London, Feb 24 (Inditop.com) A tale of sex and drunkenness on a ship travelling to Australia is recorded in a 170-year-old journal that is expected to be auctioned next month, a media report said.
The journal was maintained by James Bell who set sail on the migrant vessel the Planter in November 1838. The ship sailed from Deptford, south-east London, on the five-month journey to Adelaide, Daily Express reported.
The leather-bound 225-page journal records that on board were the 11 daughters of a doctor-preacher from Liverpool called McGowan, as well as a party of prostitutes.
Bell wrote: “Our captain made love to two of McGowan’s daughters. Such example was soon followed by all the ship’s company, �particularly the three mates who �carried immorality to a glaring height, particularly the first mate, whom I saw take farewell of a wife and child at Deptford.”
The journal was bought for a few pounds at a market stall and ended up with auctioneers �Bonhams, where it was catalogued by �historian Felix Pryor.
The journal is expected to fetch �4,000 at auction next month.
“I have never seen anything like it. I was expecting a gentle story of sightings of flying fish and the like and instead was faced with this extraordinary story of sex, drunkenness and fighting.
“It reads like a Monty Python sketch, an idiotic caricature of life at sea. It reads like one big orgy. With all this whoring and drunkenness, it is amazing the ship ever arrived in Australia,” Pryor was quoted as saying.
