THE MELFORTS GO TO SEA

An extraordinary story, based on the actual experiences of the author's grandmother. Her great great grandfather was the first Resident Commissioner of Australia, and this is a story of the days when it took six months to come from Australia round the Horn to England, in the year 1855. There were ten children in the family, but the story centers around Ada, whose curiosity took her into strange situations, and Jack, whose courage had a certain foolhardiness that eventually turned to good account. Storms, hunger, a captain who betrayed his trust, and a vivid picture of the strange life on a sailing packet, when travelers brought everything but the bare essentials, and when delay for one reason or another could bring dire disaster upon them as necessities for health gave out and mutiny threatened. A wholly original book, based on family records and journals, and often colored by the stilted phraseology of the period.