The Calypso's Unplanned Voyage to Utopia

southerly buster

hurricane in the South Seas.<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='On the 21st of November 1898, the Calypso, a team yacht, rigged as a three -masted schooner, and measuring between four and five hundred tons, met with a rather serious accident to her engines in one of those brief but deadly hurricanes which are known to navigators of the South Seas as

southerly busters.

'> An attempt to maneuver her with the screw resulted in a disaster that crippled the yacht, leading to a grinding noise in the engine-room and a broken crankshaft, leaving her drifting helplessly.^[1][1] The Calypso was on a voyage from New Zealand to the Marquesas Islands, approximately four to five hundred miles northeast of Auckland.^[1] Despite fitting a spare foretopmast and hoisting the screw out of the water, a heavy gale from the southwest further damaged her, leaving her capable of only four or five knots an hour under sail.^[1] A month later, she was still on the southern edge of the tropics, struggling with light, baffling winds.^[1]

Sir Harry Milton, a landowner and ironmaster from Northumberland, owned and sailed the Calypso.^[1] He was cruising the world with his sister, Violet, who was between eighteen and nineteen years old.^[1] Another member of the yacht's company was Herbert Wyndham, a second lieutenant of Her Majesty's gunboat Sandfly, who was on invalid leave after being wounded in West Africa.^[1] Sir Harry had persuaded him to spend his leave cruising the South Seas.^[1]

By Christmas Eve, the Calypso finally escaped the calm zone and began to feel the trade winds.^[1] On Christmas morning, an hour before sunrise, the cry of

Land, ho!

brought everyone on deck.<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='Then, about an hour before sunrise on Christmas morning, the unexpected, but none the less welcome, cry of

Land, ho!

brought everyone, from Sir Harry himself to his sister's maid, or the

Lady -in-Waiting,

as Lieutenant Wyndham was wont to call her, tumbling out of their berths and up on deck.' end_phrase='up on deck.'> Sir Harry and the sailing-master scanned the land, about ten miles distant, through their glasses.^[1] The sailing-master noted that the island was not on their chart and they were far from trading vessel tracks.<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='I can't say, Sir Harry. I've never seen the island before, and I don't believe it's down in the chart. You see, we've got clean out of the track of the trading vessels and mail steamers, and this part of the South Sea is even now very little known. I'd no idea there was land within three hundred miles of us,

replied the sailing -master.' end_phrase='replied the sailing -master.'> Suddenly, Sir Harry spotted a steam launch approaching from the island.^[1]<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='A moment later he sang out to the sailing -master -

Topline, what do you say to a steam launch coming off from your unknown island?

'> The launch, named Mermaid, was electric and hailed from an island called Utopia.<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='This is the electric launch Mermaid, and yonder island is Utopia,

he replied.' end_phrase='he replied.'> Its skipper, Frank Markham, offered assistance, noting the Calypso's damaged spars.<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='We came out to see if we could be of any assistance to you. You seem to have had rather a bad time of it somewhere, by the look of your spars.

'> Markham offered to tow the Calypso into port if Sir Harry would speak with him privately.<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='The Mermaid shall tow you in in an hour if you will first oblige me with five minutes' conversation in private.' end_phrase='in private.

'>

The Mermaid towed the Calypso into Utopia's lagoon in just over an hour.^[1] The island was strikingly beautiful, with an extinct volcano, Mount Plato, and verdant slopes.^[1] Markham explained that Mount Plato was named because they hoped to found their New Republic under its shadow.<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='That is Mount Plato,

said Markham, who at Sir Harry's invitation had remained on board the yacht to act as cicerone to the visitors to Utopia.' end_phrase='visitors to Utopia.'>^[1] He also revealed that the Mermaid could reach thirty knots and they were building a three-thousand-ton vessel capable of forty knots.<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='Twenty knots!

laughed Markham.

Why, the Mermaid can run thirty when we're in a hurry, and we've got a three -thousand tonner on the slips now in the dockyard that we are building on a new principle, and which we expect to make forty.

'> Sir Harry pledged his word of honor that he and his crew would not pry into Utopia's secrets, a condition for their entry.^[1] The Calypso was then taken to Utopia's dockyard, where it would be placed in a dry dock.^[1]

Upon arrival, Sir Harry, Violet, and Lieutenant Wyndham met Mr. Austen, who introduced Edward Adams, the visionary behind Utopia, and Max Renault, the chief engineer and electrician responsible for the Mermaid.^[1]<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='And this is Max Renault, our chief engineer and electrician, to whose genius the existence of the Mermaid is due,

continued Mr. Austen, presenting the man whose acquaintance the reader has already made under such different circumstances.' end_phrase='different circumstances.'> Mr. Austen explained that his son's death led him to join the

Brotherhood of the Better Life,

and he devoted his fortune to developing Edward Adams's social colony scheme.<sup class='text_citation' source_id='1' start_phrase='He told them, in a simple, circumstantial narrative, how the death of his son had led him to become a member of the

Brotherhood of the Better Life,

and of the change in his social views, together with his determination to retire from the business that had brought him into commercial relations which ended in friendship with Sir Harry's father, and devote the whole of his fortune, amounting to over half a million, to the practical development of the scheme which he had heard Edward Adams propound at one of the meetings; how they had bought a steamer, loaded her with everything that could be of use in the new colony, from a spade to the elaborate machinery they had seen working at the dockyard, and had brought out the first party of five hundred colonists to this island, which had been discovered twenty years before by one of the members of the Brotherhood, named Ambrose Miller, an old salt who had been captain of a South Sea whaler.' end_phrase='South Sea whaler.'> The colonists, numbering around six hundred, had prospered by excluding politics and focusing on a simple, domestic system.^[1]