BOLD JOURNEY

[Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen for tonight's true story adventure we've come to terminal island california directly behind me we find peter and jill hamilton of glasgow scotland and their 24 foot sloop the salmo with the salmo but without any modern equipment of any kind such as electricity radio auxiliary power the hamilton sailed from montreal to pitcairn island tahiti then back across the pacific to california tonight the actual films of their honeymoon voyage bold journey your television passport to the exciting colorful world of adventure brought to you each week by the ralston furina company of checkerboard square saint louis makers of wright czechs [Music] wheat checks rye crisp and instant ralston the famous foods in the checkerboard packages and here speaking for ralston is that celebrated serial salesman lee goodman [Music] did i tell you we're gonna have a big family reunion yes sir and can you imagine the whole family's made up of cereal salesmen for instance my grandfather leander goodman yes sir we checks the cereal made on purpose for grown-ups and kids who want to be like grown-ups i thank you and here's my songwriting uncle oscar goodman ii you get that grown-up feel and when you start out the day with we checks we checks sweet checks bite-sized little biscuits some toasted wheat make you wanna eat and eat and eat and eat now of course we're having all the other relatives too and here's a surprise for the whole family we're all having wheat checks out of this one big package it's the new family size package and it packs over a pound of wheat chex enough for 18 servings plenty big and so is the flavor because we checks are these bite-sized little biscuits of toasted wheat they're husky they're hearty and they stay crisp and crunchy the whole bowl through look for the convenient new family size wheat checks or regular size we checks the grown up cereal from checkerboard square romance on the high seas is sometimes more than a mere expression one fine august day mr peter hamilton left his sweetheart jill in england and sailed from glasgow to montreal canada fully intending to circumnavigate the globe alone however he soon came to realize that a single sailor's existence can be a very lonely life indeed and so he returned to england married jill then the adventuresome couple decided to embark upon a honeymoon voyage fully intending to complete the bridegroom's original plan of circumnavigating the globe well they got as far as tahiti once again had to cut the void short and again for a very good reason for their first appearance on our program series it's my sincere pleasure to welcome mr and mrs peter hamilton of glasgow scotland hi mrs hamilton how are you sir how do you do may i sit please dude thank you well mr hamilton no man is going to contemplate a circumnavigation of the globe unless he's had a wide wide experience in sailing so suppose we just forget about modesty for the moment would you tell us about your sailing experience yes of course i went to see first in the british navy when i was only 17 just before the outbreak of world war ii and served on through that and also in the korean war later on and ended up finally having command of a frigate for a while and so when i left i thought that i'd like to see how you did it in a smaller bird and go to some of the out of the way places for a change thank you very much mr hamilton mrs hamilton we've been neglecting you just a little bit here just when and how did you and your husband meet well peter was working on salmo in the south of england and i was going to stay with mutual friends and he met me at the station no he uh he went off alone and left you there unmarried jilted jill so to speak well no we got engaged just before he crossed the atlantic and then he came back and we were married and set out for montreal i see i want to thank you very much and with your kind permission now suppose we begin tonight's true story adventure and this ladies and gentlemen by means of film recording is honeymoon voyage well jack peter and i were married on a cool november day just outside london i bullied peter into wearing a formal morning coat and a grey topper the man in the kilt is peter's brother and was our best man my bridesmaid was a friend with whom i used to work when we finally cut the wedding cake i knew we were nearly off on our honeymoon and then we came back by ship to paint salmo up and launcher at montreal we could have painted up and into the water first thing in the spring it was only two days after the ice had cleared we left montreal very early one morning sailed off down the lawrence towards quebec listen lawrence runs northeast for hundreds of miles before it reaches the atlantic and going down you go right in alongside these great big ships that's the empress of britain we felt absolutely like midgets alongside her quebec was to be our last port of call before a long trip down to new york we decided to get stores here the tide was low and so we had to lower the stores down from the jetty way above us on the rope we carried a small light folding dinghy which we demonstrated to a couple of friends in quebec for two it's quite easy but it's a bit of a game when three people try getting in as you see when martha tries sitting down look rather like three men in a saucer we used to have a lot of fun at the islands because the natives used the gamble as to whether we'd make the shore or not after quebec we pushed off down river it gets much broader there and a little black bird decided he'd hitch a lift with us he tried the dinky for a while but he didn't like it any more than jill does and eventually abandoned it came onto our spinnaker pearl instead i think cooking was the thing i dreaded most before we set out on this trip this is one of the first meals i cooked we have a two burner kerosene stove and the stove and i used to argue a lot before i could get it lit properly spaghetti was a pretty simple meal and poor peter i don't think he liked the look of it very much wondered whether he'd married the right woman oh i think i did however he got it down well we had to keep going because the hurricane season sets in once we get down to the west indies and so we just kept on for our watches four hours in bed four hours out in the cold but all the time when you're out i think both of us are absolutely lying to the moment you can lean down and shout at the other person come on time for you to get up jill you know spent most of her time in her bank when she wasn't on work she loved it she hated getting out he used to go to bed with absolute layers of clothes on put a lot more on top scarf and more trousers and a sweater had a great big quilted k-pop windbreaker thing that goes on then finally we had a terrible yellow oil skin looked rather like a nightgown it was just like a ghost inside it trying to get out again i think the worst part of going on watch was this very first moment when you put your nose out of the cabin door the arctic wind seemed to slow down freeze your top nut off i used to sit in the cockpit for four hours dreaming of my blankets on the hot water bottle that i could go down to as soon as my turn was over yes you love that hot water bottle i've never seen one in a boat before so he went on getting colder and killed and killed out and jill managed to overcome the stone make hot things on it getting coffee or soup at night absolutely terrific in times like that it looks very beautiful but i don't know we didn't really enjoy ourselves too much then we kept on thinking of the warmth that was ahead of us one morning it got so cold i didn't know what was happening and i saw something ahead it looked rather like ice so i gave jill a shout see what she thought it was she came up it was ice it was the most frightening thing we'd experienced at all the whole trip i think if one of those flows had touched us it might have split us in half and we'd have gone straight to the bottom after about three days battling we decided to make port until the coast should clear coming into picture nova scotia for shelter coming alongside a sailing boat is quite a game because you've got no engine to reverse and of course you can't put the brakes on everything flaps and bangs and you think you're going to get knocked on the head with a boom and you have to rush backwards and forwards trying to fend off yeah it's cleared after only two or three days and we were able to push out to our great relief into the open sea and turn south where he got warmer and warmer and head for the state didn't take too long before we got there and we broke the flag usual courtesy gesture of a ship when you get into the waters of a new country new york is our first point of call we went right down the east river in among all the skyscrapers it was june and miserably hot in new york now we got calmed right off the end of the united nations building and was so hot that i went in bathing in east river i wish i hadn't soon afterwards because the water was a wee bit grubby another thing that frightens you is these great barges that rush up and down we've never heard about them and they really frightened us i think most people say hello to the statue of liberty we say goodbye to it as we pushed off south to jamaica about three weeks four weeks ahead of us a month at sea very soon passes i was surprised at this and soon jamaica was up ahead we had to put up a quarantine flag to show that we'd come from foreign port we hadn't got a yellow flag so we put up a rather dirty yellow duster to do instead in new york i bought a new dress and that evening we'd been invited out to dinner so i tried this new outfit on it was an awful game trying to keep it looking nice changing in a small cabin and then scrambling over all this stuff in order to get into the dinghy the dinghy gets a bit wet at times so you have to fold yourself in so your skirt doesn't touch at the bottom some little boys up in canada had stolen our rolex so we had to paddle indian fashion to get ashore it's quite a tiring business holding two walls together like that quite learn how to balance it either you never really liked the dinghy i don't think right the end of the time we were with her no i didn't it's very wobbly it's very awkward getting in and out of her but i made it to the dock very well in spite of peter's rude comments from the salmon from the anchorage in jamaica we could watch all the children in the little compound opposite to us they were marvelous dances as you see them during the american jive the jamaican music well we pushed off from jamaica hitting with panama and a couple of basin birds followed us they call them boats and birds because they're long tails sailors used to think that they were like bosons and always carried a marine spike in their tails you go right slap bang into the trades as soon as you leave jamaica going down to panama and it gets pretty rough you can see the way the deck's dancing about jill was very good now she managed to cope with all the work in the upper deck that came her way when she was on watch so she went up to take the genoa in it's a great big masthead sail that we use when the weather's calm but it's a bit of a fight trying to get it in when it's blowing like this she managed all right and the idea was we were going to set the next smaller sail which is our number one stacel that white one that was really about the one job that jill did find heavy we've got winches to help but even so she's got an awful flog to get it really taught he kept on going when you're healed over like that the miles very peel off a stunt and you feel though it's a bit uncomfortable at least it's good and you're getting places when i was on watch it got blowing even harder and so i didn't want to disturb joel so got the boat sailing herself by lashing the tiller i'd practice that a bit coming over the atlantic by myself and then was able to leave salmo to sail herself while i went forward and lowered a great big bag of sale pulled it right down wound it in round the boom we have roller reefing i'd never be without it in a boat it's so easy to shorten sail and we made very good time down to panama we even split a mainsail then jill had just saved our very laborious job in the cabin when we reached the canal we've been at sea for four months since leaving montreal the coast guard are the first people who greeted us at panama they came out then they were followed by the canal company boat who gave us a big sheath of papers to sign you have quarantined forms and landing forms and tonnage declarations just if you're a big liner one of the things we found we were in trouble over was that we hadn't an engine and without that they don't let you through very fortunately the seafarer fine big american yacht came and they very kindly said they'd tow us through so we lashed alongside and set off i understand you've had the hathaways on this show already and saw them tearing us through so here's the other side of the story one of the things that you don't know till you try it in a yacht is that when you get into the locks they open the sluices absolutely full and you're thrown about all over just like a pee in a rattle that's charles hathaway the owner of the seafarer he's rather worried because the boat's grinding up the side of the lock oh we got through all right the other side we decided we'd have to paint so we brought the boat in on a full tide propped her up and waited for the tide to go down it was a very shadeless beach so we fixed up a shade with a dinghy painting the boat was a very essential part before going into tropical waters so peter dug a trench right underneath the keel if dorito worm find any part of the boat that has not caused any paint on they will come in and eat up the hull a honeymoon like this isn't all just plain sailing there's quite a lot of work attached to it as well once it was done all we had to do was wait for the tide to come in float it off before sitting out for the galapagos islands a two weeks sailing trip away thank you mr and mrs hamilton part two of tonight's true story adventure continues in just a moment but first instant ralston presents ralph and waldo say mother don't say you don't have time to make hot cereal for the kids instant ralston cooks in just 10 seconds waldo yeah excuse me you know listen it takes three minutes alone for the water to boil yeah but i just told him it takes only ten seconds hmm you better straighten it out and gentlemen um i have a little announcement to make uh we've been having a little meeting here speak up we've been having a little meeting here and uh maybe you better add three minutes but it's worth it i was never so embarrassed in all my life that's all right they admired you for it you bet they admired you for it who's that lee goodman what does he know about it i know that instant ralston is worth three minutes and 10 seconds anytime plenty of hot and hearty whole wheat nutrition whole wheat vitamins whole wheat protein and that means plenty of energy man-sized energy puppet-sized energy too no wonder they call instant ralston the power pack and cereal from checkerboard [Music] it's tricky sailing between panama and the galapagos there's only a thousand miles but we were lucky you got to barrington island little uninhabited island in two weeks the big white sandy beach there so we rode ashore to see what all the rocks were found they weren't rocks as soon as we got there but sea lions we went to doll shore even if they were friendly sea lions jill didn't want to stay and find out so she bailed out and left me to go in among them you see how they did behave they're terribly friendly really they make an awful noise but all they do is kiss each other jill finally was so impressed that she decided she'd be a sea lion and go right in among them that's her with a pants on he got right up trying to pet a couple of the babies just managed to touch them one little chap i think was really full though she was his mother or something came along but got tired we had a lot of fun looking at all these different kinds of animals around here this is a flightless cormorant who's just lost the use of his wings he has no more enemies here and just doesn't bother to use them the penguins we found a lot of fun they're just small little birds darwin came here to evolve his origin of species and we followed in his tracks but we were just looking at the animals for fun we weren't doing any research we were on our honeymoon and the marine iguanas are funny creatures they look just like prehistoric dragons peter chased them up the rocks and they spat down at him in self-defense one evening we decided we'd have fish for supper and after half an hour peter had collected five while he was cleaning them this pelican came along and tried eating up the bones he found a bit indigestible i think he was our last visitor before we set sail for pitcairn three weeks journey away we tried reading up all about pitcairn island on the way down there [Music] and that and writing our logs were the two main occupations it's a terrific thrill when you suddenly see pitcairn island heaving up out of the ocean after three weeks with nothing at all to look at pitcairn is the island where the mutineers from the famous hms bounty took refuge in the 1790s and all the romance of it comes right back to you when you see these descendants of the bounty mutineers rowing out to greet you we were the smallest boat that had ever been there and they were all very thrilled by us there's only one landing place there all in among the surf and the rocks they've covered it over with a trellis work of wood so they can haul the boats in and out they can't leave them in the water of course so they'd just be bashed to pieces they've keep them up in these boat houses making souvenirs to sell to passing shipping is their chief industry reynold is polishing us rather sandpaping a wooden tortoise while his chimpanzee walks about the ground that chimp was brought in as a pet from the outside the women weave very gayly colored baskets from dyed pandanus leaves it got awfully rough while we were there and the anchorage is quite exposed so we were rolling about very badly and i was afraid we'd drag so i got two of the islanders to paddle me out so that i could sail the boat off and on while jill stayed ashore with one of the families very very glad that i did because it did get quite rough and undoubtedly we would have dragged i waited to the top of the hill waiting for them to come back and they carried their sandpaper and with them wherever they went they're forever working making souvenirs all day long soon it was time for me to return to salmo so i hitched a ride in their longboat a steamer was due in today and they were going to take out their vegetables and souvenirs that's fred christian a direct descendant of fletcher christian leader of the bounty mutineers rowing out in the surf on a calm days is not very exciting but as you see when we're alongside salmo she's even bigger than we are which surprises quite a lot once they'd left me on board they set sail for the steamer and we set sail for tahiti and very soon we were up to our usual sea antics diving in and swimming and tearing behind the boats gloriously refreshing and the thing that jill didn't like was sharks she's always shouting me shark sharks do be careful don't stay in too long and with that ringing in my ears i wasn't quite as happy doing it as i might otherwise have been we saw quite a number but they never really bothered us too much they never attacked before we got to tahiti i had to do a lot of navigating i used to read the sextant while jill read the time usually she used to read it wrong we had terrific rousey saying that's your fault and we didn't know where we were but somehow rather we worked it out in the end and got right after tahiti when you get there you do have to be a bit more careful about your navigation because the whole island is surrounded by a reef and you get the surf beating down on it the whole time there are only two or three narrow passes that you can go through when you get rollers like that right alongside you and you're sailing in without an engine it does make it quite nerve-wracking and you're just praying that the wind won't drop while you're on the way in at papierty which is where we went to first you lie stern onto the jetty which lies stern onto the jetty and also stern onto the main street oh there were rats there they were awful creatures they kept coming on board at night trying to do any housework imaning here is a tremendous chore because there's so many things going on outside children and sometimes three or four on one bicycle would go by a whole family and of course there are the girls but they don't wear their straw skirts anymore just the flowers in their hair we made a great discovery we'd been married now for just over a year and we discovered we were having a baby so all our plans for going around the world had to be changed and we decided the best place to go was up to los angeles so that we could fly back to scotland going through the doldrums is very slow slow business you just lie barely barely moving and it took us two weeks to go the thousand miles from tahiti up to the marchesa islands we were actually calm for two and a half days within sight of where we wanted to go and that was very very worrying but eventually we did make it and went ashore to taipei valley it's the most typical south sea island it was described so well by your writer herman melville it's very beautiful and very green in taipei these were the last houses we saw before we set sail for los angeles a long long trip away the marchesa islands are about 3 000 miles from the united states all the time they were just the porpoises to watch i think every sailor loves sports as they come and play under the bar for hours on end diving and swirling and spinning away the sunsets were gorgeous los angeles at last we had been at sea a year it was a wonderful thrill seeing a big harbour again we dropped the general for the last time and went into our birth we'd written to the hathaways and hoped they'd be there to meet us and blew me down they were too it was so lovely to be met by people we knew here we were in a foreign port having finished our honeymoon being greeted by people we'd met who had been so kind to us through the panama i'd like to do this honeymoon again i think it was tremendous fun we both enjoyed it such a lot thank you very much mrs hamilton mr hamilton we've had quite a few transoceanic voyages on our program series but to my recollection this is the first time that we've had one featuring a small craft that had absolutely no auxiliary power whatsoever well now just a few moments ago you gave away the secret the reason why you were forced to curtail the second attempt to circumnavigate the globe you're going to be parents we're delighted to hear the news and i assume of course that you're not going to be sailing back to scotland or england no no we're not we are flying back to scotland i see well now what's going to happen to the salmo here here we are in uh california terminal island do you plan to sell a boat yes it's rather sad but that's the only thing we can do we've just managed to sell her now i see mr hamilton didn't you consider it risky if not downright dangerous to attempt a voyage of this type without navigational help such as radio for example oh no i think it's more fun that way i got awfully fed up with all the equipment that you have in a modern ship and i thought i'd like to do it the easy way for a change though it was just a chronometer it's quite easy that way well now it might be a lot of fun for you but it certainly wouldn't be any fun for a landlubber like me well mr hamilton now that you're out of the navy and you're going to settle down to the life of a family man just what do you plan to do sir we're going to keep a dairy farm my brother's got one already and we're going to join up with him uh-huh well now do you plan making another circumnavigation of the globe sometime in the future well jack i'd like to answer that when the child's old enough i hope we'll set tail again peter wants to go to the bering sea i want to go to the mediterranean so i don't know which it would be well i think frankly you'll go where the youngster tells you you're going to go that's the way that's the way it is in most families and by the way we'd be very very pleased to hear from you after the baby is born tell us if it's going to be a sailor or a beautiful young model and we'd be so happy to hear it for i want to thank both of you for this very lovely this charming this most dramatic true adventure film we've enjoyed it you've taken us to places we've never seen before in our program series pitcairn ireland was just one of them again my sincerest thanks to you both in the best of good luck to you goodbye sir goodbye mrs hamilton thank you so very much and now preview scenes from next week's true story adventure but first this brief final reminder from lee goodman of checkerboard square wait are the checks please rice checks they're great at dinner time too use them in place of toast under cheese rare bit or chicken alla king delicious because rice chex have a light delicate toasted rice flavor rice chex the light size bite-sized cereal from checkerboard square if the star of africa burns brightly today much of the credit must certainly go to the great philosopher physician who dedicated his life to the dark continent dr albert schweitzer we're fortunate next week to present a first person account of dr byron bernard's journey to dr schweitzer in french equatorial africa dr bernard a veterinarian shepherded a small herd of milk goats from cincinnati ohio as gifts to the great samaritan it's a modest yet moving story mission to dr schweitzer so that'll be next week's true story adventure same time same station until then my thanks once again to mr mrs peter hamilton of glasgow scotland and as always to you ladies and gentlemen boys and girls thank you so much and good night bowl journey is brought to you every week on film by the ralston purina company checkerboard square st louis missouri