The ship's forecastle where the crew sleeps is overrun by bugs, including their beds, so they string hammocks (with practical jokers cutting the ropes they hang from).

On the 34th day, Moshulu crosses the Equator and, along with a bottle of Akvavit from the captain, the new crewmen undergo the initiation ceremony – their heads are covered in tar and red lead.

The ship sails on to Port Victoria and the crew have to offload the ballast on the outer-ballast grounds, working amidst the stench of two dead dog carcasses that the Belfast stevedores had kindly included.

Moshulu is prepared to meet the Southern Ocean and Newby at last experiences some real storms as the sea washes over the deck and the crew have to deal with flapping sails perched high up in the rigging.

Between the greatest of them there was a distance that could only be estimated in relation to the ship, as much as four times her entire length, or nearly a quarter of a mile.Newby goes aloft into the fore rigging: At this height, 130 feet up, in a wind blowing 70 miles an hour, the noise was an unearthly scream.

Above me was the naked topgallant yard and above that again the royal to which I presently climbed ... the high whistle of the wind through the halliards sheaf, and above all the pale blue illimitable sky, cold and serene, made me deeply afraid and conscious of my insignificance.As they round Cape Horn, the crew have become bored by the desolation around them and engage in a tug-of-war competition from which Newby emerges victorious.

They finally cross the Line and are given a huge rum ration which they find difficult to get through, and spirits are lifted when they think they have caught a shark but it bends the hook.

By the 1930s, the grain trade from South Australia to Europe was the last enterprise in which square-riggers could engage with any real hope of profit, and then only if the owner had a keen interest in reducing running costs.

From Newby's own description he was a formidable character: He was respected and feared as a man over whose eyes no wool could be pulled by the masters whom he employed to sail his ships, and the tremors they felt were passed down to the newest joined apprentice.

Bending a complete set of fair-weather canvas was no easy job, and sail changing was always done four times on a voyage as a ship entered and left the Trade Winds.