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Such was the four-masted barque Parma, setting out early last March. In 1931 the Australian writer-adventurer Alan Villiers with a syndicate, bought her, from a Hamburg break-up yard. A onetime German nitrate trader, she was about to become razor blades and sardine cans. A fellow-buyer was the man Villiers calls "the best sailor in the world": Finnish Captain Ruben de Cloux, 48, 35 years in sail, 18 years in the Cape Horn traffic. Captain de Cloux would like to be a sailor on the moon because the moon is smaller than the Earth to sail around. Outward bound for Australia after the 1929 grain race, he was sailing the barque Herzogin Cecilie when she rolled over on her beam ends. He managed to right her and sail on. In the 1932 race he sailed the Parma through Horn hurricanes, South Atlantic ice and North Atlantic calm into Falmouth Bay in the winning time of 103 days, beating 19 other skippers, nine of whom he had trained himself. About that voyage Alan Villiers wrote a book: Grain Race (currently published in the U. S. by Scribner's).
Last March Villiers sailed as second mate with Captain de Cloux on the Parma. two months behind the first of the fleet. Mate Villiers had served as seaman in two previous races. Members of the big crew of 32 were the Captain's daughter Marie Ann and one Elizabeth Jacobsen, 19, pretty, brawny daughter of a retired Brooklyn sea-captain. There were 14 other apprentices. On the voyage Villiers made a film with Miss Jacobsen (screen alias: Sonia Lind) cast as heroine. Captain de Cloux's chief rivals were the Herzogin Cecilie with which he had won the race five times and the 16-year-old Priwall, racing for the first time. He made Cape Horn in a fast 30 days. On the leg north he did not know that the Pamir had reached Land's End in the excellent time of 92 days. Into Falmouth Harbor last week staggered the Penang which had left Australia in late January. Its time was 122 days. Close behind it came the Parma, having finished the 15,000 mi. in the amazing time of 83 days, fair time even for a clipper. Said Villiers, "We had a good ship, a good captain—one of the best in the world—a good time and good weather." Last week the fleet admitted that the Parma had probably won the 1933 grain race, although the race is not over until the last ship is in. There is no prize.
∙Famed clippers: James Baines, Red Jacket, Lightning, Cutty Sark, Sovereign of the Seas. Best time from Liverpool to Australia: the Thermopylae's 63 days, 18 hours. Later and much slower were the iron & steel wool clippers, the still later four-masted barques competing with steam.