Tuesday, July 28, 2009

More Ocean Travel

When we flew from Chicago to London this summer, it became clear to me that we were flying a similar route to the one Betsy and Edward Walker had taken in 1897. Our flight was at 33,000 feet plus and they were at sea level. Also our flight took slightly more than seven hours and their trip took seven days. I'm slow, but at some point, I thought, aha, that's why it's called jet lag. If you're taking a day to change one time zone, I believe you would be adjusted to the time change when you got to your destination. We did our whole trip in only a day longer than it took them to sail from Quebec to Liverpool. There are many aspects of their trip and our trip we could discuss, but I'll only say it's hard to fathom travel that slow.

The following is another excerpt from her diary. As Sally says, would it be that hard to put in a period or even a comma.

Left Quebec at 9 o'clock quite calm and very pleasant our ocean voyage commenced from Quebec and the log taken - life on an ocean liner commenced in earnest. The stewards and stewardesses are all very agreeable. Mr. Walker left the . . .

. . . and laid to directly after we saw the mail tender leave the shore the tide was going out fast and they made quite a detour to reach the steamer. They unloaded the mail freight and some passengers and then loosed their ropes and when they were cleared the captain started the S S California. We sailed until noon of the 7th and made 309 miles. (We covered 500 miles an hour)We were in the straits of Belle Isle and it began to get foggy.

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