Show SEA F FARIN RIN GIRL PENS MEMOIRS o. o Joan Lowell Q si- si Writes v Best Seller That May Rival Trader Horn i i h vf s p 1 1 7 w Heres Here's Skipper Joan Lowell with a model of the Star of Bengal her fathers father's South Sea island trading ship on which she spent her lifo life until she was 17 She made the model herself Roamed Pacific With Her Father Aboa Aboard d Sai Sailing ing Ship Relates Many Strange Adventures Adventures Ad- Ad ventures NEW EW YORK March 9 United The Press sea whIch has brought forth so many strange tales has now no given up the stor story ot of a girl who spent the first 17 11 years of her li life e aboard a sailing schooner which roamed the south Pacific Joan Lowell not yet et out or of her twenties Is the girl and the story storys IS s her autobiography Under the title ot of Cradle of tile the Deep It was published Friday by Simon and Schuster and is the Book of tile the Month Club selection for March My ly life at sea began when I Iwas Iwas was eleven months old Miss 1 Lowell Low Low- oil ell writes Father had brought me down to the schooner a tiny bundle wrapped in a blank blanket ct I was so small I would have been lost in his bunk so father fathel and the Stitches I made a diminutive hammock ham ham- mock ot of canvas This hammock was vas swung from bolts one sunk In Inthe inthe the wall above the middle or of fathers father's bunk and the other into the stanchIon stanchion stanch stanch- ion at the foot or of the bunk on the outside The rolling of the ship rocked the hammock hammo k more steadilY than the most indulgent mother CARRIED LUMBER The ship was the schooner Star Sta of Bengal trim craft well remembered remen in many ports ports' on the Pacific coast Its business was to carry lumber fronD from Puget Sound San Francisco and sometimes Eureka to 10 the Antipodes lay in a cargo of calico and whatnot trade It for copra and sandalwood or mayb guano In the remote lemote islands of the South Seas and then sail back to San Francisco in Lowell w walked her first steps holding to the rail of the poop deck of the ship off of East Easter r Island her first words were an imprecation ag the wInd her baby clothes vere were made by the ships ship's and when nearly a oung lady be he wore her hei first skirts she had to learn hoW to walk jn in them At the age of oC 6 she jumped overboard In Pacific mid and went swimming after a sea horse whIch she coveted She received her coat or of tar and leathers feathers with the old old uI uninitiated sailors at the hands or Old Neptune upon upon her first cros crosing of the equator She nearly died from scurvy She suffered the tho terrible tortures which the sea meets out outto outto to the when they are becalmed and run out of water She learned to swear four minutes without a break and to spit a curve In the wind TOOK TURN AT WHEEL But what was more she took her 1 turn urn at the wheel before she was jn in her teens and could steer as true a courses course as any sailor She pulled On the lines and she went aloft ioset to io set and take In sail sall sIte she lSe had nad h her r set and take In sail sall sIte she lSe had nad h her r duties the same as every sailor aboard the ship and at times her father replied heavily upon her But In the course of this 17 years as the only woman amon among a company of deep sea sailors life had for her many peculiar turns With no mother to guide her her ter father taught her from his Bible the lessons or of life He guarded her carefully from any realization or of her sex FinallY when love I came violently into her life the sailor who was the object of her affections left the ship driven by his feeling or of unworthiness for tile the hand of the captains captain's daughter It was not long after that that Miss Lowell and her rather father both left the sea which had claimed their little schooner down off the coast of Australia Fire broke out in the paint spread to the cargo of and Joan herself was saved from burning to at the cost of tIle the Ute life of Stitches the faithful old who next to her father was her closest st friend and the nurse urse of her het babyhood baby baby- hood Then with her father ehe ahe swam three e miles fronD from a sinking lifeboat through the night to a lightship and was saved sayed Her fath father r aged 70 gave up the sea and now lives out in California his spirit tar of off in the tropics dreaming or of a fair wind and the stars and the southern cross to steer steel by WRECK OF THE STAR I In the course ot of her narrative Miss Lowell tells the story of tile wreck of the ship Star of tile the Alaska Packers fleet In Alaska when men were lost of her fathers father's life He was master or of the Star and It was I alter after it was gone that he left the north bought the Star or of Bengal and n never ver again returned to the Arctic where Ills his earlier years ears asa ns as a sailing master had won him wIde rePute She saw her father with a rifle save Ills his ship by shooting through the runnel funnel or of a water ater spout thus breaking it when In a few minutes s smore more it would have treated tile the Star of Bengal In Pacific mid exactly ox- ox as does a cyclone treat a barn barnIn In mid America She went ashore at one or of the tin tiny Islands or of th the South SouthSea SouthSea Sea and there was the guest of the chief of the Dance of the Virgins Vir- Vir Virgins gins wherein the native girls select their mates fronD from among the ble males At another little island where the Star of Bengal called for guano she saw a French convict laborer condemned to spend Ills his life on the island swim a half mile out to tile the ship but upon seeing her a woman aboard lie he became so frightened he swam Immediately back without ever stating his busI- busI ness I The whole book is replete with I strange episodes and incidents and Into them Is knit the story or of a girl child growing to womanhood In surroundings as strange as were the adventures she encountered Miss Lowell now makes New Ne NewYork York her home being the wife of Thompson Buchanan playwright and and stage director On leavIng the sea she tried stenographY log ing a switchboard became a waitress wait wait- ress played a role with Charlie Charl Chaplin In tile the Gold Rush Hush and then turned to the stage She Is Isnow Isnow now playing jn in stock In NeW Orleans Or- Or leans |