Fred's Slow Trip Around Another World - Fred Edwards - Bog

After wartime service in the Navy the author, a young man born into the bottom layer of the social pile, decided to see the world without having to find the money to do so; and work of many kinds was to be the answer. His early efforts took him to Norway and the Arctic waters of the Svalbard archipelligo before a chance meeting and a new job took to him to Canada. Returning to England he used his skills as a trawlerman to raise a stake that would take him to Sweden. He lived there for about year and a half working on farms, as a window cleaner, in restaurants and factories and, for a few weeks, in the Royal Household until a doomed romance took him for a time to Finland. Returning to England he worked began working again as a trawlerman fishing around the Western Isles and far to the west at Saint Kilda's island in the Atlantic. Another change took him to the Faroes and Shetland until a traumatic experience forced him to reconsider his life style and its dangers. He set up and ran a small enterprise until boredom sent him back to sea once again with voyages to apartheid South Africa and to New York in the senator Mc'Carthy days. A dull week in England lead to signing two year articles in a tanker which took him to Australia, the Indian coast, Venice and Athens. After spending his payoff from this voyage he joined a ship on the run to Buenos Aires where he was not only able to get some insight into Argentine politics and revolutions but also to start a new romance. A badly timed medical treatment found him once more on a slow trip to Australia where he jumped ship in Melbourne in a misguided attempt to get back to Argentina. Penniless, he took the first job he could get before moving Sydney where once again he found work as a trawlerman. This work took him around the islands of the Tasman Sea and the storms of the Bass strait; and incidentally found him appointed as a minor official of the Australian Union of Seamen. The outcome of an industrial dispute finally lead to him signing on a ship bound for Japan and a short romance before sailing again to Western Canada. The last leg of the voyage to England caused him to reflect upon his careless life style and his future. His circumnavigation of a world that was about to disappear had taken slightly more than twelve years.