Thar Be Dragons!

Last night we presented Sequitur Rounding Cape Horn to the Tiddly Cove Yacht Club at the Vancouver Maritime Museum. It was a cold night and a good turnout. The museum itself is small considering the Maritime presence the area has had. I found myself under the figurehead that once belonged to the Empress of Japan, with it's replica standing in Stanley Park looking out towards the First Narrows. Canadian Pacific Railway Company (C.P.R.) was determined to girdle the globe with a profitable transportation system and once the steam trains arrived in Vancouver, ship sailed in to complete the connection to the Orient. In her glory days the Empress rounded the Horn and she impacted on the development of Vancouver. My late husband's grandfather was Charles Binns, the purser on the Empess, and was with the C.P.R. for 40 years. He was away from home quite often and lived in Yokohama for a while, settling up the offices there. When he was in Vancouver he hosted casual dinner parties and invited other Captains and crew. After dinner they gather around the old mahogany dinning table, have a few drinks and tell stories of the sea. I inherited that old table and when we are in town, we host small dinners, invite a few sailors as we share stories of the sea.