❖ SAGA OF CAPTAIN J.C. VOSS ❖

 

Captain John Claus Voss
Tilikum
his mate Norman Luxton,
a newspaper journalist
at Oak Bay, Victoria, B.C.
beginning their sailing trip to 
London, England, dated 1901.

The saga of Capt. J. C. Voss still is unparalleled. Between 1901-1904, he sailed nearly around the world in a rebuilt Native American dugout canoe, making a voyage of 40,000 miles.
      He established a small-boat record in sail never approached since then. He carried no auxiliary motor and not even a dinghy!
      Yet, in his last days, when long thought dead, he took up a new occupation, ironic for one whose life had been spent at sea. It generally was believed he drowned when he mysteriously sailed away from Yokohama harbor in 1913 on his 25-ft yawl, the SEA QUEEN a boat he designed.
      He was always an enigma to seafarers; a man given to many actions that were unpredictable. A striking example: his sailing from Yokohama in his pigmy boat in 1913 without a word to anyone.
      The story of how Voss spent his final years, his astonishingly different occupation at the end, his formerly unknown nationality, and the unexpected place of his death add a striking twist to this seafaring saga.
      However, let us first consider some of his voyaging before embarking upon his most famous one around the world.
      John C. Voss went to sea at 16. In 1896, as master of the sealing schooner AURORA, he made an unsuccessful trip to the Cocos Islands, seeking buried treasure. He returned to the Islands in 1897 in the ten-ton, 35-ft sloop XORA, and again was unsuccessful. He sailed to South America, a voyage of 7,000 miles.
      Voss made a study of ships' reaction to ocean waves. With this knowledge, he selected a Nootka Native dugout canoe from the west coast of Vancouver Island as best conforming with his theories to meet wave reaction, for his voyage around the world.
      This craft, already 50 years old in 1901, had been hollowed out of an enormous red cedar log by a Native. Voss bought it early in 1901 for $75. The Native owner gave him the skull of his father as talisman, the father having built the canoe.
      As the craft stood, it was only a beginning: The lines, lightness, and cedar buoyancy were merely first essentials. 

Tilikum and crew 
passing the Gulf Islands, B.C., Canada
1901.

Voss faced several months of hard work to bring the rebuilt craft in conformance with his plans. The canoe was towed to Victoria.
      There Voss strengthened the cedar hull with inch-square oak frames and built up the sides seven inches. Inside were placed floor timbers. He added 300 pounds of lead to the keel. The canoe was decked to allow a cabin. The craft was fitted with three small masts for four sails. All running gear was so arranged that one man at the helm could set and take in all sails. Thus was an ancient dugout, never originally intended for sail, turned into a 38-foot sailing craft.
      Over the grotesque bird figurehead, Voss broke a bottle of wine, christened this remodeled shell the TILIKUM, a word in the Chinook dialect meaning friend. On 27 May 1901, he sailed from Victoria for Suva, in the Fiji Islands, first lap of the journey. And in this slim, light structure he went three-quarters of the way around the world in three years, three months, and 12 days of leisurely travel.
      Voss at the start was 40 years old. Some thought he was of Nova Scotian birth; others though he was from Newfoundland or the Netherlands. On the TILIKUM he had as first companion, Norman Luxton, a newspaperman, inexperienced at sea. Luxton now lives at Banff. He had shared half the expenses of fitting out the vessel. Also, he promised Voss $2,500 if they circled the globe in a craft small enough to set a new record.
      Ten days out, a terrific gale made it imperative to put out a seaanchor, Voss had invented several specially designed for the small sailing craft. To launch this anchor in the enormous following sea, Luxton tied a life line around his waist and crawled to the foremast, held on to it, while Voss tensely waited for the arrival of a lesser wave and the right moment to yell to Luxton to let the anchor go. When he did, the greenhand panicked, climbed half-way up the mast, almost turning the TILIKUM over. Voss jerked the life-line to pull the inexperienced man to the deck in time to save the TILIKUM from capsizing. On the next lower wave, the mate succeeded in getting the anchor over the side. The little craft rode safely to the wind.
      On arrival at Suva, Voss met his first disappointment. Luxton announced he was going to make the next lap of the voyage to Sydney, Australia, by the regular passenger steamer. Voss took on, as his second assistant, Louis Begent, able seaman, age 31. On October 21, the TILIKUM began her 1,800-mile voyage to Sydney.
      Six days out, at night, they were forging ahead with a high easterly wind and great following seas. It was Voss' watch on deck when the binnacle light went out. He called to the mate to take the tiller and went to the cabin with the compass box to fit the light. This done, he handed it up to Begent. Unthinkingly, the mate let go the tiller just as an exceptionally high following wave came upon them.
      As the TILIKUM swung far round to the wind the wave crashed over them, hurling Voss down into the cabin, filling it with water. When Voss scrambled back to the deck, the mate was gone, now far behind. Voss was helpless to aid him, as it was impossible to go back into that following sea. The mate lost his life because he had disobeyed the captain's strict order always to fasten his lifeline when he came on deck.
      The captain now found the compass also had been washed away. He was about 1,400 miles from Sydney, the cabin half full of water, all bedding and clothing soaked. He bailed out the cabin. Two days and nights he stayed at the helm without food and nearly perished from the cold in his wet clothes.
      Then he dozed. As the tiller swayed, a squall hit, sending the TILIKUM on her beam, hurling the captain against the lee washboards, knocking him unconscious.
      When he recovered, he saw the foresail, part of the foremast, the forward staysail, and all the head gear overboard. Yet, by this very disaster, the craft had been held safely into the wind. He picked up the wreckage, put out the sea anchor into the calming sea, lit the riding light, let the vessel drift and went to sleep. The riding light went out. He woke in darkness horrified to see the red and green lights of a large steamer bearing straight down upon him. Pulling off his left sock, he dipped it in kerosene, lit it, waved it from the end of a frying pan. Just in time the steamer altered course.
      Steering by sun and stars and the movement of the waves, the captain arrived at Sydney to face the worst disappointment of the voyage. His partner would go no further. Thus was lost to the captain the $2,500 offer for circling the globe.
      Yet now Voss was more sure than ever he could succeed. So he bought out his partner's share. Unfortunately, this left him with only $10.
     How to get money to continue the journey? the Sydney newspapers had given him immense publicity when he arrived. A reporter suggested Voss put the TILIKUM ashore in a tent in the city's park and charge admission to see this novelty ship, made out of a cedar log.
      Voss did so. Inexperienced as a showman, he waited nervously at the tent flap on the opening forenoon. In spite of the publicity, only one person arrived the first morning, an old woman of imperious manner. After paying her sixpence admission, she climbed into the cockpit and sat. The captain timidly ventured: "How do you like my little ship?"
      She answered sharply: "When is she going to start?"
      The captain, flabbergasted, asked: "Start for where?"
      Angrily the woman replied: "I paid my sixpence for a boat ride, and I want it!"
      The captain, now thoroughly flustered, expostulated: "But the boat's on exhibition as a novelty!"
      The old lady exploded: "I can see hundreds of boats out there in the harbor for nothing. Give me back my sixpence."
      Fortunately, crowds came and the paid admissions continued two months. Now realizing he could make money in this manner, Voss changed his original plan of sailing direct to England from Sydney. He went on the visit other parts of Australia, then to Tasmania, New Zealand, South Africa, South America, and some European islands.
      On January 4, 1903, he set sail for Hobart, Tasmania, on the 27th to New Zealand.
      Voss, having overcome his first shyness, turned lecturer, describing the most thrilling parts of the voyage. At Palmerston, listeners were nearly all Maoris.
      On 17 August, the TILIKUM left Auckland for Durban, S.A. Three terrific storms were encountered. Then, for 30 days, Voss and his mate drifted helplessly becalmed. Death from thirst appeared to be their fate until a deluge of rain came when they had been three days without water.

Tilikum
and crew, 1903
Durban, South Africa

      They reached Durban on 28 December where Voss once more became a showman and lecturer. By flatcar they visited Pietermartisburg--a strange triumph, she became the only ocean-going craft to reach a height of 6,800-ft above sea level.
      On 14 April 1904, the TILIKUM sailed from Cape Town for England, last lap of the history-making voyage. Voss signed on as ninth mate, Edward Harrison, 22, and in first stages of consumption, a boy never before at sea. At the end of the voyage, Harrison had completely recovered.

The exhibit sign Captain Voss
placed for his speaking
engagements.
Click image to enlarge.

      The TILIKUM reached Margate, England, on 2 September 1904. The entire voyage had required more than three years. Ship and crew were grandly received at Margate and later at London. Voss was made a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. The TILIKUM was shown at the Naval and Marine Exhibition in London in 1905.
      Then Voss sailed away to Japan, leaving his gallant ship to rot on a tide flat on the Thames. The reason for this never has been ascertained. Those who knew the captain admitted he was a strange man.
      Soon the TILIKUM was a sorry wreck. Before she was beyond repair, her condition came to the attention of two noted yachtsmen, A.W. E. and A. Byford, of the Greenwich Club. They refitted the TILIKUM at their own expense, and paid her passage by freight steamer to her home port of Victoria, her starting point. At Victoria, 1 July 1930, Dominion Day, the TILIKUM in a special ceremony was placed in a covered shed beside the House of Parliament
      In a protected house she now stands in Thunderbird Park, Victoria (1965.) She is an example of, perhaps, the mosts remarkable small sailing ship in modern times.

TILIKUM 
Undercover exhibit in Victoria, 1947,
near the place of her departure in 1901.
[Years later she was moved inside.]

      

      Voss, after going to Yokohama in 1905, became a familiar figure along the waterfront. Evidently he had made money by his lecture tours. With leisure, he began working on plans to build an even smaller and better seagoing vessel.
      This completed in the spring of 1913, was a 25-ft yawl, named the SEA QUEEN. Without a word to anyone, Voss sailed out of Yokohama harbor in June. He never heard of again. Except for one man, all others believed Voss was lost at sea in his SEA QUEEN.
      Then, 51 years later, came the amazing and strange discovery that Voss was not lost at sea.
      Despite the belief that Voss was lost at sea in 1913, one man refused to accept this. He began a long research. He found that Voss sailed to the Bering Sea. Disposing of the SEA QUEEN to a man going into the far north to trade with the Eskimos. Voss became captain of a schooner trading in the North Pacific. Then, in 1918, he turned up in the small inland California town of Tracy, where his family had lived during Voss' half a lifetime at sea.
      Voss, by then 57, was no longer in good circumstances, as he purchased a touring car and set himself up to supply the town with transportation. As a jitney driver, the fare he charged was 5 cents. For four years he acted as the town's only bus driver! He died in 1922; his death certificate lists him age 64 and his birthplace as Germany. He was survived by a son and a daughter.

Written by Francis Dickie for the Seattle Sunday Times, 3 January 1965.
Photos courtesy of the British Columbia Maritime Museum

More details on Captain Voss and his 40,000 mile voyage can be seen on this Victoria, B.C.,  web site HERE.

And then, of course, the words by the skipper himself in this below listed book.

First published in Yokohama in 1913.
Second edition in London in 1926.
This book has also been published 
in Australia, New Zealand, and
South Africa.
An introduction is by 
F. E. Grubb,
Registrar & Librarian,
Maritime Museum of British Columbia. 

✪ Perhaps Fortune Lay South? ✪

Vintage postcard from the archives of S. P. H. S.
Click to enlarge.

"While, in the late 1800s, most Victoria [B.C.] residents seeking riches went north, there were, between 1897 and 1902, four vessels which when they passed Cape Flattery turned south in their search for fortune. Their goal was the little island of Cocos, a few hundred miles west of Panama.
      There was reputed to be the concealed treasure beyond imagining.
      The first man to use the caves of Cocos as a hiding place for pirate loot was the naval captain, Edward Davis, who turned to this nefarious profession in the late 1600s.

Cocos Island, Costa Rica.
05˚31' 08" N,  087˚04' 18" W
From The Pacific Islands, Vol. 2 1943.

      More than a century later another renegade, Capt. Grahame (later alias 'Benito') of H. M. S. DEVONSHIRE added another installment.
      Last substantial deposit arrived there on the British barkentine MARY DYER. On her had been loaded by authorities of church and state in Lima the riches they sought to save when the liberator Bolivar was feared to be approaching. The sight of such wealth was too much for the British seamen and they absconded to Cocos.
      That this last loot had indeed been hidden there was proved by visits in 1844 and 1850 by the man Keating (sometimes written Keyton) who brought away gold and jewels to the value of $35,000. The other stories of concealment were probably equally true, the hiding place each time supposed to be but temporary. But pirates' led short lives and their secrets died with them.
      To add to the difficulties of those who sought to recover the treasure were the land-slides that obliterated clues and landmarks.
      First Victoria group to join the many, past and present, lured by the thought of this immense fortune, was that which left in the Spring of 1897 on the 40-t schooner AURORA. It was commanded by Capt. Fred Hackett, a brother of the Capt. Thomas Hackett who had received from a fellow 'Canadian Maritimer', Keating, the maps and papers that the latter had received directly from Thompson, the lone survivor of the barkentine MARY DYER. On the AURORA expedition was also Mrs. Brennan, former widow (third wife) of Keating.
      Later that year another surprising vessel left Victoria and some weeks later turned up at Cocos. Officially, of course, the IMPERIEUSE, flagship of the Pacific Station, and the accompanying AMPHION had gone south on a series of friendly calls on neighboring nations but the presence on board of a certain C. Harford, disguised though he was as a newsman, later made this excuse rather thin! Harford was the man who had been brought to Victoria on the AURORA's return voyage after the Victoria ship had found him there marooned when a Costa Rican gunboat had failed to return to pick him up.
      When the naval vessels got to Cocos hundreds of blue-jackets were sent ashore to 'dig for diamonds'--but unsuccessfully!
      This little foray not unnaturally led to protests from the Costa Rican government, owner of the island!
      The next year it was the later so famous Capt. J. C. Voss who sailed for Cocos, but so well did he disguise his purpose that Victoria papers of the time report the setting out of the little 8-ton XORA as under the command of Percy McCord and the 'turn of the century' exhibition of Paris as her destination. Voss, in his Venturesome Voyages, speaks of her as a 10-ton boat and identifies himself (undoubtedly correctly) as captain. With Voss and McCord were young Harry Voss and a certain Hass (Hahn?)
      A few months later they were back in Victoria, Voss ill from tropical fever, and not a penny richer.
      After this pause until the autumn of 1901 when the Pacific Exploration and Development Co. was formed in Victoria, its aim, the sale of 750 ten-dollar shares to raise the money to outfit another expedition to Cocos. Captain was to be the experienced Fred Hackett and an unusual angle of this undertaking was to be the use of some recently-invented 'metal-diviner'. These machines were said to be capable of locating gold and silver hidden underground from a distance of two hundred yards or more. 
      They were to be operated by Justin Gilbert, for many years Victoria court stenographer, and Daniel Enyeart of Washington, US. The two men, plus a Mr. Raub, went along on the BLAKELY on its 1902 expedition as passengers. Among the crew members was George Kirkendale, extracts from whose diary of the voyage follows" [in the next chapter of Home Port: Victoria.]
Above text; from this book, Home Port Victoria. Author published. 1967. 
                                   

True stories told by the men who sailed from the Port of Victoria
one hundred years ago.
In this city, a common interest in the sea brought these mariners together and resulted in the formation of the Thermopylae Club, a monthly gathering at which they yarned together for over thirty years.

Book Search here
Home Port: Victoria


Cocos Island is a National Park of Costa Rica with an annual rainfall of 275". Jacques Cousteau called it "the most beautiful island in the world".

According to these authors, Cocos Island is the home of the biggest hidden treasure in the world. They claim the main Cocos Island treasure came from Peru; if you'd like to read their book try this search.

Book search here
The Lost Treasure of Cocos Island

❖ Guardians of the Sea ❖ THERMOPLYAE CLUB ❖ Victoria, B. C.

"As guardians of memories of the sea, the Thermoplyae Club [formerly of Victoria, B.C.] has undertaken a variety of projects. Of these, most valuable was its part in the preservation and restoration of the famous TILIKUM, the craft (basically an Indian canoe), in which in 1901 Captain J. C. Voss set out from Victoria; three years and 40,000 miles later he reached England after a voyage that took him across three great oceans [with a near] circumnavigation of the world.

TILIKUM 
Home port, Maritime Museum of B.C., Victoria.

      That this boat should, after all the admiration heaped on her at Earls Court, by the mid-1920s have become a derelict hulk, rotting in the mud on the banks of the Thames, seems unbelievable. Equally surprising is it to learn that although in 1930 the efforts of the Victoria and Island Publicity Bureau and the generosity of the Furness Withy Line saw the canoe returned to its home port, the repair the hull was given was but rudimentary, and it was left roofless, exposed both to the weather and to the depredations of vandals.
      So she lay for some years--but then there came one evening to the Thermopylae Club meeting some naval yachtsmen who had just sailed across the Pacific. These told the club members in no uncertain terms their opinion of a group that called itself ship-lovers yet neglected such a priceless, irreplaceable craft as the TILIKUM.
      The club sprang into action. Led by the dynamic Captain McDonald, they soon collected the money needed to finance restoration and Captain Victor Jacobsen started on the work that saw her returned to more or less, the condition in which she appears in the Maritime Museum today.
      Later the Thermopylae Club, on the suggestion of old sealing captain Max Lohbrunner, and through the work of shipmate Bob Dallaway (with the permission of the BC government) installed in her three hollow masts. These, though shorter than the original, do give some idea of her rig and also provide ventilation for the interior.
      The club has also painted her hull and encouraged her removal to the protected position in Thunderbird Park that she occupied for many years. Today they rejoice that now she, like themselves, enjoy the hospitality of the Maritime Museum in Bastion Square, Victoria.
      Another spot that finds TILIKUM and THERMOPYLAE close neighbours is on the Causeway wall above Victoria's Inner Harbour. Here 28 bronze plaques make up the Centennial Parade of Ships which commemorates vessels that had some historical connection with Victoria, TILIKUM and THERMOPYLAE of course among them. The first was donated by the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, the second, presented by its namesake, is easily found since it is the only tablet bearing an illustration of the craft it memorializes--a non-conformity not achieved without effort and obduracy on the part of the veteran mariners!
      Another reminder that Victoria was once the home port of this famous ship was the ten-foot water-line model of her entered in the history section of the Victoria Day Centennial street parade of 1958.
      Built on the premises of the 100-year ship chandling firm owned by Shipmate Emerson Smith, and not far from the rings on the cliff at which the original clipper once tied up, the model is one of fine detail. That these are accurate was assured by the daily visits of Captain Harry Bilton to the premises on Wharf Street. It was by then 65-years since he had trodden her decks but he had not forgotten, although it is to be doubted that on so small a replica her figurehead of King Leonidas would be provided with the demountable sword whose removal, for safety's sake, the old captain remembered as one of his last duties before the start of each voyage.
      Later this model was given to the Rainbow Sea Cadets in whose headquarters in Victoria West she holds an honoured place.
      Yet a few miles farther west, above a little cove in Esquimalt Harbour, a concrete pillar marks the spot where, as the bronze tablet on it records:

      'When Vancouver Island was an infant colony nearly a century ago it was here that the gallant sailing ships from the old world stopped to replenish their supplies of water.'
Conceived by Shipmate John Keziere and carried out through the co-operation of provincial government departments, the generosity of city building supply firms and the sweat of sundry Thermopylae Club members, the cairn recalls the days when, from ships anchored off in Limekiln Cove, sailors poled to shore the floats loaded with barrels in which they would take on from the fresh-flowing stream water for the long journey back to Europe.
      Today the sailing ships and most of the men who sailed them are gone, but through this book some of their experiences, it is hoped some little contribution may be made to the preservation and dissemination of the memories of those sturdy times".
Ursula Jupp, Home Port: Victoria. Published by author, Victoria, B.C. 1967.

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Not quoted here but an interesting book on the "absorbing and instructive true-life story" of Captain J. C. Voss (1854-1922) and his 40,000 mile voyage from Victoria to England has been published.

Captain John C. Voss
The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss, 
Century Publishing, 1989.

A introduction to the Voss book by F.E. Grubb, the Registrar & Librarian of the Maritime Museum of B.C., lists historian/writer Ursula Jupp as the greatest authority on Captain Voss.
 Book search here––