his father, Captain John Henry Watlington and his mother, who was taking a sea cure, on board the Koh-i-noor . They embarked on a two-and-a-half-year voyage that would take them to the West Indies, North America and Europe.

The family would have a glorious time and see many a fine sight, but they would also experience the storms, mutiny, a shipboard fire, collisions and a waterspout! When William Henry was 82 years old, he wrote of his memories aboard the Koh-i-noor , providing a first hand account of life aboard a 19th Century tall ship.

In 1858, the family arrived in Newfoundland. From the deck of the Koh-i-noor young William Henry witnessed a great fire sweep through St. John's Newfoundland. He also went ashore on an historic occasion when the first Atlantic cable message from London to the New World was received, a message intended for the American President. Since the message only got through to Newfoundland and no where else, everyone thought the cable a hoax or a ruse to build up the price of the stock in a newfangled invention.

Mutiny The Koh-i-noor was loaded and secured for Havana, anchored at the mouth of St.

John's Bay, ready to sail, when William Henry saw his father almost killed.

The family and officers were having breakfast on the quarter deck, the crew resting, some sitting in the yards. The planned mutiny started when one of the crew stopped a steward carrying a dish of potatoes to the quarterdeck, and openly took some.

"My father happened to see this act of insubordination and remonstrated with no uncertain energy,'' Mr. Watlington wrote. "Of a sudden the ship was full of voices, it appeared to me, all were talking as loudly and angrily as possible. Then the fight knives were used. My father all but got stabbed with a sheathing knife. A big sailor, the ring leader, was in the act of plunging it into his back, when Mr. Ingham, our first mate, wrenched the knife out of his hand and hurled it overboard.'' The mutineers were overcome and put in irons. The English Ensign was hoisted at the gaff-peak, half-mast and upside down. This was seen from the shore, a Police boat came out and the mutineers were sent ashore. During the high court trial, it was learned the mutineers planned to throw everyone overboard, except Mrs. Watlington and to use the Koh-i-noor as a pirate ship in the Indian Ocean.

Collision From Cuba, the Koh-i-noor sailed to London. In Falmouth, a full-rigged brig snapped her anchor chains and drifted down on the Koh-i-noor and hitched her fore-royal-stay over the Koh-i-noor's jib boom, thus fastening the two booms together. The two ships dragged on the one anchor, and drifted down on another ship. Amid the general confusion, Mr. Ingham had the presence of mind to rush below for the axe. He chopped off the other's jib boom, to the accompaniment of curses and insults hurled between the two boats.

But this was not to be their most perilous moment, which occurred crossing the Bay of Biscay Dream of disaster "One morning I was awakened about daybreak by your father making a great commotion in his sleep,'' William Henry's mother told him. "I shook him and called. He opened his eyes and said 'I am so glad you woke me, for I have had a most dreadful dream. I stood near the wheel and all at once I saw that the ship was going down, head foremost. I could see the waves close over her bow.' '' Mrs. Watlington related that the captain seemed dull and thoughtful all that day, and at coming off his watch at 8 o'clock, he asked Mr. Ingham to put out the sidelights and take in the foretop-galleon sail, before going below and retiring to sleep. While Mr. Ingham was seeing to the taking in of the sail, a great black hull of a square rigged ship appeared out of the night bearing down on them.

"My mother woke my father,'' Mr. Watlington wrote, with these words: ` "John, John! There is something wrong!'' I heard them sing out on deck `Starboard, Hard a starboard!' My father sprang out of bed and got as far as the middle of the cabin when the crash came. This is what awoke me, the dreadful crunch as the two ships struck. Our ship trembled like some huge monster that has received a death blow.'' The Koh-i-noor's mizzen rigging was torn away. It was never learned what damage the other ship had sustained as she passed by. Although the ships sterns were close enough for a sailor to jump the distance, they found no common language in their brief and terrifying encounter.

Gunpowder The Koh-i-noor carried all manner of cargo, from cotton and sugar to convicts to munitions. On her return voyage from London, she was to carry Government goods for the Royal Dockyard and merchants' goods for Hamilton and St.

George's.

The heavy cannon were loaded first, laid immediately above and on line with the keel. Carpenters were sent from the Arsenal at Woolwich to build a magazine, immediately under the captain's cabin.

"They would not trust anyone to load the gunpowder except their own stevedores,'' William Henry wrote. "All lights were ordered to be extinguished and no light or fire was to be made, so, the consequence was that we all got a cold dinner.'' Unfortunately the Koh-i-noor , with its perilous cargo, encountered bad weather for the majority of her voyage home. Right after leaving the West India Dock and making her way down the Thames River, she encountered stormy weather in the English Channel. Exceptionally bad weather was awaiting them on the open sea.

"I remember it soon got cold. We rigged up the stove in our cabin, and made it steady with lanyards to the floor,'' William Henry wrote.

"The greater part of our trouble came from those heavy guns, that being stowed immediately on the ship's bottom, caused her to roll as she had never done before.

A boy at sea "I remember we had been laying-to all day in a storm and during the midnight watch she gave an extra lurch, the lanyards of the stove gave way, red-hot coals scattered over the cabin floor. We got the ship's buckets overboard, dipping water, and dashing it over the cabin, for after all, there was only a two-inch plank between that fire and tons of gunpowder; and, in spite of the stormy, cold blast, we had to open skylights to blow away the noxious gas.'' But an even worse storm lay just ahead, during which the Koh-i-noor gave a heavy lee-lurch, which was followed by a loud rumbling from below. One or more barrels had come loose in the magazine and were rolling from side to side, threatening to blow everyone to smithereens. The Captain and Mr. Ingham had no choice but investigate and secure the barrel before it blew the ship apart.

They managed to squeeze through a tiny hatchway, known only to the captain and kept secret from the crew.

"What an irony was here,'' William Henry wrote, When this gun-powder was taken in at London, not a light of any kind was allowed on the ship; now two men stood in that magazine with a lighted lantern, searching for a rolling barrel of gun-powder.'' The water spout "I saw what appeared to me like a huge pillar of water being drawn up from the ocean, while a big, black cloud appeared to reach down into it. The cloud had a funnel-shaped top. The water spout was directly astern of us, while we lay becalmed. Fancy a Niagara pouring its tons of water on a ship's deck, and you will have some idea of what could possibly be our fate.'' At this point, Captain Watlington called for his razor, which his puzzled wife nevertheless quickly fetched from below.

"I saw my father open the razor and wave it in a horizontal direction several times with a slow motion. All at once I saw the great pillar of water divide.

I looked again and the lower part fell back in the ocean, while the upper part, the cloud, returned upwards with a kind of corkscrew movement! Quickly after the disappearance of the water-spout, came down upon us what might be described as a deluge of rain, a cloud burst.'' Mr. Watlington wrote that he had told this tale of the waterspout a few times in seven decades, for no-one ever believed him.

Excerpts from William Henry's diary are published with kind permission from the Watlington family.

Nineteenth Century tall ship: The Bermuda-built barque Sir George Seymour. The Koh-j-noor, on which William Henry Watlington sailed around the Atlantic as a small boy with his parents, would have been very similar in appearance.