From the moment patsy Adam-Smith saw the little coastal trader ease her way out of Bass Strait, masts and rigging festooned with mutton birds, and heard her crew talk of reefs and wrecks, sand shoals, birding’ and the folk lore of the Furneaux Islands, she was bewitched.
Determined to go to sea herself, she persuaded the owner to let her sail on the Sheerwater, cooking, taking a trick on the wheel, working her passage round the lovely, scattered islands of Bass Strait and the coast of Tasmania.
Patsy then spent six years on the Naracoopa and was the first woman to be granted signed Articles in Australian waters. As radio officer, she shared the hard life of a small ship’s crew and was rescued from the sea three times in some of the most hazardous waters in the world.
During her innumerable voyages, Patsy took hundreds of photographs and she has used these to illustrate this account of her adventurous life. They show the remote and vanishing lifestyles of the Cape Barren Islanders, the lighthouse families, the mutton birders and the men who sail in small wooden ships.
