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26 Dec 57 Peter on board 'Tynemouth' Mother ______________________________________________________________________________________________

December 26th

At Sea

My dear Mother

I sit down this day to wish you all a merry Christmas. I shall not have a very merry one but I shall make the best of it at any rate.

With no roast beef & an apology for a plum pudding – with a nasty drizzling wet day – with all hands (that is all the sailors), for they are Lascars (or ns), at work & last of all absent from every one with whom I have a fellow feeling (for sailors are rough diamonds) & away from home, I cannot expect to pass so merry a Christmas as you all I hope will, but I think of you by day & dream of you all by night so that imagination makes me too happy.

We ought to have been at Shanghai today, only we had a most severe gale the day before yesterday which threw us all back. I am very sorry I could not take my Christmas Dinner in China. I wanted very much to, but I am going to imagine I did & if I possibly can convince myself that it was so, therefore if some future day you hear me talking of how I spent Christmas Day in China among the Pigtails, please do not contradict me or the illusion will vanish.

If we are not in port, we are very near it & after all, after one has been dodging about between the host of Chinese islands all round us, it is a question whether after all one may not call it China.

The cold weather – for it is beginning to get cold rain as we draw further north – makes me quite brisk again & after the heat of India, I enjoy it amazingly, but I wish the rain would keep off.

Perhaps you will scarcely believe me when I tell you that in order to reach China from Singapore on account of the winds, altho’ a steamer, we have had to go right round & far to the eastward of Borneo. Sir James Brooke* was at Singapore when we were there, on his way to England, but I did not see him. The Rajah of Sarawak will be quite a Lion on his arrival.

We caught two or three sharks during the voyage during calms & I preserved the jaw bone of one. It has about six rows of teeth, just like little saws, but they are only erect when he is in pursuit of prey. They turn right over & stow themselves away as neatly as possible.

One of our officers tumbled overboard but was luckily picked up which latter, tho’ landsmen think to the contrary, I can assure them very seldom happens.

These two last are the only things of interest which have occurred. Next to my voyage home from the Crimea, this has been the slowest time I have ever spent in my life. Eat, drink & sleep – & even now we are short of provisions. The last sheep & pig died yesterday. For the Christmas Dinner of what English hands we still have, nothing but a goose (& that a walking skeleton) remains. After that we live on salt provisions if we are not then at Shanghai.

It is ridiculous for me to wish you all a Merry Christmas for you will not get this for two months when it will be a long time forgotten, but I think I shall just be in time if I wish Helen many happy returns of her Birthday & ask you – if even too late – to give her for me a kiss. That is, mind, one extra, or else she might think it was yours instead.

It may propitiate* her – tho’ I fear she will not at first acknowledge me on my return, however much you may instil ‘Brother Peter’ & all that sort of thing into her during my absence.

Your affect Son

Peter G Laurie

* Sir James Brooke – Rajah of Sarawak; after suppressing a rebellion there and assumed government, 1841; instituted various reforms and put down piracy. A quixotic and adventurous figure

* propitiate - Appease