The Captain of the Flying Jenny

Stories for Another Day

From the time that Currie was a little girl, what she wanted most of all in the world was to travel and see different places and different people.

The best way to do this, she thought, was to go to sea. So she went down to the harbour, where a ship called the Flying Jenny was lying. She asked the captain of the ship if she could have a job on the ship and go to sea.

“A job?” shouted the captain in the loud, bellowing voice that he had got from bellowing at the crew over the noise of gales. “Doing what?”

Currie was quite small for her age, although she was spry and lively. “Cabin boy?” she asked.

“We’ve got one already,” shouted the captain, “and in case it’s escaped your notice although it hasn’t escaped mine, you’re not a boy.”

“Kitchen hand, then,” Currie said.

“Can you cook?” asked the captain.

“No,” said Currie.

“No, then,” replied the captain. “And before you ask, we’ve got a first mate, a second mate, a third mate and plenty of common sailors.”

“What about someone to scrub the deck?” Currie asked. “I’m good at scrubbing.” (Which she was, having spent nearly all her life so far scrubbing dirty clothes and dirty dishes and dirty floors, and shows you how much she really wanted to go to sea because the last thing she wanted to do was more scrubbing).

The captain scratched his head. None of the sailors liked scrubbing the deck. They were always complaining about it, and trying to find ways of getting out of it.

“All right,” he yelled, “but you’ll have to sleep in the lifeboat because all the hammocks are already taken, and if you’re sea-sick, make sure you do it over the side or you’ll have to scrub the deck all over again.”

And so Currie went to sea. She wasn’t sea-sick at all, ever, but she sometimes wished the deck wasn’t so dirty and there wasn’t so much of it, so she might have more than five minutes a day to look up from her bucket and scrubbing brush to catch a glimpse of the wonderful places they were visiting.

She was as happy as a person doing what they have always wanted to do can be, until the day the ship came to a beautiful island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Delicious fruit hung from the trees, pawpaws and coconuts and mangoes and breadfruit. The people who lived there were very friendly, and they invited all the ship’s crew to stay as long as they liked.

The whole crew, from the captain to the cabin boy, were heartily sick of being at sea all day every day, and most of them were close to retiring anyway, even the cabin boy, who was sixty-five years old but no-one would ever guess. They all decided to stay on the island, and drink pawpaw smoothies and eat fresh fruit salad every day, and they got off the ship.

“Hey!” said Currie, who hadn’t had nearly enough travelling and seeing exotic places. “What about me?” She sat down on the deck and cried.

The captain, who was very fond of mangoes and had been looking for an island like this all his life, scratched his beard. “Tell you what,” he bellowed. “You haven’t been paid a penny for all that scrubbing, have you?”

Currie shook her head.

“Well then, why don’t you have the Jenny?” He took off his captain’s cap and plonked it on Currie’s head.

Currie stopped crying and said, “Me? Captain?” The cap was too big and Currie didn’t have the faintest idea how to drive a ship or how to find her way across the ocean. “But there aren’t any sailors,” she said, and there weren’t because they were all lying under the palm trees drinking fresh coconut milk, or swimming on the golden, sandy beach.

The third mate, whose name was Tom, spoke up. “I’ll stay with you,” he said. He liked Currie very much and he thought sailing with her would be fun.

Currie made him first mate, which he was very pleased about. They found a new cabin boy and some new sailors from among the island people who were sick of having nothing to eat but mangoes and breadfruit and wanted to see the world, and they sailed away.

Currie gave the orders, generally the wrong ones, but Tom helped out and explained how sailing was done. They did a lot of zigzagging when they were meant to be going straight ahead, and they nearly capsized once or twice because the sailors from the island didn’t know much more than Currie did about sailing, but after a while, with a lot of help from Tom, they all got the hang of it and got along quite well.

They sailed north, and east, and south and west. Sometimes they took passengers with them, and sometimes they carried cargo which needed to be taken from one place to another, which was a good thing because sailors expect to be paid, and passengers and cargo both pay very well.

Once there they were caught in a terrible gale. The winds were so strong that everyone was sure they would be blown over and sink to the bottom, but Currie told them all to be brave and she promised them a holiday if they saved the ship from sinking, so they worked like superheroes and the ship was saved.

They found a beautiful island to visit for their holiday, with some excellent night markets with noodles and dumplings and even a funicular railway. All the sailors decided they weren’t going back to the ship, except Tom, of course. Currie sat down on the deck and cried. “How am I going to sail with no sailors?” she wailed. But Tom said they would easily find new sailors from among the people on the island who were tired of noodles and dumplings, and they did, because conditions on board the Jenny were very good and the pay was fair. Tom did all the cooking, with plenty of fresh vegetables, and Currie made sure that everyone took their turn at scrubbing the deck.

So they sailed off again, south and west and east and north, until one day something happened to Currie’s insides. She began to feel sad, as if she was missing something. One day as she was telling the sailors to haul in the sails and check the barometer, she started to cry.

Tom put his arm around her and asked what was wrong. “I don’t know,” she wailed. “I feel… I want… I think I want to go home!”

Tome’s face cleared. “You’re homesick! Let’s turn around then, and you can go home.”

“Can I ?” Currie said. “But this is what I’ve always dreamed of doing, sailing across the seas and seeing new things and new people every day.”

Tom said, “That doesn’t mean you can’t go back, if you want to.”

So they sailed all the way back to the harbour where Currie had first gone aboard the Flying Jenny. When they dropped anchor, Currie looked up the hill towards the house where her mother lived, and she sat down on the deck and cried.

Tome looked at her with his hands on his hips and said, “You do that a lot, you know.”

“I know,” Currie sobbed. “I get it from my mother.”

“What’s the matter?” he asked kindly.

Currie sniffed and hiccuped and said, “I want to go home, but I want to stay here on the Jenny too, with you!”

Tom laughed and took Currie into his arms. He was very pleased, because as you know, he liked Currie a lot and he had been wondering for a long time if she liked him too.

“You don’t have to let your dreams rule your life,” he said softly. “You can spend some of your time at home and some of your time at sea, if you like. You could even ask your mother to come sailing with us, if she wants to.”

Currie cheered up and blew her nose. “Will you wait for me, Tom?” she said.

“Of course,” he said. “The ship can’t sail without her captain.” He kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose and she went ashore, walking up the hill towards her old home.