Oscar Wallis Photo: Photo courtesy Annette Wallis.
A Quaker at Sea
Paul Newman is captivated by a Quaker adventure story
It is the ‘Great Depression’. Your father’s Scarborough high street business has gone bust. You are fifteen years old and must leave your Quaker school. You are offered an apprenticeship in the merchant navy, although no one in your family has a history of going to sea, and you travel down to Tilbury with a one way ticket to the high seas.
This is the beginning of the riveting story of Oscar Wallis, who is now often seen in Leicester with his wife Annette on peace vigils. His autobiography, A Quaker at Sea, tells a story of extraordinary resourcefulness as he sailed the corners of the globe, learning his mariner’s trade from 1930s depression and throughout the second world war, in the merchant navy.
Oscar recalls many adventures in the book. One was when he accompanied his captain on a trip inland from Calcutta to Patna. Their car had to be carried, by local villagers, across a fast flowing river and he goes on to describe seeing the ‘unforgettable and unmistakable figure of Mahatma Gandhi’. Oscar relives the life of being an apprentice seaman voyaging to Calcutta, New York, Sudan and many other exotic places; one minute you are sweltering with him up the river Congo and the next you are on look out for icebergs in the North Atlantic. Oscar recounts being on duty at Christmas, in Birkenhead, and taking turns to go on shore to collect the fish and chips!
This was the age of using sextants to navigate and hand leads to measure the depth of water and the nature of the seabed – vital when navigating up long estuaries and rivers. On watch for hours, he developed a keen knowledge of ornithology. Every page of the book reveals a new memory and a picture of a time long past.
A Quaker at Sea is also the story of a young man with the courage to say that his Quaker faith prevented him from carrying and using arms. He recollects the tribunal where, as a twenty-year-old, he had to justify his position as a pacifist. The chairman of his company, John Brocklebank, and the Cunard chairman, Percy Bates, were among those sitting in judgement. After questioning, one chairman turned to him and said: ‘We have listened to what you have to say and I, personally, understand. My mother was a Quaker!’ They knew he was a good seaman, well respected by men and officers alike. Oscar then recounts how he was asked to spend the rest of the war aboard a hospital ship in constant danger on the North African and Italian coasts. This is a true adventure story.
When the war was over, Oscar spent three years helping to rehabilitate people in war-torn Europe and then became a teacher in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. He finally came to Leicester to teach religious education. The book Quaker faith & practice is at the heart of Quakerism. A Quaker at Sea is the story of someone who, in a quiet and determined way, shows us how you can take what you believe and make it reality and be respected for it.
At the end of the book, Oscar answers the question ‘Are you glad that you went to sea?’ with the words, ‘I would not have missed it for worlds’.
A Quaker at Sea is a chronicle of a past long gone. It is both nautical and social history. Most of all it is a cracking read. Oscar is a man of true courage. The book is history at its best and is beautifully illustrated by his granddaughter, Emily.
A Quaker at Sea, E Oscar Wallis, is available from Christians Aware: 2 Saxby Street, Leicester LE2 0ND, www.christiansaware.co.uk. Tel: 01162 540 770.