The cruise of the Nona

"The cruise of the Nona" by Hilaire Belloc is a travel memoir and reflective essay collection written in the early 20th century. Framed by a small-boat voyage around the Welsh and English coasts, it uses day-to-day seamanship and landfalls as springboards for meditations on history, language, politics, faith, and manners. The narrator-skipper and his beloved cutter Nona, with a minimal crew, shape an intimate, digressive, and wryly opinionated journey that blends sea adventure with literary rumination. The opening of this work moves from a playful, wandering dedication into the decision to call the book a “cruise,” then immediately launches a midnight departure from Holyhead. A light drift turns into a hard blow and a brutal fight with wind-against-tide in Bardsey Sound: the dinghy is lost, the jib blows out, and the boat barely escapes into smooth water—prompting stark reflections on fear and indifference to danger. In calmer shelter Belloc muses on islands, small kingdoms, Scandinavian place-names, living dialects versus literary speech, and the rise of charged words like “cad.” A slow run to Pwllheli brings a surly local and, on departure, a Welsh crowd swayed by a fiery orator, which leads to thoughts on leadership and the genius of the Speaker in Parliament. He creeps into Porthmadog by night with an inept pilot, grounding repeatedly, and spins this into a comic-serious essay on fools and labels. Under Harlech’s mountains he recalls childhood awe, then offshore hears the tolling bell at Sarn Badrig, unfolding a long, passionate critique of Anglo-Irish politics and the failure of Westminster. The section closes with meditations on sea “mystery” and sudden “vision,” and a practical vignette: teaching his friend to steer by compass to Strumble Head, whose lifted light confirms how experience seals belief.

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