At 3 p.m. we were side by side with the _Carlisle Castle_. She flew no kites, her royal and skysail yards were down and the crossjack unbent. She was taking it easy and arrived in London three weeks after us.
On that same passage _Loch Maree_ put up a remarkably fine spin from abreast of Fayal to the Downs, which distance she covered in 4½ days. On the run we overhauled a fleet of 12 schooners bound from the Azores to England, all bunched together in a radius of 3 or 4 miles. With topgallant stunsails set and everything drawing to a spanking breeze on the port quarter, we rushed through the centre of the group of fruiters, each one of whom was doing her best with topmast and lower stunsails set.
I had often listened to the tales of old sailors, portraying in vivid language the fabulous speed of these little vessels, but alongside a smart 1600 tonner, with a skipper who knew how to crack on, they cut but a sorry figure. The _Loch Maree_ was doing at least 3 knots more than any of them, and in a very short time they were mere silhouettes on the skyline.
Right up the Channel the kites were carried, and when morning broke off the Isle of Wight a sail was discerned ahead, which daylight proved to be a big barquentine rigged steamer under all sail. We had evidently crept up on her unobserved in the darkness, for when the discovery was made that a windjammer was showing her paces astern, volumes of black smoke belched in sooty clouds from her two funnels, as if entering a protest against such a seeming indignity. But, in vain, she fell away in our wake as the fruit schooners had done a couple of days before.
_Loch Maree’s_ times, both out and home, from this date were generally amongst the half-dozen best of the year. Captain Grey, R.N.R., had her on her second voyage and then Captain Scott took her.
In 1878, when homeward bound from Melbourne, the Lizard was sighted on the 68th day out, but the passage was spoilt by hard easterly winds in the Channel.
In 1881, the _Loch Maree_ made Port Phillip Heads on 19th July, 70 days out from the Channel. On 29th October she left Geelong homeward bound. When a day out she was spoken by the three-masted schooner _Gerfalcon_ off Kent’s Group, and that was the last seen of her. It is significant that another big ship, the _North American_, a transformed Anchor Line steamer, disappeared at the same time, also homeward bound from Port Phillip.