Dillon's diary

DILLON'S  DIARY

   When Dr. William Edward Dillon sailed on a Tallship from England across the Atlantic Ocean to South America, through the Magellan Straits and up the west coast of the Americas to Victoria, B.C., he wrote a diary.

   But he wrote it on scraps of paper.  He returned home to Dublin in 1867, and his sister said, "Oh, Bill.  You MUST write this up properly.  Promise me!  You will do it, won't you?"

"Why, yes, Jane.  I promise."

   Jane handed her brother a hard-covered exercise book, and all through his travels on board ship for the next few years, he copied his diary into the book.

   Perhaps the diary writings would never have made it down to us in 2014, if he hadn't done so.  But I have often thought, how better it would have been had W.E.D. continued writing a diary as he journeyed around Cape of Good Hope, instead of beautifying the writings from the previous trip.

  The following video was created on January 19th, 2014 by Brennen Cross.  The video is full of shots of the hard-covered diary, hand written by Dr. Dillon.  Notice the date 4 August, 1860, the name of the ship on which he was an officer HMS STAR, his writing of his own signature, W. E. Dillon:

   The features described above are all on the white front pages.  Maybe you observed the torn pages?

   They were ripped out by his Evangelical Niece, Jane Wallace, and we know she didn't like comments in the diary about women and ladies!  Use your own imagination as to what a good Doctor would be writing in his diary, which he knew would be read out to family members!  Nothing too dreadful, but Niece Jane tore them out, anyway!  Our imaginations run wild!