Frederick leaned on the ship's rail, letting the sea breeze blow in his face. He hadn't been seasick since the voyage's second day.

His brother Clement joined him. "Two hundred fifty-four miles since noon yesterday," he reported.

Frederick took out his diary and noted the progress. "Amazing!"

"Twenty years ago the same voyage took us eleven weeks. Captain says at this rate we'll reach New Zealand after only two."

Frederick slapped the Colima's rail. "The miracles of modern science! Steam power. What a marvel!"

"It helps to take passage on a vessel barely two years old," Clement said with a wry twist to his mouth. "How old was the HMS Leaky?"

Frederick laughed. "I do not know. Don't remember it's proper name, either."

The Colima shuddered. Her momentum slackened abruptly. The brothers swayed at the rail, their gazes meeting, filled with alarm. They joined a throng of passengers seeking word on the problem.

It was November 26, 1875. The Colima's propeller crank had broken, leaving the steamship becalmed. The captain ordered sails deployed. The vessel limped along at a quarter its normal running speed.

Frederick and Clement had crossed the Pacific twenty years earlier, from Melbourne, Australia, to Honolulu in the Sandwich Islands where their leaky sailing ship was scrapped. Eventually they took passage to San Francisco, paying their way by working before the mast.

Now, eight days out from Honolulu on a return journey, they found their progress had regressed to the age-old tactic of running before the wind, by sails only.

Frederick made use of his time, sketching scenes from Utah canyons and the railroad route across the Sierra Nevada. He finished landscapes of San Francisco and Honolulu.

The Colima's engineers worked night and day installing a replacement crank. On November 29, Frederick wrote in his journal, "Got the steam up again at about 11:00 a.m. much to our joy, and the satisfaction of all on board."

Life aboardship returned to normal.

At 5:30 p.m. on December 2, while the passengers enjoyed their dinner in the mess hall below decks, the replacement crank broke.

Frederick's diary records, "There was such a terrific noise and commotion with the machinery as if the whole inside of the vessel was being wrenched and torn to pieces, and we were all to be instantly blown to destruction. There was an almost simultaneous rush made for the upper deck. By that time the noise had ceased, for thank God, the second engineer ran and turned off the steam, thereby stopping the machinery, barely in time to save the vessel and all our lives."

Frederick too leaped to his feet, but did not join the panic. He resumed his seat, went back to his mock turtle soup.

Later he learned, "If the piston had made one more revolution it would have torn a hole through the bottom of the steamer... One of the cylinders partly burst... so when we start again they can only run one cylinder and will not try to make more than four or five miles an hour."

As the Colima chugged into the harbor at Auckland, New Zealand, Clement shook his head. "That faulty crank and cylinder knocked our time up to three and a half weeks."

Frederick slapped his brother on the back. "Still a sight better than eleven!"