Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

54 Chapter Six Voyage of discovery 2 Hornby was struck in the face and had his shirt nearly torn off his back. He, however, conveyed his prisoner to the pavilion in triumph – Lord Harris on the Sydney riot In October 1878 Hornby was off on his travels again – this time as part of Lord Harris’s tour of Australia. Cricket was certainly giving Hornby the chance to see the world. At about 3.15 pm on 17 October 1878, Hornby departed Southampton aboard the P & O’s aptly-named S.S.Australia as part of Harris’s team to tour Down Under. They left behind them family and friends – and a severe English winter. Unlike previous tours – and this was the fifth to visit Australia from these shores – Harris led a group that was almost entirely comprised of amateurs. In fact, there were only two professionals among the party who were waved off from the dockside by a large crowd of well-wishers. The two who earned their living from the game were both Yorkshiremen, George Ulyett (1851-98), who was born and died at Pitsmoor, near Sheffield, and Tom Emmett (1841-1904), who hailed from Halifax. The pair had previously visited Australia with James Lillywhite’s team in 1876-77. They would do the bulk of the bowling for Lord Harris’s team. Happily, Hornby’s Lancashire team mate Vernon Royle, the son of a Manchester doctor, an outstanding athlete and one of the finest cover-points of his era, kept a diary of the tour. So we know quite a bit about what happened on their visit. It seems it was far from a smooth passage, and Royle, among others, was a poor sailor. Many of his diary entries detail just how sea-sick he was, especially in the early part of the journey from England to Gibraltar and then again on the Aden-Galle (Ceylon) leg.