At the time of this fateful voyage, I was the infant son of the ship's captain and the 20th and final passenger departing for the South Pacific on December 8, 1953, from the docks at the Balboa Pavilion in Newport Beach, California. On March 10, 1954, the 'Gloria Dalton' radioed the U.S. Coast Guard that the schooner was departing Buenaventura, Columbia for Tahiti, a voyage of about 5,000 miles of open sea expected to take about 35 days. On May 17, 1954, the 68th day, the ‘Gloria Dalton’ still had not arrived in Tahiti, and at that point, the U.S. Coast Guard station in Honolulu issued a Pacific area alert and declared the schooner missing with 22 people on board.