On the 27th we dropped anchor in a small bay in the northern entrance to Manila Bay, west of Los Codinos in order to clean the ship up before we went to Manila. On March 29, weighed anchor and steered for Manila harbour, and 2 p.m. anchored in Manila harbour, just opposite Manila Hotel. We had quarantine and Customs officials on board. There are lots of formalities to attend to here; the Customs put three watchmen on board, whom we should feed and give sleeping accommodation, and then they informed us that we had violated the laws of the Philippine Islands by going into Dirigue and Salomaque harbours, as these were not ports of entry, and I got an order to appear at the Custom House and give an explanation. I went to the Custom House and saw the Collector of Customs. After I had stated our reasons for going into above mentioned ports, viz., (1) We did not know that it was prohibited; (2) We are not a trading vessel, but a pleasure yacht; (3) We -were compelled to go in owing to extremely bad weather and lack of provisions, he was very kind and said it was all right. I believe the officials here got the idea that we are smugglers, especially as we came from Amoy, but after I showed the Collector of Customs one of our letters of introduction, he was at once convinced that we really were a sailing yacht on a pleasure trip to Denmark, and he gave immediate orders to remove all the watchmen on board. So we had a fine. time in Manila, we had many visitors on board, and they entertained us ashore with motor car drives and dinners and—other amusements in the clubs and hotels.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.