Half-Safe

Half-Safe is a converted Second World War Ford GPA amphibious jeep in which the Australian Ben Carlin (1912-1981) travelled around the world by land and sea. The name came from a catchphrase in a deodorant advertisement.

Origins

Carlin, born in Northam, Western Australia, served with the Royal Indian Engineers during the war and saw amphibious jeeps in India. In 1945 he remarked that a prepared GPA could go round the world; told this was "nuts", he took it as a challenge. After the war he went to the United States, married Elinore, an American Red Cross volunteer, and bought a surplus 1942 GPA, serial number 1239, at a government auction near Washington, D.C.

Modifications

He added a small enclosed cabin with a bunk, a rudder, a two-way radio and a boat-like bow that doubled as a fuel tank, bringing the overall length to about 18 ft (5.5 m). An extra tank slung under the belly, which could be dropped when empty, took fuel capacity to 220 US gallons. The cabin kept water out and made up for the GPA's very low freeboard, a weakness that had sunk many standard GPAs.

The journey

Attempts to cross the Atlantic in 1948 and 1949 ended in failure, one with a seized propeller-shaft bearing and a rescue at sea. On 19 July 1950 the Carlins left Halifax, Nova Scotia, and after 32 days reached the Azores, then rode out a hurricane on the way to the Canary Islands and landed at Cape Juby in Morocco. They continued through Europe to England, where they spent several years raising money and rebuilding the jeep while Ben wrote his first book.

The journey resumed in the mid-1950s through Europe, Turkey, the Middle East and India to Calcutta; Half-Safe was shipped to Australia for a tour, then returned to Calcutta. Elinore, plagued by seasickness, went home, and Carlin continued with other companions: crossing the Bay of Bengal, driving through Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, sailing via Hong Kong and Taiwan to Japan, and in 1957 crossing the North Pacific via the Aleutians to Alaska. He then drove across North America and arrived back in Montreal, the official starting point, in May 1958. Carlin reckoned the trip at about 39,000 miles over land and some 9,600 to 11,000 miles by sea.

Later history

Carlin's two books, 'Half-Safe: Across the Atlantic by Jeep' (1955) and the posthumous 'The Other Half of Half-Safe' (1989), describe the two halves of the journey. Half-Safe stayed in the United States with a friend of Carlin's for many years; on his death he left his share to Guildford Grammar School in Western Australia, his old school, which restored it and displays it in a glass-walled garage. A replica was shown in Germany from 2000.