THROUGH THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE
We arrived in Sydney on Thursday morning, a few minutes before two
o’clock, and I stayed up to see what happened. By good luck there was
no fog, which made things easier.
The first thing in the morning we cleaned up our cabin, and afterward
we all went ashore, to a little hotel where we had baths. Bathing on
the Morrissey is a very rare thing, although probably later on we will
use the big round washtub which was meant for clothes but which I
suppose can take us too. When Dad refitted the vessel, at the shipyard
down at Staten Island, they put on the deck a big steel water tank
which holds about 750 gallons. Then there are the water barrels too so
that we really are pretty well fixed.
Up North, Captain Bob tells me, when we get out of water we just go
alongside an iceberg and pump the water from pools on the berg over to
our tank. For this we have a little pump affair with a piece of garden
hose at each end. The melted water on the bergs is fresh, unless sea
spray has blown up into the pools.
That morning in Sydney I wrote some letters, to Mother and others. And
then in the afternoon Robert Peary, Art Young, Ed Manley, Fred
Linekiller and myself went over to the town of Sydney in our little
motor launch. Sydney is about five miles away across a big bay, and is
far larger than North Sydney where our ship lies.
Over there we saw a very big old square rigger with gun ports all along
her sides. She was once a frigate of the British Navy, I suppose about
the time of Old Ironsides. We went aboard and looked around to see if
we could find any loose belaying pins for my collection, but without
luck.
The next day Dad, Art Young, Carl, Mr. Kellerman and I went off to see
if we could find any trout fishing in one of the brooks which came down
to the bay a few miles from our anchorage. We left our boat on a sort
of beach and walked up the stream to try our luck. There wasn’t any.
After fishing for a while we went back to the boat, which we had
anchored a little off shore. But the tide had gone out and we found her
nearly high and dry in the mud.
We pushed and we shoved and pulled in mud up to our knees for quite a
time until finally we got her off. Art had no boots on so I tried to
carry him out but he was too heavy. Then we brought the boat pretty
close in and Dad tried to carry Art out. Dad had Art on his back—Art is
a big man and weighs I suppose 190 pounds—and was starting to come out
when the extra weight shoved his feet right down in the sticky mud over
his boots and when he tried to pull up his legs one boot came off and
they both lost their balance and fell into the mud and water. They took
it as a joke and had to walk nearly a mile before we found a place
where they could get aboard easily.
Over at another beach we ate our lunch which we had brought with us.
And near there Art and I got the first game of the expedition. After
sneaking up on it we charged in. And what do you think we found?
It was a big clam bed. Altogether we dug about a bushel and that night
we had a fine clam chowder. Not quite as exciting as getting a walrus,
but at least it was fun and we claimed the clams really were the first
game brought back to the Morrissey.
We saw Newfoundland for the first time on the twenty-eighth of June. It
was a very pretty sight, the mountains with snow on their sides that
had not melted away on account of the very late season. Dad says
wherever one goes it always seems that there is an unusual season. On
some of the hills the sun was shining and on others great shadows were
floating around. In some ways they looked much like the hills in
Montana, rolling and mostly bare.
We saw three little fishing schooners off the Bay of Islands, which is
a big bay on the western shore of Newfoundland. It took us from four
o’clock until eight to cross the bay. We passed one of these boats
about seven-thirty and heard someone playing the cornet, not very well.
It sounded queer to hear a sound like that come floating across these
far-away waters.
There was a beautiful sunset, so red that it looked like blood dripping
out of the sky. Ahead the weather looked fine, but astern was a big
black cloud with lightning darting out of it every once in a while. And
it sure did storm. It was so dark that we couldn’t see a thing. On deck
I fell two or three times, as it’s pretty hard to get around in the
dark on account of the deck cargo—barrels, dories, motor-boats and the
Hobbs canoes, beside lots of lumber and rope.
The wind was blowing like everything and the rain came down in
torrents. Art and myself put on our oilskins and boots and went on deck
to cover up the skylights that were leaking an awful lot. Skylights
never seem to work quite right, anyway. We put canvas and tarpaulins
over them. Water was breaking over our bows. But the Morrissey didn’t
seem to care a bit, and I think Cap’n Bob and Will really seemed to
sort of like it. Cap’n Bob is a wonder and is most awfully nice to me.
He seems to like having me work on the ropes and get into things as
much as I can about the vessel.
The lightning struck pretty near us once or twice and often the whole
sky was bright with forks of blinding lightning darting about wildly.
We saw our first icebergs on the twenty-ninth, and from noon on passed
about ten, four of them really big ones. One of them was about fifty
feet high and a hundred feet long. An iceberg is about one eighth above
water and seven eighths below. You can imagine how big the one I
described must really be; and of course later we saw bergs much bigger.
The smaller bergs and pieces of floating ice are called “growlers.”
Just a week ago we had reports that the Straits of Belle Isle were
frozen over from Labrador to Newfoundland, but the south wind of the
last few days seemed to have pretty well cleaned them out, and we went
through without any trouble. In the Straits we saw two steamers, which
like ourselves were probably making the first passage of this season.
After leaving the Straits we saw scattered bergs all day until about
four o’clock when we ran into our first real ice. There were lots and
lots of pieces in a huge bunch about three miles by one mile. There
were bergs as big as a good-sized house floating around by the
hundreds. I went aloft with Ed Manley and looked around on the
beautiful sight. The ice was blue on the top and a very pretty light
green underneath. When up in the crow’s nest you can see the bottom of
the bergs a way down.
In the morning it was pretty foggy and we came close to some big bergs.
Once when I was on deck we saw a berg not a hundred yards away that
looked like a small hotel, about a hundred and twenty feet high and
three hundred feet long.
For two days we were in the ice pretty nearly all the time. This was
the Labrador Pack, Cap’n Bob said. One morning I woke up from a jolt
when we hit a piece of ice. The bow of the boat goes out of the water
and comes down with all its force and breaks up the ice; or else we
sort of ride along on it a ways until it breaks loose. Anyway, it is
nice to know that the Morrissey is built of good solid oak, and that
there is that extra coating of greenheart sheathing around the outside
to protect her somewhat from the ice.
There was ice as far as we could see all day long, and some fog. Our
course had been zigzagging in and out and around the ice, and it seems
strange to come upon so much of it so suddenly when just the other day
there wasn’t a bit. It is smooth water where there is a lot of ice, so
we made pretty good time even with all our twisting about.
One night we had quite a party, to make the time go well. With our
little Pathex machine we had movies, and there was candy and our “foggy
dew” orchestra played between the reels, and Art Young played solos on
his funny cut-down violin which he has taken to Africa and all over on
his hunting trips. “Nanook of the North” was the picture, and Bob
Flaherty, who made it, is a great friend of ours and has told me lots
about the life of the Eskimos up in the Hudson Bay country. By the way,
Dad says that perhaps we will go up there next summer.
It was quite sunny at times during the day and Dad and Mr. Kellerman
took a great many pictures, both movies and stills. Mr. Kellerman would
go out on the bowsprit and get down on the stays, taking movies of the
prow cutting through the ice.
It is very exciting to see how the crew take the boat through the ice.
One man is in the crow’s nest, on the foremast. He calls out where to
go and then the man at the wheel repeats his words so as not to make a
mistake.
You hear the man aloft yell, “Starbo-ard!”
And then at the wheel the helmsman repeats, “Starbo-ard!”
Then the boat swings over to port, because when the tiller is drawn by
the wheel in one way the boat goes in the other.
Altogether for me a pretty interesting and exciting First of July. The
temperature was about 34, just a few degrees above freezing. And
usually at this time of year I am swimming at home!
One night Professor Hobbs of the University of Michigan gave us a
lecture on the Greenland Ice Cap. He believes that many of the Atlantic
storms start in Greenland. The country, as you probably know, is
practically all ice. There is just a little strip of land around the
shore, especially at the south, which is not covered with the Ice Cap.
It is thought that this may be a mile or more thick, but nobody knows
the exact measurement. The glaciers are tongues of the Ice Cap that
kind of ooze out to the ocean and then break off into icebergs. There
are about three hundred people in the part of Greenland where we are
going, up North. The Greenland Ice Cap and the Antarctic regions are
supposed to be the coldest places in the world, even colder than the
North Pole region.
When Peary crossed the northern part of Greenland he found that when he
climbed a hill of ice the wind was in his face; and when he went down a
slope the wind was on his back. In other words, that there always
seemed to be a wind coming down from the ice. Professor Hobbs and his
party, whom we are taking to Holsteinsborg, will study these winds, the
movements of the ice and other things.
One time about our second day in the ice when we were winding in and
out of the leads we saw a black something in the water. I yelled out to
the others to come and see the seal. It was the first northern one I
had seen outside of a zoo or circus. I happened to see this one because
I was out on the end of the bowsprit, with Robert Peary, our chief
engineer, with whom I play around a lot. He is the son of Admiral Peary
who discovered the North Pole. This is his first trip North. He and I
are great friends.
You probably have heard of Eric the Red. He was a Norwegian who
equipped a ship from Norway in the year 983 and set sail for a land
that had been discovered by one Gunbjorn to the west of Iceland. When
he got to this land he wondered how he could best get people to go
there to live, so he called it Greenland. That was the real beginning
of the present Greenland. After that cattle were brought and raised in
the southern parts.
Greenland is about fifteen hundred miles long from South to North and
about six hundred miles wide at the widest place.
We will pick up Knud Rasmussen at Disko Island where, I have read, lots
of fossils have been found. I hope to get some for my collection. At
home I have a small room which we call my museum, in which I am
gathering together quite a lot of really interesting things. Already I
have a lot there brought back from the Arcturus expedition, and things
given me by explorers and travellers who come to our house. One of my
best treasures is a bunch of pieces of the shell of a dinosaur egg,
given me by Roy Chapman Andrews, the man who first found these eggs in
Asia. They are ten million years old.