Mr. Beebe lets me call him Uncle Will, even if he is the head of this
big expedition. He was awfully nice to let me go on part of it.
I had my twelfth birthday on the Arcturus down on the Equator. And I
know how lucky I was to be taken along. It was great fun. And I think I
learned a lot, though perhaps it will hurt my school work, being away
and everything. Anyway, Mother and I joined the Arcturus—Uncle Will’s
ship—at Panama. We spent nearly three months in the Pacific Ocean,
studying sea life and visiting seven uninhabited desert islands. And I
promised Dad to write a little story about it all. He told me to try to
tell what we did and what I saw just like fellows telling each other
about their adventures. That’s pretty hard to do.
Then when I got back they let me make this little book out of what I
wrote most every day on the boat. It’s meant for boys and girls. Mother
helped me fix up the spelling and make the grammar right.
The writing took quite a long time, and I think being a naturalist
would be more fun than being a writer. Anyway, my stories help me
remember the fun we had on the Arcturus. I don’t see how it could have
been much better.
We arrived in Colon from New York and Havana early in the morning of
March 27th, and after our inspection, Capt. Lane took us in his own
launch over to the Arcturus—a high white ship which was lying across
the harbor.
This Arcturus, the boat on which we are to take our trip, is named for
the great star which sailors use as a guiding star in sailing strange
seas. She was fitted out by men who are interested in the New York
Zoological Society, which has the wonderful Zoo in the Bronx. Among the
living animals collected for the Zoo are albatrosses, flightless
cormorants (a very rare bird), boobies and penguins. A great many
specimens were to go to the American Museum of Natural History and fish
to the Aquarium at the Battery. She is fitted with a whole outfit for a
scientific expedition. At first sight she looked like a freighter, high
sided and built for cargo, with many booms and cables and equipment for
hoisting and moving things.
There are two laboratories in the forward part, the lower one fitted
with bottles, microscopes, modelling clay and all sorts of glass jars
in which to preserve specimens. The upper room is more of a library
with reference books and text books on all subjects about oceanography,
for this is an expedition mostly to study about the sea and the strange
creatures in it. Also there is a chemical laboratory so that the blood
of fishes can be examined.
The bridge, or main part of the ship, is built up of five decks, and
the members of the expedition have cabins here. The crew’s sleeping
quarters are in the after part of the ship, and many of the men have
hammocks hung up under the awning there, in which they sleep at night,
or lie around in the day time.
On the port side of the ship there is a special boom that goes out over
the side. On ships the word “port” means left, and “starboard” means
right. You never say back or front, but “aft” or “forward.”
This boom has two railings tied to the bottom plank so one can walk out
there and fish or haul in nets or go down the rope ladder. Sometimes
when the ship rolls a lot the end goes right under the water. And out
from the bow a pulpit is hung, a strong wire cage-like thing in which
we can stand for harpooning or catching floating objects as we pass. To
get down to the pulpit you climb down a rope ladder. When it’s rough
it’s pretty exciting.
In the forward part of the ship there are two rooms fitted out as
shops, one belonging to Bill Merriam the general handy man, who always
mends the nets, shapes a new dredge, puts another seat in one of the
rowboats, makes a lobster pot or fixes the motor boats. The other is a
workshop for Serge the taxidermist and for Dwight Franklin the
sculptor. Dwight makes wax moulds and plaster casts of fishes and
preserves them, as well as making drawings and paintings.
Isabel Cooper is the scientific artist. She has been on many other
expeditions and made many wonderful pictures. On this trip she did over
two hundred water color drawings of fish.
The Arcturus has two huge cables, one seven miles long, for hauling in
the big trawls. These are put down over the side and held out while the
ship goes slowly along at half speed. Sometimes the cable goes out as
much as three miles and often the sea is over a mile deep below us.
There are thirty-eight in the crew and eighteen members of the
expedition. Each night and morning the nets are put over, for a surface
haul and for a deep one a sounding is taken—a curious lead on a wire,
weighted down with an iron weight which forces the sound lead down to
the sea bottom and brings up a sample of the bottom, so we can see if
it is muddy or rocky or sandy. Each time the weight automatically drops
off when the bottom is reached, because the sounding wire isn’t strong
enough to pull it up.
After the nets are out for an hour they are hauled in and the contents
put into tubs of water. Sometimes the whole net has only a pint glass
full of tiny, tiny fish which have been brought up from a depth of over
a mile or two miles.
On the boat my room mate was Dr. W. K. Gregory of the American Museum
of Natural History, who is also Professor of Comparative Anatomy at
Columbia. Pretty nice, I think, for a real professor to let a
twelve-year-old boy bunk with him! Everyone called him just “Greg” and
liked him a lot because he always is so nice and so interested in his
work. I think Greg would rather dissect a fish than do almost anything.
I know I’d just about rather catch them!
My bunk was right next to where the smokestack went up from the engine
room, and the wall was pretty hot. So most of the time, except when it
rained, I slept on deck. Really, although we crossed the Equator
twenty-one times it was not so hot while we were at sea. Lots of times,
right on the Equator, it was cool enough to be comfortable wearing a
sweater.