David goes to Greenland

Front matter

DAVID BINNEY PUTNAM

AURORA ~ il It A Wy, VE~AIONTHS - WINTER N02. WY ee PT

NWORTHERN=— LIGHTS 2,

Foreword

AVID has asked me to write a foreword

for his book, which I have seen him

working at during these last three months as

we sailed northward. Yesterday I read the

manuscript which had just been typewritten

from those painstaking penciled pages of the boy’s.

As I read I thought more than ever how fortunate David is, first to go with ‘Uncle Will”’ (Dr. Beebe) as far south as the Galapagos Islands on the Equator last year, and now to North Greenland. For anyone, of thirteen or thirty-nine, that’s a pretty fine spread and a great experience.

I must confess that it was with some misgivings I thought of the youngster going with us. While it was only a summer trip, almost anything is likely to happen in the Arctic and there’s always a chance of having a pretty

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FOREWORD rough time—hard, anyway, for a boy. But right here, as the expedition is drawing to a close (and some of it was fairly strenuous), I must say these misgivings did not materialize.

David is a thoroughbred and has a real sane idea of getting along. No one who reads his bully story can fail to realize this. From start to finish I have watched him closely and he has measured up handsomely to all, and more, that any observer could require.

And David is still a boy. He has learned much on the Beebe trip and on this one, things that will sink deep into his young soul. I believe in the years to come he will reap well of what he has sown, and what has been sown for him. School is fine and school must come first. But surely if opportunity offers to combine such experiences as these with ‘book learning,’’ it seems to me the grandest sort of education.

I have heard it said that this youngster is having no real boy’s life. Anyone who feels

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FOREWORD that just doesn’t know David. They haven’t seen him with lads of his own age, as I have, on the football field with his friends at home or with young Eskimos on the Morrissey and ashore in Greenland.

David is still a boy, but a boy who has happened to have a rather wide experience. He’s not a paragon. He’s just plain B-O-Y. And for many years to come he will remain young, with a young heart and the natural unspoiled freshness and happiness of youth. And to me, who have not had many boys around me as I’ve knocked about, it’s been a real pleasure to have him along.

I wonder if many boys who read David's simple story here, with its many interesting incidents, won’t become jealous. I’m sure I should, if I could turn the clock back more years than one likes to think about. What youngster wouldn’t want to go hunting three thousand miles from home, and see walrus and polar bear and narwhal and all the rest of it?

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FOREWORD

That’s really what this book should do. Not really make less lucky boys jealous, you understand, but stir up their blood and make them realize that there’s lots in life over the hill and beyond the horizon. A stirring-up like that won’t hurt them. It’s good tonic for the youngsters who are lounging away their youth and getting bad starts fussing around dances and clubs and autos and all that sort of thing, when they ought to be out getting their hands dirty, their muscles hard and their minds cleaned out with the honest experiences of the sea and far places.

I hope the boys who read their way to Greenland with David in this little book (and | their Dads, too) will become imbued with David's spirit and find for themselves worthwhile Ultima Thules.

ROBERT A. BARTLETT.

On Board the Morrissey, BAFFIN BAY, September 5, 1926.

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I.—OFF TO GREENLAND . : : : 3

II.—THROUGH THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE 16

Chapter I

AST year I went on the Beebe trip to the Galapagos Islands on the steamer Arcturus which was all fixed up especially for the journey. This was a scientific expedition down to the Equator to get deep sea specimens, some of them caught at a depth of nearly three miles. The islands where we went are on the Equator six hundred miles west of Ecuador in South America, and going down we passed through the Panama Canal.

“Uncle Will’’—that’s Mr. Beebe—let me go on the Pacific part of this expedition as a sort of junior guest. We had many new experiences, some of them pretty exciting.

There was diving in a helmet away below the surface of the water, and seeing volcanoes in eruption and lava streams flowing into the’ sea, and harpooning a big devil fish. Although I was the youngest member of the party—my twelfth birthday was down at Cocos Island south of Panama—TI was able to have a part in almost everything. And of course it was great fun.

Captain Bob Bartlett is a great friend of Dad’s. It was Cap’n Bob, you remember, who was with Admiral Peary when he first reached the North Pole in 1909. Well, he and Dad often talked of a Greenland expedition, which the Captain said could be about the finest kind of a trip, with lots to do and see.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York wanted some things from the North for its new Hall of Ocean Life, as well as Arctic birds. So Dad said he would organize an expedition and get the specimens they wanted. Among these are Narwhal, Greenland Brown Shark, walrus, all kinds of seal and many birds. Of course we couldn’t get all we were looking for, but even a part of it would make the trip worth while.

I was told that I could go on this trip to Greenland, and that as soon as school was over I was to go down to the shipyard on Staten Island where the Morrissey was being refitted, and that there would be plenty for me to do there.

We are to go as far North as about seven hundred miles this side of the Pole. In all we shall cover more than seven thousand miles and will be back in October. Perhaps if we’re late Dad will send me down by train from Sydney, for school. And we're taking a couple of school books too, which he says I'll have to work at when there is time.

It is certainly exciting to look forward to the adventures which I hope we will have. I’ve a Newton 2.56 rifle and a twenty-two rifle and I hope to get a chance to do some shooting, although I think the most fun will be helping in the scientific and taxidermy work, and in getting the motion pictures. And part of my job is to write a record as we go along, to make a little book later.

Last year Mother took me below the Equator. And this year I’m going with Dad 780 miles north of the Arctic Circle—that is, if we have luck with the ice. Anyway, I’m certainly a lucky thirteen year old boy!

school closed on Thursday afternoon. Friday I went to Dad’s office and looked over some equipment. He and I had been working over the equipment and making lists and generally getting ready, for weeks. In the afternoon we went by ferry to West New Brighton on Staten Island to McWilliams’ shipyard, where our boat, the Morrissey, was.

The Morrissey is a two masted Newfoundland fishing schooner. She is one hundred feet long and has a twenty-two foot beam,

“They Set Me to Work with a Paint Brush.”

Will Bartlett, Mate; ‘Skipper Tom’? Gushue, Bo’sun; Ralph Spracklin; and Billy Pritchard, the Cook.

and draws about fourteen feet when heavily loaded. With us now she draws probably about twelve. Her crew are all Newfoundlanders, wonderful sailors in fair weather or foul. Captain Bartlett owns her, and Dad and some friends refitted her, putting in an engine and making many changes to take care of our party.

Jim is the tallest of the crew. He is over six feet and looks like a cow puncher with small hips and broad shoulders. He is a fine ship’s carpenter. ‘Tom, the boatswain, is the oldest and most experienced. He can make most anything that belongs on a sailing vessel. He was with Peary on the Roosevelt on a couple of his trips to the North, including his one to the Pole. Joe is the biggest man of the crew, and Ralph the youngest.

Billy Pritchard is about the most important man on board, to my way of thinking. Heis the cook. Bill is pretty small, but he is a grand cook and has had lots of experience at sea. He has been in the far north and has been wrecked four times. When the Morrissey came down from Newfoundland to get us, when the ship jumped in a heavy sea Billy got thrown clean out of his bunk across the galley and on top of the stove. Billy’s helper is Don, who is always very nice to me.

Our skipper is Robert A. Bartlett who was with Peary and has spent years of his life in the Arctic and is about the most experienced ice navigator living today. Cap’n Bob is most awfully nice to me and he and his brother Will Bartlett, who is the mate, say they will help me learn the names of the ropes and to box the compass and all that. You see, I’ve never made a trip on a sailing vessel before, and there is lots to learn.

Well, when I got to the ship, a paint brush was stuck in my hand and I was told to start painting on the hull, as we were then in drydock having a hole bored in the stern for the shaft for the new propeller. That day I 8 painted pretty near a quarter of the hull and all day Saturday there was other painting— bunks, lockers, hatch covers, etc. We had lots of fine Masury paint which had been given to the Expedition. And there was plenty of cleaning-up work to do.

The Morrissey is divided into three different cabins. The fo’castle has six bunks where the crew sleep. It is used for the galley also. You know, on a ship the kitchen is called “galley.” Aft of that comes the main cabin where most of us sleep. There is a big table in the middle of the room which is used for eating, writing, working, etc. There are twelve bunks and the wireless outfit in this cabin, and a large skylight put in where the old cargo hatch used to be.

The wireless is a short wave outfit, run by Ed Manley, who is an amateur who volunteered for the job and who just graduated from Marietta College in Ohio. The fine big radio equipment, with which we expect to be able to talk right to home even from north of the Arctic Circle, was given to the Expedition by Mr. Atwater Kent and the National Carbon Company who make the Eveready batteries.

Then comes the engine room which was once the after hold where they stored fish and carried coal when the boat was used for freight. All around the engine are stores, crowded in tight so they can’t possibly shift when the boat rolls around in a storm. Some of them belong to Knud Rasmussen and some to Professor Hobbs whom we will pick up at Sydney. He is going to South Greenland to study the birth of storms on the Ice Cap there. We are picking up Rasmussen at Disko Island on Greenland and are taking these stores for him to his trading station at Thule, near Cape York. Rasmussen is a great Danish explorer and an expert on Eskimo.

Astern of the engine room comes the after cabin where the Captain, Dad, Mr. Raven

IO and Mr. Streeter sleep. There are six bunks, a table, a small stove and the only chair on board. Over the table is a shelf of books mostly about the Arctic and adventure. I have some special ones of my own to read, including ZJwo Years Before the Mast, Doctor Luke of the Labrador, The Cruise of the Cachelot and Richard Carvel. And then Dad has waiting for me a couple of school books, Latin and an English grammar, which don’t sound quite so much fun.

Most of our own stores are in a special store room next to the galley and stored in the run and lazarette away aft. On deck we have over fifty barrels of fuel oil for our Standard Diesel engine which you probably know burns oil and not gasoline.

We started on Sunday, June twentieth, from the American Yacht Club on Long | Island Sound. That’s at Rye, our home, and most of the men in our party visited at home with us before we started.

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It was a hot sunny day, and a great many people came out in launches and inspected the Morrissey. ‘There was a big lunch party at the Club and Commodore Mallory gave Dad and Cap’n Bob the flag of the Club to take North with us. At about a quarter to five we got clear of the visitors and got the anchor up and started down the Sound. A great many yachts and small boats were all around us, blowing horns and whistles and giving us a grand send-off.

Grandpa's yacht, the Florindia, took all the mothers and sisters and wives of our crowd, with my Mother and my little brother June. They went along with us as far as Sound Beach, Connecticut. And then, when they had tooted their last salute, and we had answered on our fog horn, we were actually off for the North.

Monday was a nice calm day which gave Art Young and myself a chance to stow our stuff. He bunks just below me so we have

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"sUOHRAIOSGO BUTYL jNOGy plarq s]joy sreddiyg oyy a OFF TO GREENLAND to go half and half on the lockers. Art is the bow and arrow expert who was in Africa shooting lions. In America he has killed grizzly bear, moose and Kadiak bear with his arrows. He hopes to try his luck with a polar bear and walrus.

Monday morning, our first day out, we saw eighteen airplanes near Block Island, at the eastern end of Long Island Sound, all headed for New York. Perhaps they were going to welcome Commander Byrd, who was expected back in a couple of days, coming home from England after flying to the North Pole. Dad and Mr. Byrd are friends and he was at our house a little before he started on his trip in the Chantier.

There was a fine wind and a pretty small sea running all day. It was nice and sunny, but very cold, so that we all put on lots of sweaters and coats. Everyone ate dinner and supper that day. As we were going up through Vineyard Sound in the afternoon a submarine and a lot of Coast Guard vessels passed us.

Then it began to get rougher with a stiff southerly breeze which was fine for sailing. On the next afternoon we saw a lot of small whales, about 25 feet long. Two or three of them jumped most out of the water, and once about fifty yards ahead of our boat I saw one jump completely out. He looked like a huge bullet.

That day almost all of our gang were sick, and even a couple of the crew. I spent most of the time on deck, listening to Mr. Raven and Van Heilner tell stories about spear traps and the way the Malay natives made and set traps for animals.

We were rocking so hard and keeling over so much that often the water would come in through both port and starboard scuppers. I was looking through a scupper hole when we hit a big wave and all of a sudden the water came right in and hit me in the face as I turned around from watching Captain Bob slack the main sheet.

Ralph, one of the crew, has showed me how to make chafing gear from rope. It is used to keep the sails from slapping and wearing out against the steel cables. And Jim has taught me the names of the sails and is starting on the ropes.

The last two days of the trip to Sydney were not so good, with a lot of fog and some rain. Now and then we heard fog signals on the shore of Nova Scotia, and when the fog lifted saw the shore and lighthouses. It is great fun to go up in the crow’s nest.

Chapter II Through The Straits Of Belle Isle

E arrived in Sydney on Thursday morn-

ing, 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

In the Cross Trees, 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 wasa very pretty sight, the mountains with snow on their sides t. ‘lp gnc fy

oie, .

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 seventhirty and heard someone playing the cornet, not very well. It sounded queer to hear a sound like that come floating across these faraway 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

We saw our first icebergs on the twentyninth, 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 realice. 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 ae?

Pas of #

Co DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 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 Green-

The Morrissey in Jones Sound.

er q € . * » = : x aye v 4s

A Baffin Bay Portrait of the Author.

land 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. 27

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.