The Log of Bob Bartlett. The true story of forty years of seafaring and exploration, etc.

Front matter

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Pinchot.

Captain Robert A. Bartlett.

Foreword

It seems there is a fashion of writing Forewords to books. I had not intended doing it — after all, a sailor isn't apt to be fashionable. But two things made me change my mind since I have logged off the chapters of this story of mine.

Just after we got back from the Baffin Land Expedition of the summer of 1927, a letter came to me. I have had a good share of letters in my time, some of them flattering (plenty contrary!) and many from really important people. But never came a pleasanter, more surprising letter than this one. I wanted to use it in my book. But the book was written.

"We will make a berth for it," I said to myself. "A Foreword is the place. If the book cannot carry that additional sail she's not fit for sea anyway."

Here's the letter,1 and that's all I know about this cheerful friend:

1 Reprint from the Bowling Green Column of the New York Evening Post.

Mr. Jedediah Tingle

Occasionally, in recent years, various people have been startled to receive a letter, most charmingly phrased, expressing gratitude for something they have done or painted or written or said, and signed Jedediah Tingle. These people have justly suspected that Jedediah Tingle is a pseudonym, but they have found that the check was perfectly valid and cashable or the book worth reading.

Now one of the most pleasing adventures we have had lately was a call from Mr. Tingle himself. He did not come, we must explain, to exert his benevolence upon ourself, but to consult us vi FOREWORD

November 4, 1927.

Captain Bob Bartlett, c/o Explorers Club, 47 W. 76th Street, New York, N. Y.

Dear Bob:

I don't know who is paying you wages at the moment, but I do know the whole world is in your debt. If your salary were based on the value of your services to mankind and your employer, you would be in the millionaire class, but damn it Bob, that isn't the way with mankind. An inventor hits on a lucky device for polishing teeth and pulls off a fortune — you, not only take care of yourself, but a dozen tenderfeet through a thousand miles of arctic waste, and what? — Draw maybe just enough to carry you, while you are trying to find another job. But, we love you just the same. We admire your fearless courage, your clear head, your mastery over the forces of nature, your rugged grandeur, for you really are a master of men and natural forces — a giant among pigmies.

about a certain phase of his recreation of secretly rewarding, in a modest way, those whose works appealed to him. He did not tell us his real name, and we have no desire to know who he is, other than that he is a thoughtful business man who has found great delight in these mysterious gestures of helpfulness. To identify him would not only necessarily put an end to his cheerful avocation, but would also deprive the situation of its unique charm.

The secret circle of those who have received these letters from Jedediah Tingle is a curiously assorted one. We have had some of the letters shown us, in the past, by those who have received them. These letters have gone to Cabinet Ministers and to obscure, struggling poets, to great writers and to unknown heroes. But the point is this — while Mr. Tingle tells us he has greatly enjoyed the occasional acknowledgments that have come to him by being addressed to the banks on which his checks are drawn, certain individuals and newspapers have made determined attempts to

FOREWORD vii

In a thousand years you will be more famous than today. But, meanwhile hasn't mankind a duty? I think so, and I have one too, namely, to do my little bit, which is to divvy my assets to the extent of a Fifty, which I am enclosing herewith.

I have known you a good many years, but I don't want you to know my real name, lest you might hesitate to accept the check. Just consider it a little payment on account of the great debt the world owes to you, and which under no circumstances is it ever apt to pay. Sincerely yours,

(Signed) Jedediah Tingle.

Address —

Care of American Trust Co., 209 Montague Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.

The second reason for this extra literary top-hamper is this. I have been reading a book by a great explorer, a man who has accomplished really big things. It is an

unmask his innocent secret. We should like to ask all Managing Editors and others to be good sports and not spoil this admirable innocent generosity by trying to discover its source.

Christopher Morley. ******

The undersigned feels mildly resentful at being called a "pseudonym." He harbors a strong suspicion that he is the living incarnation of his own great-grandfather whose name he has taken and who in turn came from generations of Abou Ben Adhems.

In 1820 they placed his bones in a country graveyard in the Middle West, now an abandoned tangle of grasses, briars and broken trees, but that event was probably merely an episode in an eternal mission, which is to bring smiles and tender thoughts to the great in heart — in high and low places. To comfort and cheer those who do exceptional things, or suffer.

Jedediah Tingle.

viii FOREWORD

amazingly unhappy book. He seems to want to quarrel with all the world. As he writes it, nearly everyone is a rascal, a fake, and incompetent. It is all bitterness and recrimination, without a trace of good humor anywhere.

Well, after I read as much of that as I could stand, I was sort of sick at heart, and really sorry for this poor man who so easily could have remained as big as his fine big record. And at once I said to myself, "If there is any of that kind of sour spirit in this yarn of mine, my log is never going to be launched at all."

Well, I read my book all over again. And changed a bit here and there, and threw a few paragraphs overboard. It is my book now about the way I would like to have it — although of course I wish it were more interesting and better written.

At least there is no meanness in it; and, I think, no bitterness and no criticism. I am not taking a swipe at anyone. I am not trying to open up old sores and air old grievances. At the worst, at least it is all set down with a smile.

My log is just a simple yarn of a plain man — a man not particularly well-equipped, who has seen a lot of life in queer ways; who has had his share of success and discouragement and excitement; and who is grateful for what life has given him in adventures, fun and friends. And I hope the book finds a fine fair wind to take it to the harbor of its readers' friendship.

Contents

CHAPTER

—The Trouble with AVomen

PAGE

Chapter I

I have been shipwrecked twelve times. Four times I have seen my own ships sink, or be crushed to kindling wood against the rocks. Yet I love the sea as a dog loves its master who clouts it for the discipline of the house.

"How does it feel to face death?" is a question that has often been put to me.

"That depends,', are always my first words in reply. And it does. Because, if the peril is short and swift, as when a man points a gun at your head, that is one thing. But if you have to cling, half frozen, for many hours to the rigging of a sinking ship, not knowing which moment may be your last, that is another sort of shiver altogether.

One misery I have been spared; the feeling in the face of death that I was leaving wife and children behind me. I never got married. I don't think a seafaring man ought to because women so often break your heart. A fisherman I knew got wrecked on the Labrador one winter. He left his wife in a snow dugout while he went to the nearest village for food. When he got back to his wife he found the dogs had eaten her. He never got over the shock; which shows what a care and sorrow a woman can be under some circumstances.

Naturally, my life has been mostly with men, hard men, good and bad men, brave men and cowards; but men all the time. One good look and I can tell what a man is like. A couple of questions and I know his character. I can tell whether a man can be counted on or not in a pinch. I can almost say how he will behave when he dies.

Yet, strange to say, I have learned a deal about women too. I don't claim to understand them. They probably don't even understand themselves. But I know how a woman acts under circumstances, and why. Maybe it is this knowledge that has kept me a single man. Women don't often go where I have gone. However, curious to relate, there have nearly always been women on my most exciting voyages.

When I went close to the North Pole with Peary, we had Eskimo women aboard the ship. When the Karluk sank in the middle of the Polar Sea one black January night, with the temperature fifty- four degrees below zero, one of the bravest persons in our party was an Eskimo woman — a wife and mother.

Once I was shipwrecked in the North Atlantic and it was a woman that smiled when the great moment of disaster came. The biggest influence in my forty years of going to sea has been a woman — my mother. She is still alive and now and then still tells me where to get off.

You might say it is not fair to look on Eskimos in the same light as one would look on white women. That is not true. An Eskimo woman cooks and sews, gossips and laughs, loves her babies and worries about her husband every bit as much as any white wife does.

There was Inuaho on Peary's ship the Roosevelt. She was a fine bronze study as she sat stripped to the waist sewing away on her skin boots. Her name wasn't easy to say so we called her "The Black Mare," from the long ebony locks that hung over her shoulders.

One day Inuaho came to me on the ice outside the Roosevelt and said:

"Captain, you watch my man?"

I could see her hands were gripped tight and her eyes were wide open.

"Sure I watch him. Why?"

"Because Pearyaksoh (the big Peary) do not care if he die. My man go where Peary go. I am afraid."

I patted the girl on her back and told her the best I could that I wouldn't let anything happen to her man. That summer her baby came; its father was one of the first human beings to reach the North Pole. In 19 1 7 I returned to Greenland and told the story to the sturdy little hunter growing up.

In 191 4 the Karluk sank north of Alaska. She was crushed to kindling wood in the ice. We were many miles from the land. The weather was dreadfully cold. In the biting wind the powdery snow drifted ceaselessly across the wild and broken ice-fields. It was a gamble whether we should ever get back. Four men started off towards Alaska and were never heard of again. The rest of us struggled down to Wrangell Island. The trip took weeks and was filled with terrible hardships.

We had an Eskimo woman along. She was our seamstress. She was not trained to sledge work for she had lived a sheltered life in the little village where we had picked her up. She was not like the North Greenland Eskimo. I should say that she was as unprepared for hardship as most white women. Did she whine? Listen:

"Where in hell are my boots ?" I yelled at the top of my lungs in the confusion that followed the sinking of the ship. Nobody paid any attention.

Five minutes later I felt a woman's fingers on my wrist. I whirled around in the dusk and flying snow. There was Inaloo.

Ada Blackjack.

Seamstress on the Kurlulc.

"I fix Captain's boots," she said.

I grabbed them out of her hand. I suddenly noticed her lips were bleeding.

"Somebody hit you?" I asked.

"You fell down?"

"Well, what in the devil is the matter with your face?"

"I chew Captain's boots."

Then I realized that she had dashed into the cabin, at risk of her life, when the ice was crushing the ship, and saved my spare boots. I knew they were wet and in bad shape. She had taken them out and in the Eskimo way had chewed the thick leather into a pliable state and filled the soles with grass. In the cold and snow, and with the hard hide, she had split her lips in twenty places. But she had saved my feet.

In the long hard weeks that followed she was like that all the way. Time after time she helped bind up frozen feet and fingers ; she went easy with her share of the grub when we were short; she mended our clothes and cleaned our boots; and she was always there with a smile when things looked darkest.

White women are just as brave and just as fine when they have to be. Of course when it comes to wearing fandangles in competition with other women for the eyes of a man, she has got to be on the job if she is going to make progress. But jam her up against a stone wall of necessity and I'll stake my hat on the average woman being full-and-by with the best of us.

I remember one girl down the Newfoundland coast. She was from a good family in Halifax. She fell in love with a young sailor and went with him to live outside of a little village near my home. I suppose the excitement of being married and living in a new country carried her along the first year or two. She was pretty free" and could visit about while her man went to sea. But children came along one after another, and pretty soon she was tied down as much by poverty as by her brood.

The sealing season begins in March. Men are poor in Newfoundland. Late in February, after they have cut enough wood for their families and when their winter supply of salt fish is getting low, they begin to go down to St. John's to join the sealing fleet. Usually they walk. Young men think nothing of covering a hundred miles or so overland, through deep snow and blizzards.

The bad part of it is after they have gone through two months, maybe three, of hard sealing life, they come back with total earnings of as low as $15! Sometimes they make $50 for a sealing cruise; sometimes $300 — but that is very rare. Usually it is around $25 to $60.

Think of it. This $50, let us say, represents the total season's earnings for the head of the family. Some of it goes for the man's outfit and clothing. Some of it he wastes in knick-knacks for the children. After three or four months of ice, and snow, and cold, and incredible toil, he goes back to his woman with maybe only $25 in cash!

That Spring the girl I am telling about kisses her man goodbye. All the little children kissed him goodbye— five of them, as I remember it. He had to go. The $25 or $50 he would bring back must pay for the flour and medicine and tools vital to the life of the little family.

Three days after he left it came on to blow. Snow mixed with the wind. The little shack where lived the mother and her children became isolated. It was isolated for a month. It was half isolated for another month. In the third month the mother broke out and got help to bury one of her babies. Meanwhile she cut wood and boiled salt fish and waited for her man to bring back $25.

He never came back. After a while the girl gave up. She let people come and help her support the children; she was a good sport about it. She went right on working and made enough money so that she could have her little house. She fished and chopped wood like a man. She did not forget that her man had gone down in the sealer Southern Cross in a brave effort to provide for her. The children were io THE LOG OF BOB BARTLETT

half his and to this day she tries to carry his load as well as hers.

I have an idea that all women are good to start with. The trouble with so many of them is that they have too easy a time. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe if they didn't have an easy time they would lose that ornamental edge which catches the eye of a man skilled in a woman's fine points. Anyway, I know plenty of cases where my theory holds true.

There was a good girl I knew who turned up her nose at lots of fine young fellows because they didn't have enough money or hold down big jobs. She was out to marry a Captain. She finally did.

Now some Captains like to take their wives to sea with them. But all sailors know that a woman on board ship is bad luck. I once sailed as second mate with a Captain who took his wife along. She brought misfortune from the day we cast off until we reached port again.

On the second day out I fell down the hatch and nearly put out one of my eyes. My shin had to have four stiches taken in it. Next the first mate broke his knuckle when he swung at one of the deck-hands. The sailor dodged and the mate struck the oaken pin rail with his unprotected knuckles.

The worst tragedy came in the second week out. Our steward had a bad knee. I suppose it was rheumatism. He suffered terrible pain. You know the

THE TROUBLE WITH WOMEN n

average merchant ship doesn't carry a doctor. She has a medicine chest aboard with a book of directions. When anybody is ill the Captain opens the chest and treats them according to the book. If he gets the symptoms wrong, or reads off the wrong page, then there is old Nick to pay.

When the steward complained about his knee the Captain's wife insisted on taking charge. She got the book out of the medicine chest and read it all through from beginning to end. I think that's what set her adrift. Anyhow it turned out afterwards that she treated the steward for something on page 109 when what he had was on page 209. He became terribly ill on the second day of the treatment and just before we reached port he passed away. There was an investigation and the Captain got in a lot of legal trouble that I don't think he ever cleared up. Next time he put to sea his wife stayed home where she belonged.

Yes, I have sailed all over the globe and often been shipwrecked. And I have handled some thick-skinned humanity in my time. But my greatest danger and my toughest task always has been the women- folk.

I remember once I had just rounded to from a cruise to the West Indies. I had a cargo of bananas on board that had to be discharged. As the job would take some days I stowed away in a boarding house. The housekeeper was a fine up-standing woman of about forty. I could see right off that she was built for hard work and heavy weather. Though she had a nice face she would never take a beauty prize.

The second night I came home for supper she had a rose in the vase up on my bureau. About two minutes after I had come in and was about to cast adrift for a bath, I heard a knock on the door. It was my hostess.

"Everything all right, Captain?" she asked.

"Fine as a fiddle," says I.

"Can I do anything for you?"

I wanted to tell her she could get out, but instead I said. "Yes, you can. If you will wait a minute you can take this shirt and send it to the laundry."

Would you believe it, she was insulted! Before I knew from which quarter the wind blew 1 was apologizing. And the minute a fellow starts to apologize he's in irons. I mean at a disadvantage. Within ten minutes that woman had tears coursing down her cheeks. I don't know whether it was my apologizing or whether she was laughing at me. Anyway it ended up with my taking her out to the movies. She had the cargo hooks in me fore and aft.

I tell you it was a narrow shave. Even now I don't know how I escaped. But I got a room at a different place the very next day. I could see there were breakers ahead with that boarding-house keeper.

Luckily she wasn't there when the expressmen came for my ditty bag.

I have heard that a sailor has a girl in every port. Lots of sailors have. But by a girl is meant a sweetheart. And a sweetheart to a sailor doesn't always mean what it means to other people. That sounds a little complicated. It is complicated. Women are the most complicated things in life.

I think my worst encounter with a woman happened at a house party I once attended. I suppose the host thought it would be fine to have a sea captain along; sort of give his party a touch of atmosphere. Several of the guests were yachtsmen and there was a big swimming pool in the back yard ; so it might have been called a sea- faring party, I suppose.

But I was all out of kilter there. The people were very rich and every time I turned around I bumped into a servant in livery. But I got through the dinner all right and was doing well with the evening — it was a nice moonlit, summer evening — when someone proposed that we all go swimming. I didn't mind swimming but the suggestion was that we go swimming with all our clothes on. No doubt the wine had made my friends reckless. Being a teetotaler, I was not so enthusiastic at the idea.

Like most sailors I travel light. I had only one suit of clothes with me, one suit of underwear and one pair of shoes. So when that happy crew began to move towards the swimming pool with the idea of jumping in "all standing" I was faced with a problem.

I was puzzled as to whether I should turn around and run, or whether I should throw off some of my clothes and make the best of a bad bargain.

Just then two ladies took hold of my arm and began to propel me towards the pool. I back-watered hard. But there was no escape. I figured if I could only get my coat and pants off I would at least have some dry clothes to put on when I got out.

With a quick move I suddenly shook myself clear and peeled off my coat. Before they could grab me again I slipped out of my pants and started off on a run for the pool. It was about twenty yards away. There was a loud shout as I did so. At once several of the ladies came running for me and began to pull at my shirt. You would hardly think ladies would act like that even after a little wine. Before I knew it I was pretty nearly down to rock bottom so far as clothes went. Terribly embarrassed I dove in.

Of course there were loud cheers when I came up. I refused to get out of the pool until my host brought me an overcoat.

Experiences like that make a seafaring man glad to get to sea again.

I could go on for a long time telling about my experiences with women ; some of them good, some bad ;

some funny and some tragic. Naturally these experiences have brought me to pretty definite conclusions about the fair sex.

One of these conclusions is that while they may be fair in the sense of looks, they aren't in the sense of justice. An old lady once exclaimed to me:

"Why, Captain, you have the cleanest hands !"

"Well, why shouldn't they be clean, madam?" said I.

She giggled foolishly. "Oh, because you are a sea captain."

You see she just had a deep conviction that all sea captains had dirty hands; and probably nothing in the world would shake that unfair prejudice out of her.

On the other hand I think most women are braver than men; certainly they are more plucky. I have heard many a man whine; I've never heard a normal healthy woman in her right mind whine.

I like a woman's judgment, too. Old as I am, and I'm old enough to be a grandfather, had I shipped a wife in youth, I still write and consult my mother's judgment if I possibly can before making any important decision.

I like a woman's temperance and moderation. This may seem a funny thing to say when there's so much outcry against the modern flapper and dissipated young married woman. But I don't believe all this truck.

Let the young things be gay and the brides be free — so long as they are decent. And when you come to heave your sounding lead among the two sexes you'll find it's the women far more than the men that have kept to the deep safe channels of health and good citizenship.

Good women are the best company in the world: this from a confirmed old bachelor, too.

Pound for pound, thought for thought, a competent woman will work even with the best of men.

A woman is more constant in every way; more consistent, too, if you don't go and upset her with emotions we men don't understand.

Woman's home-keeping instinct is the sailor's salvation; maybe it's the world's too.

If women are bad luck at sea, they're equally good luck on the beach.

I am sorry I have never married. This has been my greatest loss in life; but then it's also probably been some poor woman's gain.

Chapter II

A life of adventure takes on a queer shape towards its finish — that is, unless a man be rich and can fashion its shape to his heart's desire.

I was in the Explorers Club of New York not long ago when a friend of mine came in accompanied by another gentleman. My friend introduced his companion and then, excusing himself, left. I was struck by the eagerness with which the companion plied me with questions :

"My, you fellows are lucky who can go exploring !" he exclaimed.

"Yes," said I. "It's all right while you're exploring. You get used to rotten meat, frozen fingers, lice and dirt. The hard times come when you get back."

He looked surprised. He was a business man and probably had spent his entire life since college moored to a desk.

"But I thought that was the finest part of it all. Don't you go to banquets, lecture, write stories and get interviewed a lot ?"

"Yes, we do."

"And aren't you always more or less preparing for the next voyage, looking up a ship and gathering supplies together and that sort of thing?"

"Yes, that's true, too."

"And don't people make a lot of you? I mean to say, isn't an explorer something of a social lion?"

I had to laugh at that. And right away I had to agree, because there was some truth in what the fellow said. But I couldn't give him the whole truth without revealing a good many private matters that I have never spoken of until I penned these lines.

I was just a young fellow when I got back from Peary's polar trip. I had lived a seafaring hard life and had never known what a real luxury was. So I was pretty much set up when under Peary's guidance I got myself a suit of evening clothes and sat down to ten-course dinners with a lot of great men. At first it was like going to a circus. And the figure of speech that calls the guest of honor a lion proved to be an accurate one. For the guests of honor are animals that everybody comes to look at.

Curiously enough I didn't discover I was a lion until after about ten years of it. Then it began to dawn on me that the smiles and cordiality passed out were not always genuine. It was come-along stuff. People who wanted me to do my tricks, so to speak.

I didn't have any real tricks, any more than old Silver King did. He was the big polar bear I brought

Dr. K.md Rasmussen and Captain Bartlett o.v the Morri.s.scu.