CHAPTER III
It does not surprise me that the Vikings of the olden days used to leave the southern coast of Norway for summer visits to our Highlands and western isles, for the climate in this Southern Norway in August is most relaxing; there is absolutely nothing of that feeling of “atmospheric champagne” that you expect to enjoy in Northern Norway in summer.
We drive into Tonsberg from Henriksen’s farm every morning, and after spending the day in the shipyard, come out again in the evening with our ears deafened with the rattle of steam-hammers on iron bolts, rivets and plates. And at night in the quiet of the country we pore over Admiralty charts of the world, especially those of islands down in the South Atlantic, about which we have special knowledge, where we hope our new whaler will pick up cargoes of whales and of seals.
Our first Sunday off work, 4th August, came as quite a relief, the quiet of the country was so welcome. We wandered through the fields of Henriksen’s farm with his wife and their jolly children, and Rex, the liver-and-white collie, smuggled into Norway from Shetland, then through woods and heather till we came by an ancient road to the summit of a little hill and the remains of a Viking watch-tower, where we lay amongst blaeberries and heather and enjoyed the wide view of sea and islands at the entrance to Christiania Fiord, a pretty place to dream in and plan raids to the Southern Seas. As we rambled homewards through the pine wood that belongs to the farm we selected fir-trees to be cut down later for boat masts, lance shafts and flensing blades.
By the end of August we realise that our small ship is rapidly approaching completion. What a little while ago was only unkindly iron ribs and plates, with the added woodwork of the deck and masts, has now become a little more personal, and more homelike. We have had our engine hoisted from the slipside by a great crane and slowly and tenderly sunk into the engine-room, a very modern six-cylinder Diesel motor made in Stockholm. The fo’c’sle is well aired and lighted, and is fitted up with comfortable bunks and mattresses on wire stretchers. Each man has a long chest beside his bed, for we believe in making the men as comfortable as the after-guard.
The binnacle is now on the bridge, in front of the wheel; its bright new brass looks resplendent; and two hermetically closed boilers we have fixed on deck on either side under the bridge for boiling down whale blubber at sea.
Our hull forward of the engine-room is made up of iron tanks, and in these we hold crude oil for the engine. They will be filled, we hope, by whale oil and whalebone as we use up the crude oil for the engine’s fuel.
Above the most forward tanks is the hold, where we shall stow our whale lines—light lines for sperm or cachalot, or the small Right whale, Australis, of the Southern Seas, and our heavy lines for the great fighting finners will be in two bins to port and starboard. Forward of the hold there is the fo’c’sle and men’s quarters, with more space under their floor in the peak for more spare lines and sailcloth, and many other necessaries for a prolonged whaling cruise.
We have a small cabin aft, below deck, with four little cabins off it—to starboard, the captain’s; the writer’s temporary berth is to port, to be used later for any extra officer or pilot or for stores; the first mate’s and first engineer’s cabin are a little aft on either side of the companionway.
The iron galley with its small cooking-stove is forward, on deck, and attached to it we have a mess-room, into which four or even five of us can squeeze at one time for meals.
Aft of this mess-room and the foremast we have a very important part of our gear, a powerful winch driven by a donkey steam-engine. This is our reel, to wind up or let out our line, the five-inch cable when we play a finner. The line passes five or six times round two grooved barrels of the winch, and with it we haul up to the surface the dead whale. But more about this winch when we tackle a whale.
The 9th of August was a great day for us, for we started our 200 h.p. engines, and drove them at half-speed for an hour and never moved an inch, for the very good reason that our bows were still against the quayside. How quietly and simply they work. We then got our big traveller fixed across our deck for the sheet of our foresail. We are schooner rigged, foresail and mainsail both the same size, and count on doing eight to ten knots with engine, and six or seven with a fine breeze and sails alone.
In the morning we look at our guns in the harpoon factory. The gun or cannon for the bow weighs about two tons. It is already in position; the bollard on which it pivots is part of the iron structure of the bows and goes right down to our forefoot. Its harpoons weigh one and a half hundredweight: we shall take twenty-five of these, and forty smaller harpoons for sperm or cachalot or Right whale. On either side of the bows there is a smaller gun pivoting on a bollard to fire these harpoons. These two small guns and our twenty-five big harpoons and forty of the smaller size we find arranged in order at the works—a charming sight to us. Harold Henriksen, the builder of our ship, takes us to these works, where his brother Ludwig and his father make the harpoons and guns that are now sent all over the world. The father is very greatly respected in Tonsberg; he is called the “Old Man Henriksen,” to distinguish him from the younger member of his family. I have already mentioned him as being co-partner with the famous Svend Foyn, the inventor of the new big harpoon for finner whales.
He has made many inventions for marine work on all kinds of ships, for which he has received many medals, and only lately he received a decoration from the hands of his king, which is shown in the portrait given by him to the writer, a rare and highly appreciated gift.
He is seventy-eight years old and sails his own cutter single-handed. I wish there were space here to tell of his experiences whilst working with Svend Foyn developing the big harpoon. He takes us round the works, where forty years of fire and iron have made their mark; remains of failures are there; of burnt building and scrapped metal, but, besides, there are these fascinating stacks of modern harpoons and piles of their shell points to be used for great hunting in all seas.
The “Old Man” chuckles as we wander from forge to forge and out amongst the geraniums in the yard as he tells me how the first harpoon they tried went over the walls of the works and landed through the umbrella of an old lady in the street, and stood upright between the cobblestones. You may believe they practised out of town after that! Though old—seventy-eight years to-day—he is enthusiastic about our new plan of whaling. He has formed a yacht club; everyone yachts at Tonsberg. It is on a small island of little plots of grass between boulders and small fir-trees. We were invited there to-day for the celebration of his birthday. There were ladies in pretty summer dresses in groups, cakes, teas, fruit and pleasing drinks, coffee and cigars, and wasps by the thousands. Norwegian ladies cultivate coolness, and merely brush these away as they hand us cakes and wine; and they would be greatly offended if a man were to attempt to hand tea cakes. For the carpet knight there is no show. I wish he could be exterminated at home. Do the gods not laugh when they see our menkind in frock coats or shooting kit handing tea and cakes to females?
These pretty groups of summer-clad figures amongst lichen-covered rocks and rowans, fir-trees, oaks and honey-suckle were all reflected in the still water. As the sun sank low and a mosquito or two began to sing, fairy lamps were lit amongst the trees, and softly shone on groups of men and women in light raiment in leafy bowers. The light from the yellow and red lamps contrasted with the last blue of day. There was warm air and moths, cards and smokes, and then came music, and a perfect ballroom floor and blue eyes and light feet—a kindly welcome to the stranger in Gamle Norge.
In the dark before dawn, with lighted Japanese lanterns, ladies and men threaded their way over the flat rocks to motor launches and bade good-bye to the hosts. I shall not soon forget the long walk home across our island, the low mist, the warm, dark night, and wringing wet fields.
There is one place in Tonsberg of which I must make a note before I come back to our shipbuilding. It is the Britannia. Anyone who wishes to learn all there is to know about modern whaling must get an introduction to that cosy, old-world club. It is a low-roofed wooden house, with low-roofed rooms; one big room adjoins a kitchen, in which broad, kindly Mrs Balkan, wife of my friend the engineer on the whaler Haldane, sits behind a long counter and rules supreme. You leave the shipyard and drop in there for middag-mad, or shelter if it rains. It seemed to rain very often in August. The “old man” Henriksen’s portrait and one of the great Svend Foyn are, of course, in evidence, and Svend Foyn’s whaling successors come there for middag-mad or aften-mad, and some of them drink, I dare say, a silent skaal of gratitude to the memory of Svend Foyn, who gave them the lead to success, to become small landholders, each with his home, farm, and family.
Burly fellows are his successors, the pick of Norse sailor captains. One is just home from the South Shetlands. I saw these desolate, unhabitated, snow-clad islands many years ago, and saw there finner whales, thousands of them! and knew they must some day be hunted, but I did not calculate to a penny that there would be over a million pounds sterling invested in whaling stations there to-day; in one bay alone in Clarence Island, and that round these islands in 1911, twenty-two whalers would bag 3500 whales. So whaling here is an assured industry. In Britain the few who hear about it call it a speculation.
Another ruddy-faced, broad-shouldered, fair-haired captain comes from South Georgia and tells me of my friend there, Sorrensen, the bigger of two big brothers, both great harpooneers—they are both quite wealthy men now. They whaled with us from our Shetland station a few years ago, and between hunts we talked of a whaling station we were going to start in South Georgia; two or three years at this station has set them up for life.
Most of the men who come into the Britannia have been over all the world; half-a-life’s experience of any of them would fill a book. But of them all I think I’d sooner have my friend Henriksen’s experiences. Young as he is, he has perhaps had more experience in whaling than any of them. He was whaling for the Japanese when they opened fire on the Russian fleet. At least he had been—he stopped when the guns began to fire, and took his little whaling steamer behind an island, and he and another Norsk whaling skipper climbed to the top of it and viewed the fight from shelter. I believe they were almost the only Europeans besides the Russians who saw that spectacle. Henriksen has a red lacquered cup—a present from the Mikado in recognition of his services for supplying food in shape of whale to Yusako during the war. In time of peace there they eat the whole whale, paying several dollars a kilo for best whale blubber and as much or little less for the meat.
We in the Shetlands turn the fat oil into lubricants, etc., and the meat into guano for the fertilisation of crops. I suppose it comes to the same thing in the end, if “all flesh is grass.”
So the talk, as can be imagined, wanders far afield in the Britannia. I heard a skipper asked by a layman what corners of the world he had been in, and he paused to consider and replied: “Well, I’ve not been in the White Sea.” From Arctic to Antarctic he’d sailed a keel in every salt sea in the world bar the White Sea and the Caspian. The telephone interrupts many a yarn; perhaps Jarman Jensen, our ship’s chandler, calls up someone about provisioning a station, say for three years—food, etc., for one hundred men for that time or longer; or perhaps there is a less important order from Frau Pedersen ringing up her husband from their little farm, telling him to call at the grocer on his way home, and he perhaps tells her he thinks he may not get out in time for dinner, and “Oh, buy a house in town, Olaus” is possibly the jesting answer—a great saying here in Tonsberg, where men sometimes are said by their wives to dawdle away the afternoon in the Britannia, when they are really deep in whaling finance, planning whaling stations for islands known, or almost unknown down south on the edge of the Antarctic, or on the coast of Africa or the Antipodes.
Here is the 12th of August, day of Saint Grouse, and we should be treading the heather at home, but we are still on the island of Nottero, with rain every day; and every morning the same slow drive behind Swartzen into Tonsberg, longing all the time for our ship to be ready for sea. We hoped to have had it ready in June!
We have, however, made almost our last payment, and have her insured. What a lot it all costs!
We tried to console ourselves to-day with the interest of our first trial run of our engine as against loss of pleasant company and grouse at home, also we have the pleasure of seeing the last of our whale lines being made and we get our chronometer on board, stop watch, etc., and spend hours in Jarman Jensen’s little back shop with three skippers giving us advice, as we draw up lists of provisions for the St Ebba for a twelvemonth.
In the rope factory run by Count Isaacksen we watched the last of our great whale lines being spun; three five-inch lines we have to port and three to starboard, one hundred and twenty fathoms each—that is, we can let a whale run out three times one hundred and twenty fathoms on our port lines, three hundred and sixty or two thousand one hundred and sixty feet. I have seen that length run straight out in a few seconds at the rate of sixty miles per hour, with engine going eight knots astern and brakes on, and then it snapped; for some big blue whales five of these lines are attached to give greater weight and elasticity, because, you see, there is no rod used in whale-fishing.
The rope factory and Jarman Jensen’s store are two wonders of Tonsberg. The store is a small front shop, generally pretty full of townspeople making domestic purchases, butter, potatoes, coffee. Jensen, with perfect calm and without haste, weighs out a pound of butter, wraps it in paper and hands it with a bow to some customer, gives a direction to one or two heated assistants, and comes back to us in the den behind the shop and continues to tot up the provisioning for our ship for a year, or the stores for some far bigger whaling concern running to thousands of pounds.
So much business done in so small a space and with such complete absence of fuss! Jensen in his leisure hours is antiquarian and poet. He possesses a valuable library in Norse antiquities and will write a Saga while you wait. He must have burned a good deal of midnight oil over the splendid saga he wrote about our St Ebba which was rich with historical reference to the amenities between Scots and the Norwegians in ancient days.
The slowest part of the outfitting for our whaler was, for me, the customary expressions of hospitality. I hope my Norwegian friends will understand and forgive my criticism. It is the result of my being merely British, with only a limited knowledge of Norse and a comparatively feeble appetite. A quiet little dinner given to us as a visitor and representative of our Whaling Company would begin at three P.M. and wind up at ten—eating most of the time—plus aquavit and the drink of my native land, which seems to be almost as popular in Norway as it is in England.
Think of it—five or six hours’ smiling at a stretch, pretending to understand something of the funny stories in Norsk and joining in the hearty laughter! I could have wept with weariness. They are to be envied, these Norse, with their jolly heartiness, the way they can shake their sides with laughter over a funny story. The world is still young for them. I remember that our fathers laughed and told long stories like these people.
One chestnut I added as new to their repertoire. I believe it has spread north as far as Trömso, about the man with a new motor who, when asked about its horse-power, drawled in reply it was said to be twenty horse-power, but he thought eighteen of the beggars were dead! And as to speed, it had three—slow—damned slow—and stop! It seemed to translate all right—saghte—for-dumna-saghte, and, Stop! fetched the audience every time. At least it did so when Henriksen told the story, but he is a born raconteur, and infuses the yarn with so much of his own humour and jollity that everyone, especially the womenfolk, who are very attentive to him, laugh till they weep.
A perfect wonder to me is the way in which women here can prepare meals and entertain a lot of people single-handed, or with, say, the help of one maid, at a couple of hours’ notice; have a spise-brod ready—a table covered with hors-d’œuvres at which you can ruin the best appetite with all sorts of tasty sandwiches, aquavit, liqueurs and beer till the Real dinner is ready, say, of four substantial courses and many wines, custards and sweets. Between times she will possibly see her own children off to bed, probably alongside some of the visitors’ children; then she will sing and play accompaniments on the piano, and join heartily in the general talk, and later will serve a parting meal and a deoch-an-doris, and walk a Scotch escort of a mile or two with the parting guest as the morning sun begins to show.
They seem very jolly though they are so busy. Everyone on this island knows everyone else: they were all at school together, as were their parents before them. Most of the married people have a little farm. The wife looks after this when the husband is at sea-whaling. The women have the vote too! They voted solid a year or two ago for a neatly dressed, plausible young orator who came round the island, and when their husbands came home after the whaling season was over, found he was a Socialist; and if anyone’s interests are damaged by the Socialist in Norway, it is the whaler’s. So the vote for some time was not a favourite subject of conversation here when ladies were present. I think the wealthiest family in Tonsberg, a millionaire’s household, runs to two maidservants.
But this is dangerous ground; let us upstick and board the St Ebba. “Once on board the lugger” we cast off wire hawsers, let on the compressed air with a clash in the cylinders, then petrol, then crude oil, back her, stop her, then motor ahead easily.
The St Ebba’s first journey! We passed down between Nottero and the mainland, rapidly passing the small motor craft that seemed to be timing us, travelling at nine and three quarter knots. She seems to go as quickly as our steam-whaler the Haldane—less “send” in calm water. The Haldane and her like pitch a little, St Ebba makes no turn up behind to speak of at half speed, which is fast enough for actual whaling. She seems particularly quick in turning, and in a very small circle.
We had charts out all the morning planning our southern route, possibly to the Crozets, possibly the Seychelles or the Antipodes. We have information about whaling in these waters; I wrote our directors about the possibility of running a shore station with St Ebba, and painted the St Ebba flag.
Then we went by our launch, a Berlinda motor-boat fitted with bollard or timber-head at the bow for small harpoon gun for killing sperm or Australis. We found St Ebba’s engineer very busy, and worried. The cooling water inflow was stopped by something from outside. The British engineer was also very busy with our Cochran steam boiler for our winch. This winch seems very satisfactory—a sixty-horse-power salmon reel, with ratchet and noise in proportion.
We continued working at the engines till seven P.M., then motored in the St Ebba launch down the side of the island, and got home in the dark at ten-thirty.
I must cut down these day-to-day notes. “Launching a whaler” sounds interesting enough till you come to read about details. Little troubles and big troubles and worries arose to delay the getting afloat, signing on men took time, signing off an engineer who got drunk, and getting another in his place caused another delay; and delays occurred getting our papers audited. They had all to be sent back to Christiania to get a “t” crossed or an “i” dotted. Rain came and helped to delay getting our lines on board. Then we had to have an official trip, with representatives of Government, etc., etc., on board, a curious crowd all connected with the sea, most of them captains, a Viking crew on a British ship, still with the Norwegian flag astern!
At the next trip, however, given by us, when we had accepted deliverance, we unfolded the Union Jack and had what I’ve heard called a cold collation on our main hatch. There were the captain’s and friends’ relatives, photographers, reporters and skippers all intensely interested in our new type of whaler.
On [page 36] are depicted figures looking into the engine-room, because there was no room inside! There our engineer is discoursing to whaling and mercantile skippers, showing how he can be called from his bunk and have the engine going full speed ahead in less than four minutes; and all the wonders of a modern Diesel motor.
And one by one the carpers climb down, each in his own way—for you see almost all the “men-who-knew” said something or other would happen or wouldn’t work. But once they saw our engine work and the arrangement of harpoons, guns, lines, and oil tanks, all of them prophesied success.