David goes to Greenland

by David Binney Putnam

The stove in the galley and in the after cabin had to be put out, as there was danger [[78]]they would spill over and set the ship on fire. The big galley stove was braced up with seal hooks to keep it from sliding. Billy the cook moved in to shore and kept making coffee there so the men had something hot to help keep them going. Before it was all over most everyone had been working continuously more than forty hours. I was at it more than twenty-five, and was pretty dead tired.

The Captain ordered all the food put ashore and there was a lot more to do, lashing more casks and trimming the cargo and moving gasoline to land, for the motor boat in case we got stuck, and kerosene for the primus stoves. Then, too, they put out the big heavy anchor, taking it in the dories quite a way from the ship and dropping it, so that we could haul on it with the windlass.

While the tide was down there was a lot of work to do on the banged-up bottom of the vessel. The false keel, which is a big timber on the very bottom below the real keel, was [[79]]pretty well ripped off aft of the mainmast, and a lot of oakum was loosened out of the garboard seam. Lying down on the wet rocks we filled in a lot of oakum, which is a sort of fibre like shredded bagging or say potato sacking, with caulking tools, which is a blunt kind of chisel and a mallet or hammer to pound the stuff into the seams or cracks.

Then we got a lot of Billy’s dish washing soft soap and mashed it up with a hammer and worked it in our hands into a kind of pasty putty. We put this in on top of the oakum. We worked in the water until the tide got up around our boots, and then climbed the ladder up on deck. I was able to help quite a bit on this job, and afterward there was plenty to do bailing.

On shore we put up one of our small tents and took in most of our things, like sleeping bags, blankets, guns and ammunition. Everybody as best they could threw their things together to land. It was exciting, and exactly [[80]]as if we were abandoning the ship. And awfully sad, too, to see our fine Morrissey all soaked with water and oil, and everything thrown about so terribly.

Where the Morrissey’s False Keel Ripped Off on the Rocks.

After the unloading work, and after the men had had a mug of coffee and hardtack and whatever Billy could dig out of the cans, it was pretty nearly high tide again, along about eleven o’clock at night. The sun, of course, was always about the same distance above the horizon, only at a different point, so it seemed always a sort of bright afternoon. We were terribly lucky not to have it stormy.

All hands were called on board and while three men worked the pumps the others manned the windlass. We had the big anchor and a small one out, to pull on with the windlass.

There was a good wind coming up so we had to get her off then or she would surely break up and leave us there. After working for an hour or so we were just about to give up when [[81]]the wind freshened more. Cap’n Bob ordered all sails hoisted. Everyone got on the halyards and pulled as hard as they could. The wind flattened out the sails and the engine went full speed ahead. But for a good many minutes she held fast and we were most awfully discouraged.