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CHAPTER I
OFF TO GREENLAND
Last year I went on the Beebe trip to the Galápagos 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. [[4]]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—I 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 [[5]]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.