Wilson’s photograph of the Ohiki, with Mr. Thurston on board, became the frontispiece of a top secret publication on amphibians of World War II’s joint army staffs in London. The amphibian war of the Pacific Ocean and Normandy was to develop dozens of different designs of landing craft, but war use was unforeseen by me at the time of our experiments.
With a crew of four we cruised from Kailua to Kawaihae along the west coast of Hawaii, landing on beaches and lava flows, and camping at Makalawena, Kiholo, and Puako. We encountered real grief at Kawaihae against the front of a soft submerged bank in shallow water, where the front wheels made too much resistance and the rear wheels dug into a mud bottom. We needed front wheel pull, but we finally got the craft up the beach by power hauling with gypsy and cable and a tree. More grief developed on our way up to Waimea when we fractured wooden rear axle attachments. We went gratefully into the Parker Ranch shop for some days, until we were able to return to Hilo and the volcano, completing the circuit of the island.
The National Geographic vessel was built by George Powell who advertised a Ford “mobileboat,” designed for the use of fishermen to enter midcontinent lakes. He had started on a larger model, which Grosvenor accepted for the National Geographic Expedition. Powell and I tried it out on Bellingham roads and lakes and on beaches of Puget Sound. We provided everything extra, for Alaska had no roadside filling stations. A wheeled vehicle on the peninsula was unheard of. We had elongate steel mats to give traction across the upper sands of a beach, and this plus bow winch, levers, and manpower enabled us to abandon beaches and enter the tundra. Our planning paid off, for in the 400 miles along the coast of Alaska from Shumagin Islands to King Cove, over water, beaches, and tundra, we did not even have to pump up the tires. The Honukai’s numerous excessively low gears even enabled us to drive to the snowline and bring out the heavy fur and bones of a bear that I had shot on a snowy volcano, Mount Dana.
The expedition was very productive. McKinley made an excellent topographic map; we corrected errors in old maps; we obtained many photographs through Richard Stewart, who carried still, color, and movie cameras; and we obtained minerals, fossils, geologic notes, and many plants which I collected. McKinley used a panorama camera for his topographic work and his wide photographs were invaluable as a record of the country.
Meanwhile, I kept in tough with the seismograph station at Kodiak. The steamers of the Pacific Commercial Company, which owned several of the canneries and had headquarters in Bellingham, transported us from Puget Sound to King Cove, and the many tugs for the canneries’ salmon traps enabled me to make local explorations along the southern coast. At one trap the fishermen had a tame baby seal, who would eat nothing but little trout caught for him from the brook. He lived in a box, and went off to sea by himself at night; but he always came home next morning.
In 1929 Finch sent Austin Jones, a seismologist, to construct and establish a hut at the Dutch Harbor radio station for a second Alaskan seismograph, of the Hawaiian type designed by R. M. Wilson. Jones taught the wife of a radio operator to manipulate the station and transmit the seismograms. The women in charge of the two stations at Kodiak and Dutch Harbor kept their work up for several years, and kept in constant correspondence with me. Though in the winter time they had to dig the stations out of snowdrifts, and to cope with all kinds of damage from rain and storm, they courageously and faithfully visited the instruments. It is a hellish country for weather.
Although both stations were within fifty miles of active volcanoes, earthquakes were not numerous, and the story was very different from that told by our records made at the edge of Kilauea caldera, only two miles from an active lava center. Thus we have demonstrated that the only way to study an active volcano is to live close to the crater itself, even if a shelter has to be built underground.
In concluding this story of our Alaskan expeditions of the twenties, in contrast to my windjamming experience of 1907, I must underscore the importance of water transportation and credit those who have provided it. In fact, all transportation was by water until aircraft became supplemental. I feel that the U.S. Coast Guard, which takes care of the Pribilof Island seals, is the supreme achievement of our government in policing these stormy waters. Their 60-foot motor cruiser, equipped with sails has come to be standard for such government bureaus as the Biological Survey and has replaced the earlier, 80-foot sealing schooner among the traders.
The canneries maintain big boatbuilding yards and operate large and powerful tugs for visiting the salmon traps. The traps are heavy weirs made of northwest pine logs, which are battered to pieces by the winter storms and must be rebuilt with pile drivers every spring. Thus a by product of cannery activities, and a godsend for trappers, fishermen, Aleuts, and campers is the pine lumber distributed all along the beaches from the annual wreckage of salmon traps. It is the only firewood and construction material of the country to be found anywhere west of Kodiak, for the land has no forests.
Our contribution to the boating problem was the exhibition of what an amphibian landing truck will do on Alaskan beaches and its usefulness along those beaches where a boat may be in difficulties from stormy weather.