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.
CHAPTER IV
At last! on the 23rd of August, the St Ebba was ready to be taken away from the slip, and the town, and the noise of the builders’ yard, and one morning, with rain blotting out the grey stone hills and threshing the trees, and the country a swamp, Henriksen, Mrs Henriksen and the writer went into town for the last time about St Ebba’s affairs, motoring in our whale-launch nine knots through the spray. It shows how hard some people are to please, for Mrs Henriksen vowed she preferred her recollection of the motion of a Rolls Royce in Berwickshire on a dead smooth road. Fancy comparing metal springs and the hard high road to the silky rush over spuming surge down the fir-clad fiord, the wind right aft, and each wave racing to catch us.
So we took St Ebba from town and the grime of the quayside and cleaned her decks and laid her alongside a wooden pier a few miles from Tonsberg, brought a flexible pipe on board and filled her tanks with sixty tons of solar oil from an oil refinery, enough to take her at one ton a day to Australia without a call! That went on board in eight and a half hours, one man on watch with his hands in his pockets. How different from the work and dirt of coaling!
Then clang goes the bell for stand by—let go, fore, and aft—half-speed astern and we back away from the pier, with Henriksen on the bridge, our crew young and nimble as kittens and our young mate or styrmand forward alert and the picture of smartness. He is twenty-one, is Henriksen’s brother, and has held master’s certificate for three years.