“We,” I had better say here, will often stand in these notes for my friend C. A. Hamilton of Cochno, and Dunmore, Stirlingshire, and myself; we have done a little whaling together, and he gave me his good company a few years ago through the rough and smooth of hunting black bear and caribou in the barrens of Newfoundland. The rest of our party were four Spaniards, one of whom, F. J. de Gisbert, made the bundabust for this voyage, chartered our diminutive whaler, at Trömso, provisioned her and arranged about captain and a Norwegian crew. De Gisbert is to lead the proposed Spanish National Polar Expedition, and is at present building his vessel, which ought to be second to none, as a floating oceanographical laboratory and ice-ship. It is to be a four or five years’ drift across the Polar basin east to west, somewhat after the manner of the Nansen expedition, benefiting from their work, and carrying out still further observations with a staff of Spanish naval scientists specially trained in the various branches of natural science in the high northern latitudes.
It is a long road to North-East Greenland by Trömso and the north of Norway, and so many people are familiar with the Norwegian coast that the reader may care to make one jump right north and join us on the Fonix, a few hours out from Trömso—to join our rather curious little party in the cabin of a very small whaler; so we will avoid wearisome detail in the latter part of this book about fitting out our vessel, such as those with which I have perhaps burdened the first part about our St Ebba.
So we raise the curtain in the cabin of the Fonix; De Gisbert and Archie Hamilton are at chess, whilst the writer and our young Spanish comarados, two brothers Herrero and their cousin, Don Herrero Velasquez, are playing cards, drawing, and speaking in French, English, and Spanish, separately or all at the same time.
To add to the vocabulary, Svendsen, our skipper, comes in with his collar up, from the cold outside, and taking Gisbert’s guitar trolls out Norse sea-songs. Three of us “touch” the guitar, and we also have bagpipes and a mouth-organ. It promises to be quite a homely and musical party.
The engine goes beautifully quietly—but we know from the wind and the low glass there must be a heavy sea outside the fiord, and we are heavily laden with coal on deck!
The evening passes with snatches of Spanish songs, and bits of sailors’ chanteys, and we have one bottle of rum between us all as a libation for a successful voyage and a “full ship.”
Then, alas, we strike the rough sea outside the fiord, and roll and pitch as only small whalers can. But still the three cousins trill away at songs, bravely, bravely, though they grow more pale. Then they retire one by one to their minute cabins; turn their keys and shut themselves in their bunks and hide discomfort. How they live without any air is a wonder—and after two days they turn up again, smiling.
A word here about our little whaler, the Fonix, and her build. She is just a handy size for dodging in and out amongst the ice, and she is said to be strong. She was built in 1884 for bottle-nose whaling, and for use in the ice—ninety-two tons register, two pole masts and a funnel, one hundred and forty horse-power, eight and a half knots in calm water, over all one hundred and ten feet, with broad beam, her sides are sheathed with greenheart and oak two feet thick; her ribs are eleven inches by twenty inches broad, with only five and a half inches to six inches between them at bows. The forefoot has a five-foot thickness of timber and the usual belts of iron round the stem or cut-water, to protect it when ramming ice.
Between 3rd and 6th July we are all seedy, there is no gainsaying it, the writer perhaps makes the best pretence not to be so, and is rather envied; and several of the crew are down, it is not nearly so bad though as last year on the St Ebba, where, out of a crew of fifteen seasoned hands, the skipper, first mate, and writer, were all that could stand a watch for three days after sailing. That was, however, in a pucca gale. Still, on the Fonix, we managed a game of chess or two between the appearance and disappearance of our señors, and worked a little at Spanish and strummed mandoline and guitar—Gisbert playing the mandoline, the writer accompanying him on the guitar, whilst all well enough joined in the words.