Northern Lights

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Text originally published in 1939 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

NORTHERN LIGHTS

by

DESMOND HOLDRIDGE

Illustrated by Edward Shenton

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 6

THE NATURE OF THE VESSEL AND THE VOYAGE 7

BUSINESS ONLY, WITH TREASURE RULED OUT 18

OF ERRORS AND GALES 26

THE BEGINNING OF NIELSEN’S ADVENTURE 36

THE COURSE AND LIQUIDATION OF THE ADVENTURE 45

EXHIBITION MEETS EXHIBITION 54

NORTHWARD HO! 62

DEATH IN OKKAK—PERIL IN HUDSON STRAIT 71

SIR THOMAS BUTTON HIS ISLANDS 81

RETREAT 92

FAREWELL TO THE LABRADOR 102

PAROLE 111

BEANS AND BUTTER ON THE OVERHEAD 122

SOUTHEAST OF SCATARI 135

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 143

THE NATURE OF THE VESSEL AND THE VOYAGE

OF THE events in this book I have written before; briefly but in excruciating detail. If the foresail was jibed at midnight, I set down that fact. If I saw a dog on an uninhabited island, I said so. If the tide was against us in an unimportant passage, nothing would prevent my recording the misfortune. But I said nothing of mistakes in navigation, I made no mention of friction among the three very diverse personalities aboard, and never, absolutely never, did I say that we had, at any time, been seasick or at loss for an expedient. It is hardly necessary to say that I omitted all mention of my extreme youth.

The account was published in an obscure but excellent yachting magazine, now defunct; I have often wondered if the laborious detail of my story did not have much to do with the sudden demise of that publication, for otherwise it was a very good one.

But I was intent on sounding like the old sea dogs I admired and very sincerely I was fascinated with the technique of sailing and navigating; so complete was this fascination that I had only a perfunctory interest in the places I visited with my first boat. To the people who inhabited them I paid little heed; that is, when people did inhabit them—often there were harsh, inhospitable spots where even a seal or a bear might consider well before taking up residence. As time went on, however, there were other voyages, other vessels, and other lands and peoples; when I remembered this first cruise the images that came to mind were not those which would be entered in a well-kept logbook. They were thoughts I enjoyed letting come and go at odd moments and they had not much to do with the technicalities of sailing. But I devoted little time to them until thirteen years after the cruise had ended.

It was a flat, heavy package from the American Geographical Society which set me to remembering, remembering in detail and, I fear, with a certain nostalgia. This because I no longer possess the physical courage or downright stupidity I then possessed; of a rather astonishing capacity for enduring discomfort very little remains. The package contained No. 22 of the Society’s special publications: Northernmost Labrador, Mapped from the Air. An accompanying card informed me that it was sent with the compliments of the author, Alexander Forbes.

Forbes, I knew, had been performing a detailed survey of North Labrador, using planes, a big schooner, and a remark-able mapping method developed by Miller, of the American Geographical Society. It was the best kind of exploration in the modern manner and now, in my hands, I held the results. I thumbed through the pages, looking at the splendid air pictures, picking out old anchorages, and seeing how far a certain fiord just south of Hudson Strait really ran into the mountains. And then, reading the text, I discovered that the absurd voyage of my Dolphin was described as a remarkable cruise, that the rags of information with which I had dressed up my account in the little yachting magazine had actually been of value to this serious explorer, and that we had, indeed, been the first white men to enter the fiord. It was very exciting.

That the cruise of the Dolphin could possibly have been of use to anyone had never occurred to me. I got out the old account I had written; half a dozen pages and I was smiling at myself. Thirteen years after the event, I was no longer interested in palming myself off as an old sea dog and an expert in all things that concern sailing and navigation. That the Dolphin’s foresail had been reefed during the morning watch on August 20, 1925, was a fact long forgotten and quite without importance. But I could remember clearly the cold, damp folds of fog, the naked grandeur of the rocks and peaks, the desolate beauty of the fiords, the rosy cheeks of the jolly Eskimo girls, the unreasoning fear of nothing which attacked me in the Button Islands, the milky streamers of the aurora, the wild runs before gathering storms, the smell of drying fish, the unearthly howl of the sled dogs, the kittiwakes in Mary’s Harbor, the mosquitoes in the long passages among the brown islands, the fiery wake we left astern during the dark nights of early autumn—I could remember a whole host of things that made me glad I had once owned and sailed the Dolphin, regardless of the fact that in the Perfect State the Commissar or Führer of Water Sports would have confined me in a concentration camp because my ship was not particularly seaworthy, because I was inexperienced, and because the cruise had been woefully underfinanced.

No doubt, a good deal of trouble might have been avoided had such an official got his hands on me, but one of the pleasant features of the still im-Perfect States is that in them a man can make a fool of himself, elaborately, without being seized by politicians and recalled to the deep worn paths of common sense. For boats, even the uglier ones, are among the loveliest creations of man’s hands, and though owning them brings a train of debts, hangnails, bruises, bad frights, and all kinds of worries not experienced by those who content themselves with the more practical vices, the relation between a man and his boat is as personal and intimate as the relation between husband and wife.

Neither relation admits of much outside interference. But, just as there are a few members of the human race who like to live their bedroom life in public, so there are a few people who set out for far places in small boats, not from an over-mastering urge to see them and to wage war with the sea, but only to have their names in the newspapers. These deserve every bit of the ridicule heaped upon them.

There are, however, others who wish to see strange lands over the bowsprit of their own craft, but, not having enough money to buy or build the best kind of small yacht, they go forth in an unsuitable vessel simply because they would rather go dangerously than not go at all. Occasionally, those who are more fortunate in the matter of money grow indignant with these men, saying that they should be prevented from embarking on their lunacies, since the Coast Guard or someone else will in all probability have to pluck them off the wrecks to which a righteous sea will reduce their hookers. The argument would be better if the cost and risk to the Coast Guard in so doing, over an average five-year span, were not but a fraction of the cost of a summer of pulling well-designed, well-built, and exceedingly expensive yachts off mudbanks and sand bars, plus the dispatch of an escorting cutter for an ocean race. I am disposed—unfairly, perhaps—to connect this sort of abuse with the fact that yachting is big business as well as splendid sport, and I am touchy about it because my first boat cost four hundred dollars and had previously been used to haul potatoes from Tancook Island to Halifax.

When Reuben Heisler showed her to me I thought for a moment that she was a row-boat. We were perched on the dock before his yard, looking at a little, partly decked green sloop dozing in the back harbor. She was a pretty thing, Tancook-built and typical of the work done in that part of Nova Scotia. But she looked very small; Reuben said that she was thirty feet eight inches long, from the forward side of the outer coat of paint on her stem to the after side of the outer coat of paint on her stern.

I asked how much she would cost, half hoping it would be too much.

Four hundred dollars, Reuben said firmly, and the price was near the upper limit.

I stared a while longer, knowing that she was little more than half the size of the vessel I needed, but two weeks in Nova Scotia had proved that the ideal ship was not going to be purchased with four hundred dollars.

She’s not rigged for a heavy-weather cruise, I demurred. She’s only an open boat except for the bit of deck fore and aft and the strip along her sides. She’s small, too. What’s her name?

"Iron Duke."

That’s not a very good name, I said, but, with the words on my lips, I was telling myself that it could be changed. Four hundred dollars! This sloop could be mine.

Reuben performed a gesture that would have been a shrug had he been a Latin. His face was thin and drawn, which was no wonder, for it was said jealous rivals had burned down his yard over on Tancook Island; the new yard had just been established here in Chester. Well, he murmured, we can go out and look; I won’t hold you to buying just because you looked.

We got into his dory; it leaked and the thwarts were cracked and it needed painting and he could find only one oar for her. The boat builder’s dory, said Reuben whimsically. They say a shoemaker never has shoes.

If the Iron Duke was short, she was also narrow, for, as we got closer, I found that the beam was a bare eight feet and, if she was narrow, she was also shallow; Reuben said she drew only a touch over three feet of water. But she was good-looking. She had a typical Nova Scotian spoon bow and her stem was narrow, as local practice dictated; she lacked little of being a double-ender. Now if a boat is short and narrow and shallow, it follows that she is small, but it also follows that she is consistent; and consistency, while of doubtful value in some fields, in naval architecture is a prime virtue.

So, small or not, I liked her (at four hundred dollars), and since there were only three of us going a-voyaging, size, I considered, was not important.

I could do a lot with her, Reuben said. Put a little house over the hold and there you’d have your cuddy. Give her a schooner rig instead of the sloop and she’ll ride out some right bad weather for you. Ï could do quite a lot....

And to do that—how much?

Well.... Reuben scratched his head and took a few measurements, although they were hardly necessary; he knew to an eighth of an inch the distance between any two points on her. Does seventy-five dollars seem a lot?

It did, because I was going to do this on a very short shoe-string.

That will re-rig her, build a cabin trunk, fit those bunks, and include a place to cook? Reuben nodded.

Then I think I’ll do it, I said. "I think I will, only I want that name changed; I don’t like Iron Duke very much."

It’s a good name. But if you don’t like it, you can give her another. By the time Reuben took me to catch the Halifax train, I had acquired my first boat. She was two years old.

I hardly think that the road bed has been improved since that spring afternoon, so probably the C.N.R. leaps and rattles as badly as ever. On this occasion the train outdid itself and I could scarcely think of what I had done. But I could feel, and the feeling was a warm, pleasant one, tempered by apprehension; I had a boat and I never had had one before. Oddly, I did not worry about what the big, gray sea might do to the little thing; it was on Nielsen’s opinion and Robinson’s that I pondered. I had gone alone to Chester in order to economize on railroad fare. Now I had bought a boat outright and they had not been given an opportunity to approve, and both of them were seawise, while I had behind me only summer voyagings on freighters.

I hurried from the Halifax station to the hotel and found the pair of them sitting on a bed reading newspapers and smoking cigarettes. I’ve bought a boat, I stated bluntly.

Robbie jumped to his feet. Where is she? he demanded. His excitement was gratifying.

Chester. It’s the first one they showed me.

Nielsen, however, remained noncommittal and quiet. There was no stampeding sudden feeling into him, for he was a deliberate, melancholy man, a Dane who had done much seafaring—twenty years of it, I believe. What’s she like? he asked.

I tried to tell him, but it was difficult to describe her, for I had absorbed the integral picture rather than the details, and in the end we all walked down to the waterfront to see if I could find a duplicate to show them. There were steamers down there and schooners, and a fishing ship or two, and ultimately we found a dock with several little green schooners, replicas in all but rig of the Iron Duke, as Reuben called her. On one, a man leaned against a canary-yellow mainmast smoking, in a ruminative fashion, a short, black pipe.

Where was your schooner built, Skipper? I called from the height of the dock. Skipper looked at us in silence and then took his pipe from his mouth. He inspected it with some attention and spat over the side.

Tancook, he said eventually.

There, I told Robbie and Niels. It’s the same build as this one I’ve bought, And returning to Skipper: Is she a good boat?

He spat over the side again, I guess there’s worse some’er’s, he replied cautiously. Then he retreated to the cuddy.

To my relief Niels approved. In a stolid way, to be sure, but I knew him well and it was real approval; Robbie was delighted. She’ll do it. She’ll do it, and she’ll be easier to handle than a big schooner. After all, we’re not carrying cargo. All we need is space for ourselves, so the smaller the better.

No cargo. God knows why we were going. We were set on cruising the entire length of the Labrador coast, from the Strait of Belle Isle to Hudson Strait. At first it had been a cruise after seals. We were to fill our ship with sealskins and sell them for about five hundred dollars apiece. When we found out that the kind of seals we meant lived only in the Pacific and that the Labrador seals were another kind whose skins were worth but a few cents, we were not at all disappointed; we merely decided, with the greatest facility, that we would shoot polar bears for their pelts, trade with the Eskimo, and prospect for gold. None of us had ever shot anything but rabbits and partridges; the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Moravian Mission stations had the whole Eskimo trade on the Labrador nicely in their hands; and as for prospecting, we had not the very faintest knowledge of such a thing.

Nevertheless, the enterprise was on a strictly business-like basis. I bought the boat and outfitted her; Robbie and Niels contributed their persons and services; all profits from hunting, trading, and prospecting were to be split three ways. Not for anything would we have admitted that we were going yachting.

When the three of us moved into Chester to see the work done, it was April and the town was a sea of mud. The big, good homes of summertime American residents were closed and gloomy, there seemed to be no inhabitants, and we stayed at a boarding house where the only other guest was a school teacher, a withdrawn lady who was, I believe, a little afraid of us. In the mornings we always went to the yard and watched Reuben at work. In the afternoon we compiled extensive lists of food supplies, arms, trade goods, charts, navigating equipment, and clothing. Always these had to be destroyed because the money available was not enough. A new list would be made, composed of what we swore were the barest necessities, and then it would be destroyed because it was still too long. We clipped off such things as charts and navigating equipment; a compass and one ancient sheet given us by a retired fishing captain would suffice. Off came every kind of food that could be thought luxurious; in the end we bought cornmeal, salt pork, flour, tea, coffee, sugar, oatmeal,