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CHALLENGER
The Life of a Survey Ship
by
GEORGE STEPHEN RITCHIE
Captain, Royal Navy
ABELARD-SCHUMAN LTD
NEW YORK AND LONDON
First published in U.S.A. 1958
© Copyright by Abelard-Schuman Ltd
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 58-6427
Printed in Great Britain by
William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles
for the publishers Abelard-Schuman Ltd.
404 Fourth Avenue, New York 16, N.Y.
Preface
By VicE-ADMIRAL Sir Guy Wyatt, K.B.E., C.B.
Hydrographer of the Navy 1945-1950
sure that all who read it will agree that he has made a first-class
job of it.
Iam also happy that he has asked me to write a Preface because
it gives me the chance to say a few words in memory of this well-
loved ship and to my old shipmates.
During her twenty-two years of life Challenger saw the final
passing of the old methods of survey and the firm establishment
of the new for, though she was fitted with echo sounding gear on
her first commission, it was still experimental and often un-
reliable so that much work was done with the lead; her boats
relied entirely on this ancient means of sounding; fixing position
depended on good visibility. At the close of her career echo
sounding was used exclusively both in the ship and her boats, the
lead being relegated to one means of obtaining samples of the
bottom; the fixing of position no longer depended entirely on
sight, for various electronic devices made fixing possible under
any conditions.
Nowadays nothing but human limitations or a gale of wind need
prevent the surveyor sounding both day and night for weeks on
end! A most alarming thought for all of us who used to look for-
ward to a day of rain or fog to allow us to catch up with office
work or just have a ‘caulk’.
Nearly all those mentioned in this book were shipmates with
me in Challenger or other surveying ships or in the Department ;
some, alas, are no more. It has been a great pleasure to read of
their adventures and to recall the times we spent together. So I will
end this Preface by saying to them, ‘Old Ships—Here’s to the
memory of our old ship and to old shipmates who have passed on!’
| AM SO glad that Captain Ritchie has written this book and Iam
Holly Tree Orchard,
Woodbridge, Tasmania
June 1957
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Contents
Foreword: ‘A Famous Name’
The New Ship
Labrador
Windward Isles and the Grenadines
The Winter Party
Spring in the North
The West Indies
Sandy Shores
Iceland
War at Sea
Gambia River
The Eastern Fleet
Torres Straits
The Persian Gulf
Cyprus Interlude
World Voyage Begins
The Pacific
Atolls
The Deepest Depths
Homeward
Appendix : Challenger’s Captains
Index
113
126
146
201
214
233
24.2
24.3
List of Illustrations
Challenger Frontispiece
Rounding Cape Harrigan. Voyage North—July 1932 facing page 10
Pan Ice. Voyage North—July 1932 Io
Nain, Labrador II
The Carenage, St. George’s, Grenada 26
Lieut.-Commander Baker and Officer’s Steward Holgate starting off fora
day’s surveying 27
Petty-Officer Stevenson feeding the dog teams 27
Nutak—half way to Hebron 42
Hebron—the journey’s end 43
Renatus building snowhouses 58
A survey camp between pages 58-59
Springtime travel between pages 58-59
Buck Baker and Dennis Deane going out from Nain to meet Challenger,
July 1934 facing page 59
Main Street, Hillsborough, Carriacou, Grenadines 74
The surveyor’s topographic task in the Grenadines TE
In the floating dock—Bermuda 90
The new furnaces arrive in Bermuda 91
Christmas—1937. Alongside the new wharf at Trinidad 106
Fishermen at Port Said 107
Passing through the Suez Canal rea
Anchored off Muscat 123
Sheikh Khamis Bin Hilal approaches with his ‘Army’ 138
Commander Baker with Sheikh Khamis Bin Hilal and his Brothers 138
Anchored alone at the head of Hvalfjord, June 1940 139
Making Sail 154
Camouflaged—Sheerness, May 1942. Before sailing to join the Eastern
Fleet Eo «
Rigging a survey beacon on deck 170
Laying a moored survey beacon 17I
Challenger’s echo sounding launch.—Winter Harbour, Vancouver Island 186
Coming alongside—Pearl Harbour 187
viii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ix
facing page
Heavy weather—North Pacific 202
Black-footed Albatross alongside the ship—North Pacific 203
Fijian women dance the ‘Meke’ 218
Children on Funafuti Atoll 219
Challenger’s judo team—Ominato, Japan 234
Arriving at Portsmouth for the last time. Commander Ashton poses for
the Press wearing one of Challenger’s many ‘Trophies’ 235
Maps and Diagrams
Somerville sounding gear page 5
The coast of Labrador.—The inshore route north taken by H.M.S.
Challenger in 1932 12
The Submarine Sentry as
Scheme of Triangulation 29
Survey area northwards from Nain, showing first part of sledge journey to
Hebron 44
Theory of station pointer fixing 63
Approach route to Ras at Tannura 78
Triangulation mark in the Gambia River 116
Swept depth channels, Torres Strait 150
Portion of Fair Chart ‘Approaches to Umm Said’, as surveyed by
H.M.S. Challenger. Drawn by Lieutenant P. J. D. Hayter, Royal
Navy. 174
Portion of Admiralty Chart 3787, published 9th April, 1948, from the
survey by H.M.S. Challenger GMs
A seismic refraction experiment, showing the paths by which various sound
waves travel from explosion to the hydrophones 187
Structure of Funafuti Atoll as deduced from seismic experiment 223
Baillie rod and sinkers 227
The Western Pacific, showing positions of the main ocean trenches 231
Acknowledgments
Letters of Proceedings at the old-fashioned mahogany desk
in the Commanding Officer’s ‘cuddy’ in Challenger. Before
telling the story of the ship I had to read all these and I am
indebted to the Hydrographer of the Navy for giving me access
to them, and for his permission to reproduce portions of two
charts. |
Some of these Letters of Proceedings hint at interesting or
amusing happenings and give some description of the difficulties
being encountered by the Surveyors, but for the most part they
are but brief factual accounts of the movements of the vessel and
the month-to-month progress of the work. When I had read them
and made notes I had a framework upon which to hang the tales
of her Company and the stories of the ship herself.
I have, therefore, to thank a very large number of persons,
many of them in the Royal Naval Surveying Service, for so
willingly assisting me to spin the yarn, for I have served but a
brief period in Challenger compared with many of my informants,
who have returned for second and even third commissions in the
dear old ship.
To list the name of everyone to whom my thanks are due
would be a long task. I must specially mention a few who have
supplied me with invaluable material: Vice-Admiral Sir Guy
Wyatt, K.B.E., C.B., who lent me his manuscript of a paper on
Challenger’s pre-war work in Labrador which appeared in the
Journal of the Royal Geographical Society; Captain E. H. B.
Baker, D.S.O., R.N., who lent me his spirited diary kept whilst
on detached survey work in Labrador, and gave permission to
use many of his excellent photographs taken whilst serving in
Challenger; Commander G. P. D. Hall, D.S.C., R.N., who gen-
erously allowed me to make the fullest use of his notes made
whilst serving in Challenger and which he had intended for a book
of his own; and also Commander Alun Jones, R.N., and Com-
mander J. M. Sharpey-Schafer, O.B.E., R.N., who both supplied
N DOZEN different Captains wrote nearly three hundred
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI
me with a number of anecdotes about the ship during their
respective periods in command.
Among others who have helped me with material and given
encouragement are Vice-Admiral Sir John Edgell, K.B.E., C.B.,
F.R.S., Captain R. M. Southern, R.N.; Captain G. D. Tancred,
D.S.C., Royal Australian Navy; Captain H. Menzies, R.N.,
Captain C. C. Lowry, R.N., Commander C. Sabine, O.B.E.,
R.N., Commander R. Bill, D.S.O., R.N., Commander R. T.
Tripp, R.N.., Lieutenant-Commander E. E. Croome, R.N.,
Commander D. L. Gordon, R.N., Commander D. N. Penfold,
D.S.C., R.N., Commander J. C. Grattan, D.S.C. and Bar, R.N.,
Lieutenant-Commander J. A. B. Thomson, R.N., Lieutenant-
Commander S. J. Hales, R.N., Lieutenant-Commander G. J. B.
Simeon, R.N., Lieutenant-Commander J. M. Nicholas, R.A.N.,
Chief Petty Officer C. Long, B.E.M., Surveying Recorder First
Class, and Petty Officer J. Greenshields, B.E.M., Surveying
Recorder First Class.
Also, I must thank Commander Bill Ashton, D.S.C., R.N.,
who throughout many years’ friendship has told me countless
amusing yarns, many of them about Challenger, in which he
served as Navigating Officer and later as her last Commanding
Officer.
To these must be added Mr. R. J. Crowford and Mr. C. T.
Laws, formerly Royal Marines serving in Challenger, who are now
back in their civilian employment at the Hydrographic Supplies
Establishment at Taunton, and who told me much of their work
and play in the old ship, during one cold snowy night when we
were sheltering together in the bar of the Castle Hotel, Taunton.
Mr. Crowford prepared the maps and sketches for this book.
To Dr. Tom Gaskell and Dr. John Swallow I must give very
great thanks—they showed me that there is much to be found out
about the bed of the ocean apart from its mere depth below the
surface. They never tired of answering my layman’s questions
about their scientific experiments, and many a night watch I
passed away in Tom’s company as he described his theories of
the deeps. Dr. Swallow took most of the photographs used to
illustrate the World Voyage.
I have to thank Mr. G. B. Stigant, O.B.E., late Chief Civil
Hydrographic Officer in the Hydrographic Department of the
xii CHALLENGER
Admiralty, and Mrs. C. S. Auckland, in the Secretariat of the
same department, for forwarding references to me when I was at
sea and far from the amenities of the Admiralty Library; and also
Mr. J. A. Jerome on the staff of the Chief of Naval Information,
who helped me with some of the difficulties of writing a book
for publication in England whilst sailing the waters of the Pacific.
Finally, I owe a great debt to my wife who has read and
corrected my work at every stage, and who rescued the manu-
script of the final chapter from among the springs of an old sofa
where it had been taken by my eldest son’s white rat for use as
nest-building material.
G. S. Rircuie
H.M.N.Z.S. Lachlan, 1956.
Foreword
‘A FAMOUS NAME’
was established at the end of the eighteenth century and at
first formed only a very small section within the Admiralty.
The duty of this branch was to record and index the large amount
of surveying data which was gathered at that time by many of
England’s navigators, including such men as Captain Cook of
the Royal Navy and Dalrymple of the East India Company, who
was chosen to be the first Hydrographer of the Navy. Very soon,
however, it was seen that special ships would be needed for
surveying duties and that officers should be specially selected for
this valuable work which requires devotion and endurance to an
exceptional degree. So the Surveying Service was formed and for
many years about eight ships have been maintained by the Navy
for surveying work, and about 60 or 7o naval officers who have
specialised in hydrographic surveying have gone to sea in these
ships with naval crews to make the Admiralty charts in many
and varied parts of the world.
Surveying ships carry no guns or offensive weapons in times
of peace and they can be distinguished from other naval vessels
by their white hulls, with yellow funnels and upperworks.
Nothing pleases a naval surveyor more than to be greeted with
a word of praise for his ship: “I saw your vessel working in the
bay last week. She looked just like a beautiful yacht.’ He likes
to hear the reference to the work as much as he does the com-
parison of his ship with a yacht, for he prides himself on being
a hard worker. Every advantage must be taken of spells of
suitable weather and very long hours are worked by all onboard,
for when the gales come the ship may lie weatherbound in some
remote anchorage, the Captain anxiously peering from his cabin
windows at the wind and the rain and turning to look at his
barograph for any sign that moderating weather will allow him
xiii
Te Naval Surveying Service, a branch of the Royal Navy,
Xiv CHALLENGER
to resume work on the survey; while the junior surveying officers
are often content enough to hear the wind howling or to see
the fog closing in to give them some respite from the apparently
endless days of sounding in boats.
Modern surveying ships have borne the names of many of the
great surveyors of the past, such as Cook and Dalrymple, Fitzroy
and Flinders.
The ship about which this book is written also bore a famous
name. She was called after H.M.S. Challenger, built at Woolwich
for the Royal Navy in 1858, and more famous in the fields of
science and exploration than in the line of battle. This earlier
vessel was a screw corvette of 1462 tons displacement with a
two-cylinder engine, using a twin-bladed propeller which could
be disconnected and hoisted clear of the water when she was
under sail.
In 1861 she left for service on the east coast of North America
and the West Indies, taking part in operations against Mexico in
1862. Her next commission was on the Australian Station, where
little unusual occurred, except that she visited Fiji on a punitive
expedition to avenge the death of a missionary and his dependants
who had been murdered by the Fijians.
It was in 1872 that her career took a dramatic turn when she
was selected as a surveying vessel to be employed on a scientific
cruise round the world.
For some years the Royal Society had been sending scientists
to sea in naval surveying ships. These were the first real efforts
made to find out something of the physical make-up of the ocean
and of the life within it beyond the immediate vicinity of the
coast. Professors W. B. Carpenter and Wyville Thomson had been
the prime instigators of these cruises which had been conducted
off the north-west coast of Scotland and in the Mediterranean.
But knowledge of the depths of the oceans was still extremely
vague ; there was a widespread belief that there was an azoic zone
below a thousand fathoms or so where no life existed, despite
evidence to the contrary provided by starfish which had become
entangled in deep sounding lines; many considered that the
ocean’s floor would be flat and featureless ; of what the ocean bed
was composed no one knew; there had been considerable dis-
cussion, based on slender data, whether the temperature of the
FOREWORD XV
oceans decreased steadily with depth or whether there were zones
of warmer water alternating with cold. ‘The vast ocean lay
scientifically unexplored’, said the Circumnavigation Committee
of the Royal Society when they approached the Admiralty with
a proposal that a world voyage should be made.
Dr. Carpenter had already been in communication with their
Lordships and had done much groundwork so that things moved
swiftly, and in a very short time the Hydrographer of the Navy,
Admiral G. H. Richards, was vigorously under way with plans.
Captain G. S. Nares, a surveying officer of great experience, was
chosen to command the Challenger. As the Royal Society had
nominated Dr. Wyville Thomson to be the scientific leader of
the expedition these two worked in harmony from the start,
for they had sailed together in similar appointments on the most
recent oceanographic cruise to the Mediterranean in the surveying
vessel Shearwater.
The sparse nautical figure of Captain Nares, with his neatly
pointed beard and high bald forehead, and that of his more portly
but active scientific companion were familiar enough in and
around the dockyard at Sheerness during the summer of 1872,
and the ship steadily took shape as the first British vessel ever to
be fitted out exclusively for oceanography. Her spars were re-
duced and all her guns except two were landed. This made room
for laboratories and workrooms, stores for thousands of fathoms
of dredging and sounding ropes, storage spaces for the almost
countless specimens which it was planned to collect, for the
spirits of wine which would be needed to preserve them, and
for the trawls, nets and dredges with which they would be
taken.
By 6th December all was ready and the President and Council
of the Royal Society and the members of the Circumnavigation
Committee were invited to inspect the Challenger at Sheerness.
‘A saloon carriage will be ordered to be in readiness to convey
them to that port by the 10.30 a.m. train from Victoria Station’,
wrote the Secretary to the Admiralty.
A few days later the ship sailed for Portsmouth, encountering
a great gale off the Kentish coast; in fact the scientists, who had
not yet found their sea legs, were landed by request in the Downs
and travelled by road to Portsmouth.
Xvi CHALLENGER
Captain Nares,* a ‘devilish good fellow’, as Sub-Lieutenant
Swire described him in the jargon of the day, was assisted by a
fine team of deck officers and engineers, with Navigating Lieuten-
ant Tizard, one of the cleverest surveyors in the service, in charge
of the surveying work and of the fixing of the positions of the
many sounding and oceanographic stations which were to be
occupied by the ship. The scientists under Wyville Thomson
numbered three naturalists, Murray, Moseley and Willemoes von
Suhm ; Wild, who was secretary to Thomson, and was also a most
capable artist, and Buchanan the chemist. Dr. Suhm died at sea
of erysipelas during the latter part of the voyage.
The objects of the expedition were clearly set out in the
instructions issued to Captain Nares and Dr. Thomson. These
were fourfold:
1. To investigate the physical conditions of the deep sea in the
great ocean basins (as far as the neighbourhood of the great
southern ice-barrier), in regard to depth, temperature, circula-
tion, specific gravity and penetration of light.
2. To determine the chemical composition of the sea water at
various depths from the surface to the bottom, the organic matter
in solution and the particles in suspension.
3. To ascertain the physical and chemical character of deep-sea
deposits and the sources of these deposits.
4. To investigate the distribution of organic life at different
depths and on the deep-sea floor.
At first the weather was furiously against such work and on that
first Christmas Day at sea there were many of the scientists, and
sailors too, who wished, as the ship wallowed and creaked in the
heavy seas, that they were enjoying their Christmas dinner in
the familiar surroundings of the homes they would not see again
for nearly four years. Nor were the first attempts at dredging
successful even when the weather did moderate, for all were un-
accustomed to this novel and difficult technique for hauling
quantities of life from regions completely unknown to Man. Three
* On 18th January, 1957, Vice-Admiral J. D. Nares died in harness as
Director of the International Hydrographic Bureau at Monaco. He was born
in 1877, about two years after Captain Nares’ return from the Challenger voyage,
and, like his father, spent his life in the Naval Hydrographic Service.
FOREWORD Xvii
times did the dredging rope part with loss of gear before the ship
reached Lisbon, her first port of call.
Here the King of Portugal paid a visit to the ship, being the
first of many personalities who were to interest themselves in
the fascinating work of the Challenger.
After sailing from Lisbon the expedition’s luck changed and
soon the sounding, dredging, trawling and the taking of water
samples and temperatures became routine work. No fewer than
362 of these stations were made during the course of the world
voyage; at each of such stations sail was shortened, for it was
necessary to navigate under steam to keep the vessel up to the
sounding line so that a true vertical distance to the sea-bed should
be measured.
To avoid sudden jerks on the one-inch Italian hemp line which
was used for sounding this was rove from the deck engine through
a leading block slung from the foreyard before descending to the
depths. The leading block was secured to the foreyard by a so-
called accumulator composed of twenty stout india-rubber ropes,
each being passed through individual holes in two large wooden
discs to keep them separated. These accumulators were capable
of considerable stretch and took up the violent motions of the
heaving and pitching vessel without transmitting them to the
sounding line.
In the early days of the cruise there would be a great concourse
on deck each time the dredge or trawl broke surface to watch the
naturalists attacking the formidable task of sorting hundreds of
specimens of marine life which scattered the deck, or lay con-
cealed in the grey or reddish ooze from the seafloor—fish of
strange colours and shapes, deep-sea corals, sponges, starfish,
deep-sea worms and sea urchins and many more, some large and
obvious, others small and obscure, to be searched for with sieve
and microscope. But soon this work became boring in the ex-
treme to those handling the ship or working the winches during
the day-long task of bringing one haul from the depths. Only
Wyville Thomson and one or two of his assistants would be there
at nightfall to see their treasures tippled from the net, or, as on
one or two miserable and notorious occasions, to see the trawl
ropes part just as a heavy catch was raised clear of the water,
allowing a mass of life to sink back into the ocean before their
2
XVili CHALLENGER
eyes and containing perhaps priceless gems never to be captured
again.
Whether or not something new would be taken in the next
haul became a matter for betting with gin and bitters as stakes,
and for many of the wardroom this soon became their only interest
in this tedious business.
And so the ship crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic, the
southern part of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. She called at
the British ports of Gibraltar, Bermuda, Halifax, Cape Town,
Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, Hong-Kong and Port Stanley to
re-provision and carry out repairs. She visited Madeira, Teneriffe,
St. Thomas, Cape Verde, Bahia, Yokohama, Valparaiso, Monte-
video and Vigo, and at each place expeditions were made into
the hinterland by the scientists and the officers, their observa-
tional powers sharpened by the knowledge of the importance of
the voyage upon which they were embarked ; they recorded details
of the lives of the people; the activities, or lack of such, by
governments, and the flora and fauna of the countryside. Many
little-inhabited or uninhabited islands were visited, where speci-
mens were obtained of every animal, plant or even stone to be
found upon them. These included St. Paul’s Rocks, a small group
less than one hundred feet high situated upon the Equator far out
in the Atlantic, and past which the river of the Equatorial Current
runs so steadily and so swiftly that the ship was able to secure by
a hawser to one of the rocks at the western side of the group and
lie there for two days and nights, whilst the scientists examined
the few inhabitants of this barren spot; these consisted of two
species of noddy, a booby, a spider and a crab. Meanwhile the
men fished for abundant cavalli from a boat made fast to the
hawser securing the ship to the rocks.
The visit to the island of Fernando Noronha, lying between
St. Paul’s Rocks and Bahia, was not such a success, for although
the vegetation and the birds were both of considerable interest,
the island was a Brazilian prison and the Governor, although
courteous, would not give permission for collecting.
Tristan da Cunha was reached on the way to the Cape and here
some high-priced provisions were bought, and two Germans, who
had been living a Robinson Crusoe existence on nearby Inacces-
sible Island for over 18 months, were rescued from a life among
FOREWORD xix
myriads of penguins and a herd of pigs rendered inedible by their
diet of penguin flesh.
Prince Edward Island, Crozet and Kerguelen in the far southern
Indian Ocean, and known only to a few inarticulate whaling
skippers, were explored, every detail of their natural history being
recorded. From Kerguelen the ship sailed southward and crossed
the Antarctic Circle in February 1874, the first steam vessel to
do so, and here spent some weeks among storms and icebergs and
low visibility. Many anxious days were spent in endeavouring to
trawl among the forest of icebergs and more anxious nights en-
deavouring to keep clear of these rugged rocks of ice; on one
occasion the ship collided with a berg at night, losing her jib
boom but suffering no more severe damage. ‘All hands on deck!’
was a frequent cry on those cold nights as disaster loomed up
ahead through the falling snow.
The expedition visited many islands in the south-west Pacific,
recording the way of life and the material culture of the native
population, both of which were changing rapidly at that time as
the full impact of the western world was being felt with the
ever-growing influence of the missionary and the trader. The
anthropological records made by scientists and officers of
the Challenger in these areas may one day prove to be among the
most important they made, for they photographed, sketched and
collected material among the natives of Tonga, Fiji, New Heb-
rides, Cape York, New Guinea and the Admiralty Islands.
Moseley in particular noticed how the old life was fading away
and realised how vital it was to record every vanishing facet.
The efficient colonial rule of the Dutch was seen in the
Moluccas, the crumbling rule of the Spaniards was observed in
the Philippines. Members of the expedition were granted an
interview with the Emperor of Japan; King Kalakano of Hawaii
was entertained, he at that time steering a wavering course
between British and American supporters; Queen Pomare of
Tahiti, much under the thumb of the French, attended a ball
onboard the ship. And here at Papeete the Challengers had a
wonderful time ashore where then, as today, the welcome for
the seafarer was overwhelming. The Tahitians are among the
friendliest and most lovable people on this earth.
Early in 1876 Challenger passed through the Straits of Magellan,
xX CHALLENGER
seeing some of the Fuegian Indians, the most miserable and
dejected people they had encountered on the whole voyage.
The old ship anchored in Spithead on 24th May, 1876, having
been away 33 years and having sailed 68,500 miles. Out of 243
men who had set sail, 61 had deserted the ship on the long voyage,
an interesting light on the discipline of those days. But much was
also the same at sea then as it is today; a seaman, Wilton, was
lost overboard from the chains in heavy weather in Cook Strait.
‘He was a quiet, well behaved man and always did his duty well’,
wrote Sub-Lieutenant Swire in his journal. ‘Such men are scarce
in the Navy nowadays.’ This remark might be heard in a ward-
room today.
There is little evidence of any serious friction between the
naval officers and the scientists on this long and arduous voyage,
which says a great deal for the skill with which the Hydrographer
of the Navy and the Royal Society chose these men. There were
of course many minor incidents, such as the calling on deck of
the men at night to search for a broken spar, for the officer on
watch had heard an ominous crack. In fact this had been caused
by Moseley in his cabin firing a paper pellet from his airgun at
a large cockroach which had for long escaped him. On another
day Commander McLean, the executive officer, stubbed his toe
on a giant spider as he put his feet into his seaboots. The naturalists
had brought this animal onboard for study but it had gone into
hiding.
One of the tasks set the Challenger scientists was to investigate
‘bathybius’, a supposed primordial stuff of life believed to exist
in the depths. This fabulous white matter had been found in
samples taken from the sea-bed but proved eventually to be
nothing more than a white precipitate resulting from the addition
of preserving spirits of lime to sea-water. However, before this
had been discovered the philosophers were in a great state of
excitement one day when a deposit of ‘bathybius’ was found
among sample bottles in the laboratory. While they were
gathered excitedly around this a marine came in to ask if anyone
had seen his pipeclay which he thought he had mislaid somewhere
in the laboratory.
The ship lived on, dismasted and unrigged, as a coal hulk until
1921. Captain Swire, the last survivor of the expedition, died in
FOREWORD XXxi
1936. But the ship and her company will never be forgotten in
the world of science.
An expedition of this nature would not have gained lasting fame
had not the results been carefully prepared and published. Sir
Wyville Thomson set up an office in Edinburgh for this purpose,
and here, under his direction, Murray commenced to write the
famous Challenger Reports. In 1882 Wyville Thomson died and
Sir John Murray eventually published the fifty volumes, each
carefully edited and many beautifully illustrated, these forming
the very basis for all studies concerned with the oceans from the
time of their publication until the present day. To these must be
added several popular accounts which were written by members
of the expedition, each stressing their particular interests on the
voyage. So today, whether one is studying oceanography,
geology, geophysics, ornithology, zoology, botany or anthropology
one cannot read far without stumbling across a reference to the
Challenger Expedition of 1872-76. Such references run into
thousands and provide the most suitable memorial to the famous
old ship and the enquiring and forceful men who sailed in her.
Whether the surveying ship Challenger, which has so recently
been towed away to the breaker’s yard, has, in her very different
way, upheld the famous name, the reader will be able to judge
for himself.
otk
I
The New Ship
searching for and surveying new fishing grounds in northern
waters, and as such she was to be paid for by the Ministry
of Agriculture and Fisheries, but was to be administered and run
by the Hydrographer of the Navy. The ship’s officers and crew
were to be men of the Royal Navy, the Captain and the deck
officers being surveyors. A small scientific team was to be carried
to study the environmental conditions of the fish; a trawl was to
be part of the ship’s equipment and a fishing skipper and four
trawlermen were to be carried to shoot it on the fishing grounds
to see what type of catches could be expected by commercial
fishermen. As the ship was to be built in the Royal Dockyard at
Chatham and was to sail under the White Ensign, the Ministry of
Agriculture and Fisheries suggested that Rear-Admiral H. P.
Douglas, then Hydrographer of the Navy, might like to name her.
His mind at once turned to the earlier surveying vessel which
had been so successful in carrying out scientific investigations in
the oceans and he had no difficulty in selecting an honoured name.
So Challenger it was—the sixth ship of this name to serve in the
Royal Navy and the second to serve in the Surveying Service.
Challenger was to be a single-screw steam ship of about 1200
tons, just over 200 feet long; she was to be broad in the beam
with a high forecastle; her stern was to have an overhanging
counter. She was of an unusual design for a naval vessel, planned
to stay atsea for a month or more in the waters around Spitz-
bergen, Iceland and Greenland where heavy seas are common-
place and ice forms on the decks and rigging. Many took a hand
in the planning of the ship and by no means all of these were
in agreement with the design. Minutes written by those con-
cerned in Admiralty at the time include one which reads: ‘God
help all who have to sail in this fantastic ship.’
She was built in a drydock in Chatham Dockyard and was
I
C- LLENGER Was originally planned as a suitable vessel for
2 CHALLENGER
launched on rst June, 1931, by Miss Addison, daughter of Dr.
Addison, the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, in the pres-
ence of the Hydrographer of the Navy.
She was not allowed to take the waters gracefully in the normal
manner, but unromantically floated on the slowly rising waters of
a dry dock, and as the bottle of champagne was broken on her
bows, towed away by an undignified tug. Later she entered dry
dock again for final fitting out.
Lieutenant-Commander E. H. B. Baker was appointed to
Challenger about the middle of 1931 to ‘stand-by’, as it is called.
This officer assists the dockyard officers with the siting of many
of the minor fittings, boat hoisting arrangements, ship’s com-
pany’s amenities and numerous other items which can be much
improved with the advice of a sea-going officer. A boatswain was
appointed to assist Baker, the Engineer Officer having been
appointed earlier.
These three officers were standing on the deck as the water
was let into the dry dock to float the completed ship. The water
rose towards the ship’s water-line and then slowly above it. The
wooden shores supporting the ship on the starboard side floated
clear but it was obvious to the officers on the deck that the
shores on the port side were still under great pressure; then,
suddenly, there was a rending and crashing sound as the port side
shores splintered and broke as the ship heeled quickly over to
port. The heavy work boxes belonging to the dockyard workmen
which had been stacked on deck slid down with a terrifying
clatter, and the small group of officers found themselves alone
on a deck sloping at about 12 degrees.
There had been no one of importance on the dockside to see
the second launching of the Challenger, but very soon the Admiral
Superintendent of the Dockyard and many other “brass hats’ and
senior dockyard officers were mustering around the dockside, to
see the distressing sight of a brand new vessel lying afloat in the
dock with a heavy list to port. She had compelled men of
importance to witness her final launching.
Some miscalculation or some departure in construction from
the plans had caused this instability, and many tons of ballast
had now to be placed in the bottom of the ship to make her
stable. Those who had doubted her suitability for her work felt
THE NEW SHIP 3
that they had been justified, and others said that a mishap at the
launching boded ill for her future. In fact, when she had been
properly ballasted she proved to be one of the most seaworthy
vessels ever built; although she was lively she was extremely ‘dry’
—that is, she rode the seas and shipped very little water onboard.
All who have served in Challenger speak highly of her fine qualities
in this respect. It was an exciting experience to stand on the
bridge looking aft when the ship was running before a really high
following sea; great waves would come towering towards her
tiny quarterdeck and at the last moment, when you could be
sure that it was too late and that she was to be badly pooped,
her stern would rise steeply upwards and a great wave would pass
safely below.
Challenger was completed in the autumn of 1931: her Captain
had been chosen and the scientists had been selected; but 1931
was the year of the great financial slump, the economy drive was
on, and soon the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries realised
that they would be unable to afford this ship. So Challenger lay,
complete and ready for sea, in the basin at Chatham, her future
uncertain at the very commencement of her career.
Lieutenant-Commander Baker, a forthright officer, and known
affectionately in the Surveying Service as ‘Buck’, took command
of the ship with only a handful of men to keep her alive. Buck
knew, as all good seamen do, that if a ship is once reduced to a
care and maintenance state she will take a very long time to get
back to sea again. A ship lives only when men are looking after
her, and when her gear and equipment are receiving daily atten-
tion. Buck resisted, as only he can, all the efforts of officialdom
to reduce Challenger to a care and maintenance state. He, his
Engineer Officer, his Boatswain and his few seamen and stokers
got down to the work together, wielding brooms and paint
brushes, deck scrubbers and holystones. The ship remained alive
but her future was still undecided.
This was the state of affairs a few days before Christmas, 1931.
Every man who could be spared from Challenger’s skeleton crew
had gone on Christmas leave when the Captain was called to the
telephone. The Operations Officer on the staff of the Com-
mander-in-Chief, The Nore, asked him if he could be ready to
sail for Portsmouth in the morning as the ship was required by
4 CHALLENGER
the Admiralty to go there at once. The ship’s boilers were in a
state of preservation, the fuel tanks were empty and the crew on
leave: tomorrow was impossible, but by recalling the crew from
their Christmas festivities and by every man’s doing his utmost,
the ship sailed in three days’ time, the skeleton crew being
augmented by a few ratings from Chatham Barracks to form a
steaming party.
The Captain had been told that His was urgently required at
Portsmouth and he thought he had done well to get there so
quickly. In those days a Commanding Officer put on his frock
coat before waiting on an Admiral, and as he stepped ashore at
Portsmouth so attired he was pleased with himself and anxious to
know what urgent work lay in store for his new vessel. He was
shown in to the Admiral who had been informed that the C.O.
of Challenger was there to see him. ‘Good morning, Baker,’ he
greeted him. ‘What is Challenger—a new fleet repair ship?’ Buck
wondered where the urgency lay.
Naval ratings are all attached to one of three manning ports— |
Chatham, Portsmouth and Devonport—and in peace time at least
it is the custom to man a ship with a crew all drawn from one
of these three depots, as they are called. Although the ship had
been built at Chatham it transpired that her arrival at Portsmouth
had been ordered so that she might commission with a Ports-
mouth crew of about one hundred men, which she did on 2nd
January, 1932. Except for the war years, when crews were
mixed, she has had a ‘Pompey’ (naval slang for Portsmouth) crew
ever since.
It had been decided to take her over as a full-time naval
surveying ship, and, as this service is limited in its number of
ships, often an old and well-loved ship goes to make room for the
new. H.M.S. Iroquois was due at Portsmouth in a few days’ time
from the Red Sea after many years surveying in the East, and
orders had been given that all her stores and surveying equipment
should be transferred to Challenger on her arrival. Iroquois’s
surveying days were over.
Surveying ships in peace time go to sea for their working period
during what is called the ‘season’, which lasts for eight or nine
months while the weather is at its best. The remaining three or
four months of the year is known as the ‘lie-up’, when the ships
THE NEW SHIP &
are refitted and the surveying officers draw the fair charts from
the data collected during the past season. In Home waters, the
season usually commences about 1st April and the removal of
funnel covers from surveying ships is as much a sign that spring
has arrived in a dockyard as the note of the first cuckoo in the
countryside.
So Challenger was to start her first season in April and in
January Captain A. L. Jackson took over command from Baker,
who once again became the First Lieutenant and went ahead with
his preparations for the coming season. Like all good First
Lieutenants he kept his eye open and acquired little things for
the ship which might otherwise have benefited no one. The old
battleship Marlborough was being stripped at Portsmouth prior to
being broken up, so it was only sensible to become friendly with
the nightwatchman on board her, and soon the wardroom of
Challenger was embellished to the extent of a fine mahogany table
and a fitted sideboard. But perhaps the acquisitions of the
Challenger did not go quite unnoticed by authority. ‘Good
morning, Number One,’ said the Inspector of Dockyard Police.
‘That fine spar there is for the Royal Yacht. I thought I had better
tell you, as I have heard Challenger requires a lower boom.’
The most vital information on an Admiralty chart is the depth
of water; thus the taking of soundings is the most important part
Leather mark to be hove
AI
Leading block /
Y Z
A | Sounding position q
yo Marked leadline
Somerville sounding gear
6 CHALLENGER
of the hydrographic surveyor’s work, The traditional method of
sounding is by leadline, that is lowering a weight to the sea-bed
on the end of a line marked in fathoms and feet. This would be
easy enough if the ship could be stopped for every sounding, but
as this is not practicable, the lead must be heaved far ahead so
that it reaches the sea-bed at the moment the leadsman passes
over it. An ingenious mechanical apparatus for accomplishing
this had been devised many years previously by Admiral
Somerville, a well-known surveyor, and this gear was fitted
in Challenger as standard equipment. By means of a steam
winch operated aft the lead was hauled forward after each
sounding, the leadsman being stationed near the winch on the
quarterdeck. A trailing counterweight kept the leadline nicely
taut.
In 1931 a shallow water echo sounding set was being introduced
in surveying ships. This machine emits a sound toward the sea-bed
and measures the time taken for the echo to return to the ship.
These early machines employed a formidable hammer in the
bottom of the ship which banged out a signal at frequent and
regular intervals; the operator on the bridge then ran a drum
marked with the various depths backwards and forwards until he
received the loudest returning signal in his earphones, when
he read off and reported the sounding showing on the dial.
In Challenger, in addition to shallow water sets, there was
fitted a new deep echo sounding machine designed to take
soundings in the deeper ocean. The first thing to be done before
the season started was to carry out trials on the echo sounding
sets and to do this the ship would have to proceed to seaward of
the continental shelf to find deep enough water for trying out
the deep sounder.
The continents are surrounded by a comparatively shallow and
gently sloping shelf formed over millions of years by deposits
carried seawards by water flowing off the land. At a depth of
about 100 fathoms the edge of this shelf falls rapidly away to
depths of 2000 fathoms or more, and the true oceans have been
reached. The whole of the English Channel lies within the con-
tinental shelf, and to reach the edge of the shelf the ship had to
steam south-westward from Plymouth for a distance of 200 miles
or more.
THE NEW SHIP I)
The deep set recorded the depths on iodised paper, and clear
recordings were obtained to a depth of 1200 fathoms. These
soundings were checked by the ‘Lucas’ wire sounding machine,
which employs piano wire on which a sounding lead can be
lowered to the greatest depths and can be recovered by the
steam engine which forms a part of the machine.
The first half of the surveying season was then spent off the
green, rock-bound coast of Aberdeenshire, charting the Buchan
Deep, and later in the turbulent waters of the Fair Isle Channel
assisting oceanographers to measure the flow of water from the
Atlantic into the North Sea. It was an uneventful period, but it
served as a ‘shake-down’ cruise, as they say in the Navy, when
officers and men appointed to a new ship become familiar with her
and her equipment; for every ship is an individual to be studied
and humoured by her company before she will give of her best.
In June Challenger was ordered to the coast of Labrador.
Labrador was administered by the Colonial Office and thus the
charting of her coastline was the responsibility of the Hydro-
grapher. It was generally desired at this time to open up a coastal
route among the labyrinth of uncharted isles and rocks which
endangered the navigation of mail steamers and other vessels
trading in the north, and which thus formed a barrier against the
development of this rugged country.
At Portsmouth, Commander A. G. N. Wyatt took over the
command of Challenger from Captain Jackson on Monday, 13th
June, 1932, and preparations went forward in earnest for the
forthcoming survey in Labrador; on Friday, 24th June, the ship
sailed for St. Johns, Newfoundland.
The surface of the ocean is constantly in motion, with many
great current rivers flowing along their established courses, such
as the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic, the Kuro Shio in the North
Pacific and the Humboldt Current in the South Pacific which
carried the Kon-Tiki voyagers on their way. The British seaman
Dampier was the first man to carry out a comprehensive study of
these ocean currents and they are still being mapped today. Their
speeds and directions can be shown on ocean charts, but beneath
the surface lies a complex system of currents, always moving,
with waters of different temperatures and salinities; a system to
8 CHALLENGER
which the whole life cycle of the deep sea fauna is completely
connected, but of which man as yet knows very little.
As they probed into the depths of the ocean, scientists had
expected the temperature to decrease and the salinity and the
pressure to increase; but it is found, in fact, that it is usually onl
the pressure which increases at a steady rate with depth. The
different water masses moving beneath the surface cause irregular
fluctuations in both the temperature and the salinity, and such
fluctuations in turn affect the speed of sound in the water—and
hence soundings obtained with an echo sounder.
Working on the returns of temperature and salinity at depth
recorded by many of the world’s oceanographic expeditions, from
the Challenger of 1875 onwards, Dr. D. J. Matthews of the
Hydrographic Department had divided the world up into a num-
ber of areas, in each of which he considered the water conditions
to be similar enough for him to establish tables of corrections
to be applied to echo soundings to give the true depth; but so
few and far between were the available data that Matthews was
anxious to revise his tables, and by 1932 he was actively collecting
records for this work, which he completed in 1938. In the North
Atlantic over the next three or four years Challenger was to be
able to occupy a considerable number of stations to make oceano-
graphic observations of this nature as she voyaged between
Portsmouth and her survey grounds in the West Indies and in
Labrador.
An instrument known as a ‘reversing water-bottle’ is used to
obtain this temperature and salinity data. A number of such bottles
are attached at set distances apart on a wire running from a winch
on the forecastle. The reversing water-bottle is an open-ended
cylinder with thermometers attached to the outside. When
lowered into the water these bottles are set like mousetraps, to be
sprung later by a small weight or ‘messenger’ which is sent down
the wire when the bottles have been lowered to the correct
depth. When thus sprung, the bottle turns upside down and
closes, trapping a water sample, which may later be bottled for
salinity analysis; while the temperature at the time of the rever-
sal of the bottle may be read from the special thermometers which
are designed to record the temperature at the time of the arrival
of the messenger.
THE NEW SHIP 9
Such observations are somewhat laborious, and in order that
they may not hold up other survey work, they must go forward in
any weather, day or night. To keep the ship head to wind and
the wire vertical the officer in charge needs to be fully alert, and
it may take up to five hours to complete all the observations at
a station in deep water of 2500 fathoms or so. It is recorded that
on 24th November, 1932, a standard series of temperature and
salinity observations was obtained while a strong west-nor’-west
wind was blowing, causing the ship to roll up to 25 degrees, but
that the ship lay very well with main try-sail set and her engines
turning slow ahead, with an occasional kick of half ahead to
straighten her when she tended to fall off the wind. Challenger
carried a fore-sail and a try-sail, probably the last naval vessel to
carry sail.
Perhaps it was after such an occasion that a tot of gin found its
way into one of the samples before they were despatched for
analysis in England, but the chemist was up to his work, for he
sent a note back to say that further sampling at this particular
station should augment the wardroom wine stocks.
And so Challenger occupied ‘bottling stations’ for many long
hours during her passages in the Atlantic during the next few years.
Modifications had been made to the Challenger deep echo
sounding set, and on passage across the Atlantic soundings were
obtained with ease at depths down to 2580 fathoms. Even today
there are very few vessels fitted with sounding sets recording
more than 600 fathoms; so it is upon research vessels, survey
vessels and telegraph cable ships that hydrographers rely to obtain
data on the topography of the ocean bed, the average depth of
which throughout the world is about 2700 fathoms. When
obtained, much of this deep sea sounding information is passed
by member states to the International Hydrographic Bureau at
Monaco, which maintains a world series of bathymetric charts
depicting the complex topography of the floor of the world’s
oceans. It is when looking at the few lines of soundings across the
vast areas comprising the oceans that one realises how much there
is to be learnt about such a large part of the earth’s surface.
Il
Labrador
N Tuesday, sth July, 1932, Challengerarrived at St. John’s,
Newfoundland, and the Captain made the usual calls on
the Governor and the Prime Minister. Arrangements were
made for Captain Clarke, Master of one of the Newfoundland
Government steamers, and well acquainted with the northern
Labrador coast, to be embarked to act as pilot on the voyage
‘down north’, as they say in these parts. The coast of Labrador
is fringed with countless islands and islets and the sea-bed is ex-
tremely rugged with pinnacle rocks rising to within a few feet
of the surface.
No better captain could have been chosen for this survey work
in Labrador than Commander Wyatt. He was a real seaman in
the very finest sense, navigation being second nature to him. In
his leisure moments he might be found sitting on the deck outside
his cabin sewing canvas or splicing wire rope. Officers and men
who sailed with Wyatt always had supreme confidence in his
ability as a seaman and, although a strict disciplinarian, he was well
loved by his ship’s companies in Challenger. His speech was that
of a good old-fashioned seaman; one day the Boatswain was
baffled by the Captain ordering him to remove a mouse from the
forestay, a ‘mouse’ being a piece of spun-yarn wound round a
wire or rope to form a thickening.
The Labrador coast is frozen in from December until the
spring, when the ice begins to break up. The ice disappears first
from the inshore areas, leaving icebergs here and there along the
coast, many of them grounded in the shallower water. The
melting bergs also ‘calve’ small pieces known as growlers, which
are very low in the water and are a real danger to a ship navi-
gating at night. For another six weeks or so the pack ice prevents
navigation in the waters offshore.
For a ship to pass up the Labrador coast in late summer there
are two alternative routes, the open sea route or the inshore
10°
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Below: PAN ICE. VOYAGE NORTH—JULY 1932
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LABRADOR I!
route threading between the numerous islands. The inshore route
is open long before the outer route, but the inshore route was
only very sketchily charted in 1932, the charts being so much
in error along some parts of the coast as to be unrecognisable.
Challenger’s instructions for her work in Labrador were to survey
a route inside the islands from Indian Harbour in the south to
Cape Chidley in the north, touching at each port of call, and
with passages to seaward at selected intervals.
But first Challenger must navigate northwards along this un-
surveyed coast route to reach Nain, where it had been decided
to commence surveying operations. The pack ice to seaward denied
the use of that route until later in the season and the work must
be started at the earliest opportunity.
On Thursday, 7th July, the ship, loaded with stores and fresh
provisions, and with the mails for northern Labrador, sailed for
Hopedale. By nightfall the following day the ship was off Belle
Isle, icebergs and growlers having been sighted during the day,
which had been fine and clear, with a cloudless sky. Sailing
northwards off the coast an increasing number of bergs were
seen, between 25 and 50 being in view at any one time. Captain
Clarke, the pilot, said that this number was usual along this part
of the coast at this time of year. He had been navigating these
waters as a fisherman, as a master of sealers and ice breakers and,
finally, of the Newfoundland Government steamers, for over 40
years and was now 60 years of age, although he looked far
younger. He spoke with the Irish brogue common to Newfound-
landers, although he was of English stock and had never been to
Ireland. At times his brogue was so broad that he was difficult
to follow.
Bergs were by now becoming so numerous that navigation after
dark was hazardous and the ship anchored for the night of
Saturday, 9th July, in Webeck Harbour, passing into the anchor-
age between two icebergs grounded in the entrance. Inside were
two fishing schooners, frequently met with along this coast during
the summer when they fished for cod, which was salted and sent
to the European market.
At dawn the ship weighed and stood over to the south side of
Ragged Islands, passing between them and a small double island,
thence past Black Bear Island and north-eastward of Mortimer
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LABRADOR 13
Shoal, when the wind shifted to the north-east and fog came into
the land. This being long before the days of radar the ship had to
look for an anchorage and just found one in a bight at the south
end of Kidlialuit. By noon the fog had lifted again, and weighing
anchor the ship passed between the Iron Bound Islands and then
across between Mokkovik Island and Ulgoklialuit Island. She then
stood over to Cape Mokkovik and between the Turnaviks, south
of Striped Island and round Tikkerasuk Light and across to
Kayaksuatilik, where the passage between the islands and rocks
is exceedingly narrow though quite deep. The existing chart was
almost unrecognisable, but from here across to Hopedale was
nearly a straight run with pack ice visible to seaward. By 7 p.m.
the ship was at anchor in Hopedale and the Captain landed to
call on the local missionary belonging to the Grenfell Mission.
At noon on Monday the ship proceeded again northwards for
Nain. Close pack ice between Kikkertaksoak Islands and the coast
islands prevented the route being taken to Cape Harrigan, so
passage was made through the inner sounds and Windy Tickle.
Loose pans of ice, some of them very solid, were in all the bays
and tickles and the ship was continually under helm to avoid
them. ‘Tickle’ is the name given in these parts to a narrow
-passage between land, and the scenery coming through them was
very beautiful; high hills streaked with snow and little copses of
spruce at the foot of the valleys, bright sunshine with cumulus
clouds, and deep blue water flecked with white icepans made an
exciting picture.
On arrival at Cape Harrigan loose pack ice was found from about
a mile offshore to the Farmyard Islands but only drift ice inshore,
so the Captain hoped to round the cape, but fog came down and
the ship had to turn back to find anchorage behind Nunaksaluk
Island.
It was not until 4 o’clock in the afternoon on the following
day that the fog lifted sufficiently for the ship to get under way,
but at once pack ice was seen almost in to the coast, with a lead
of blue water about four miles out. There was a narrow lead
between the pack and Cape Harrigan, through which the ship
managed to pass, only about 100 yards off the rocks but with a
depth of 16 fathoms of water. After passing the cape, however,
the course across to Wrecked Boat Island was entirely blocked
14 CHALLENGER
and the ship had to push her way through loose pack, butting the
smaller pans end on, rising a little, and then breaking through
with her weight. After rounding the south-west end of Wrecked
Boat Island the pack was heavier and the Captain decided to stand
inshore to pass inside Kutallik Island, the ship finally coming to
anchor for the night in Davis Inlet.
On Wednesday morning the ship was under way by 4.30 and
passed north-eastward of Ukasiksalik Island, but the ice-pack ex-
tended inside Freestone Islands and it was doubtful whether it
was best to try and go through it or to take the inner channels.
The inner route was selected as Captain Clarke thought it likely
that the ice would become worse towards Spracklings Island.
The lead in the ice divided into two between Tunnungayualuk
and the mainland, and choosing one of these leads the ship soon
passed the wrong side of an island and had a rock awash ahead
and had to bring up. The two motor sounding launches were
lowered and with lead and line tried to find a passage but with
no result. So the ship turned back and tried the other lead, with
the boats ahead of her running submarine sentries, a simple
device made of two boards about two feet long and six inches
wide, secured at right angles, which when towed from a boat
keeps a steady depth according to the length of the towing line.
When the depth of water is less than that to which the sentry is
set it strikes the bottom and rises to the surface to give warning
of shallow water; a device used by generations of surveyors for
feeling their way in uncharted waters.
The sentries soon tripped and the boats then commenced a
search for deeper water; it was not until 5 o’clock that they
found a passage with six fathoms of water through it and the
ship was able to proceed. The boat’s sentries tripped again in
the Narrows between Tuktuinak Islands and Tunnungayualuk.
The ship anchored while they searched for a passage, which they
eventually found, and then went on as far as Achpitok Island
where, at ro o’clock at night, she brought up in 18 fathoms
between the island and the mainland.
By Thursday rainy weather had set in. The ship weighed
anchor at 4.30 in the morning and stood across to Dog Island
through a lead in the ice. The existing chart was wrongly orient-
ated here but a channel was followed between Nochalik and
LABRADOR iG
Kikkitavak. With a boat running a sentry ahead the ship passed
through the Taktok Tickle and then north-westward for the
channel between Palungitak and Paul Islands, where she came to
anchor and a boat was sent to sound out and buoy the channel
through.
The area where the survey of the coast was to be commenced
had now been reached, and all eyes on the bridge were alert to
see any site ashore which would be suitable for the base line
measurement.
There are three basic essentials to an original survey. First a
suitable stretch of land, at least half a mile long, must be found
Striker €
The Submarine Sentry
and levelled. On this a base line will be carefully measured with
steel tapes to establish the scale of the survey. Next the geograph-
ical position on the earth’s surface of some point within the area
of the survey must be fixed by taking star sights, usually with a
surveyor’s astrolabe. The position of this point in relation to
the base line can be found by measuring the angles of the triangle
it forms with the base line. But the orientation of the survey still
remains to be found. In other words the direction on the earth’s
surface of the base line (or any other line on the survey) is still
unknown, and this is established by measuring the angle between
a line joining any two points and the sun (or a star), knowing
16 CHALLENGER
the exact time at which this reading is taken. This is known as
a true bearing between the points. Stations marked by flags on
poles, or by tripods boarded up or filled in with calico, are then
established, usually on the higher ground, throughout the area
to be surveyed. By measuring the many horizontal angles con-
tained by the numerous triangles thus established the relative
positions of all these points are found. The geographical position
of each can be found by referring all stations to the position fixed
by star sights and the position where the true bearing has been
observed. This framework is known as the triangulation and to it
all the details of the survey, soundings and topography are fixed
as the work proceeds.
No really suitable place was found for a base on Paul Island
and so, when the boats had sounded out the channel, the ship
went through and came to anchor in Nain Bay at 9.30 at night,
one week out from St. John’s, Newfoundland. Challenger’s arrival
at Nain was popular with the few inhabitants of this little Hudson
Bay trading station, as she was the first steamer to get north
through the ice this year, and the mail she brought was very
welcome. Nain lies well protected from seaward by numerous
islands, the largest of which, Aulatsevik, lies to the north-east-
ward. A narrow channel, or ‘run’, as it is called, divides this
island from the mainland and leads to Port Manvers about 20
miles northward. Local opinion seemed to agree that the ship
could pass up inside this Port Manvers Run although there were
two ‘rattles’ to be negotiated. (A rattle is a narrow channel
through which the tidal stream flows so fast that an appreciable
noise is made by the water.) Local opinion also agreed that a flat
expanse of land lay on the south side of Port Manvers which
seemed suitable for the base measurement. There was no hope
of reaching Port Manvers by the outside route for some weeks,
pack ice being solid right into the coast of Aulatsevik. So on the
morning of Saturday, 16th July, the ship steamed up the Port
Manvers Run, experiencing no difficulty until the second rattle
was reached about two miles from Port Manvers. Ice floes were
drifting through the rattle on the tidal stream, so the ship was
anchored and a boat sent to investigate. She located a navigable
passage close to the eastern shore and later led the ship through,
but on rounding the point it was seen that the whole western
——
LABRADOR 17
entrance to Port Manvers was jammed solid with ice, and there
was nothing for it but to turn round and go back down the run
to an island about eight miles from Nain, which had been noted
as a possible base measurement site.
Navigation ‘down north’ by the inshore route has been des-
cribed at some length to show the risks which had to be run in
1932, and in the following two summers, in order to get to the
survey ground as soon as it was sufficiently clear of ice for survey
work in the very short season, which lasted only from mid-July
until early November.
The base site having been chosen, the survey went forward in
earnest. On the evening before a day of surveying, the Captain
makes his plans, stating broadly in his surveying order book what
work is to be done and which surveying officers are to do it.
The First Lieutenant then assesses how many men and what
boats will be required for the various tasks, and then, with the
Coxswain, he details the men for each party; these are not con-
fined to any particular branch in the ship—seamen, stokers, the
sick bay attendant, the officers’ stewards or even the ship’s cooks
may be sent on this work if they volunteer for it. To an outsider
there appears to be a certain degree of chaos in the early stages
of a survey; parties go off every morning after an early breakfast,
taking with them their dinner, together with a quantity of gear,
such as poles, flags, calico, rope, hammers, spades, mauls, bolt
staves and axes, maps, charts, binoculars and prismatic compasses.
A surveying ship usually carries about six or eight boats of
various types and sizes, and all these may be away on any one day.
It is an animated scene in the mornings, particularly when a strong
wind is blowing and the boats alongside are heaving up and down,
as the assorted equipment is handed down and passed into the
boats, the petty officer or leading seaman in charge seeing that
the gear of each party is not irretrievably muddled with that of
another party. At the appointed hour, 7.30 or 8 o’clock, the
boats, with their crews clad in many assorted rigs, each man
wearing what he thinks most appropriate to the weather con-
ditions prevailing, and towing dinghies or dories for landing on
the coast, cast off and head away towards different points on the
horizon. As they become smaller and smaller and finally become
a tiny dot in a white flicker of foam the Coxswain heaves a sigh
18 CHALLENGER
of relief and goes below to stop the rum tots of those who have
gone off surveying for the day, nothing being more infuriating to
the sailor than to find when he returns, after a day in the field,
soaked to the skin and dead tired, that he has a ‘cold’ tot, one
that has been mixed with water since midday due to the failure
of those onboard to realise he is away for dinner.
On this first day of the Labrador survey a large party of sur-
veying officers and men went ashore to prepare the base for
measurement, while other parties were marking the proposed
triangulation stations on the mountain tops, some of which are
as much as 3000 feet high; such heights take a deal of climbing,
starting from sea level laden with spars, ropes and iron pegs for
erecting the mark on the summit. The first few hundred feet of
the mountains were clothed with spruce and after that the climb
became steep and rough, the mountain sides being almost
entirely barren, even moss and lichens being scarce amongst the
huge tumbled boulders. These same mountains would then have
to be scaled again, with a theodolite on the back, to observe the
horizontal angles between the other main stations and the marks
which will by then have been set up along the coastline; and then
perhaps again after that if the visibility closes down on the top,
preventing observations.
The base measurement party had a formidable task ahead of
them; part of the proposed base lay over stony, rough ground
while the remainder of the distance was across a swamp. It was
the best that could be found in this rugged country. Three days’
work was required before the hard ground had been levelled and
an earth causeway built across the swamp to take the steel tapes.
The measurement itself must be made with great care; even
the temperature of the tapes and the tension upon them must be
taken into account. It is a careful and unhurried process.
All surveying parties cursed the black flies and the mosquitoes
which swarmed on the exposed parts of the face and body: head
nets and gloves were essential but, if the head net was allowed
to touch the face at any point, that part of the net would soon
be black with flies irritating damnably. Only when a strong wind
was blowing was there any respite from these pests.
Rain fell heavily and steadily throughout these early days and
sometimes the whole of the base line area seemed to be under
LABRADOR 19
water. A portable galley had been rigged ashore to provide a good
midday meal for the party, and the junior ship’s cook had been
established in a tent to do the cooking. He had never cooked
under such conditions before and soon he came out into the
pouring rain carrying a little billycan: ‘Where do I go for
water?’ he asked a seaman who was drenched to the skin.
‘Water!’ shouted the sailor. ‘Why, you just keeps on walking
till your ruddy cap floats.’
How do the men like this kind of work? The great majority
find it a welcome break from life in the Fleet for it is certainly
something altogether different, and in the days before the war,
when the drafting authorities did not appear to be so tied to
regulations, surveyors were allowed to keep the same men in the
ship commission after commission if they volunteered to do so
—which many of them did. Those who really like the work can
become Surveying Recorders, which means that they will always
serve in surveying ships. Such men are trained in the simpler
surveying work and are invaluable leaders, who are able to teach
the newly appointed surveying crews what surveying is all about
in the first baffling days of a new commission.
Through August and early September the work went forward,
the base was measured, a party in camp observed stars with the
astrolabe after waiting many nights for clear visibility; and then,
the position being known, a true bearing with reference to the
sun was observed between two of the triangulation stations in
the survey. Two and sometimes three camp parties were estab-
lished in the Port Manvers Run area and on the barren islands to
seaward. The pack ice had cleared and the ship was often under
way among the islands, navigating day after day in uncharted
waters.
Apart from the day-to-day organisation of the hill marking and
theodolite observing teams, there was the welfare of those in
camp to be thought of, replenishment of the camps with food
and sometimes water on the more barren islands, and there was
wood to be chopped on the mainland and carried to camps where
no wood existed.
The Doctor Forbes Air Survey seaplane and a party in an
attendant schooner arrived one day and provided welcome new
faces; besides which the seaplane took a number of air photo-
20 CHALLENGER
graphs which were of considerable assistance in the survey.
Commander Wyatt was taken up for a reconnaissance flight over
the area. The day of his flight was fine and clear and he described
the scene; the islands along the coast were almost literally in-
numerable and the general appearance from aloft of the relation
between land and water was that of pieces of a jig-saw puzzle
scattered over a blue cloth. The country inland was exceedingly
rough, well wooded in parts, but broken up by many inlets of
the sea, some running thirty miles or so inland, and with lakes
and ponds scattered everywhere and at all levels. The immensity
of the survey task was fully apparent from this height.
Leaving a camp party at Nain, the ship hurried to Halifax at
the end of August for fuel and provisions and then down north
again, now using the easier outside route.
Back on the survey ground the triangulation was carried sea-
ward on the chain of islands, and, with all the officers except the
Boatswain either away in camp or with daily survey parties, the
Captain was alone all day on the bridge as the ship moved from
one island to another, picking up parties from one point so that
they could be landed elsewhere to observe there. The ship moved
amongst a labyrinth of uncharted islands, rocks and shoals, feeling
her way, constantly under helm, and sometimes, with breakers
ahead, having to come astern or turn round and try another
passage.
A secure anchorage was found at Ford’s Harbour and thither
the ship often made her way back as dusk was falling, only to be
under way again at the first light of dawn. On Friday, 23rd
September, she weighed and left Ford’s Harbour at daylight and
steamed northwards at nine knots to land a theodolite observing
party on an island about eight miles distant. She was taking a
route which she had followed in safety twice previously and
where no dangers had been located by echo sounding or by the
man looking out from the crow’s nest (such a look-out was
always posted in these waters). The Captain was alone on the
bridge except for the rating watching the echo sounding machine
who called out the soundings every 20 seconds. The soundings
were between 50 and 30 fathoms, but suddenly a sounding of 21
fathoms was called, and the water then shoaled so rapidly that
the echo was momentarily lost, and before another sounding
LABRADOR 21
could be called the ship shuddered as she struck a rocky shoal.
The engines were stopped and put to full astern with no effect.
Abreast the bridge the ship was hard and fast, while at her bows
and stern soundings showed deep water ; truly this was a pinnacle
rock.
This was indeed a serious predicament, the ship firmly aground
in a remote part of the Labrador coast with the nearest help over
a thousand miles away and the amount of damage done to the
ship’s hull difficult to assess. Challenger must now rely entirely
on her own officers and men and they did not fail her.
A boat having sounded round the ship it was decided to at-
tempt to get the ship off stern first at high water, which was due
in about 43 hours’ time, and might give about two feet of water
more than when the ship grounded. Time was short and work
commenced at once. First the damage was inspected as far as this
was possible inside the ship, and then wooden shores were placed
against all the adjacent bulkheads, the damaged compartments
themselves being sealed off by their own watertight doors. It
appeared that all the forward oil fuel and fresh-water tanks were
leaking and that the large provision room and canteen store were
flooded with oil fuel and water, and further, that there was a
slight leak in the forward end of the boiler room which was
situated abaft the provision room. This damage must be localised
as far as possible so that when the ship floated off the reef the
minimum risk of further damage might be incurred.
Meanwhile the two ship’s anchors were lowered below the
water line and slung beneath boats ; this was no mean task as each
anchor weighed 28 hundredweight. These anchors were discon-
nected from their cables and when wire hawsers had been secured
to them they were laid out astern of the ship and the hawsers
brought to the steam trawl winch on the quarterdeck. An amus-
ing incident happened at this point, for when the huge anchors
were slipped from beneath the boats the latter regained their full
buoyancy with such force that a member of one of the crews was
catapulted into the icy water. A smaller kedge anchor was
similarly laid out ahead of the ship to steady her.
Just before high water, the anchor cables, now without their
anchors, were lowered onto the sea-bed, 14 tons of fresh water
and 15 tons of fuel were pumped overboard from tanks in the
22 CHALLENGER
forward part of the ship and all the crew mustered aft, so that the
ship was considerably lightened forward. At about high water the
stern hawsers leading to the two bower anchors which had been
laid out astern were hove upon and the engines put to full speed
astern. It was a tense moment as ever so slowly the ship began
to move, and very gently came off the rock. The first part of
getting the ship back to port was achieved, but there were many
more difficulties to be overcome yet. A hum of eager conversation
on the quarterdeck was soon quelled by the Coxswain detailing
the men for the task of recovering the anchors. The hawsers
running to the bower anchors had now to be led to the forward
winch and these anchors hauled up into the hawsepipes once again
and connected to the cables. The kedge anchor had also to be
recovered before the ship returned to Ford Harbour so that divers
could determine the full extent of the damage; meanwhile the
pumps were just holding their own with the water in the
damaged compartments.
On the next day, Saturday, a strong easterly wind was blowing
into the anchorage and it was late in the afternoon before the
two ship’s divers could be sent down. The whole of Sunday was
also spent in diving, while the ship’s boats made long journeys to
recover the three camp parties who were soon alive with bustle
as they took down the tents and packed the bedding, provisions,
surveying equipment and a hundred other items that make up
the detached survey camp.
The divers had an extremely cold job and they could work only
in short spells before warming up onboard and preparing to go
down again ; but encouraged by the Boatswain and the small party
of men who were working the air pump and attending on them,
they gradually built up a picture of the damage to the ship’s hull
and in addition they were able to plug six holes from which
rivets were now missing. This allowed the pumps to reduce con-
siderably the amount of water in the damaged compartments.
At daylight on Monday, 26th September, the ship was as ready
as she could be to sail for the south, and it was now necessary
to take the inshore route again, at least until it was certain that
the plugged rivets were holding satisfactorily. To encounter heavy
weather such as could be expected in the open sea might cause
further damage, particularly to the forward bulkhead of the boiler
LABRADOR 23
room, which might be flooded with the most serious results.
Both Challenger’s boilers were in the same boiler room, fitted
side by side.
So once more the boats swept ahead of the ship with the sub-
marine sentries for two long days as the ship sailed southwards
through the islands to Cape Harrigan. Halifax seemed a very long
way away to those who were anxiously watching the damage and
nursing the vessel every mile of the way. The Commander-in-
Chief of the West Indies Station had been kept informed of the
ship’s plight and on Wednesday she met up with the naval sloop
Heliotrope which had come north to stand by. Challenger had felt
very much alone during these last few days and all onboard were
glad to know that now they were being looked after.
The glass began to fall and the wind was freshening from the
south; such weather might soon increase the damage, so the two
ships anchored in Domino Run for shelter. There they remained
weather bound until Friday, when a lull permitted them to go
on to York Harbour in the Bay of Islands, Newfoundland, where
again shelter had to be taken. Never more anxiously had those
onboard watched the barometer and the freshening wind. After
a false start on Sunday, when the swell in the open sea forced
them to return, they eventually sailed on Monday and reached
Halifax on Wednesday without further mishap. Here they were
received with generous assistance afforded by the Royal Canadian
Navy, and the ship was docked a few days later for extensive
repairs to be carried out by Halifax Shipyards Ltd. It was not
until 18th November that she was ready to sail home to Ports-
mouth.
The Lords of the Admiralty considered this case of grounding
and decided that no blame was attributable to anyone for striking
an uncharted pinnacle rock in such difficult waters; furthermore,
they considered that the Commanding Officer had acted in a sea-
manlike manner in getting his ship afloat and carrying her to
Halifax, and commended Mr. H. Good, the Engineer Officer,
and the divers for their fine work.
The Hydrographic Department placed ‘Challenger Rock’ on
the charts of the Labrador Coast.
fil
Windward Isles and the
Grenadines
ITH its 4000 navigational charts, the British Admiralty
\ / claims to have world coverage; and although a large
proportion of these are based on original surveys made
by earlier British hydrographic surveyors, they are kept up to
date and new charts made from British and foreign government
surveys. Hydrographers generally are generous in their exchange
of information and the international goodwill existing in this
field can be equalled only by the similar free exchange of ideas
and information among the world’s oceanographers and astrono-
mers. International politics could profit from these examples.
All the British Dominions, except Ceylon, now have their own
hydrographic services, leaving the Hydrographer of the Navy
responsible for the charting of British Home waters and those of
the British Colonies overseas. Even today this is a very formidable
task, difficult to envisage until one realises how much of this
area is still imperfectly surveyed; in addition much of the earlier
work requires re-surveying with modern methods and equipment
to bring it up to the standard required for modern charts.
The Hydrographer keeps constantly under review those areas
which require survey, and it needs considerable foresight and
thought to decide which areas should be tackled next. The
Hydrographer is responsible that both the Royal and the Mer-
chant Navies receive the up-to-date charts they require, and to
a lesser extent he must be prepared to assist the Colonial Office
with surveys which may be needed to foster new developments.
For naval requirements an eye must be kept on the future,
judging which anchorages and passages will be of the greatest
importance in any emergency or future wartime activity. The
opening of a new oil refinery in a remote place may mean that
24
WINDWARD ISLES AND THE GRENADINES Dike
there is a sudden call for up-to-date charts of an area which has
been little surveyed: these eventualities must be foreseen and
thus the surveyor oftens finds himself working in a little known
part of the world which within a few years will have become a
busy development area. It is of no use to build a new commercial
harbour to handle oil, timber or even ground-nuts if the outer
approaches are found to have shoal water preventing the use of
the harbour by the deepest draught ships which can be expected
in the future.
With these possibilities in mind and always with more surveys
to do than there are ships, the Hydrographer juggles on paper
until the programme for each ship for the forthcoming season is
decided. Hydrographic Instructions are then drawn up for each
Commanding Officer, the instructions being addressed to him
personally and covering the broad outlines of the surveys to be
carried out during the season, usually leaving all details of admin-
istration, such as fuelling and provisioning arrangements, and the
order in which the surveys are to be done, to the Commanding
Officer. He will make his own plans, suitable to the weather and
other local conditions prevalent in each area.
It is interesting to compare the opening sentences of the
Hydrographic Instructions of a hundred years ago with those of
today. The following is an example of the language of the earlier
days:
Strong representations having been made to H.M. Government of the
rapidly increasing traffic between our Australian Colonies and the western
Coast of America, and moreover of the inadequate knowledge we possess
of the intervening navigation amongst its insulated rocks and intricate clusters
of islands which extend to the eastward of New Caledonia, and considering
the great benefit that distant commerce and maritime enterprise would derive
from a thorough examination of that region, from having its dangers fully
explored, and from having its harbours so charted and described that the
Seaman could know where he would either obtain supplies or repair to for
refit or refuge, or endeavour to fix his whaling or his coaling stations.
We have therefore thought proper to select you for the purpose of carrying
out these important objects and have appointed you to the command of
H.M. Ship Herald, and we have also placed H.M. steam tender Torch, com-
manded by Lieutenant William Chinnco, under your orders to act as your
consort and to pioneer you in doubtful ground and shallow waters—both
vessels being amply furnished with Stores, Instruments and comforts of every
kind. . . . (Orders for Captain H. N. Denham, R.N., 14th May, 1852.)
26 CHALLENGER
The passing of such an explicit and encouraging opening must
be regretted. Today they read rather more prosaically :
Having completed your refit and the drawing of the Fair Charts of last
season’s work, and being in all respects ready for sea, you are to leave
Portsmouth on Monday, roth April and proceed to the Grenadines, West
Indies, where you are to take in hand the following survey .. .
And, in fact, that is how the Hydrographic Instructions for
Commander Wyatt read when he received them in early Feb-
ruary 1933.
Although the Labrador survey was to go forward, it was im-
possible to get in through the ice much before mid-July and it
was expected that freezing over would force the survey to be
discontinued about mid-November. This was a short season in-
deed and Commander Wyatt had discussed a plan with the
Hydrographer whereby a winter party would be left ashore in
Labrador in November until the following July. It seemed that
such a party might expect to make considerable progress in both
triangulation work and in coastlining; with the sea completely
frozen over the theodolite teams would be able to move across
from one island to another by sledge, and plotting the coastline
could be done by sledging along the edge of the frozen sea
rather than by walking over many miles of broken country as
would have been necessary in the summer time.
But conditions during such a winter would be extremely
severe and it would need men of character and endurance if much
useful work was to be accomplished. Challenger had these men:
‘Number One’, Baker, would lead the team with Lieutenant
D. W. Deane as his assistant surveyor. Surgeon Lieutenant Com-
mander E. W. Bingham had now been appointed to Challenger ;
he had much previous experience of work under such conditions,
having been to Greenland with Gino Watkins, and he was known
to be a good man with dog teams on which the work would very
greatly depend. These men, together with Petty Officer Stevenson,
were well suited to lead others under the rugged conditions to
be expected, which to say the least of it were novel to the
seamen who were to make up the winter party.
However, few were thinking of the winter in Labrador as
SS eee eee
Ws
VAVNdAd
Above: LIEUT.-COMMANDER BAKER AND OFFICER’S STEWARD HOLGATE STARTING OF
FOR A DAY’S SURVEYING.
Below : PETTY-OFFICER STEVENSON FEEDING THE DOG TEAMS
WINDWARD ISLES AND THE GRENADINES Dy
Challenger steamed into the beautiful harbour of St. George's,
Grenada, on a steamy morning in early May. The Captain was
thinking of the call he would shortly have to pay on His Excellency
the Governor of the Windward Isles, who resided at St. George’s ;
laying out his white No. 10 uniform which he would be wearing
for the call his steward was thinking of all the ‘dhobeying’ he
would have to do now that the officers and ship’s company were
to be wearing whites for some months ; Number One was thinking
how hard it was to get Perkins, the coxswain of the motor boat,
to look neat and clean for such an occasion, as this good seaman
sat in the stern sheets of the motor boat which was about to be
lowered into the water at a sign from the bridge; Ordinary Sea-
man Clarke was thinking of the ‘blast’ he would be getting from
the Boatswain as soon as he heard the anchor leave the hawse pipe:
Clarke’s job was to see that the rope ladder, now neatly rolled
against the guardrail, ran clear when the others hauled out the
lower boom to which the boats secured in harbour—but it
always fouled something and held back the boom, ruining the
whole evolution, as the Boatswain forcefully told him ; and Stoker
Pierce, sweating in the engine-room, was thinking of the warm,
earthy smell of the land, and the crunch of gravel under his feet
as he made his dusty way along the seafront looking for the
inevitable bar, not knowing on this first night where to find it—
but once he had found the right joint and had settled down there
would be rum, happy dusky female company and music stretching
into the long tropical night ahead.
The ship’s company were experiencing that excited anticipation
of visiting a port for the first time, an experience which never
palls, and which makes seagoing always something ofan adventure.
The white houses of the town were scattered higgledy-
piggledy among the palm trees on the lower slopes of the rounded
hills surrounding the Carenage, while above the town the palms
gave way to thick dark-green, bosky trees. Seen from the ship
at anchor the town has a pleasing aspect and the schooners lying
with their sterns to the wooden quays before the old-fashioned
warehouses bring thoughts of earlier days.
The ship had already visited Carriacou in the Grenadines some
45 miles to the northward along the arc of islands forming the
Windward group. The work in the Grenadines was to chart a
4
28 CHALLENGER
number of extensive anchorages for large vessels which appeared
to exist among the smaller islands such as Carriacou, Little St.
Vincent and Little Martinique.
The early operations were the same as on other surveys: a base
had to be measured, astrolabe sights had to be taken, and then,
a true bearing having been observed, the triangulation had to be
schemed and carried on to the hilltops, here much covered in
trees, scrub and cactus. So instead of the cold, rugged, climbing
of Labrador there were long days here spent clearing the bush
so that the various triangulation stations should be inter-visible.
And a camp party were thus engaged at this moment while the
ship lay in St. George’s and the crew relaxed ashore. After the
week-end the ship returned to the survey ground and once again
the ship’s company were in the throes of the activity which is
attendant upon the early days of a survey.
During the first week the base measurement was the most im-
portant work; the day temperatures being too high for accurate
measurement with the steel tapes, only the early mornings and
the late afternoons could be used for carrying out this work. Also
during the first week the star sights were obtained with the
astrolabe.
On Carriacou clear starlit skies permitted observing all night
long and the native people were amazed to see lights flickering far
into the night on Jack-a-dan Island. Inside the instrument tent the
chronograph operator cursed the hundreds of tiny flies, moths and
flying beetles which were attracted by his kerosene light and
which fell with a click into the back of the chronograph or became
lodged on the rollers guiding the paper and jammed these in the
middle of a successful series of observations, to the unreasoning
fury of the observer at the astrolabe outside. Sometimes in a lull
between stars the observer would come into the tent for a tot
of whisky, for there is nothing like this to make the stars twinkle
in the telescope.
As dawn was breaking each day, those who had been observing
through the night turned in on their camp beds in the cool tent
and slept as the sun rose and the shadows fell away; but later
the tents became so hot that further sleep was impossible and they
turned out to meet the fierce glare of noon and to feel the sand
hot beneath their feet as they went down the beach for a bathe.
WINDWARD ISLES AND THE GRENADINES 2
THE GRENADINES
Scheme of Triangulation
H.M.S. CHALLENGER
1933 -35
LIST OF STATIONS
BASE TRIANGULATION — MAIN STATIONS
A East Base G Mabouya |.
B West Base H .MtS*Louis
C Sandy |. I Sister Rocks
O Jack-a-dan(Obs.+) JI S.W.Point
D Chapeau Carré K Kendeace P*
E mMtD'Or L_ Lit. Martinique
‘A-B, Base measured F High North M Union I.
along beach. N Frigate /.
P Bonaparte R‘*
Q Cannouan Peak
S One Tree /.
T Catholic /.
V Sail Rock
7 4 Sea Miles 6
PO Bonaparte R**
Scheme of Triangulation
30 CHALLENGER
When the triangulation was complete the ship and boats com-
menced sounding the area to the west of Carriacou, the two boats
working from a camp established at Hillsborough, a village on the
west side of Carriacou. Twice during May and June the ship had
to go to Port of Spain, Trinidad, for fuel and on such occasions
she left the boats working from the camp at Hillsborough, which
was now well established, having friendly relations with the in-
habitants of the village where exciting football matches were
played on a sandy pitch thinly covered in grass, near the seashore,
these matches being enthusiastically followed by the great
majority of the villagers.
Early in July the camp party was embarked, the triangulation
flags on the hills taken down and the sites of these stations
permanently marked by brass plates set in concrete. The western
part of the survey was complete and the ship sailed on sth July
for Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Nain in Labrador to carry on with
last year’s survey there.
Although the ship reached the coast of Labrador on 21st July,
only about a week later than the previous year, the ice situation
was much clearer this year and the passage northwards simpler.
The ship anchored in the Davis Inlet so that the Captain might
visit the senior Hudson Bay Company trader here to make early
arrangements for winter clothing and other supplies needed for
the winter party and required to be sent north to Nain. He was
not the only visitor to the store as a party of Nascaupee Indians,
numbering about 80, were camped along the shore making their
summer visit for trade with Hudson Bay Company and to meet
the Catholic priest. They appeared filthy and were clad in rags
of deerskin; their dwellings were of both the ridge and the
pointed type of tent, covered with any old canvas, with a hole in
the top from which issued smoke from a fire within. From the
ship, watching through binoculars, it was amazing to see up to
a dozen Indians coming out of a tent which one would have
thought would be crowded with two persons inside. The H.B.C.
trader was the only white man in Davis Inlet ; he had two or three
native assistants. There were no Eskimos here. The Indians come
and go, travelling and hunting the country from Ungava to the
St. Lawrence River. For travel they used light canoes weighing
WINDWARD ISLES AND THE GRENADINES 31
about 50 pounds so that they might be carried easily across land;
such canoes were built of light laths of larch laid as frames and
covered with painted canvas, which they obtained in exchange
for furs in the H.B.C. stores.
The next day the ship again reached Ford’s Harbour where
nine months earlier she had been licking her wounds after her
encounter with Challenger Rock. The poles marking the triangu-
lation stations, which had been left on the ship’s hurried departure
last year, were still standing and could be seen on the hilltops. Next
morning parties were away putting new flags on these poles from
which the winds of winter had removed every trace of the old.
A conference was held onboard at Nain to which Mr. Grubb,
the missionary, and Mr. Clarke of the H.B.C. store were invited
so that arrangements could be made in good time for the winter
party, who were to have their headquarters in Nain. It was
arranged that the party should live in the small unused wooden
hospital, which appeared sufficiently large to accommodate them
and to leave room for a chartroom for plotting the survey work.
Arrangements were made to start collecting the dogs which would
be required for hauling the sledges or ‘komatiks’, as they are
called. In summer time the husky dogs are either placed on small
uninhabited islands where they have to fend for themselves, going
down to the water’s edge to catch their own fish, or they may be
incarcerated in the centre of the settlement in square stockades
made of logs placed vertically to form the walls. Into this com-
pound cod heads and other fish offal are thrown from time to
time, and the level inside the stockade and the smell outside it
rise steadily during the months of summer. When the dogs are
released with the first snows of winter they are so wild for the
first few days as to be uncontrollable. Dogs were reported scarce
this year due to sickness but it was thought that the requisite
number would be available by November.
The komatiks which the dog teams pull across the ice and snow
through the long winters are of the simplest construction, being
formed of two long fore-and-aft wooden runners shod with iron,
with cross boards secured between them on the top along their
entire length to form a platform.
The marks having been for the most part fixed last season, the
ship and boats were able to press on with the sounding work,
32 CHALLENGER
while parties landed daily to delineate the coastline, all such
sounding and coastlining work being fixed in relation to the
triangulation marks.
One morning when the ship was surveying oft Nain a boat came
out towards her and a burly man hailed her from a position in
the bows. He was the Master of the American schooner Minnie B
lying in Nain. He requested the Captain’s aid in arresting his
crew who had deserted in Nain and were now in the settlement,
but the circumstances did not appear to the Captain to warrant
their arrest. However, it was most undesirable to have a number
of unemployed white men hanging round a settlement where
there was no accommodation or any amenities, and it was lucky
that the Newfoundland steamer Kyle was due in a couple of days’
time and arrangements were made with the master of the Kyle
to take these men to St. John’s, Newfoundland, while the Master
of the schooner remained onboard his vessel.
The Secretary of State of Newfoundland and a Customs official
happened to be travelling onboard the Kyle and the dissatisfied
deserters must have talked on the passage to St. John’s for a signal
was received from the Secretary of State ordering the Captain of
the Challenger to detain the Minnie B on suspicion of illicit trading
and obtaining customs clearance under false pretences. So on
Sunday morning an officer from Challenger boarded the schooner
and, to the consternation of the skipper, removed the ship’s
papers, her sails and essential engine parts, and he seemed little
mollified by the offer of the Captain of Challenger for him to use
her radio to get in touch with his consul.
The mosquitoes were as bad as ever and three cases of septic
mosquito bites developed among the ship’s company, one of these
being the ship’s Medical Officer. As he was unable to carry out a
satisfactory operation on himself, the ship had to sail south
to Cartwright, where a hospital was supported by the Grenfell
Mission.
Whilst lying at Cartwright the Kyle arrived with the Customs
Officer for the East Coast of Labrador and a magistrate onboard
bound north to try the case of the Minnie B. So the ship’s papers, .
sails and the engine parts were handed over to the Customs
Officer and Challenger’s police duties were over.
WINDWARD ISLES AND THE GRENADINES 33
The ship had left both boats operating from a camp south of
Nain and was unable to wait for Bingham to recover fully, but
he made his own way down the coast in a local open boat, being
storm-bound several days in windswept anchorages whilst on
passage. It was a good thing that Bingham was used to rugged
travel, for he was none the worse after this ordeal. He was
welcomed at Nain with open arms because his boat brought the
mail, the mail steamer having made her last run north of
Hopedale for the season.
At the end of September the ship, leaving a large camp party
with both sounding boats in a landlocked bay south of Nain known
as Kauk Harbour, sailed south to Halifax for fuel and large stocks
of provisions needed for the winter party. By 12th October, in
the first flurry of winter snow these stores were being disembarked
at Nain. From now onwards the survey work was much hampered
by snow and gales; on 2nd November the temperature was down
to 19°F and spray was freezing as it fell on the canvas canopies of
the boats which were away placing secondary marks along the
coastline for the use of the winter party.
While one of the boats was being hoisted on this day a brand
new fall parted in one of the blocks: as the whole weight of the
boats is taken by these ropes it was fortunate that no one was
hurt and that no damage was done. On examining the fall it was
found that owing to the low temperature the tarred fibres had
become frozen and brittle so that, when bent, the rope snapped
like a stick. So from now on falls had to be unrove after hoisting
or lowering a boat and stowed below until required again, a most
unpleasant nuisance in such conditions.
On 9th November strong westerly winds were blowing the
snow off the hills like smoke and next day the ship proceeded to
Nain to establish the winter party. The temperature was down
to 13°F and ice was forming around the ship’s water line. All the
stores were ashore and stowed in the old hospital at Nain by the
evening of 14th November and the party said farewell and went
onshore. The next day the glass fell very low—to 956 millibars—
but there was no wind until the afternoon when it began to blow
from the south-west and gradually increased to a gale at night.
The temperature fell to 5°F onboard and to zero ashore and,
when an attempt was made to veer more cable, it was found that
34 CHALLENGER
the windlass was frozen solid, and on the morning of 16th Nov-
ember the sea was ‘smoking’ prior to freezing over; it seemed
high time to be away. A fire had to be lit under the windlass
before the cable could be worked, but once that was freed the ship
was soon heading for the open sea in a fresh gale and a snow-
storm. There were not many who were sorry to be homeward
bound for Portsmouth from this inhospitable coast, where nine
members of the ship’s company were preparing to see the long
winter through.
IV
The Winter Party
HE old hospital at Nain was to be the base camp for the
winter party from November until July; it had a good stove,
and provided sufficient wood could be collected it would
remain reasonably comfortable throughout the winter.To carry
out the survey work it was planned to send small survey teams
into camps in the area. These camps would be housed in light
arctic tents and occupied for a matter of two or three weeks,
after which the teams would return to the base in Nain. It was
realised that life in the camps in the depth of winter would be
extremely hard and the teams would probably need about ten
days or so at the base camp to plot the survey work completed
in the field and to prepare the gear for the next camp party.
As the ship steamed slowly out of the bay and sailed for home
the winter party turned to their immediate tasks. The hospital
was scrubbed out and shelves and hooks were erected to take the
stores and the winter clothing; the chartroom had to be rigged
and provided with a table, chairs and racks to take the instru-
ments; and the most important work of hauling in the firewood
and stacking it in readiness for use had to be started at once.
Meanwhile, the ice began to form in the Bay, at first very thin and
easily broken up by the slightest wind, but on 22nd November
news came in that the Port Manvers Run was completely frozen
over except for the rattles, and that people were able to walk
on the ice there. Sledging would soon begin.
The population of Nain consisted of a number of ‘settlers’ of
European extraction and some Eskimo families, some living in
the settlement and others in huts, built as fishing and hunting
camps, tucked away in odd corners, at the head of an arm of the
sea, or close under a sheltering spruce coppice. These dwellings
were scattered thinly over the empty landscape. Some of them
had long since been given up as regular dwellings but were found
to offer some shelter to winter travellers to whom any protection
35
36 CHALLENGER
from the freezing, numbing winds was very welcome. The
settlement of Nain itself consisted of a number of well-built
white wooden huts clustering along the shore near the neat little
church and the Hudson Bay Store, while to the north were a
number of ruder wooden huts stretching towards the spruce
woods on the lower slopes of the rocky hills. The hospital was
one of the more imposing buildings, having two storeys and
dormer windows in the roof.
The winter party consisted of Lieutenant-Commander Baker
in charge, with Dennis Deane as his assistant surveyor, a cheerful
and amusing person; then there was ‘Doc.’ Bingham, who was
a Surgeon Lieutenant Commander; and the ratings consisted of
Petty Officer Stevenson, Leading Seaman Hampson, Able Seamen
Marshall and Marlowe, and, lastly, Officer’s Steward Holgate, all
of whom had volunteered for this winter in the north but of
whom only Bingham had experience of dog team driving, the
use of snowshoes and of living under arctic conditions. There was
much to be learnt, and the party were soon making their first
floundering steps on snowshoes, while they tried out the winter
clothing, the windproofs and the sealskin boots and the sleeping
bags.
a the same time there was hunting to be done, for hunting
is a necessity of life for all who live in the far north; seals must
be killed for the feeding of the dogs, which had by now been
acquired and which lay in the snow around the base camp awaiting
the first trial sledging journeys. As the ice forms in the bays in
the early stages of freezing over and is broken up by the wind it is
driven in towards the beach, these blocks forming a jumble of
oddly shaped ice boulders, known as ‘billycaters’, and it is by
crawling through the cover afforded by these that one can some-
times come within rifle range of the seals lying on the seaward
edge of the ice.
Henry Voisey, one of the local settlers, was taken on as camp
servant. He was a good man with dogs and had his own team,
and he knew the country well.
Baker at once decided that he should be ready at any time to
send out a party capable of living unsupported for at least seven
days, so a number of ‘camp boxes’ were made up and kept in
THE WINTER PARTY 37
readiness to be loaded onto a komatik. These boxes contained
saucepans, a frying pan, a tin opener, a primus stove and knives
and forks, etc., sufficient for two persons, while a ‘ration box’,
which would also have to be taken, contained concentrated
rations sufficient for two persons for seven days and included
such items as 6 pounds margarine, 6 pounds pemmican, porridge
oats, plasmon biscuits, pea flour and cocoa, etc. The seamen of
the party, used as they were to the loaded plates of roast meat and
potatoes which they prepared for themselves and the heavy dufts
which followed when they fed in Challenger, whether the ship
was on the equator or off the coast of Iceland, looked with dis-
appointment at the apparent inadequacy of the rations, not
realising how concentrated they were.
Buck decided to go with Doc. and a dog team to establish a
camp for a week so that they might judge what the conditions
would be in a survey camp and what the snags might be. So on
29th November, having loaded the komatik with a camp box,
a ration box, tent and sleeping bags, they set out on their first
sledging journey, with Buck’s and Bingham’s teams harnessed
together, to make camp, after four hours’ travelling, on the shore
of a saltwater lake. And here for a week, shooting ptarmigan for
winter use, and fishing through a hole in the ice for cod to feed
the dogs, Buck and Doc. acquainted themselves with the difficul-
ties and the conditions which would be experienced by those
occupying the survey camps during the long winter months ahead.
The tents were of a new arctic pattern, having a double skin
and a ventilator in the outer canvas which could be opened by
a cord from inside; but when the primus stove was out it was
found that hoar frost formed both on the inside and between the
two skins, making the tent very damp when it thawed on the
primus being relit. So tubes were sewn from the inside to the
exterior ventilator, thus reducing considerably the amount of
hoar frost forming whenever the temperature in the tent was
allowed to fall. By spreading deerskin rugs between the sleeping
bags and the ground sheet the bags were kept moderately dry and
once the sleeper had overcome the sense of suffocation experienced
when using the hood he was able to sleep warmly and in comfort
even when the temperature in the tent was down to o° F, as it
often was.
38 CHALLENGER
Driving the dog teams had also to be practised. A komatik is
normally pulled by seven or so dogs which are harnessed by a
single bridle which, at some distance ahead of the komatik, has
short extensions or traces leading to the dogs on either side of
it. From experience it was found that traces and bridles made of
3-inch circumference sisal rope brought from the ship were far
easier to manipulate and were also stronger than the sealskin line
normally used for this purpose. Little difficulty in the actual
driving of the dogs was experienced in the early days, although
much practice was required to get used to handling the 45-foot
thonged sealskin whips, which, when well manipulated, can be
used to flick a delinquent dog in exactly the right place from a
position on or behind the komatik; the inexperienced driver often
ends up by giving his own cold face a savage cut with the end of
the thong.
So the early days passed. The woodpile grew higher and higher,
camp and ration boxes were made up and canvas was nailed around
the eaves of the hospital to keep out the smallest ingress of chill
air.
On 12th December the advance gear for a survey camp—tents
and rations, hop poles and flags for survey marks—was hauled by
komatiks to the first site selected, at the mouth of a small bay on
the eastern shore of Satosoakkuluk, about eight miles from Nain.
This gear was cached among the trees at the site and the teams re-
turned to base. It was intended to come out on the following day,
but, as was to happen so often throughout the coming winter, the
barometer fell during the night and it came on to blow hard from
the westward. The visibility on such occasions is cut down to a
few hundred yards, which, combined with the bitterness of the
wind, makes travel impossible. So the dogs huddled on the lee
side of the old hospital and the men lay up all that day, but hauled
out to the camp site next day, and having set up the camp carried
out a considerable amount of triangulation in the area. A week
later camp was struck and the teams had a hard trip back to Nain
as the komatik was heavily laden and one dog was sick, leaving a
team of six dogs to haul across the Bay against a strong headwind
blowing from the west. As soon as the base was reached the
party were helped by a number of Eskimos to unharness the dogs
THE WINTER PARTY 29
and to unload the komatik. This is a local custom; any komatik
coming into Nain is always assisted on the last part of the journey
by anyone who happens to be around, and when all the gear has
been carried into the house the helpers melt away, expecting no
thanks for this courtesy, which always made the return to Nain
seem like a home-coming and was very welcome after hours of
battling with the elements.
Christmas was spent quietly in social activity, visiting Mr. and
Mrs. Grubb of the Moravian Mission, Mr. and Mrs. Clarke of
the Hudson Bay Post and various friends among the settlers and
the Eskimos. The local silver band was much in evidence, playing
on their ‘grandstand’, the roof of the church, where they stood
precariously as they blew in harmony.
The 3rd January was spent preparing for the second surve
camp and, on the morning of the 4th, a small party led by Baker
was away to establish and occupy the camp. Buck’s spirited private
diary describes the rigours of the surveying work and the day-to-
day difficulties of sledging and camping.
4th January. It looked as though it was going to be a really good day as the
wind dropped away altogether by 0830, but came in puffs from all points of
the compass.
It finally steadied in the S.W. and by the time all the gear was lashed to
the komatiks by 1000, it was getting up.
We started off and the wind increased to about force 6 before we had got
very far, and fairly blew us along.
We got to the camp site by noon and pitched camp in the same place as
last time.
During our absence, however, a spring must have burst its way through the
snow and ice as Marshall fell through into about a foot of fresh water about
15 yards from our snow shelter.
Henry started building a snow house for us to use as a survey office but
made it rather big and with not enough tumble home so that it was impossible
to put the roofing on ‘a la Eskimo’. I made him pack up about 1530 and sent
him back to Nain as I wanted him to get back before dark.
We settled down comfortably and had all the fresh water we wanted for
cooking and drinking without the bother of having to melt snow.
sth January. A cold day with wind from the N.W. but not a strong one.
We all went away coastlining in different directions. Personally I don’t think
that I have ever had such a foul day, as the wind, although not strong, was
darned cold and going against it simply froze one’s head and face. I went up
wind and coastlined down wind but it was pretty grim as every time one
stopped to fix and ‘shoot up’, one got beastly cold, the sextant telescope
40 CHALLENGER
clouded over and this immediately froze and had to be cleared off with the
point of a pencil. Taking angles up wind was very trying as it made my eyes
water and this, of course, froze too, The temperature was —17 degrees all
day. I got back to camp just about ready to commit murder at the slightest
provocation.
As the snow house was not completed, Dennis and I had to plot and ‘ink-in’
in the tent and this was about the most trying thing I have done for a long
time. Only one could work at a time and he had to sit on the ration box with
the plane table on his knees and tilt it downwards away from him to get
enough light to see by. Our eyes ached like hell by the time we finished and
we both vowed we would not try it again. Altogether somewhat of a grim day.
6th January. It was snowing to start with so we finished building the snow
house, and set off on our coastlining as soon as it cleared up. We used the
snow house in the evening for plotting and inking-in and it was simply
marvellous compared to a tent, The plotting table consisted of a large snow
block laid on top of a beaten down pile of snow in the middle and the light
was supplied by two candles lashed to broom handles and stuck in the snow
either side of the table. The light given was truly amazing and made work
almost a pleasure! The primus stove kept it fairly warm and we slung the
bottle of ink on a lanyard to thaw it and keep it thawed. Even so we had to
hold the ink over the primus flame every minute or so as the ink froze on
the pen while inking-in. We finished the great work by about 1830, and on
going out noticed that the spring was quoring up almost into the igloo
although this was built on the side of a small hill. After supper I went out to
do the usual chores of filling up pots and pans and so on and went up and
had a look at the igloo and found the water had risen considerably and also
that it had broken out at the back and was threatening the tents. I tumbled
the crowd out and we cut a channel to drain the igloo and cut through into
a small river which welled up very strongly. I decided to shift camp and we
made a quick job of it, shifting it about 50 yards away in lee of a small hill.
The whole camp was shifted and settled down again with all primus stoves
roaring in three-quarters of an hour. The lads were very cheerful about it
and picked the tents up bodily and carried them to the new site, singing
some Salvation Army song that is usually sung when the latter carry large
banners about. I did not feel too happy about the snow house but, as we had
tapped the stream below it, it did not look as though anything would occur.
jth January. It was blowing hard and continued to do so until about 1130
when the wind appeared to ease somewhat. We all had a quick ‘mug up’ and
got away by 1230. It was soon apparent, however, that it was only a temporary
ease up, as by the time I had cleared the land it was blowing hard again.
Standing up in the komatik with the wind behind me it was strong enough to
blow the komatik along and keep the bridle and traces slack over hard wind-
blown patches of ice. By the time we had got to the east end of Kruger
Island, I could see that we were in for a buster as the snow was being blown
off the tops of the hills in Nain Bay. I rounded the point and started to come
back the other side of the island, as I thought we might have a lee of sorts.
THE WINTER PARTY 41
I was mistaken, however, for very soon it was blowing so hard and with so
much ‘drift’ that I could not see my dogs. It was evident that we were not
going to get back stemming that wind and drift so I got ahead of the team
and led them up over the top of the hill 180 feet high. They followed like
lambs and pulled the komatik up like little Trojans. We careered down the
other side and found it was much better as far as drifting snow was concerned,
but the wind was so strong that we had to lean against it. We got back to
camp by 1530, and on getting up to the camp saw two of Dennis’ dogs there
and so thought he must have got back before me. I could not see his komatik
anywhere, though, and realised that one of his dogs had slipped its trace and
run back to camp and that he was out in the gale with only four dogs. I went
over the crest of the hill to look for him and told Marlowe not to unharness
my team as, if he was a long way off, I would go out with my team and bring
him back. I met him, however, just coming up the hill and gave him a hand
home. He was breathing fire and murder about his leader, Lively, as he
thought he had gone back to Nain again, as he had done on Friday. He was
very surprised to find him in camp and forgave him. The other dog, Frank,
I knew he had left in camp as it was sore under the forelegs. We were all
glad to get back and get into our tents out of the wind.
8th January. It was still blowing when we turned out so I decided to wait
and see what the weather was going to do, as the barometer was going down
and it looked as though anything might happen.
On going over to the snow house we found to our horror that the water
had quored up inside and my guns, harnesses, plane tables, cartridges and
other odds and ends were standing in about six inches of half-frozen water.
Dennis crawled in and chipped all the gear out and passed it out. We shifted
all the surveying gear to a little dip on the opposite bank of the pond that
we were now camped on. It looked as though the snow was good enough
to build another snow house so we all set to work and had one up by lunch
time. It was made more or less in the correct way and was roofed ‘a la
Eskimo’ and was a great success, thanks chiefly to Dennis who did most of
the building.
The wind was dying away so we had a hurried lunch and got away by about
1300. We had a good afternoon surveying as the wind died away completely.
I did not get back till dark, and we plotted and inked-in in the igloo again
and by the time I came out it was snowing. The barometer was falling fast and
looked as though we should have bad weather in the near future so we
decided that, if it was not surveyable weather on the morrow, we would
pack up and go back to the base.
Sure enough the weather was bad and the party struggled back
to Nain.
There was plenty of work to occupy the time of the surveyors
when they returned to the base camp after a week or two in the
field. It seemed that whenever it was decided to establish another
42 CHALLENGER
camp the weather at once deteriorated ; the barometer would fall
and the wind and the drifting snow would rise, making travelling
conditions impossible; and so, with the komatiks loaded and
everything ready to go, the party sat impatiently day after day
in the base camp.
It was during such a period that something happened which
altered all the immediate plans for the survey. On the night of
25th January Clarke came to see the party and brought with him
a certain Mr. Smith, the Hudson Bay trader from Nutak, some
50 miles north of Nain. After two hours of small talk, when they
were about to leave, Clarke said that Smith would like to see
Buck alone and so they went out into the porch together. Here
Smith came straight to the point, asking for Baker’s help to quell
disturbances which had been going on at the H.B.C. post at
Hebron, and which Massie, the trader there, was unable to
control. The Eskimos at Hebron were said to be a tough crowd
and were a bit of a mixture of a number of families who had
settled there.
What Smith wanted Baker to do was to travel north to Hebron
with Clarke and himself and arrest an Eskimo named Renatus
Tuglavina, who they said was the ringleader of the trouble-
makers. Baker did not like this idea and said so, pointing out that
he had no authority on the coast and really could not act on such
vague evidence. He did say, however, that after the next survey
camp he might travel north to Hebron and see for himself what
was happening and bade Smith and Clarke good-night. He did not
sleep well, turning over and over in his mind what should be
done. He did not wish to arrive at Hebron either with the
Hudson Bay Company people or with the missionary, although
he was sure that Mr. Grubb would be willing to go. Baker felt
that the Navy should not appear to be the power behind either of
these two, and that if he went to Hebron he should go alone.
He decided that Dennis, Bingham and Stevenson should
accompany him and that they should slip away quietly for Hebron,
where their surprise arrival might do much to steady the Eskimos
there. The tents had already been pitched for the next survey
camp and, as these would now be required on the journey north,
a party was sent out to bring them in, while at the base prepara-
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THE WINTER PARTY 43
tions went ahead for this formidable journey to Hebron, 150
miles to the northward beyond the Kiglerpait mountain range
which is over 1oo0o feet high. But, as so often happened when
plans had been laid, the barometer fell and high winds prevented
the teams starting for the next five days. Only the party knew
where the komatiks were bound when the weather cleared and
this they kept to themselves, the rest of Nain thinking these
preparations were for the establishment of a survey camp. Baker
did not want Renatus to get wind of his intentions as he certainly
might have done, news travelling fast across these wastes. An
Eskimo party tried going out to gather wood on the fourth day
of the gale but had not returned by 8.30 at night with the weather
as thick as a hedge and with soft snow lying in drifts waist deep.
The church bell was tolled to give them their direction and,
leaving their komatiks behind in the woods, they struggled in
with their teams at 10 o'clock.
On 31st January the weather at last cleared and it was good
enough to make a start for Hebron. Three komatiks were taken,
Henry Voisey with his team, with Stevenson as passenger, Buck
and Bingham with a team of nine dogs on the big komatik, and
Dennis with his own team on the small komatik. Smith and
Gillingham from the post at Nutak had also been waiting for fine
weather to return to Nutak, and they too set out.
The route followed was from Nain, past Base Point and Stony
Island (names given by Challenger to these two places), up and
over Itilialuk neck and down into Challenger Cove; then straight
on up Port Manvers Run. Both ‘rattles’ were open water, the
tidal stream being too strong to allow ice to form, and these were
skirted by going over the necks of land. Going down the further
side of the second neck a slight mishap occurred to the team on
the big komatik, the bridle being cut among some tree stumps
leaving the whole team to go careering off along the trail; Buck
stood up on the komatik and let out a loud ‘view holloa’ which
was heard by Henry ahead on the trail and he ran to stop the
runaway team and bring them back. Tikkeratsuk, the goal for
the first day, was not reached until about 8 p.m., 35 miles having
been covered in 10 hours; for the last hour the party travelled
by moonlight. The travellers put up for the night in a lonely
shack belonging to an Eskimo called Ama Panagonjak, whose
5
44 CHALLENGER
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Survey area northwards from Nain, showing first part of sledge journey to Hebron
THE WINTER PARTY 45
hospitality included a seal for the dogs. And here the story is
continued from Baker’s diary.
While supper was being got ready Ama went out and with the help of
Nathan (Gillingham’s driver) and Lucas (Smith’s driver) cut up a whole seal
for the teams to feed off. It was a grand sight, as it was brilliant moonlight,
and they had hauled the seal out onto the sea ice, and were cutting it up there.
Grouped round the seal in a semi-circle were all the teams, about 40 dogs
in all. Henry and I were either side of the cutters keeping the dogs at a
distance with our whips and Doc and Gillingham were among the dogs. The
interesting part was to see how the teams grouped themselves, Henry’s was
opposite him and mine and Dennis’ teams sat opposite me, while Doc’s and
Gillingham’s teams respectively sat down by their masters’ sides. Smith’s
team, not having their master there, sat on the extreme right of my team. . . .
As soon as the seal was cut up into small bits one of the Eskimos gave the
word and the whole crowd avalanched onto the food and there was surprisingly
little fighting for so many dogs feeding.
The next morning the party had to back-track about four miles
to the mouth of the Man o’ War brook and then they started the
long trek up and over the Kiglerpaits, a rugged range barring the
way. The trail led upwards over the brook and a number of small
lakes, all of course frozen over, with occasional steep climbs up
small hills and down the other side. The snow was soft and the
going poor and Baker’s large, heavily-loaded komatik made
progress very slow. The teams would have to be reorganised if
they were to reach the Kurukuluk shack by nightfall, this being
the goal for the day. Dennis’ small komatik was left behind now,
his team being harnessed with Buck’s while Smith and Gillingham
each lent two dogs from their teams, giving Buck 14 dogs on the
big komatik with Dennis while Doc went with Stevenson and
Henry on the other komatik.
At last the top of the pass over the Kiglerpaits was reached,
but the descent on the northern side was almost worse than the
climb; the snow was very soft and the big komatik kept taking
charge and overtaking the dogs. On one occasion when the dogs
were going all out, they went one side of a boulder while the
komatik tried to go the other, the result being that the komatik
rolled right over, throwing its riders, and then onto its runners
again; without a stop Buck and Dennis were on the komatik again
as it careered madly onwards. There were a number of sudden
drops of ten feet or more which the dogs saw only at the last
46 CHALLENGER
moment and it was with great difficulty that the komatik could
be swung clear to one side or the other where the slope was more
gentle.
Eventually the head of the Kurukuluk brook was reached and
the teams started working down towards the shack at the foot.
But the snow here was very soft indeed, a condition known as
‘mowya’, and from here, time and time again, the big komatik
slid off to one side or other of the trail into the deep soft snow,
and Buck and Dennis had to leap off into snow waist deep, and
sometimes chest deep, in order to get the komatik back on to the
trail. Their language should have been sufficient to melt the
snow, and the dogs howled dismally until they could go on once
more. In this manner the shack was eventually reached, making
the second stage of the journey 25 miles. The shack was a rough
old place without so much as a nail to hang the harness on to
keep it away from the dogs, but it had a stove and a roaring fire
had been got going before the last komatik got in.
Overtired from the terrific exertions of the day’s journey no
one slept much and Gillingham kept the fire going all night. At
5 a.m. the travellers had breakfast and by 6.30 the teams were
skimming across the flat sea ice, from time to time passing over
a neck of land, reaching Udlik Point, where there was a small
Eskimo house, by 9.30, and here the teams paused for a “mug up’
of cocoa. Then on across another neck of land to Nutak Run
where the going was very good; Nutak was reached by 12.30,
an excellent run of 24 miles’ really good going.
Nutak is purely an H.B.C. post with no settler or Eskimo
dwellings in the vicinity; it is a clean and neat little place and
here the Smiths made the party really welcome. Stevenson was
sick with a severe chill so he was left with the Smiths at Nutak.
As Henry did not know the trail northwards from Nutak, Smith
urged Buck to take Willie Metcalfe, his Eskimo store servant,
with him as guide and interpreter. The large komatik was left
here and a smaller, old one of Smith’s was taken instead. And
so the party pressed on next day: Buck, Doc, Dennis, Henry and
Willie Metcalfe, with two smallish komatiks and 16 dogs. At first
the teams made for the small Eskimo settlement on Parkivik
Point, and then, after some miles of rough going among the
‘billycaters’ along the shoreline, a high neck of land had to be
THE WINTER PARTY 47
surmounted, the snow being very ‘mowya’ and much time being
wasted ; it was dark by the time the sea ice was reached on the
further side of the neck and it was difficult to pick out a trail.
There was an Eskimo encampment close by somewhere but
Willie was not quite certain where it was; then, after going a
mile or so Dennis suddenly saw the lights of the houses behind
and the teams were turned round. They soon smelt the place
and away they went, hell for leather, arriving at the huts to the
complete surprise of the Eskimos. Willie Tuglavina and Ephraim,
living here with their families, took the party in and made them
very welcome, everyone enjoying a really good night’s rest. This
encampment, for this is all it was, consisting of huts of a very
temporary nature, was called Itibliasuk and was 35 miles from
Nutak, It huddled under the steep slopes of the Mugford Range
of mountains, great square blocks of rock 3000 feet high, with
sheer cliffs falling 2000 feet from the summits and then coming
down to the sea ice in long scree slopes, a barren and forbidding
landscape. During the early part of the next day’s run the
mountains lay to the westward and the going was good along the
sea ice and over the many low necks of land separating one bay
from another. About 10 o’clock the party was joined by an
Eskimo when they stopped for a ‘mug up’; he was hauling wood
to Hebron. Willie Metcalfe said he was one of the bad men of
Hebron, but he was a cheerful soul and could handle a primus
like a good one and as it is best not to make an enemy of such
a man in those parts, he came on with the party.
At half-past three in the afternoon the komatiks came in across
Hebron Bay and Challenger would have been proud of her men if
she could have seen them racing across the sea ice, with their
white ensigns flying from each komatik. The Eskimos of the
Hebron Settlement had never seen sucha sight and, as they watched
the arrival, there was much discussion as to who they were and
what they had come for, but suspicions were aroused and soon
there were few to be seen except Massie, the Hudson Bay trader.
Hebron consists of a few huts clustered around a great barn of
a place which is the Hudson Bay store, right next to which is the
church, denoted by a tiny cupola on the ridge of the roof.
Despite the church it seemed to the travellers a God-forsaken
place, but it was the journey’s end.
48 CHALLENGER
Massie had a meal all ready for them and it seemed that they
were expected, which was strange in the circumstances, but
after they had eaten they realised that Massie was as surprised as
anyone in Hebron to see them arrive and he had given them his
Sunday dinner.
Buck inspected the store on the following day and was shown
where a small Eskimo had broken in through a window to allow
the others to enter on the first occasion in November; on two
subsequent occasions the rascals had entered the store by using
a key they had cut for the purpose. Renatus was said by Massie to
be the ringleader and Buck announced that he would interview all
the Eskimos, one by one, on the following afternoon. This lasted
from 4 o’clock until 8 o’clock and each man incriminated Renatus
as being the leader in their misdoings. Then at last it was Renatus’
turn to be interviewed and he at once started by being truculent.
He had been threatened so many times before and nothing had
happened that he thought he was above the law. This belief was
strengthened by his faith in an old medal a schooner skipper had
given him and which he regarded as a talisman, making him
invulnerable to anything the forces of law and order might do
to him. These forces found great difficulty in extending their
long arm quite as far as Hebron and Renatus felt secure.
Baker thought he had better make his own position clear to
Renatus. He asked: ‘Do you know of God?’ Renatus replied that
he did. ‘Do you know of King George?’ Renatus answered that
he had seen his picture and knew of his power. ‘Well,’ said
Baker, ‘I come next after him.’ For the first time this thick-set
Eskimo looked impressed, his jaw dropped and his attitude at
once became more reasonable. And when Baker said he was
willing if necessary to lash him to his komatik and take him to
Nain, Renatus reluctantly agreed to be ready to travel with his
family on Wednesday morning, anything in the way of clothing
and gear which he would need for the journey being provided
by the H.B.C. store.
Towards the end of the evening meal a deputation of the
Eskimos arrived and said they wanted to see Baker. When he saw
them they said they were all very sorry for what they had done
and asked for orders for their future conduct. Buck told them to
lead the normal life of the north, to go hunting and to trade their
THE WINTER PARTY 49
furs and not to spend their days lolling round the store hoping
for pickings. One man said that he came on behalf of Renatus
to say that he heard he was to be imprisoned in Nain, and if
that was the case he would rather be killed now. Baker said that
when he got to Nain he would certainly not be put in jail but would
jolly well have to go hunting for his living and work for the survey
arty.
i te of Tuesday was spent by Renatus in going to the store,
where the party were living, with various objections to his
travelling south. But it was clearly put to him that he was coming
south whether his family was ready or not, and so on Wednesday
morning the journey began, Renatus travelling with his family on
his own komatik. Good time was made to Itibliasuk where once
again the hospitality of Willie Tuglavina was very welcome, there
being quite a crowd sleeping in his hut that night; there were
Buck, Dennis and Bingham, Willie Tuglavina and his wife and
two tubby boys, the old mother and Job Allack, an Eskimo who
had decided to travel south from Hebron with the party. When
the travellers arrived there was a seal in front of the fire, thawing
out preparatory to skinning, and after supper Job skinned it,
removed the blubber, and fed the teams.
It was blowing like hell on Thursday and the party lay up all
day in the overcrowded hut, sleeping or cursing the weather;
but on Friday they were on the trail again, reaching Nutak that
evening, where a day was spent waiting for Stevenson to be fit
enough to travel.
Renatus was proving very friendly and amenable and for many
hours at a time Buck travelled with Renatus on his komatik.
The shack at the foot of the Kurukuluk Brook was reached early
on Sunday afternoon and after a brief ‘mug-up’ in the hut, the
ascent of the Kiglerpaits began again, the snow being very
‘mowya’ up the brook. To get through this heavy going one of
the party had to break trail with snowshoes ahead of the dogs.
At dusk the highest point of the pass was reached and here a
camp was made, using the tents, while Renatus made a snow
house for his family and Dennis. It was a fine clear night, the
loveliness of which was accentuated by beautiful aurora with a
delicate pink shade on the edge of the usual yellow bands of
light ; the night was quiet, crisp and still, as the travellers listened
fo CHALLENGER
for the crackling sound that can sometimes be heard when an
aurora is seen from high ground. But not a sound ruffled the
immense stillness.
On Monday the last and best day’s sledging of the trip was
accomplished. Striking camp by 8 o’clock the descent down the
Kiglerpaits began, and after a ‘mug-up’ in an old ruined shack at
3 o'clock in the afternoon, the teams reached the Base Camp
at Nain at half-past seven, having covered 43 miles in a day and
completed the round trip of 300 miles to Hebron in nine travelling
days.
vi
Spring in the North
Hebron, so Baker was anxious to establish the next
survey camp as soon as possible. Renatus, who was under
open arrest, had settled down peacefully enough in Nain and was
given employment by the surveyors when he was not hunting;
he was particularly good at making snow houses and from now on
the camps became more comfortable. But life was still hard and
the entries in Lieutenant Commander Baker’s diary for 25th to
28th February are typical of the conditions.
Me surveying time had been wasted during the run to
Sunday, 25th February. Had a most disturbed night. We turned in about
2130 and I had been asleep about an hour when I woke up suddenly feeling
that something was wrong. My first thought was that the dogs had broken
into the snow house next door and were getting at the seals there. Kwalik,
Dennis’ new dog, which is always tied up, had been giving tongue earlier on
in the evening and I remarked that I thought there was some mischief afoot
among the dogs, but Dennis and J listened and could not hear anything so
thought all was O.K.
Dennis was awake by this time and we sat up and listened and soon made
out distinct noises of crunching. Cursing, we pulled on our boots and
gloves and jammed our caps on and burst out of our snow house in a rage to
find seven dogs having the time of their lives in Henry’s snow house, chewing
the seals. I armed myself with an ice spear handle and Dennis poked them
out one by one, and accompanied by much lurid language on both our parts,
I gave each dog a thundering good hammering. Got them all out as I thought
and then we blocked up the holes and pulled the komatiks up and turned them
over on top and packed an assortment of gear round and on it and went
back and started to turn in. We hadn’t been in more than a minute or two
when we again heard sounds of scrunching and both of us pulled our wind
proofs on this time as it had been a bit chilly before and dashed out again
thinking the dogs had broken in again. Nothing had been disturbed and the
dogs all seemed quiet so I got my torch and pulled away a komatik and looked
in and found that we had locked Lively, Dennis’ leader, in with the seals and
he was having the time of his life. He got what the others got and we hauled
the seals out and stored them in the spare tent. They did not get much off
them as they were frozen as hard as rocks and were smooth. Turned in and
brewed a mug of cocoa as we were both very hoarse and thirsty after all
Ly!
§2 CHALLENGER
our vocal and muscular efforts. It was midnight by this time and we spent a
peaceful night only to wake up and find it blowing like hell and drifting hard,
cutting down visibility to about 200 yards,
Blew hard all day. What a country!
Monday, 26th February, Another wasted day as it continued to blow like
hell from the west and then veered to the north-west from which direction
the drift was much worse. Dennis and I spent a lot of the forenoon repairing
Henry’s snow house and spent the afternoon reading.
Tuesday, 27th February. A more or less decent day for a change during
which we managed to do a certain amount of work. Marlowe and I went up
Noazunaluk and a pretty perilous ascent and descent it was too. I had to cut
steps on the snow slope which was as hard and as slippery as ice and one
false step and one would have careened over either side and had a vertical
drop of about 400 feet. Observing was an infernally cold business and in
consequence a long one, taking three and a half hours for a job that under
ordinary conditions would only take about an hour. After every two or three
angles we had to stop and dance about and fling our arms in order to warm our
hands and feet. The main trouble is that one gets sweating hot running
alongside the komatik and climbing up the hills to the different stations, and
one’s duffles and socks which are by this time damp, freeze in one’s boots
and until you can get going again your feet are encased in ice. Every evening
when I take my boots off the duffles are frozen to the soles and take a lot
of getting out, and there is usually hoar frost in my socks as well, to add to
the gaiety of nations. Got back to camp about 1730 to find Henry had got
back from Nain and brought back all the odds and ends sent for as well as a
nice present in the shape of smoked trout from Mr. Grubb, a delicacy he
knows I love.
Wednesday, 28th February. A peculiarly bloodstained day. It was blowing
fairly hard with a lot of low drift, but as it was beginning to cloud up I thought
the wind would probably drop, so we made a start. The trip out to Central
Island was foul, so much snow drifting that we could hardly open our eyes.
Having climbed the hill we were out of the drift and the wind seemed not too
bad until Marlowe and I tried to erect the windbreak. It was all we could do
to hold onto it and when we finally got it up, the guys parted, and they were
made of brand new stuff too. I gave it up as hopeless and, as the wind had
increased, went across to the island where Dennis was observing only to
find that he had been more lucky. His little island was more or less sheltered
by Aulatsevik and so he had managed to observe. I did a bit of coastlining and
shot up a few marks but it was a far from pleasant job as we were working
up wind and it got so bad that I eventually packed up at 1500 and returned to
camp. I got the snow house cleared out and cut up the floor and re-levelled
it and put down spruce branches as beds for Dennis and me, as I had had
to send Henry to Black Island this morning with our sleeping bags and
deerskins, they having got sopping wet through the snow melting under our
bodies. He got back about 1900 and now we are most comfortable and the
beds feel like feather ones with the spruce under us,
——
SPRING IN THE NORTH 53
A calamity occurred while we were both in the spare tent drying our
clothes, some of the dogs breaking into the snow house and eating up all
our smoked trout. In addition they removed my small camera which was in
a sealskin case and chewed up half the case, but luckily did not damage the
camera. I could forgive them this everlasting breaking into places to find
something to eat if they were badly fed, but they are better fed than any dogs
on the coast and, if I catch one of them at it, and I know the two ringleaders
in all these peccadilloes, they will rue it for some time to come.
Good Friday fell on 30th March and, while members of the
party were attending the Church service, the weather turned
suddenly mild with heavy rain and soon there was much slush
underfoot; by Sunday, when the band climbed to the church roof
to give a concert, all the snow had gone from it. Spring was
coming to Labrador. The snow storms still came in the following
weeks, but the snow was soft and wet, making poor going for
sledging; the komatiks proceeded slowly and the men waded
knee deep beside them.
During the long winter months those who did little travelling
spoke of the spring with delight as one would speak of the coming
of spring during the dark months of an English winter, but to men
like Willie and Joe Ford, who spent their lives hunting and
trapping, the spring held no delusions and they said so. Willie
Ford said he loathed the spring, the going was nearly always bad
and one suffered from a blistered face and cracked lips due to
the heat from the sun being reflected by the snow. Even when
snow was absent there was water about a foot deep covering the
ice, through which the dogs had to wade. Baker describes in his
diary travelling in the spring snow: “The speed of travel was the
speed of the dogs . . . as the poor beasties were belly deep the
whole time and they had to lift their feet out of each step as the
snow was too cloggy for them to push through. Walking along-
side was no joy, plod, plod, the whole time and nearly always
knee-deep . . . | found it was 5 p.m. and we had taken 7 hours
to do 10 miles.’
Doc stayed in Nain for the time being as the whole settlement
were down with sore throats and a mild type of influenza, and
he had a busy time going from house to house, visiting his
patients. Falling rain and melting snow now prevented the
building of snow houses and the tents again became the only
shelter for the camp parties. Everything got wet, the sleeping
54 CHALLENGER
bags, the deerskin rugs and all the clothes they wore. The edge
of the sea ice came slowly nearer to the coast during April, and
it was not uncommon to break through the ice when travelling
along the heads of the coves where fresh-water streams were
coming down. Occasionally a sharp frost during the night would
improve conditions for a few hours, but a thin film of ice would
form over the water lying on the sea ice and through this the
dogs’ feet would break at every step making them dance like cats
on hot bricks and laming them for days to come. No, nobody
who travelled felt well disposed towards the spring.
The seals were beginning to come up through the holes ap-
pearing in the sea ice, where they lay close to the openings. The
dogs had fared badly in recent weeks and whenever these seals
were seen attempts were made to stalk and shoot them either from
behind the ‘billycaters’ or by crawling out over the bare ice, clad
in white and protected by a white vertical screen pushed ahead
of the crawler. But time and time again the seals became alert
and dived into the holes, and even when wounded they sometimes
managed to slither in before the hunters running across the ice
could get to them. Eventually, however, patience was rewarded
and, on such occasions, the dogs fed well.
In early May it became necessary to lash a boat on top of each
komatik and in this all the camp and surveying gear was stowed,
so that in the event of breaking through or having to cross deep
water lying on the sea ice, the komatik and the ‘flat’, as the boat
was called, would keep afloat. It was a peculiar experience for
the travellers to sit in the bows of a boat, the surrounding water
being above the top of the komatik, while they looked ahead at
the wading dogs towing this amphibian.
So with their faces covered in vaseline, their clothes sodden
and their tempers frayed, the party worked on through the spring,
more coastline being plotted, more topography being mapped as
the outline picture of the coast grew and grew in readiness for
the ship’s return, when she would complete the work by sounding
out the runs, the bays and the deep-water channels leading to the
open sea.
On 22nd May the last survey camp of the winter was established,
this time in a trapper’s hut on Bridges Run. The brooks and the
runs were opening up and every day detours to avoid open water
OP eg Fe Se Ree
SPRING IN THE NORTH os
became longer and longer and on Monday, 4th June, it was
decided that komatik travel was no longer economical and the
final return to Base Camp was ordered. Small paying off pennants,
such as are hoisted by a ship at the end of a commission, were
hoisted in the bows of the two flats, and the drivers beat frying
pans to encourage the dogs. They left Bridges Run shack at 10
o’clock and the going was surprisingly good after an overnight
frost, although the komatiks were afloat from time to time.
Racing down the bay to Nain with the pennants flying and the
pans beating, the two komatiks made a brave sight to the watchers
in the settlement. The long sledging season was over, and the
next few days were spent in disposing of the dogs to their
original owners or those who wished to buy them.
At the end of June the ice was breaking up everywhere in
the bays and in the runs. Every traveller coming in brought news
of new cracks and openings in the sea ice. A message had been
received that Bingham was required to go to England at the
earliest possible date to join an expedition going to the Antarctic,
and so Doc and Buck now turned their attention to this matter.
The steamer Kyle would come north as far as Hopedale as soon
as conditions made this possible but it would be necessary to have
a boat to get south from Nain to Hopedale. Negotiations were
commenced with one or two settlers who were known to have
boats and finally it was agreed that John Voisey’s would be in the
water by the evening of 27th June, and that Buck and Bingham
would set out in this boat with Waldo, another of the settlers,
before high water on the following afternoon so that they would
catch the tide going out through the runs.
At first a few floating pans of ice were met, but once clear of
the Bridges Run the water was quite clear with fine weather.
The boat party landed on Achpitok Island about half-past eight
at night, lit a fire and cooked a meal, going on southwards an
hour later. The boat was an open one with an engine, which,
as in all other boats on the Labrador coast, was extremely tem-
peramental, and the hull leaked. Not long after leaving Achpitok
Island she broke down, and Waldo worked on the engine for
an hour and a half while the water in the bilge slopped miserably
from side to side as the boat lolled in the swell and Buck kept
the hand pump going steadily. Eventually the boat got going again
56 CHALLENGER
and passed through Shoal Tickle at midnight as the moon rose
to light up the bleak landscape, and a cold northerly wind began
to blow.
The boat party reached the H.B.C. post at Davis Inlet at 4.30
in the morning where they went ashore to shake Peters, the
trader, no time being considered unusual for travellers to call in
these parts, where each tiny settlement or hut is an oasis of
warmth and comfort. Peters was away but the post servant’s wife
turned out, opened up the house and cooked them a good break-
fast before they went on via Big Bay, Black Point, through Windy
Tickle and on south to Hopedale, which they reached at 3.30 in
the afternoon, completely worn out after 25 hours’ travelling
without sleep and with a bitter north wind blowing for most of
the journey.
There was no news yet in the settlement of the arrival of the
Kyle although the ice was clear and she was expected daily. The
time of waiting was spent in trout fishing and in kayaking, and
Buck had a kayak made for him to take north. The Labrador
summer was beginning, the country was opening up, and visitors
arriving. First came Macmillan, bound for Baffn Land to watch
the birds nesting, then an American was landed from a schooner
to spend the summer in a search for skulls and Eskimo remains,
and then followed the Fort Garry, the Hudson Bay Company
schooner, on her way north to collect the winter haul of furs.
At last, on 9th July, came the Kyle. Bingham could embark for
Newfoundland and Buck must head north again by boat.
Baker had left Dennis in Nain to carry on the work from the
schooner Mary Nolander, loaned by Amos Voisey; she was twin
masted, with an auxiliary engine. But Dennis had a tale of woe
to tell when Buck got back to Nain; the engine would not go at
all, mainly because one of the pistons did not even fit the cylinder,
she sailed very badly as all the weight was aft and the sails them-
selves were rotten, and of course she leaked like a sieve. So
now she was beached again, and while old Amos Fry, a settler,
caulked the seams of the hull and pitched the bottom, Buck and
Stevenson struggled to fit another engine, loaned by Mr. Grubb.
But without cutting away large sections of the engine bedplate
this could not be done so it was decided to rely upon sails alone.
There were still a few important angles to be observed at the
SPRING IN THE NORTH S7
stations on the outer islands, and a number of stone cairns erected
and fixed during the winter must be whitewashed in readiness
for use as marks by the ship.
Without the assistance of many of the friends made during the
winter the party might never have completed this last important
part of the work. Mary Nolander, which became a floating and just
mobile survey camp, would only sail in half a gale and relied upon
tows given to her by various settlers who were going out to their
fishing huts by motor boat. But these boats themselves were often
in trouble, and it was a common sight to see the schooner under
way being towed by two motor boats, only one of which ever
seemed to be going at any one time, while the driver of the other
was buried deep in her engine. Amos Voisey stood at the
schooner’s wheel looking, in his peaked nautical cap and heavy
untrimmed moustache, like some whaling skipper of earlier days.
Every day was a struggle, either sailing this cranky vessel or as-
sisting some good Samaritan to extract quantities of sand from
his carburettor so that he might help to: tow the schooner. But
the struggle was worth it and the last tasks of the winter party
were eventually completed before Challenger arrived.
Challenger had meanwhile spent the lie-up in Portsmouth and
sailed again for the Grenadines in mid-April, 1934. During the
time at Portsmouth a number of officers and men who had been
two years in the ship were relieved, but Commander Wyatt,
knowing the Labrador coast, stayed on in command. Also during
the lie-up one of the ship’s sounding boats was fitted with an
echo sounding machine—the first time Challenger carried such a
boat; the days of hand lead sounding in boats were beginning
to pass away. This innovation had far-reaching effects in the Sur-
veying Service during the next few years: the daily output by
boats was greatly increased, but so also was the amount of work
to be done by the officers when they returned to the ship at
nightfall and had to ‘ink in’ all the sounding work they had
completed during the day.
Economy had once again stepped into the life of Challenger.
The Labrador survey was proving extremely expensive and during
this winter was under discussion in the Admiralty. The expense
did not seem to be justified in view of the few ships likely to
58 CHALLENGER
visit the area in the foreseeable future, so it was reluctantly
decided that the survey in the vicinity of Nain should be brought
to a close during the coming season and only the possible shipping
routes sounded. This, together with the soundings which had been
taken during the ship’s passages along the coast, were considered
to be a very satisfactory addition to the hydrographic knowledge
of the coast of Labrador. But it was also decided to survey the
relatively important harbour of Cartwright before the end of the
coming season. This decision to discontinue the Labrador Survey
was not easily reached nor was it easily accepted by the authorities
and others in Newfoundland and on the Labrador coast.
By early May the ship was anchored off the now familiar village
of Hillsborough, Carriacou, in the Grenadines, and after a week-
end there renewing old acquaintances she landed a camp party
with both sounding boats on Little St. Vincent to carry on to the
eastward the work commenced last year. The usual routine of
coast marking and triangulation went forward and ship sounding
began, the ship visiting St. George’s, Grenada, for an occasional
week-end’s leave, and Trinidad to take on fuel.
In July the Grenadines survey was broken off and the ship
headed once again for Labrador, calling at Halifax for fuel and
reaching Nain on 23rd July. There was less ice on the coast than
in former years and the passage north was comparatively simple.
Buck and Dennis were at their supper on this evening when
someone rushed in and shouted something unintelligible which,
on investigation, was found to be news that Challenger was round-
ing Nuvutannak, and she came to anchor at 7.15 p.m. off Nain.
Buck and Dennis were out in their kayak waiting for her before
she anchored, and alongside and onboard the moment she let go.
There was a great reunion party, but there were many faces new
to the two who had left Challenger nearly nine months before.
It was 1 o'clock in the morning when the kayak left for the shore.
About three weeks later the Kyle arrived at Nain bringing with
her two large policemen to arrest Renatus. They came to see
Baker in Challenger and asked where his prisoner was confined.
To their amazement Buck pointed to a figure peacefully chopping
wood on the shore. They soon had him under arrest, for Renatus
had given Baker his word that he would give no trouble, and
under lock and key in the Kyle. Buck followed a few hours later
SHISNOHMONS ONICTING SNLVNAYU
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SPRING IN THE NORTH 59
to take passage to Newfoundland, for he was bound for home.
The Nain Band came out in a boat and played farewell tunes as
they circled the Kyle, finally tackling “God Save the King’ as she
sailed away.
There was a Justice of the Peace onboard Kyle and the trial
of Renatus was arranged. It was expected that Baker would
prosecute, but to the surprise of the Court Baker elected to
defend Renatus as he had no other onboard who could befriend
him. Renatus’ defence was that he had caused the disturbances
at Hebron as he thought the Eskimos were being badly treated
by the trader there and he wished to cause an investigation of these
injustices. He was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment and
Buck and Renatus parted firm and lasting friends.
Challenger completed the survey by sounding out a good ap-
proach channel to Nain from seaward from the vicinity of the
Hen and Chicken Islands and by sounding the coastal passages
southward from Nain. She carried out a running survey through
the Port Manvers Run, and sounded out a narrow route south-
wards from Port Manvers through the labyrinth of islands which
had been mapped by the winter party outside Aulatsevik.
The latter part of the season was spent doing a survey of Cart-
wright Harbour and approaches, both boats being left in camp
there to progress the work while the ship visited Quebec for fuel
and stores, this being a pleasant change from Halifax which the
ship’s company now knew so well. On 15th November, with the
survey of Cartwright complete, Challenger sailed away from
Labrador for the last time, reaching Portsmouth on 24th Noy-
ember, 1934.
VI
The West Indies
N March, 1935, Lieutenant-Commander Alun Jones relieved
Wyatt in command of Challenger and Wyatt went to the
surveying ship Flinders and Deane accompanied him. Jones,
a Welshman, was well known in surveying circles for his energy
and great output of work, and there was certainly plenty to be
done in the next two years in the West Indies.
The Labrador surveys being finished, the whole of the 1935
season was to be spent in the West Indies. The anchorages in
the Grenadines were not yet completed, so once again the ship
anchored off Hillsborough, Carriacou, on 26th April, the remain-
der of the month being spent in getting the survey in hand and in
establishing the necessary camps. There was still some sounding
and topography to be completed at Carriacou, and a detached
party was established on Tobago Cays to commence the surveys
there. During June, both boats were working from the camp on
Tobago Cays while the ship carried on steadily with the sounding
in the deeper water.
Some of the hill marks had been left the previous year, and
once these had been re-flagged they were used as sounding marks.
However, considerable trouble was found in making the fixes ‘go’
—fixes on different sets of marks gave differing positions. It was
after some searching and puzzling that the cause of this trouble
was found and it was due to the good relations which had been
established with the people of Hillsborough. In the ship’s absence
a hill fire had swept towards one of Challenger’s marks, which
the villagers had rescued in time and replaced after the fire had
passed by. It was only unfortunate that they had not replaced the
mark exactly.
To build up the triangulation a theodolite is used. In practice,
theodolite work is far from simple; the instrument must be
exactly levelled and a very light touch is necessary, though this
60
THE WEST INDIES 61
is sometimes hard to achieve when panting and sweating on a
jungle hilltop after a hard climb. The elements also make ob-
serving difficult on many occasions, a heat haze causing the dis-
tant mark to dance about in the field of view of the telescope,
while a high wind will shake the theodolite and throw it off level
despite the erection of wind-breaks. It is always a satisfactory
point in a survey when the theodolite observing has been com-
pleted, and the position of the marks relative to the origin having
been worked out, they are plotted and ringed with convincing
red circles on the plotting sheet. Even the plotting needs skill
and speed, for in the tropics the paper on which the sheet is
plotted may alter its shape from day to day, owing to the differing
temperature and moisture of the air.
One day, Lieutenant R. H. Griffiths was away on Carriacou
with a theodolite and was being hampered in his observations by
a crowd of West Indian girls who were peering inquisitively into
the object end of the theodolite telescope. They thought he was
taking photographs of them and they were all anxious to be in
the picture. Griffiths hit upon the idea of letting an intelligent-
looking male bystander look through the theodolite telescope and
then got him to explain to the crowd of women and girls that the
officer could see them all ‘upside down’, as in fact the image seen
through a theodolite is always inverted. There was immediate
consternation, and all at once stood aside except for one large
‘mammie’ carrying a huge basket on her head who refused to
move, and when upbraided by her fellows for her boldness and
vulgarity, she said loudly, “I don’t mind; I’m not like you common
women—I wear drawers.’
Once the copies of the various portions of the plotting sheet
have been made by transferring the positions of the stations on
to paper pasted on field-boards, the fieldwork itself begins.
Fieldwork consists of ship and boat sounding and coastlining.
During all these operations the location of details is done by the
observer fixing his position by sextant and station pointers, the
theory of the latter being as follows: If an observer takes a
horizontal angle between two fixed points he knows that his
position will lie somewhere along the circumference of a circle
passing through these two points. If, at the same time, he observes
62 CHALLENGER
the angle between one of these fixed points, and a third, then
he knows that his position will lie at the point of intersection of
the two circles, the diameters of which are determined from the
angles which he has observed.
To fix the coastline the surveyor walks along the shoreline,
stopping at each alteration of direction of the coast, when he
fixes his position by observing the horizontal angles between three
well-selected triangulation stations or secondary marks. He can
then plot his position with a pair of station pointers, an instru-
ment with three long metal arms, two of which can be moved
either side of the central fixed arm to set on the angles observed
by the sextant; and when the angles are set the station pointers
can be moved on the field-board until the three arms pass through
the three selected stations. The observer’s position is then in-
dicated by a small V cut at the centre of the station pointer.
When a number of such fixes have been dotted, circled, and
numbered in pencil, they can be joined up rather as children
connect up numbered positions on a blank drawing featured in
children’s papers and find they have drawn an ostrich or a boy
wheeling a barrow. The surveyor’s less exciting picture will be
the coastline.
It was a pleasant enough occupation to go for a day’s coastlining
on an island in the Grenadines. Accompanied by a surveying
recorder companion, the surveyor walked the shoreline, the
turning of each small point of land opening up fascinating new
vistas—a yellow, sandy, palm-fringed beach; a rocky cove with
sparkling blue water heaving towards the rocks; the long thin
white line of breakers on the windward side of the pale green
reef; a hutted village beneath the trees. From such huts came the
smiling people to see what strange ‘looking’ and writing was
going on as the surveyor sketched in his field book the details of
the shore or the trees and huts behind. The children followed
for a mile or so and felt well rewarded when allowed to peer
through the telescope of the sextant, through which they probably
saw nothing. A halt for a sandwich lunch in a cool palm grove,
a bathe, and then on and on along the shore the coastliners went
until the boat came in through the surf to collect them and take
them back to the ship; onboard the weary pair would plot and
ink in the day’s work and feel, over an iced whisky or a tot of
THE WEST INDIES 63
rum, that they had added some small contribution of their own
to the vast whole of the world’s maps.
Every day the ship and the boats were slowly covering the sea
with lines of soundings. Backwards and forwards they went, first
running in towards the shore, then to seaward again; the boats
worked along the coast in the shallower water of less than ten
fathoms or so, the ship carrying on the sounding to seaward of
the boat’s limits. The sextant and station pointer method of fixing
is used in such cases but as the boats and the ship are moving an
officer and a recorder take the two horizontal angles simulta-
neously at the word ‘Fix’, which is heard at frequent and regular
Three fixed marks
used for fixing. ty, ,
=
Angle taken
by second observer
Angle taken
by first observer
Theory of station pointer fixing
intervals throughout every long day’s sounding. The lines along
which it is proposed to sound are drawn on the field-board, and
by steering the appropriate course, and by making small altera-
tions whenever a fix shows that the ship or boat is being set off
the line, an endeavour is made to follow the planned lines which
will give a regular sounding coverage of the area.
Ocean currents are caused by the friction of wind upon the
surface of the sea, and the North-East and South-East Trade Winds
set up westerly-moving currents north and south of the equator
respectively. These great equatorial currents continue westwards
64 CHALLENGER
until they meet the land, when they are deflected to the right
in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemi-
sphere, setting up great clockwise current movements in the
North Atlantic and North Pacific, and anti-clockwise movements
in the South Atlantic, South Pacific and Indian Ocean. These
movements carry cold water along the eastern sides of the three
great oceans towards the equator to take the place of the west-
ward-flowing water, and this does much to account for the lack
of coral growth in these regions, for the coral polyp does not
endure in a temperature of less than 20°C.
The coral polyp, which must be regarded as a sea anemone
which lives and multiplies by extracting lime from sea water,
thrives therefore in the western parts of the great oceans, between
the latitudes 30 North and 30 South, where the water is warm
enough for its tastes.
The coral reefs, which are built up of the countless calcareous
skeletons of coral polyps, will often build out more readily to
windward of an island where abundant ‘food’ is brought by the
water of the west-flowing current. Thus in the Grenadines great
areas of reefs grow out to the eastward, leaving behind them bays
and passages between themselves and the land; whereas on the
western side of the islands there are practically no reefs.
The Trade Winds were blowing strongly on to the reef-fringed
eastern side of the Grenadines in May and June, and no inshore
work was possible in this area until the winds eased off about the
middle of August. As soon as this happened, work on the western
side of the islands was suspended, a camp was established at Little
St. Vincent, and both the sounding boats concentrated on the
weather side of the reefs during a spell of calmer weather.
So the survey went on, the Captain constantly thinking ahead
and planning to make the most of changing weather conditions,
his First Lieutenant putting his plans into practice, arranging for
men to go into camp, for stores and fuel to be landed, while the
Engineer Officer seized every opportunity to carry out mainten-
ance work on his boats, which ceased running only for a few hours
at the week-ends.
In June, the Captain was promoted in the Half-Yearly Pro-
motions to Commander, and after the customary celebrations
THE WEST INDIES 65
onboard he ordered a ‘brass hat’ from Gieves, the well-known
naval tailor of London. It took two months, however, before this
necessary item of uniform reached the ship in Grenada, and the
Captain had been wearing it only a fortnight before it blew
overboard in a sudden squall while the ship sailed from St.
George’s. For a further two months the Captain had to revert
to his plain-peaked cap which he had worn as Lieutenant-Com-
mander.
About ten days later the Captain was going ashore at Grenada
when he saw a rascally native boatman wearing the missing
‘brass hat’, only a little green in places as a result of its immersion
in sea water. This almost naked boatman proudly continued to
wear the hat as he plied for hire round the ship during her
subsequent visits to Grenada, he being the Commander while the
Captain remained a ‘two-and-a-half’.
There were other diversions to be fitted in with the minimum
of delay to the general progress of the survey; His Excellency
the Governor of the Windward Islands requested a passage from
St. George’s, Grenada, to Kingstown, St. Vincent, and this was
carried out with the appropriate ceremony; the ship had to visit
Trinidad for oil; the schooner Jane Victoria was stranded on a reef
off the east coast of Carriacou and was refloated by Challenger ;
the ship’s divers recovered 30 fathom of anchor cable lost by
S.S. Cornwallis off St. George’s ; four days’ summer leave was given
to the crew, who billeted themselves in the Quarantine Station
for the purpose. Her Majesty’s Surveying Ships are, first and
foremost, vessels of the Royal Navy, and as such expect from
time to time to carry out duties more normal to General Service
Ships.
On Monday, 14th October, the Governor of the Windward
Islands was once again embarked, and while the boats’ crews in
camp at Tyrell Bay were completing the Grenadines survey, His
Excellency visited in Challenger some of the smaller islands of the
Windward Group. Finally he landed at Kingstown, St. Vincent,
on 17th October, where he was to attend a Legislative Council
meeting to put through certain changes in legislation.
Ever since the commencement of the Italian-Ethiopian dispute,
feeling had been very tense among the peoples of the Windward
66 CHALLENGER
Group and Trinidad. A very great interest had been taken by the
lower classes in this colonial war, which was seen as a racial
conflict between Black and White. Employment conditions in
the Islands were not good at this time and the working-class
people were only too ready to listen to the street orators as they
reviled the Whites for doing nothing to stop Mussolini murdering
Africans. One orator had held up a white and a black fowl, and
his audience became wildly excited when he struck the head from
the white bird as a symbol of what would happen soon to all
Whites who were standing aside in the African War.
The Governor’s visit to St. Vincent was to introduce new
tariffs which were not designed to hit the poorer classes but were
to be a charge on the middle-men. Rumours of these new taxes
circulating before the Legislative Council met, some of the store
proprietors at once put up their prices; on some commodities
such as matches they increased the price by roo per cent, while
the prices of salt-fish and other staple items of diet of the working
classes were increased in varying amounts.
In their present unsettled mood the working-class people were
thus bitter and hostile before His Excellency met the Council
to discuss the tariffs. Whilst the meeting was taking place, mur-
murings were heard outside the Courthouse, and soon a peti-
tion was sent in, requesting His Excellency to give a personal
interview to one of the leading members of the Representative
Government Association which had been formed about three
years previously, and which had gradually become highly critical
of all Government actions. The Governor intimated that he would
meet the petitioner at the conclusion of the Council meeting, but
by now the murmurings outside had developed into an uproar,
which the Governor then attempted to quell by going outside
himself to face the crowds and address them in person. The crowd
nearest about him began to calm down as he started to speak in
a steady voice, but as noise on the outskirts of the crowd made
it difficult for him to be heard, His Excellency suggested that a
deputation from the crowd should enter the Courthouse with
him to state their case. As soon as the Courthouse doors were
opened the mob surged in, and it now became obvious that the
great majority were well primed with rum and were quite
unprepared to listen to reason.
THE WEST INDIES 67
The reading of the Riot Act by the Chief Justice had little effect,
and the rioters, now armed with sticks and stones, divided their
forces into three main bodies, more by chance than by organisa-
tion. One section went to the prison, broke down the gates and
released some of the prisoners, severely manhandling one of the
warders in the process. The second section cut the cables at the
Cable Offices and the remainder of the rioters commenced
looting the stores.
The police were by now armed and they fired a round over the
heads of the looters. This had no effect and so orders were given
to fire low at this section of the mob. Most of the casualties
occurred at this stage, and the looters now began to filter up the
side streets, taking their booty with them.
There was sporadic looting and uproar in the outskirts of the
town throughout the day, when property was damaged and
stones were thrown.
The wires leading from the Cable Office having been cut, no
signal could be sent to the outside world from there. However,
the A.D.C. to the Governor and a member of the Cable Company
managed to find their way on foot through the skirmishing on the
outskirts of the town and along the shore to the cable hut which
was still intact, and were there able to pass a message to Grenada
calling for assistance. They were just in time, as the mob cut
the wires outside the hut only a few minutes after the signal had
gone out.
Challenger was carrying out a survey of the harbour at St.
George’s, Grenada, being anchored in the harbour, with her boats
and parties away from the ship on the survey. To her came the
message from Kingstown. The general boats’ recall signal was
hoisted at the yardarm and the various parties of officers and men
hurried back to the ship. Such a recall is unusual during the course
of a fine surveying day, and speculation as to its meaning was in-
tense among the boats’ crews as they collected the coastline parties
and made for the ship. Theories ranged from a major error having
been found in the triangulation to an order having been received
onboard to return at once to Portsmouth. One lovelorn ordinary
seaman was already imagining himself meeting his girl on Farewell
Jetty at Pompey when he was rudely awakened to the fact that he
should be handling his boat-hook as the boat came alongside.
68 CHALLENGER
The ship sailed as soon as all boats were hoisted and a number
of Grenada police had been embarked. Steaming at her best speed
she came into Kingstown in the dark and anchored off the town
by midnight.
A United States newspaper report of this rush to St. Vincent
caused amusement onboard when the papers were received: ‘The
battle cruiser Challenger, travelling at high speed, rushed to the
Island, with the Marines formed up on the quarterdeck with
bayonets fixed, ready for landing, and the guns manned and
trained in readiness for action.’ Challenger’s maximum speed at
this time was about ten knots, while her armament consisted of
12 rifles, 6 revolvers and 6 cutlasses.
The Navy does not exist to do police duties ashore, and on
occasions such as this when it is called upon to aid the Civil
Power, it is loathe to take action unless it is clear that the situa-
tion is beyond the control of the local police. The Navy’s
strength is more often in the sobering effect which the presence
of a well-disciplined force always has upon an excited population.
The Senior Naval Officer must discuss the situation with the local
authorities and decide the most suitable réle for the Navy to play.
And so at about 1 o’clock in the morning, Commander Alun
Jones was reporting Challenger’s arrival to His Excellency the
Governor, who was conducting operations from the Police Head-
quarters. It was decided that the men of Challenger would relieve
the police of guard duties, enabling more police to take action
against the rioters. Challenger took over responsibility for guarding
the Police Barracks, the Power Station, the Cable Offices and
the Telephone Exchange, and parties of officers and men from
the ship who had been quietly preparing onboard were soon
marching through the dark streets on their way to take up their
stations. One party came face to face with a priest who was level-
ling an old blunderbuss at them; he had thought the tramp of feet
indicated the approach of a well-organised section of the mob
coming to loot the treasures of his church.
A wireless signal station was established in the Police Head-
quarters which kept in touch with Challenger throughout the
week, while the ship’s Medical Officer was kept busy assisting
with the casualties in the hospital. But perhaps Challenger’s great-
est part in the quelling of the riots was the steadying eftect brought
THE WEST INDIES 69
about by the ship’s company being granted leave in the evenings
and their playing of football and cricket, at first among themselves
and later against local teams. This was by no means the first
occasion on which the Navy has employed football and cricket
to restore a sense of normality to an excited populace.
The local police, aided by the Grenada police who had arrived
in Challenger, were now able to turn their full attention to the
rioters in the outlying country districts. Within a very few days
all was quiet again and the shopkeepers were taking down the
boards from their shop fronts and glass and litter were being re-
moved from the streets. Life became normal again in Kingstown.
Soon after Challenger’s arrival the Chief of Police had cracked
up under very considerable strain and the Captain was asked to
relieve him temporarily. This meant all-night duty at the Police
Headquarters.
About 6.30 a.m., a policeman brought in a person accused of
looting. The night had been a busy one at the H.Q. and the
situation in the town at the time was very tense. The prisoner
was one of the aboriginals of St. Vincent, people who live in
the dense jungle in the highland interior of the island. They
speak no English and never wear clothes ; they seldom visit civilisa-
tion; but they had heard vaguely of the riots and a few of them
had ventured into the towns hoping desperately for food, and this
aboriginal indicated by signs that it was food he had in the parcel
he was carrying. The bundle was ordered to be opened in front
of Commander Alun Jones, and a lady’s pink boned corset was all
that it contained—little use as food or clothing for this miserable,
naked man, who stood trembling before his captors.
Six days after arriving at Kingstown, at 3 o'clock in the morn-
ing, Challenger crept away like a white ghost, and by ro a.m. the
surveying boats were being lowered in Grenada Harbour. A day
or so later, Commander Alun Jones received a letter from His
Excellency the Governor of the Windward Islands thanking
Challenger for her valuable assistance to the Administration in its
efforts to restore law and order, and expressing his sincere ap-
preciation of the good conduct and discipline of her ship’s com-
pany and the friendly relations with the people of Grenada and
the Grenadines which had existed throughout her numerous visits.
Challenger again acted as policeman at the St. Lucia coal strike
Jo CHALLENGER
a month or so later, and then went to Trinidad for oil fuel prior
to returning to England. At the last minute a survey was ordered
in Dominica, off a small village called Portsmouth at the north-
westward end of the island. Commander Alun Jones enjoyed
sending his final departure signal to the Commander-in-Chief
West Indies Station—‘ Challenger left Portsmouth for Portsmouth,’
it read. But no word came from the C.-in-C. to indicate whether
he appreciated the coincidence or put it down to a signalman’s
error.
Outward bound again after the lie-up in May, 1936, the usual
water sampling and temperature observations were carried out
in the Atlantic. The programme of surveys for this season was
an extensive one in the vicinity of Trinidad. The island of Trini-
dad lies to the eastward of the coast of Venezuela, enclosing by
two long arms running to the west a great shallow area between
the island and the mainland. This is the Gulf of Paria, where the
depths of water vary from 8 to 15 fathoms and below which a num-
ber of oil companies were at this time prospecting with a view
to drilling beneath the sea for oil.
Challenger still had on the bridge the type of echo sounding
machine with which the operator listens for the returning echo.
The shallow floor of the Gulf of Paria is composed of soft, grey
mud, which made the returning echo impossible to hear. How-
ever, the new boat’s set which had now been fitted recorded the
soundings on iodised paper in a similar manner to the deep water
set carried in the ship. In the boat set the small returning echo
was amplified on receipt from the sea-bed before the paper was
marked. So it was decided that the new boat’s set must be in-
stalled in the ship to get the best results when ship sounding over
this soft, shallow bottom. The transmitter and the receiver of
this set, which can be imagined as the speaker and receiver of a
telephone, are fitted inside the hull of the boat in tanks which
are filled with fresh water. When the set was moved into the
ship these tanks posed a problem, until Lieutenant Menzies, the
Navigating Officer, thought of using upturned buckets welded to
the ship’s hull which housed the transmitter and receiver
excellently.
This echo set worked well and the survey went on apace.
THE WEST INDIES JI
Frequent samples of the bottom were taken with special scoops,
such samples being much in demand by the oil prospectors.
As the days passed, the ship required more and more propeller
revolutions to push her along at the speed necessary to carry out
the sounding work; it was seen that a thick growth of barnacles
clustered along the water-line. The ship’s divers went down to
find the whole hull thickly covered with barnacle growth,
choking the inlets through which water is taken into the ship to
condense the used steam, and to circulate around the cooling plant.
Serious boiler defects occurred about this time, first in one
boiler and the following day in the other. An inspection showed
that it would be dangerous in the extreme to continue steaming.
Bermuda was the nearest Naval Base, and arrangements had to be
made to tow the ship there for the fitting of new furnaces, which
would be a lengthy business. An oiler of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary,
the Celerol, eventually came to Port of Spain and commenced this
long tow of nearly 2000 miles. Things went well during the tow,
the speed getting gradually faster and faster despite signals from
Challenger calling for speed to be reduced. The passage took just
over a week, the two ships arriving at Bermuda on 10th November.
It was rumoured there that the Captain of Celerol had been sick
for the latter part of the tow and that the First Officer, who had
taken over, had a girl friend in Bermuda who was thus responsible
for the very great despatch with which the stricken Challenger
was hauled to her destination.
The ship was docked on arrival so that the full extent of the
growth on the hull could be seen. It was completely composed of
shell growth, there being no trace of weed of any kind.
Here at Bermuda Challenger lay, immobile herself until new
furnaces arrived from England, which was not until 31st May,
1937. But although the ship may have been idle, her officers and
men were far from being inactive. There is always surveying to
be done and here was no exception. The hydrographic surveyor
is ready to improvise and to take on local craft to expedite his
labours. Camp parties were established about the Bermuda group
of islands and with the aid of local boats which had been pressed
into service to augment the work of the ship’s boats, a great area
of Bermuda, including the main entrance through the reef and
the harbour at St. George’s, was surveyed.
Fi2. CHALLENGER
On 2oth July, 1937, Challenger sailed from Bermuda for Ports-
mouth, Commander Baker having returned to the ship to take
over command from Jones. She re-commissioned in Portsmouth
and returned to Trinidad to complete the surveys in that area.
This work in the Gulf of Paria was finished by February, 1938,
the ship having spent Christmas alongside the new wharf being
constructed at Port of Spain.
Surveys at Barbados were left to detached parties, while two
deep-sea sounding cruises were carried out and a visit made to
Bermuda for a quick docking to remove the barnacle growth that
had once more accumulated on the ship’s hull during her period
of working in the Gulf of Paria.
The Leeward and Windward Islands form a crescent from
Puerto Rico to Trinidad through which merchant ships use well-
known passages; and one of the most popular of these is the
Sombrero Channel east of the Virgin Islands and lying almost on
the direct route from England to the Panama Canal. A small,
low, dun coloured isle known as Sombrero Island lies in the
north-eastern approach to this channel, and a light upon it,
maintained by dues paid by British shipping companies, shows the
way through the island chain. To fix accurately this focal point
is of considerable importance, and Challenger’s last task in the
West Indies was to land an astrolabe observing party on this
island to take star sights to locate its accurate geographical
position.
When Challenger sailed from Sombrero for Portsmouth, she
left a part of the world of which her officers and men had many
happy memories of bathing picnics, sundrenched beaches, cool
rum drinks, and cheery parties with the many friends they had
made there. Life was good in the West Indies in the days before
the war. It was to be 12 years before Challenger returned to the
Caribbean where she had spent so much of her early life.
— ee eee
ae sa
Vil
Sandy Shores
sheets drawn and forwarded. These are the detailed and
very minutely drawn charts prepared by hand during the
lie-up period and carefully stored in the Admiralty for the use
of future generations of surveyors.
It is from such sheets that the cartographers in the Hydro-
graphic Department of the Admiralty compile Admiralty Charts.
The cartographer is unable to use all the soundings shown by the
surveyor so he must select with care those soundings which,
when shown on the published chart, will best indicate to the
navigator the trend of the sea-bed, the shallows and the deeps.
Nor must he include too many soundings or the mariner will be
unable to see the wood for the trees—the cartographer must
leave the sounding pattern open so that the navigator can plot his
courses clearly and insert his pencilled fixes.
A full-stop is thus inserted at the end of the season’s work and
the Hydrographic Instructions are studied so that the surveys for
the forthcoming season may be planned.
Challenger was now bound for the coast of Arabia, where the
winter months are more temperate than the shimmering summer
and thus generally more suitable for survey work. On 18th
October, 1938, she was heading down channel on one of those
grey, drizzling winter days with the visibility down to a mile or
so; through this misty curtain appeared from time to time a des-
troyer at sea on exercises, or an Atlantic liner inward bound for
Southampton, her passengers eagerly peering for their first sight
of the Isle of Wight.
Challenger followed the familiar run to the East so well known
to the naval man; to Gibraltar with its first feel of a foreign land
and yet still so English with its army garrison and familiar police
uniforms ; the sun on the water ; the smell of horses at the gharry
stands ; the oranges for sale in net bags made of some form of vine
73
Te lie-up was completed by mid-October and the fair
74. CHALLENGER
which have the habit of bursting and casting their contents upon
the waters as the sailor, who may have had just one too many,
gropes his way from the liberty boat on to the gangway; and the
female orchestras beating out the popular dance tunes of the day
which are a feature of naval night life at Gibraltar. Then on to
Malta’s Grand Harbour where Challenger was dwarfed by the grey
giants of the Mediterranean Fleet as she came in to berth below
the golden-yellow bastions of Fort St. Angelo; the steep climb
through the narrow, stepped streets which were thronged in those
days not only with people but with goats, to Strada Streta where
a sailor could lose himself in any one of the hundred bars which
existed only for his particular entertainment, the very names in-
viting his patronage—the Light Cruisers Bar, the Dreadnought,
the Royal Marine. On across the sunlight waters of the Mediter-
ranean until the High Light at Port Said was sighted above the
low landscape of yellow and white blocks of flats along the sea-
front; in past the long breakwater which is yearly being thrust
further and further to seaward in an endless struggle to arrest
the drift of the sediments carried eastward from the Nile Delta,
and which constantly threaten to close the entrance to the Suez
Canal; past the fishermen’s boats moored to the quayside, their
nets hanging to dry on the tall iron railings of the port area
whence carries to the passing ship the overwhelming smell of
fish.
After a night at Port Said Challenger moved into the canal with
a French pilot on the bridge. All that sunlit day she sailed steadily
southward, the pilot yarning with the Captain, giving him the
latest news of the canal, the changes in administration, the
difficulties of a recent passage with an unwieldy ship, life in Egypt
since the 1936 Treaty and above all now, in 1938, the threat of
war and its effect upon the vital link of the Suez Canal. Quietly
the orders were passed to the helmsman as each change of course
carried the ship south past Ismailia, that oasis with the green
lawns of the French Club running down to the canal bank like
sward beside an English river ; past the neat yellow signal stations
surrounded by their green belts of trees, where numbered boards,
cones and flags hoisted on the masts gave the pilot news of other
shipping moving in the canal; past Deversoir station into the
Bitter Lakes, their glassy surfaces stretching away to meet the
MAIN STREET, HILLSBOROUGH, CARRIACOU, GRENADINES
SANIGVNAYW9D
AHL NI ASVL
OIHdVUOOdOL
S WOATAUNS AHL
SANDY SHORES 5
sandy shores of the Sinai Desert; past gangs of Egyptian workers
reinforcing the canal banks, who paused in their labours to shout
ribaldries at the British sailors. Finally after dark the ship was out
in the Bay of Suez, the pilot was saying good-bye and Challenger
sailed into what was, for her, a new world—a world of blue seas
and brown shores, of sandy hills stretching upward and away to a
distant horizon; these hills have shape and form when the long
shadows of the morning are upon them but lie dun coloured and
featureless in the midday heat; a land where yellow land-tint
replaces green on the fair chart.
Masira Island, composed of a number of bare, stony brown hills,
is about 30 miles long and three or four miles wide, and lies some
8 to 10 miles off the coast of Oman in south-east Arabia, parallel
to the mainland. Between Masira and the coast is an area of reef-
studded water where it was hoped to find a channel leading to a
sheltered anchorage, which could be used when operations were
put in hand to build an airstrip and air station on the island. This
station was to act as a staging post on flights to the East, and is
now one of the loneliest postings an R.A.F. officer or man can be
offered.
In 1938 there was only the Arab population on Masira, living
in a few villages along the western shore and ruled by the Sheikh,
Khamis bin Hilal, who owed a distant and vague allegiance to the
Sultan of Muscat, with whom Great Britain has had a treaty of
protection for many years. So, before commencing the survey
of the Masira Channel, Challenger proceeded north to Muscat to
embark the Political Agent, Major Watts, so that he might be
taken to Masira to explain the proposed work to the Sheikh and
people of Masira. The Arab of the desert is suspicious, and sur-
veying vessels in the past have become embroiled in misunder-
standings with Arabs on remote shores, who have thought that
the flags erected on the triangulation stations bore political
significance.
The town of Muscat lies in a semi-circular bay surrounded by
rugged and barren mountains. The glaring white houses are
disposed around the bay like seats in the stalls of a theatre;
flanking the stage are two old Portuguese forts dominating the
blue sheltered water—the stage where the ship is anchored.
7
76 CHALLENGER
As it was impossible to locate the Sheikh after anchoring off
Masira the Captain and the Political Agent made contact with
the Headman of Dawa, and it was explained to him that the
survey marks must be left where they were placed until the ship
recovered them. The islanders were friendly from the beginning
and the ship’s medical officer, Surgeon Lieutenant Sloan Miller,
seeing their rheumy eyes, running sores and bad teeth, suggested
to Commander Baker that he might set up a camp near the village
where he could dispense medical treatment to those villagers
who were in need of it; at the same time this would further
friendly relations between the ship and the local people. This
relationship is greatly needed in countries where both wood and
cloth are scarce, as survey marks constructed of these materials
become a source of great temptation.
Whenever the Captain made enquiries for Sheikh Khamis bin
Hilal he had either ‘gone to Oman’ or was ‘away fishing’ ; how-
ever, Miller, with the aid of his interpreter, Hassan Ramzam,
gained the confidence of the 400 or so inhabitants of Dawa to an
amazing degree, being hailed as ‘Hakim’ by all, and one day the
Sheikh, hearing of the medical camp, arrived there to visit Miller.
Arrangements were made for the Sheikh to return to the camp
with his brother and the Head Man of Dawa on the following
Thursday. The Captain would be there to meet them and all
would then go onboard Challenger for a social visit.
At the last moment, however, the Sheikh’s heart must have
failed him for he arrived at the camp on Thursday with his
complete army, consisting of about eighty ruffianly looking Arabs
armed with an assortment of rifles of various ages and calibres,
and with a banner proudly floating above them as they approached.
The Medical Officer went out to meet this formidable party,
shook hands with the Sheikh and his brother and led the army
towards the tents where Buck, in full naval uniform, was waiting
to greet them. The Sheikh seemed ill-at-ease and made every
excuse possible for not coming onboard the ship. His advisers,
of whom there seemed to be a number, appeared to believe that
his departure onboard would end either in his drinking poisoned
coffee or in his being kidnapped. So the proposed visit to the ship
had to be abandoned, but the Captain was able to thank the
Sheikh personally for the fact that none of the survey marks
SANDY SHORES 7
had been touched during the course of Challenger’s work on
Masira.
It is sad to reflect that Sloan Miller, who had done so much
for these islanders of the Arabian coast, died at the hands of the
Egyptian mob in the Gezira Sporting Club in the post-war Cairo
riots.
Christmas was spent this year in Karachi, and on completing
the work at Masira, Challenger entered the Persian Gulf and sailed
into Khor Kaliya, the anchorage close south of Manama. This is
the seat of the Sheikh of Bahrein, an island having political treaties
with the United Kingdom, lying half-way up the southern side
of the Gulf, between the territory of the Sheikh of Qatar and the
northern coast of Saudi Arabia.
The California Standard Oil Company were at this time building
a refinery on the Saudi Arabian coast about 25 miles north-east
of Bahrein, whence oil was to be exported from the wharves
now being constructed on the east side of the long, low headland
of Ras at Tannura. To reach these new wharves it would be
necessary to navigate in through reefs, out of sight of land, for
a distance of about 50 miles along a little-surveyed channel.
Captain Clausing, of the oil company, had laid down some spar
buoys as a guide to himself when he piloted vessels in through
these reefs, but the courses he had to steer to clear the dangers
were not those he would have expected by studying the existing
chart. Challenger laid a large permanent surveying beacon at the
seaward limit of the channel and fixed it by star sights. Such
beacons carry huge flags 30 feet above the surface of the sea and
are moored with heavy anchors and many fathoms of wire rope.
They are used by surveyors as triangulation marks when working
out of sight of land, and the laying and recovering of these
cumbersome buoys forms a considerable feat of seamanship.
Surveyors use a taut wire measuring machine to measure ac-
curately distances at sea by streaming piano wire under tension
astern of the moving ship, the end having been anchored to the
sea-bed. Up to 140 miles of wire can be used, and it has startled
more than one enquiring taxpayer to hear that no attempt is made
to recover this wire. The thought of steaming stern-first for many
miles to reel up thousands of yards of kinked and coiling piano
78 CHALLENGER
T.W. Reading
‘Wharves (under
construction) N°4p oe
: Noe3\|.
T.W. Reading |
-_——--—.
—— 221M
-Sketch of the Route first
used by shipping approaching
Ras at Tannura in 1939.
Showing taut wire distances
and star sight positions used by
H.M.S. Challenger to fix the channel
buoys laid by Captain Clausing, of
the California Standard Oil Co. Me?
acon (under
onstruction)
I
|
|
S
ln
®
3
2)
CY)
)
Sea Miles
(1) 5 19
[SS SS SS SS ES
N°l -Floating Beacon
laid by Challenger.
(Fixed by star sights)
on \
/ Ba \
Bahrein ‘Athama; (Believed position)
abe Tighe Vessel Shoal *
‘ ‘
Z
Approach route to Ras at Tannura
SANDY SHORES 79
wire is indeed a surveyor’s nightmare. This apparatus was now
used to measure the distance from the anchored beacon to the
inner end of the channel and the distances between each spar
buoy, the course to be steered along each leg of the channel also
being noted.
Finally, at the inner end of the channel, the ship passed close
east of a beacon which had been constructed on the southern tip
of the land. A party was then landed at night on this beacon with
a theodolite which was used to observe star sights, thus establish-
ing its position. Both ends of the taut-wire traverse had now been
fixed, the difference in latitude and longitude of these two posi-
tions agreeing within reasonable limits with the differences calcu-
lated by working out the taut-wire run between them. The spar
buoys were now plotted in their positions relative to the two
ends of the channel and the correct courses for each leg were
known. It only remained now for the ship to run a number of
sounding lines along the axis of this channel, and the approach to
Ras at Tannura was established as a safe sea lane.
This was Challenger’s first of many visits to the Persian Gulf and
her first task in connection with the export of oil from this
unsurveyed coast, in which she was later to play a not insignificant
art. It was also her first experience of winter weather in the
Gulf, which was quite unexpectedly cold. North-westerly gales,
known locally as ‘shamals’, may blow for many days at a time,
raising short choppy seas and filling the air with sand until
visibility is down to half a mile. Surveying comes to a full stop
on such occasions while the ship tugs at her anchor cable in the
exposed anchorages off these flat, featureless coasts; only at the
eastern end of the southern shores of the Gulf are there high
mountains in sight of the sea, the ranges running south from the
vicinity of Muscat.
The ship called again at Muscat before leaving the Gulf on
22nd March, 1939. Fuelling at Aden, she went northwards into
the Red Sea and to Muhammad Qol on the coast of northern
Sudan.
As well as Admiralty charts, the Hydrographic Department
produce and have constantly under revision a formidable library
of over 70 books, known to mariners as the Sailing Directions.
80 CHALLENGER
These ‘Pilots’, as their official name is, give world coverage, des-
cribing the coasts, the approaches to ports and harbours and how
best these may be navigated, as well as some description of the
ports themselves and the facilities they provide. The description
of Muhammad Qol given in the Red Sea Pilot cannot be improved
upon:
The Village of Muhammad Qol, consisting chiefly of Arab huts,
lies on the north-western shore of a bight, about three miles
south-westward of the western extremity of Sararat; there is a
conspicuous fort in this village, also a custom house. There is a
jetty in front of the village.’
This, in fact, is a very full description of the extent and
amenities of this Sudanese seaport.
Off the jetty were moored two of the dhows which are the
trading vessels of this part of the world; the anchors of these
craft had been hooked beneath the coral knobs on the sea-bed
by a member of the crew who had dived down for this purpose.
The huts of the village, rudely constructed of driftwood, corru-
gated iron and sacking, were stifling within; only the thick walls
of the fort could provide the surveyors with shelter from the
burning sun at midday. Inside the fort were a few chairs and a
battered table, and two police camel saddles of complicated
design which appeared to have been little used in a country where
an old sack is considered saddle enough for a riding camel. Bats,
disturbed by the unexpected intrusion as the opening of the heavy
door admitted glaring daylight, fluttered helplessly out into the
sun and were easy prey for the black crows which were standing
about the sandy outskirts of the village.
The tribesmen had long, woolly, unkempt hair, and carried
short camel sticks with which to guide their riding camels, great
light coloured beasts which lay around the well, groaning and
grumbling.
The ship herself was much under way while surveying the
approaches to the port, encumbered as they were with shoals,
most of which did not appear on the existing chart. Normally,
such coral patches may be seen from the bridge or by a look-out
aloft, but a cloudy sky casts shadows upon the water which con-
fuse the observer. On such an afternoon Challenger was searching
for a sheltered anchorage on the west side of Mayatib Island ;
SANDY SHORES 81
strong squalls of wind were coming from every point of the
compass and the day’s work had been abandoned.
The Captain’s intention had been to anchor on the north side
of a charted rocky patch which was clearly visible from the bridge
as the ship steamed slowly in, leaving the shoal to starboard. But
as she neared the proposed anchorage shoals were sighted to port
and ahead of the ship, leaving but a small channel between them
and the charted shoal. But this water looked deep and secure and
the ship, turning slightly to starboard, crept slowly ahead.
A minute or so later that dreaded, indescribable feeling of a
ship touching the ground was experienced by those on the bridge
as she grazed along her port side. The Captain at once stopped the
engines and ordered an anchor to be let go. He dared not go
astern, for with but one screw his stern would have been thrust
over to port and thus moved onto the shoal.
A change in the light as a cloud shadow passed now revealed
pale green and yellow coral heads beneath the ruffled surface of
the water close on either hand, where but a few moments before
the dark blue of the water had indicated a deep, clear channel.
Of such a pinnacle structure were the coral knobs that the ship’s
echo sounder never recorded less than eight fathoms.
A sounding boat was lowered to lay a small marker buoy on
each of the coral heads which now appeared to cluster about the
ship, and slowly the anchor was weighed and the ship turned
round, This was not an easy operation for the wind was still
gusting, and from whichever quarter the squalls came there was
always a coral head dangerously close to leeward. Gusts of wind
could be seen racing across the water, rumpling the surface and
flecking it with white-capped wavelets. The wind struck the
bridge awning, making it thump and rattle, a noise which formed
a background to the orders given by Commander Baker as he
stood tense upon the bridge, manoeuvring his vessel in this con-
fined space—‘Port thirty’, “Stop—half-astern’, ‘Mid ships—star-
board thirty’. He glanced ahead, peering through his polaroid
sunglasses which helped him to see the submerged reefs; he
looked aft to watch how his ship’s stern was swinging into the
wind as he went astern. He strode purposefully but unhurriedly
from one side of the bridge to the other, to see how far off were
the buoys which marked the danger. At last the ship was round
82 CHALLENGER
and steaming slowly out the way she had come in, the sounding
boat feeling her way ahead of the ship.
Next day the ship’s divers were able to report that it had only
been a graze and that no lasting damage had been done. It was just
another of those hazards to which a surveying vessel is exposed
when searching for an anchorage in uncharted waters.
The 21st April saw Challenger returning to England, the survey
of Muhammad Qol completed. She did not know it then, but
her peacetime surveying was over for many a long day to come.
Vil
Iceland
her refit at Portsmouth, and on 25th August the officers
and men on leave were recalled from their homes so that
the ship might sail for her war station on the following day.
From the Humber to Dover the waters of the east coast of
England are comparatively shallow and encumbered by numerous
sandbanks, and it is only by navigating the channels between them
that ships can safely sail along the coast or enter the Thames
Estuary and the other ports of East Anglia. With many of the
navigation lights ashore extinguished or considerably reduced in
visibility as they would be on the outbreak of war, vessels would
have great difficulty in navigating those channels. The shallow-
ness of the waters makes the mining of ships off the east coast a
comparatively simple task for the enemy, so that in order to
reduce the amount of water to be swept daily by our limited
number of minesweepers it had long since been planned to
restrict navigation to war channels, which were to be marked
by lighted buoys every three miles or so to ensure that the
convoys kept to the swept and navigable water.
The accurate positioning of these buoys was, therefore, of im-
mediate importance and was an exacting task, many miles at sea
off the flat, featureless coast of East Anglia. It was Challenger’s
first war-time duty to sail along the war channels, and, using taut-
wire measurements and shore fixes where possible, to fix the
proposed position of each war channel buoy and mark it with
a temporary light buoy. Trinity House, who maintain the lights
and the buoys around the coast of England, would later lay the
large light buoys anchored by their six-ton clumps in each of
these marked positions. Thus, in these anxious days just before
the outbreak of war, Challenger, her gleaming white sides and
yellow funnel now painted a uniform grey, was slipping out of
Harwich in the dark hours before the dawn, followed by the
83
Ti War was very near as Challenger hurriedly completed
84 CHALLENGER
Trinity House vessel Patricia, as the two ships worked together
to mark the narrow sea-lanes of the east coast, which were to
be more permanently marked by the upperworks, funnels and
masts of the many vessels which were mined and torpedoed when
these lanes became so appropriately named ‘E Boat Alley’.
By the end of September Challenger’s work on the war channels
was complete and she was at Sheerness carrying out tidal stream
surveys in the Thames Estuary, At this point Commander Baker
exchanged duties with Commander W. C. Jenks, who had been
in command of the surveying ship Scott, now being fitted with
a 4-inch gun and depth charges to become an escort vessel.
Commander Jenks was a man to whom surveying was more than
his job, it was his whole life. He was a man of stern appearance
and a hard man to cross. If he expected his ship’s company to
work 18 hours a day, then he himself would work 20, and those
are the hours that, in fact, he worked during war-time sur-
veying.
With the coming of the War a number of bases and fleet
anchorages were being opened up and protected by the laying of
booms across the harbour entrances. There was much surveying
work to be done at such places; large-scale charts of the anchor-
ages were required; the accurate positioning of the booms and
the boom gate vessels required triangulated points ashore and
an exact knowledge of the depth of water where these booms were
laid; tidal streams had to be measured where these were to be
placed; range finder testing charts required the accurate fixin
of the prominent marks onshore; there were a hundred and one
odds and ends of survey work to be done at these ports and
anchorages in the early days of the War and the programme was
delayed by the necessity of sailing in convoy between one port
and the next.
It was not until the end of October that there was found time
to fit Challenger with any armament at all, although on a number
of occasions low-flying enemy aircraft had been sighted by the
ship while working in the Thames Estuary. Two Lewis guns were
all that were fitted and this delayed her sailing in convoy from
Sheerness to Plymouth, but she was able to overtake the convoy
before it reached Dungeness at 10 o’clock at night. Challenger
ICELAND 85
broke off from this ‘eight-knot convoy’, which was proceeding
at no more than five knots, when westward of Start Point and
steamed on to Plymouth, reaching there at 2 o’clock in the
morning. Her entry into Plymouth was not a success and was
later referred to as the ‘Battle of Plymouth’. It was necessary in
war time to flash a code signal to the station ashore before entry
into the port was granted ; the code word was frequently changed
and on this particular night Challenger had the wrong signal. The
Army had established a battery on the hills overlooking the
harbour entrance and the gunners manning it sat night after night
longing for the day when they would be ordered to open fre.
Their communication with the signal station was good and it was
only a matter of a minute or so before their first round was
whistling between the bridge of Challenger and the fore stay, to
the alarm of the officers on her bridge who did not realise what
was happening; by now a searchlight beam was lighting up the
whole scene and enabled those on the bridge to see the splash
of water close on the starboard side as the next round fell short.
‘Full astern’, shouted the Captain, and soon the ship was at a
standstill while confused signalling commenced between the ship,
the shore and the examination vessel now closing her to investi-
gate. After some delay the examination vessel was satisfied and
Challenger entered Plymouth Sound, while the gunners sponged
out their guns and longed for the next of these infrequent
encounters with the enemy.
The ship was making for ‘Port A’, a remote natural harbour
on the west coast of Scotland, which was being made into a
naval base and where the usual surveying tasks in connection with
the defences were required. Slow, coastal convoying was a weary
business in those early days, when officers were inexperienced and
there was no radar to show where the ship ahead moved in the
darkness of the winter nights. Hour after hour the officer of the
watch would peer ahead looking for the small feather of white
that indicated the ruffled water in the wake of the next ship in
the convoy; at one moment it would seem far away and he would
increase the engine revolutions, but within minutes he would
realise with a tingling feeling in the pit of his stomach that he
was almost on top of her and would ring down slow speed or
stop the engines. The geared rods of the engine room telegraphs,
86 CHALLENGER
which passed through the Captain’s cabin below the bridge, made
a churning noise, followed by the tinkle of the engine room
repeating telegraph. Sometimes the Captain slept undisturbed by
this, but at other times, when there were many movements, he
might appear at the back of the bridge, announcing his presence
by a gruff enquiry as to how things were going. Yes, it was a
nerve-racking business, this convoy work, for hundreds of naval
and merchant service officers in these early days of the war. The
four hours of the middle watch from midnight to 4 o’clock in
the morning seemed like an unending stretch of worry and strain,
reaching away almost to eternity. But slowly the hours passed as
cups of greasy cocoa punctuated the crawling time and then, quite .
suddenly, the watch was nearly over and another came to take
on the duty as the convoy concertinaed on its way, up speed,
down speed, but all the time averaging little more than the speed
of a man running, as they crept around the coastline. The complete
and utter feeling of contentment that creeps over the relieved
watchkeeper as oblivion overtakes him in his bunk cannot be
described, it must be experienced.
In such a convoy Challenger left Plymouth for Port A at 3.30
in the afternoon of Saturday, 4th November, 1939. The convoy
consisted of Challenger, the oil tanker E/ Alito and the cable ship
Marie Louise Mackay under the escort of H.M.S. Montrose, an old
destroyer. Commander Jenks, being the senior naval officer
present, was in charge of this odd little group. A heavy gale blew
from the south-west as they rounded the Lizard and headed north-
eastwards for the Bristol Channel where the cable vessel was to
be detached. The El Alito was flying light, without cargo, and at
the height of the gale reported herself out of control ; but at last,
very slowly, she got her head round into the wind and hove to
on a course of 240 degrees, making good only two knots.
Challenger stood by her all through that night in case she should
drift in towards danger, and as grey dawn broke and the wind
moderated, the little convoy crawled on through the Irish Sea to
Liverpool Bay where two more ill-assorted vessels joined up
and El Alito was thankfully detached. A minor collision between
Challenger and s.s. Portavogie was the next frustrating little incident
before the ships steamed slowly on through another night towards
the Clyde, where Challenger was detached to carry on to Port A
ICELAND 87
independently, navigating her way through the narrow darkened
Sounds of Islay and Mull during the next night.
A fortnight was spent at Port A carrying out sounding of areas
along the approach channel, laying buoys and setting up shore
marks for fixing the boom defences. From here the ship went on
to Scapa Flow to be met there with demands for a whole series
of surveys in connection with the defences of this fleet base.
H.M.S. Royal Oak had recently been sunk by a German U-boat
which had penetrated the defences and had entered the Flow.
This had added a great and overpowering urgency to all work
connected with booms and other defences. Work commenced
onboard at dawn on Sunday, 24th December, one hour after the
ship had arrived at Scapa, and continued unceasingly. The weather
was cold and stormy, with frequent snow squalls, while day after
day the boats’ crews set out from the ship across the grey and
white ruffled waters of the Flow. While their fellows in the
Fleet came and went in cruisers and destroyers, slipping out
through the boom at dusk on their warlike missions, the men of
Challenger spent their day in drudgery under the unkindest
weather conditions; the younger officers particularly, and many
of the men, longed to be posted to some more warlike vessel, and
many of them requested the Captain for a transfer. But the work
was essential and no one could be spared; the surveying went on
and on and on.
Work completed in the Flow, the ship steamed round to Kirk-
wall, where similar surveys were carried out in connection with
fixed defences to be laid in the various sounds leading into the
Contraband Control Anchorage at Kirkwall, which was crowded
with neutral shipping of many nationalities, their national flags
painted boldly on their sides, waiting for their turn for examina-
tion, their crews cursing the endless delays.
Long, bitter days were spent here by the surveyors in the field,
relieved only by the overpowering kindness of the crofters of
Orkney. Many a survey party was called into a farmhouse at
dinner time, where they joined the family round the kitchen table
to eat a boiled fowl and to enjoy the glow of warmth from the
hearth after hours spent observing with the theodolite on some
blustery hilltop. The lie up period was now only a peace-time
88 CHALLENGER
memory ; every day throughout the year was now a surveying day,
come hail, rain or snow.
The defence of harbours by controlled minefields was now being
pushed forward at ports throughout the United Kingdom.
Roughly, these defences consist of mines laid in exact positions
on the sea-bed, which can be exploded under an enemy craft
entering the harbour by a watcher in a control station ashore.
He explodes the mine when he sees, by taking a bearing and
range of the entering vessel, that she is passing over one of the
mines. A number of such mines are laid across the harbour en-
trance and it can be seen that the position of each mine must be
accurately plotted if it is to be exploded according to plan. This
means that a triangulation network must be set up in the vicinity
of the harbour entrance and transit marks connected to this net-
work must also be set up to guide the mine-laying vessel to the
correct laying position of each mine.
So here was a huge programme of harbour defence triangulation
to be carried out by the three surveying ships which now re-
mained available at Home. Many of these harbours lay in remote
areas where existing triangulation stations were difficult to
locate ; such stations may have been established by the Ordnance
Survey 7o or 80 years before and the marked stones lay buried
some two feet or so below the surface of the ground. Descriptions
of the locations of these survey marks, made by the surveyors at
the time they were laid down, were available and it was always
necessary to recover two such stations if the measurement of a
base was to be avoided and if the network of triangulation being
set up was to be connected to the Ordnance Survey of Great
Britain, which was highly desirable. The scene, of course, had
changed since those descriptions were made so many years ago:
new woods had grown up and others had been felled, old buildings
could only be located by the ridge on the ground indicating the
line of the ruined walls, or new buildings had sprung up to con-
fuse the issue. Days were spent in digging, like treasure hunters
on a desert island using a sketch map made by a long deceased
pirate, but no successful treasure hunter was happier than these
naval surveyors when at last the scrape of the spade denoted a
flat stone, and the removal of the last handfuls of earth from the
ICELAND 89
trench revealed the triangulation mark (A) cut clearly in its
surface so many years before, still marking the exact position in
the survey of Great Britain.
Challenger worked on at Scapa, Kirkwall, again at Port A and
at Kyle Akin on the west coast of Scotland. She returned to
Portsmouth for a refit in March, but while the refit went for-
ward there was little respite for the surveyors, who were
occupied with defence surveying in and around Portsmouth and
Spithead. In early April the Germans invaded Norway and the
‘hot’ war had begun. This was marked in Challenger by the fitting
of two pom-poms on the forecastle and the refit was hustled
forward. Many of the experienced men now left the ship and it
was with a new crew that she sailed away again, carrying a
number of men who had joined the Navy for the duration of the
war only and knew no difference between a surveying ship and
a destroyer during their first days onboard. The same round of
harbour surveys in connection with controlled mining defences
went on—Plymouth, Milford Haven and then to Sullom Voe in
Shetland, where work was completed by the end of May. In the
Shetlands the Germans were now only 200 miles away across in
Norway ; an airborne attack against our northern outposts seemed
a likely possibility so the boat sounding, coastlining and observing
parties were armed with revolvers and rifles. It seemed difficult
to believe, as the surveyors walked the sunlit moors of Shetland
in glorious summer weather, that in the Low Countries men were
fighting and dying while the situation grew more desperate every
hour. Once again the junior officers longed to leave surveying
and to get to grips with the enemy, but Commander Jenks,
sympathising with them though he did, also realised more than
anyone onboard the importance of preparing firm defences of our
fleet bases and how very soon now they were likely to be tested.
Sixteen hours of every day, seven days of every week, he kept
the officers and men to their task. Long days of field work were
followed by hours of plotting and inking-in the detail, while the
dawn saw the boats away for more sounding or observing.
Britain had at last taken a firm course in Northern Waters,
occupying Iceland and the Faroes, knowing how important it
would be to use the long, secure fjords of these islands as fuelling
bases from which her ships could sail out to intercept the raiders
90 CHALLENGER
outward bound to harry our shipping on the wide oceans. These
fjords were little surveyed, and H.M.S. Franklin, another naval
surveying ship, had recently sailed north with the forces occupy-
ing the Faroes and was now carrying out a survey of Scaale
Fjord, the fine landlocked anchorage in those islands.
It was now thought at Scapa Flow that Lieutenant-Commander
Prien had entered in his U-boat to sink the Royal Oak by one of
the four eastern channels. These entrances had been considered
to be effectively blocked by the sinking of a number of old
merchant ships both before and since the outbreak of war, but
now it seemed that there were one or two small remaining gaps,
through which flowed the swift tidal streams, where there was
just sufficient room for a submarine to pass if piloted with
supreme skill. Only a solid causeway across these four entrances
would absolutely ensure no repetition of Prien’s masterly feat of
seamanship with disastrous effects upon our Fleet within. But to
build such a causeway and block the very strong tidal streams
running here might so increase their force in the two main
entrances of Hoxa and Switha Sounds that it would be impossible
to maintain a boom there. To test this possibility before building
the causeway a tidal model of the Flow was to be built and for this
an accurate tidal survey of the existing Eastern Channels was
required, and it was for this purpose that Challenger sailed from
Shetland to Scapa; but when she reached there orders came to
transfer these instructions to Franklin, newly arrived from Faroes,
while Challenger was to proceed without delay for surveys in
Iceland. Within a few hours of arriving in Iceland the fleet net-
layer, H.M.S. Guardian, which was to lay the net defences across
the mouth of Hvalfjord, had struck an uncharted rock and could
do no more. Good charts of the Icelandic fjords were required
and Challenger must make them as fast as she could.
Surveying ships do not often operate in company and seldom
do they meet each other, but when they do there is much to
discuss and a reunion party always results; the officers of both
ships, many of whom will have served together on other stations
years ago, will speak of the eccentricities of former mess-mates,
the capacity of their present Captains to force the pace of the
work, and recall perhaps a hundred amusing incidents of the past
~
ee
—
IN THE FLOATING DOCK—BERMUDA
RS
NEW FURNACES ARRIVE IN BERMUDA
ICELAND 91
from surveying in Labrador to the lie-up in Hong-Kong. Just
such an evening developed in Franklin when she met Challenger
in Scapa Flow in that unhappy June of 1940, whilst the two
Commanding Officers transferred instructions in the ‘Cuddy’.
Challenger lay at anchor a few cables away across the Flow,
appearing dull and drab in her war-time coat of grey paint, the
tiny pom-poms on her forecastle looking hopelessly inadequate for
the voyage, unescorted, across the grey northern wastes to Ice-
land on which she was to set out next day.
These were desperate days; there was the possibility of the
country being over-run by the enemy and the British were
determined to fight on even from Canada if need be, whither they
would take their fleet. In such an eventuality Iceland with its
spacious fjords would be invaluable as a spring-board for returning
to the attack in Europe. Surveying has to take account of eventu-
alities, for the survey must be complete before the harbours are
required, and such work is laborious and takes months of un-
disturbed and patient labour. The task in Iceland was to survey
at once the fine harbour of Hvalfjord on the west coast, after
which other good anchorages on the east coast of Iceland were
to be tackled. But all this work lay ahead as Challenger anchored
off Reykjavik, the crew knowing they would soon be working
harder than they had ever done in their lives. The scene was new
and unforgettably beautiful: away to the north-east could be seen
the towering flat-topped mountain called Esja, and beyond it, on
the opposite side of Hvalfjord, the equally precipitous Akrafjall.
Close round the ship and to the southward lay the little rocky
islets of the bay with their vivid green slopes contrasting with
the gay red and white houses of the town of Reykjavik.
The British Naval Headquarters had been set up in the Borg
Hotel in Reykjavik and Challenger’s Captain was already ashore
there discussing the numerous surveying requirements for Iceland.
The Head of Hvalfjord on a scale of 6 inches to the mile and the
whole of the rest of the fjord on a scale of 3 inches to the mile
was decided upon. Jenks returned to the ship having added to
his staff a pleasant-looking student from the University, Bragi
Kristiansson, who would act as an interpreter when questioning
the local farmers as to the whereabouts of survey marks laid down
by the Danish surveyors years before.
8
92 CHALLENGER
Soon the ship was steaming up Hvalfjord, wild mountains
towering on either hand, all of the same peculiar formation, with
flattish summits and precipitous rocky sides dropping away for
about half their height, after which they sloped in great screes
scattered with boulders until they merged into the green fields
of the coastal strip. Here and there farm houses lay dwarfed by
the towering rocks, their small fields, sheep pens and cattle sheds
with cattle and sheep looking like children’s toy farms.
As the ship steamed slowly up the fjord, sounding her way in
these well-nigh uncharted waters, Bragi Kristiansson stood on the
open bridge with the Captain and Tim Connell, the navigator,
as he pointed out the chief landmarks and named the farmsteads
and the rivers, the latter of engaging interest to Tim, an ardent
fisherman, who had heard of the great salmon fishing to be had
in Iceland. Perhaps he would be able to fit in just a few hours of
fishing in the weeks ahead. Gradually the fjord turned to star-
board and more and higher mountains came into view, their flat
tops carrying the eye beyond them to the snow-clad peaks of
Botnsular.
Rounding the promontory of Hofdi the ship slowed and came
to anchor. No craft of any kind had been seen on the glassy waters
of the fjord, nor had people been moving in the fields; it seemed
to those onboard Challenger that they were steaming alone into
the heart of an empty, peaceful land beyond this world and far
from the bloody scenes in France of which they heard as each
hopeless news bulletin followed another over the ship’s radio.
But as the rumble of her anchor cable shattered the silence of
the fjord people came running from the farmsteads to the water’s
edge to stare at this small grey ship, with a strange flag flying at
her stern. Challenger was the forerunner of war which was now
reaching even this remote and lovely place. These people were
to see more and more ships as the days passed, first naval trawlers
and boom vessels, then store ships, tankers and hospital ships,
each with her boats and tenders, and finally the great grey shapes
of cruisers gliding into the fjord. The clean beaches were soon
to become sullied with floating refuse, the rusting drums, floats,
seamen’s caps, lifejackets, boathook staves, and many other ugly
pieces of flotsam that scatter the shores whenever a great fleet of
warships is at anchor. Strange sailors and soldiers were soon to
ICELAND 93
land to erect guns, hideous buildings, and mile upon mile of
barbed wire.
When the surveyors went ashore they found the Icelanders
pleasant enough and happy to help them in locating the old survey
marks whenever they could: they would offer them glasses of
fresh milk and smile and pass the time of day.
During the long summer days with practically no real night
Commander Jenks was able to keep his men in the field 18 hours
a day. In order to get the greatest efficiency he kept the same
officers on the same work day after day. Lieutenants B. G. O’ Neill
and G. P. D. Hall were the two junior surveying officers and
these he kept in the boats, sounding continuously from 6 o’clock
in the morning, crossing and re-crossing the fjord on their lines
of soundings, until even the Arctic summer night became too
dark for them to see to fix; this would be about 10.30 p.m.,
after which they would spend three or four hours in the chart
room inking-in the day’s work. These two young lieutenants felt
they should be in destroyers or the Fleet Air Arm, hitting the
enemy, but they were left little time to ponder on these
possibilities during the hectic days of surveying.
Lieutenant D. L. Gordon had a neater hand than even most
surveyors and Jenks selected him for the drawing of the collector
tracing. Onto this he transferred details from all the field boards,
so that on the day the field work was finished there would be a
complete record of the work on tracing cloth from which copies
could be printed by a sunprint process onboard for use within the
Fleet until the Admiralty produced the properly printed chart.
‘General’ Gordon, as he has always been called in the Surveying
Service, has a fine sense of humour and can give an amusing
account even of his employment as a draughtsman for 18 hours
a day; and he needed his sense of humour as he drew thousands
upon thousands of minute figures denoting the soundings on the
many surveys Challenger completed in Iceland. He worked the
same hours at his chart table as the men in the field, day after day
throughout the summer and autumn of 1940; vagaries of the
weather never held him up on his steady plodding work.
Those working in the boats were often overtaken by sudden
storms of intense fury. Out of a clear blue sky and without
warning the wind would come sweeping down the mountainsides,
94 CHALLENGER
striking the water of the fjord and whipping it into a smother of
white foam and lashing spray and stirring up numerous little
whirling water spouts which raced across the fjord. On such
occasions the boats hurried for shelter under the lee of the nearest
island and lay tossing there as the rain came slanting down. The
Boatswain in the ship ran to the forecastle to let go the second
anchor and veer more cable as the ship began to tug at her
moorings. But the sun soon came through, the rain passed off with
a brilliant rainbow and work began again.
All through June the survey of Hvalfjord went on; at the end
of the month it became necessary to return to Reykjavik to land
a rating for hospital treatment and to take in stores. At the en-
trance to the fjord the wind was blowing hard and five British
soldiers from the newly established battery were found adrift in
a small boat. It was lucky that Challenger found them, for within
an hour the east wind had developed into a full gale and when the
ship anchored at Reykjavik at 3 o’clock in the morning it required
both anchors down with seven shackles of cable on each to hold
the ship. Soon after 5 o’clock in the morning the aircraft carrier
H.M.S. Argus was seen to be dragging her anchors and within
three minutes was ashore to leeward beam on. In such a gale it
was impossible to render assistance to tow her off, but there was
no immediate danger to personnel. The weather moderated slowly
during the day and at ro.30 at night, on the rising tide, Challenger
and two trawlers began towing operations. Challenger towed from
Argus’ after fairlead, and the two trawlers from a fairlead amid-
ships, but it was difficult for them to keep their bows up into
the wind as they hauled, and gradually they fell off, parting their
wires. Challenger was assisted by a small local tug to keep her
head up into the wind and she hauled steadily while Argus worked
her engines astern, her crew of some hundreds of men jumping on
the quarterdeck. Such jumping, if done in complete unison by
the crew, has the effect of lifting, if only slightly and momentarily,
the bows of even the largest vessel and this sometimes assists in
refloating a ship grounded forward. Ever so slowly, about mid-
night, she came free, Challenger continuing to tow until both
ships were in open water clear of the harbour.
By next day the gale was blowing again and Challenger lay at
ICELAND 95
anchor in Reykjavik Roads surrounded by assorted small naval
craft—trawlers and a frigate or two, all yawing this way and that
across the wind. Anchor watch was set in Challenger—an officer
posted on the bridge to observe bearings of objects ashore to
detect whether the ship was dragging her anchors—while a small
party of seamen were huddled beneath the bridge superstructure
waiting to veer more cable or to work the engine-room telegraphs ;
down in the engine room all was ready for slow speed. Anchor
watch is a dreary business which may last for days at a time in
these stormy seas; but on this occasion it was soon to be proved
most necessary. A trawler anchored ahead of Challenger began to
drag her anchors and was soon driving down rapidly towards the
ship. The officer on the bridge ordered the cable party to veer
cable, and by going slow ahead with the wheel hard to starboard
he managed to stop the ship from sheering across the wind for
long enough to allow the trawler to go careering down the port
side of Challenger and just clear of her. The trawler went ashore,
and she could easily have taken Challenger with her.
It can be seen that the visits to Reykjavik away from the survey
ground were not as restful as they might have been. One night
Brian O’Neill and Geoffrey Hall were dining and dancing at the
Borg Hotel with some charming Icelandic girls when the Naval
Staff Officer (Operations) came over to their table with a grim
expression and asked Hall to step outside into the foyer for a
moment. Arrived there, he handed Hall a letter, saying that it was
for the Captain of Challenger and that he should deliver it onboard
as soon as possible. Hall asked what the letter might contain
that made it so urgent, to be told that it carried news of a German
convoy which had been sighted off the south-east coast of Iceland,
steaming in a westerly direction and heavily escorted. The convoy
was expected to reach Reykjavik about noon next day.
Hall signalled to O’ Neill and both made excuses to their party,
saying they had been ordered back to the ship, and took their
hurried departure. As they made their way to the landing stage
the seriousness of the situation came home to them, giving them
a feeling of excitement mingled with fear. There were very few
offensive ships in Iceland at this time and Challenger carried only
two small pom-poms. Signals by torch from the jetty to the ship
96 CHALLENGER
eventually resulted in a boat’s coming inshore for them and by
midnight Hall was in the Captain’s cabin giving him a shake. He
sat up in his bunk, wearing his pyjamas, and read the letter, an
expression of fury slowly spreading across his face. “My God,’ he
said at last, ‘if they think that’s what we’re going to do while
the enemy carries out an invasion they’re very much mistaken.
Have a boat alongside for me at 0530. Good-night.’ The letter
had, in fact, carried the news which the Staff Officer had told
Hall, and had further instructed Challenger to carry on with her
survey of Hvalfjord.
At 5.30 in the morning a little group of officers saluted as the
Captain, grave faced and tense, descended the ladder into the
waiting boat. Meanwhile all preparations were being made on-
board to get under way, and for action; the two small guns were
being provided with ammunition. The officers and men moved
around with a curious sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs ;
‘lone survey vessel goes down fighting against supreme odds’—
some imagined their obituaries to read in the papers at home.
Half an hour later the Captain was back onboard, coming up the
gangway with a half sheepish, half furious expression on his face.
The little group of saluting officers awaiting desperate orders saw
a ghost of a smile pass over his face. ‘A bloody Army Exercise,’
he said.
The following months of July and August were also spent in
and around Hvalfjord, surveying for the boom and the controlled
minefield near the entrance. Their old friend the Trinity House
vessel Patricia arrived to lay the navigational buoys in positions
indicated by Challenger. But at last these surveys were all com-
plete, and by 1st September the ship lay at Reykjavik awaiting
further orders. These soon arrived and gave instructions for the
carrying out of surveys of three fjords on the east coast of Iceland.
H.M. Ships Hood and Repulse had recently been lying in Reydar-
fjord, but now it was desired to use three of the smaller fjords,
all of which were incompletely surveyed; these were Seydisfjord,
Akureyri in Eyjafjord and Hrutafjord. Secure anchorages in Ice-
land were invaluable, for ships based there could dominate the
Denmark Strait and the Iceland-Faroe Channel through which the
enemy raiders had to sail to reach the high seas. The survey of
ICELAND 97
each fjord followed a similar pattern: the entrances for the booms
and the controlled minefields, and on a large scale the anchorages
within and the narrow parts of the fjords where navigation was
in any way difficult.
More and more members of the crew were called on to give
the surveyors assistance in the field and large parties of men were
landed to search for and mark the existing triangulation stations.
On one occasion the Chief Boatswain’s Mate was in charge of
such a party. Many attempts had been made to find an essential
survey point but without success. Commander Jenks had said that
it must be found, and even that the eventual finder would be
rewarded. As night fell the Chief Boatswain’s Mate returned
triumphant and was ushered into Commander Jenks’ presence.
But the smile on the Captain’s face quickly vanished when he
saw that the Petty Officer was holding in his hand the iron plate
which once had marked the position of the triangulation station
to within an inch upon the earth’s surface.
Friendliness was met with from the country people of Iceland
as the parties worked through the perfect autumn days; cold
misty mornings with cloudless skies gave way to glorious after-
noons and evenings as the sun’s rim touched the line of the
western hilltops, illuminating the cliff-sided fjords with a soft
rose light reflected from the silver surface of these long arms of
the sea.
The vast programme was completed by 22nd October, when
the ship returned once again to Reykjavik. The great areas sur-
veyed, combined with the impeccable accuracy upon which
Commander Jenks always insisted, will undoubtedly make sur-
veying history, and his work here in Iceland ranks with that of
the great surveyors of earlier days.
IX
War at Sea
N October of 1940, with the surveys of Iceland complete,
| Challenger sailed southwards for a refit period in England.
Almost as soon as she put to sea the winds began to blow
and a gale harried the ship the whole way across the grey wastes
of ocean between Iceland and Scotland. The wind howled relent-
lessly in the rigging, the ship heaved, pitched and rolled, the seas
thumped against her side and blanked the portholes with green
and white as the waves rose towards the upper deck. The men
below in the mess decks cursed with rage as they wearied of
constantly bracing themselves against the rolling of the ship.
In the Pentland Firth on the forenoon of Sunday, 3rd November,
the ship joined a convoy bound for the east coast across the
Moray Firth and round Kinnaird Head. The Senior Officer of the
convoy escort, sailing in the anti-aircraft cruiser Curacao, ordered
Challenger to take up station as rear ship of the port column; at
about 6 o’clock that evening a merchant ship named Eros joined
the convoy, having come from Invergordon: she had recently been
torpedoed and the repairs made temporarily to her bows were
plain to see. She took up station astern of Challenger.
As dusk closed in, the convoy crawled on at six knots on a
south-easterly course about seven miles off Kinnaird Head. Soon
the sound of aircraft could be heard and gunfire was seen from
Curacao, who had moved out to a position about three miles on
the port side of the convoy. A few minutes later the men at their
A.A. defence stations in Challenger saw a twin-engined float-plane
coming in low on the port beam. The two pom-poms on the port
side were soon in action; seconds later there was a thud, and
looking astern those on the bridge saw a huge column of water
and smoke rising on the port side of Eros to the height of her
masthead; the plane passed out of sight astern in the gathering
darkness and grey, low cloud.
Soon the attacking aircraft was in sight again, coming in on
98
WAR AT SEA 99
Challenger’s starboard quarter at a height of s0 feet. The guns
opened fire when the plane was about 400 yards away, the tracer
bullets appearing to travel right into her; she banked steeply and,
passing between Challenger and Eros, disappeared to the eastward.
It had been assumed at first that Eros had suffered a near miss
by a bomb, but in fact the float-plane had launched a torpedo,
which had passed narrowly astern of Challenger as it went on its
way to hit Eros on the port side. Although Eros did not as yet
appear to be taking on a list, she was dropping astern quickly into
the darkness, and just before losing sight of her Commander
Jenks decided to go back and investigate.
It was pitch dark when Challenger got back to Eros and it could
only be dimly discerned that the two lifeboats were gone from the
starboard side of her boatdeck. She appeared utterly deserted,
the lifelines and boats’ falls trailing in the water as she moved
sluggishly to the gentle swell. She had a slight list to port and was
down by the stern about five feet.
The whaler was lowered, with the seaboat’s crew and
Lieutenant O’Neill in charge, to cross to the stricken vessel and
investigate the possibility of taking her in tow. As the seaboat
pulled across to Eros those on Challenger’s bridge heard quite
clearly the cries of a demented being coming, apparently, from
somewhere within the deserted ship.
O’Neill climbed the jumping ladder which had recently been
used by the crew to abandon the ship. He then walked along the
empty decks, calling out to see if any man remained onboard.
He neither saw nor heard any living thing except the ship’s cat
which he carried down to the boat; all he had heard was the
dismal slopping of the sea water that had entered the engine room
and stokehold.
Whilst awaiting the return of the whaler Commander Jenks
had sighted the two lifeboats from Eros, which could be seen
dimly about a mile away in the direction of the shore. They were
hailed strongly and they turned back towards Challenger.
As O’Neill reached the bridge to report to the Captain that
there appeared to be no life onboard the damaged vessel, the
desperate cries came clearly over the water again, so back went
the seaboat. Accompanied by Able Seamen Harry Barbour and
Charles McKenna, O’Neill started to search the crews’ quarters,
Ioo CHALLENGER
shouting continually and inspecting every compartment until the
engine room was reached, where the noise of sluicing water was
now very great every time the ship rolled to the swell. The small
party then worked along the narrow well deck passage, their
thoughts turning to the flooding water and the possibility of the
ship’s foundering at any moment as they got further and further
from the clean air of the upper deck, which now seemed one of
the most desirable places imaginable. At the end of the passage
tappings were heard from the stokehold below. It was not pos-
sible to enter from the port side so that it was necessary to work
round to the starboard side before the stokehold could be reached.
In the darkness somewhere below the voice of the trapped man
could be heard, crazy with fear; he called desperately for help,
but could not be persuaded by the searchers to tell them how
they could get down to him through the darkness; all that he
could tell them was that flood water prevented his reaching the
deck by the usual ladder.
The rescuers worked their way round the base of the funnel
and got onto the steel gratings above the boiler casing ; from there
with a torch the trapped man’s head could be seen, above the
top of the end of the boiler casing but below the gratings on which
they were standing. These gratings were formed of narrowly
placed steel bars, imprisoning him like a rat in a cage as the water
rose below him. There were two rungs of the grating rather more
widely spaced than the others, and slowly, bit by bit, the hysterical
man was encouraged to crawl along between the top of the
boiler and the gratings to this opening. He was covered in water
and oil fuel and was being burnt on the boiler casing as he made
his way along. But once he had squeezed wildly through the gap
he recovered quickly as he poured thanks on his rescuers and
shivered in the stern of the whaler.
O’Neill reported that Barbour and McKenna had no thoughts
for their own safety and had to be restrained from entering the
dark, flooded stokehold of the ship which, as far as they knew,
might sink suddenly at any moment. McKenna had served in
merchant ships and his knowledge of their layout was invaluable
as the rescue party groped their way through the darkness guided
only by the cries from the stokehold.
By now the lifeboats had come alongside and as Eros appeared
WAR AT SEA Io!
to be settling very slowly Commander Jenks intended to take her
in tow and hoped that he would be able to get her into Aberdeen
before she foundered. The Captain of the Eros persuaded a number
of his officers and men to go back to the ship with him to make
fast the tow. Some considerable delay occurred before a 7-inch —
manila rope was roused up from aft in Eros; this rope was 90
fathoms long and was secured, with the help of the Fraserburgh
lifeboat which had now arrived, to Challenger’s 31-inch wire
hawser of 250 fathoms. This work had to be done with the
minimum of torchlight as enemy aircraft could still be heard in
the offing, flares were being dropped in the distance and anti-
aircraft firing was continuous ashore. It seemed that the tow
would never be ready, but at last all was secured and Challenger
moved slowly ahead.
Anxiety was felt by both Captains as to the possibility of towing
such a large vessel with this light gear; the soft eye of the manila
was shackled to the wire hawser which gave a sharp nip where
considerable chafe might develop. But in fact the ship was got
under way with ease and she followed steadily at a speed of 43
knots. The tow continued southward through the night and at
daylight off Aberdeen Eros was handed over to the tug Sabine,
who took her safely into harbour to sail the seas another day.
The Royal Naval Dockyards had long since been working to
capacity and now it was commonplace for naval ships to be re-
fitted by commercial ship repairers ; and in early November, 1940,
Challenger was taken in hand for her annual refit in the East India
Dock, Blackwall.
However clean a ship may be at the beginning of the refit,
and however comfortable, there is a rapid deterioration as soon
as the refit gets going. The water system is taken apart, the lava-
tories are closed, the galley is torn asunder—it is like having one’s
house completely rebuilt and yet trying to remain living in it.
Gradually the amenities disappear; portable galleys, shore wash
rooms and lavatories never satisfactorily replace those of the ship.
Above all, in winter time the shore supply of power is invariably
inadequate for the needs of the vessel, giving but a dull red glow
to one bar of the electric radiator and a depressing half-light
throughout the ship. In the winter of 1940-41 Challenger suffered
102 CHALLENGER
all these discomforts, with nightly bombing by the enemy as
well.
Conditions were so uncomfortable that arrangements were made
to keep only the minimum number of men onboard at night; an
officer and ten men formed the fire party to deal with the incen-
diary bombs which fell nightly over London. Except for this small
party the ship was deserted from 5 o’clock on these winter after-
noons until 7.30 the following morning. As the bombs crumped
and the ack-ack guns thumped away around the docks the fire
party gathered in the ill-lit galley to cook a communal supper.
Alone in the cold wardroom sat the duty officer, huddled over
the tiny glow of the radiator—perhaps the loneliest man in all
London. He longed for the pale watery morning and the arrival
of the workmen and his relief.
Amidst the hammering and rattling of the rivetters in the un-
heated chart-room, the surveying officers daily worked on their
fair sheets of Iceland; true, prints taken from the collector tracings
had been used to make the charts which had already been sup-
plied to the Fleet, but the fair sheets were required for the
permanent record of this important work. The days of the warm
drawing office ashore and the leisurely pace of draughtsmanship
were gone; it was hustle, hustle all the time with two or some-
times three officers taking it in turns to work on the same chart.
But there were days of leave, quite a number of days, to
compensate for the dreariness of the ship at this time. The officers
and men packed their suitcases, and taking a last look at the grey
ship with the frayed ropes’ ends from the dockyard stages blowing
in the keen wind, they walked out through the formidable dock
gates into the bustling, mean streets of the East End of London,
where daily they saw more signs of ruin and destruction. Four
who walked ashore so happily for leave never returned to their
ship; they were killed by a direct hit from a bomb on an East
End milk bar.
General Gordon paused in his drawing of the Iceland charts,
upon which he had now been employed for so long, and went to
the makeshift mortuary where the dead sailors were lying with
over a hundred other mangled bodies. It had been a terrible night,
and when he had done his dreadful duty of identifying the sailors
he stood outside the building; his legs shook, he felt sick, and
WAR AT SEA 103
for a few minutes was unable to walk away. A young doctor who
had been working through the night came out of the mortuary—
‘Just like a butcher’s shop, it’s ghastly,’ he said.
By the end of January all was ready for sea, and Vice-Admiral
Edgell, the Hydrographer of the Navy, paid a visit; this was all
he was able to see of his ships in these days, and these visits were
always appreciated as they made everyone onboard feel that the
Chief still gave much thought to the ships despite his over-
whelming occupation with chart production and supplies which
had by now reached enormous proportions.
The new internal degaussing coils had been run round the ship
as a protection against magnetic mines. These were calibrated by
taking the ship over the degaussing range at Tilbury before she
sailed down river and into the Medway at Sheerness, where she
arrived during an air-raid. Enemy aircraft were flying low through
broken cloud, and the ship’s guns were in action; as she stemmed
the strong tidal stream so that the men on the forecastle could
secure her to the buoy a barrage balloon came drifting down on
the wind in flames, narrowly missing the ship as it struck the
water.
The first big survey of 1941 was that of Lough Foyle where
Challenger arrived in mid-February. With bases in Eire denied to
us, Londonderry was our nearest port to the Battle of the Atlantic
and was growing daily in importance as a base for anti-submarine
vessels, frigates and corvettes as the battle gained in intensity.
Many of these vessels were having difficulty in navigating the long
channel through the lough and up the river to Londonderry.
Whether this was bad navigation or a change in the channel itself
was not readily apparent: it is natural for many seafarers to
question the chart before questioning their own navigation. How-
ever, in view of the ever increasing importance of Londonderry
and the plans that had been formulated in the Admiralty for wharf
construction in the river at Culmore, the Hydrographer was taking
no chances and ordered a re-survey of the whole channel and
river approach to Londonderry.
This was a formidable survey and Commander Jenks tackled
it with the same determination with which he had tackled Iceland
in the previous year. Every boat onboard was pressed into service
104 CHALLENGER
and men found themselves away in the whaler, sounding under
sail with lead and line, to augment the work of the echo sounding
launches. Such methods of sounding had probably not been prac-
tised for over 40 years, but as long as results were accurate Jenks
cared nothing for appearances or discomfort.
The channel as far as Culmore, where it enters the river, skirts
the north shore of the lough, and passes within a few hundred
yards of the Eire shore in some places. Although main triangula-
tion stations were recovered on the south shore of the lough on
which basis the survey was built up, it was still necessary to
include some fixed points along the Eire shore. Theodolite parties
who landed on this coast were nervously looking over their
shoulders and expecting to be interned at any moment, but when
a Civic Guard did eventually appear he was only interested in
discussing the progress of ‘our’ war with the English surveyors.
Once the survey entered the river the scale was greatly in-
creased. The reason for this was unknown to those in Challenger
at the time; it was only later, when the large United States Base
and fuelling wharves for their escort vessels were built at Lisa-
hally on the south bank of the river, that it became clear why this
survey had been ordered by the Hydrographer in the early part
of 1941.
By early May the Londonderry surveys were complete and the
ship was in Lough Larne, for this too was to play its part as an
anchorage for escort vessels employed in the Atlantic battle. The
officers and men of Challenger had now served together for some
considerable time and many had served under Commander Jenks
in Iceland; by now they were well practised in the arts of rapid
wartime surveying and quicker results were being obtained as each
new survey was taken in hand. But at Larne there was considerable
trouble with the triangulation in the upper part of the lough:
the triangles observed between the stations which had been erec-
ted along both shores refused to close within reasonable limits
of 180 degrees. At low water this part of the lough is composed
of acres of mudbanks through which winds a narrow boat channel,
and across these soft flats it was necessary to walk to reach the
triangulation stations on the foreshore. After two or three muddy
surveyors had returned with angles which did not add up to the
WAR AT SEA 1o¢
magic figure, the Captain announced his intention of going him-
self the next day to complete the work—‘And I shall want a pair
of mud pattens, Number One,’ he said to Lieutenant-Commander
Henry Menzies, who was already carrying in his head a list of the
instruments and other gear which the Captain had ordered ; Num-
ber One looked puzzled: ‘Surely you know what mud pattens are
—like a cross between snowshoes and skis with which you can
walk dryshod over soft mud,’ said Jenks. Busy with his other
preparations the First Lieutenant forgot all about the pattens until
he reported that all was ready to the Captain in the morning,
who enquired if they were in the boat: ‘They will be down there
in a minute or two, Sir,’ said Number One, who rushed down
below to see the Shipwright. ‘Chippy, for heaven’s sake make a
pair of mud pattens full speed.’ Chippy’s face was as puzzled as
Menzies’ had been the night before. Number One described the
pattens as quickly as he could, and very shortly two small boards
with four holes drilled in each and a piece of cord attached were
passed down into the boat. It was all there was time for, and
Menzies reported to the Captain that all was ready.
For Number One it was a long day of waiting, and at 6 p.m.
there was still no sign of the Captain returning, but an hour later
the boat was sighted on its way back and even when she was still
half a mile away it could be seen that the Captain stood in the
sternsheets covered in thick black mud from head to foot. Not
only had the mud pattens been too small in area to support Jenks
on the mud, but once he had sunk in they anchored him securely
despite all efforts of the boat’s crew to remove him.
Orders for tropical service were now received and the ship
proceeded to Greenock, where all efforts were devoted to em-
barking stores and awnings and generally preparing the ship for
service in tropical waters. Only the Captain knew where the
ship was bound, but some clue was given to her destination when
information was passed to the officers that Challenger was to escort
a 10,000-ton troopship to a West African port. Challenger had
relied in the past for her safety in her insignificance on the high
seas, and her armament of four two-pounder pom-poms seemed
ill suited to this task. However, three corvettes were also to form
the escort—H.M. Ships Lavender, Starwort and Petunia—with
106 CHALLENGER
Commander Jenks as Escort Commander. The trooper was s.s.
Anselm, said to be sailing in this special convoy as she had proved
too slow to sail with an earlier one which had just left. She
carried 1400 troops, the greater proportion of whom were R.A.F.
personnel.
At midnight on Sunday, 29th June, this little convoy sailed out
of the Clyde, bound for Bathurst in the Gambia River. A Welling-
ton bomber joined as air escort off the north coast of Ireland, but
this heartening support had soon to leave as they steamed west-
ward towards mid-Atlantic.
Commander Jenks had organised his force as follows : Challenger
in the centre with Anselm following astern; ahead and on either
flank a corvette formed an effective screen as the little ships
searched with their asdic equipment for any contact with a sub-
marine. When well out into the Atlantic the leading corvette
signalled that her asdic had broken down and could not be re-
paired with the resources available; this was disastrous news and
meant a complete re-disposition of the force as the van was no
longer protected from submarine attack. This corvette was
ordered to the rear and the remaining two corvettes moved further
forward on the flanks to cover each bow.
The Battle of the Atlantic was now moving rapidly towards its
peak. By obtaining radio bearings of U-boat transmissions and by
other intelligence methods the Admiralty were able to form quite
a good idea of the whereabouts of a number of the U-boats at
sea in the Atlantic, and twice daily they issued a coded situation
report known as the ‘Sitrep’, which gave convoys this vital in-
formation. Spread out in the surveying chartroom below the
bridge was a chart of the Atlantic showing the position of the
vulnerable little convoy and the suspected positions of the U-
boats as given in the ‘Sitreps’. Never was any chart on this table
scanned as keenly as it was by the small group of officers as each
‘Sitrep’ was being plotted; the little swastikas, which represented
U-boats, came nearer and nearer to the course of the convoy as
it crawled its way southwards across the Atlantic.
There was no avoiding action to be taken at a speed of 10 knots,
nor was it certain that the ‘Sitreps’ could be relied upon as highly
accurate. There was nothing for it but to keep going, zig-zagging
by day and urging the asdic operators and bridge look-outs to
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WAR AT SEA 107
ever greater vigilance. All onboard were conscious of the vul-
nerability of the convoy, the low speed, the corvette with the
defective asdic gear, the great bulk of the Anselm—it was like
walking naked through a huge room full of people; the eyes of
every U-boat must be upon them.
On the night of sth July the little convoy was right in the
middle of the North Atlantic; the night had been one of varying
visibility, fog sometimes cutting off from view the escorts and
the troopship. The Captain had been on the bridge nearly the
whole night, but shortly after daylight at 6 o’clock the visibility
cleared and he went to his cabin to rest and in a few minutes was
dozing in his armchair. Just under an hour later he was awakened
by the impulsive jarring ring of the alarm gong, the worst
awakening known to a naval man, and one which remains in the
memory. He ran to the bridge, jostling as he did so the men who
were hurrying up the ladders to their action stations. As he
reached the bridge he saw Anselm astern; she was down by the
head with a slight list to port, moving slowly ahead through the
water. The Officer of the Watch said that she had been torpedoed
—he had heard the detonation and had turned to see a vast column
of brown coloured water falling onto the upperworks of the
troopship.
Jenks ordered the two leading corvettes to hunt the U-boat
while he turned Challenger so that she came round astern of
Anselm where already men were in the water stringing out behind
her like a trail of refuse cast overboard, while alongside the
troopship boats were being lowered. Slowly Jenks manoeuvred
his ship ahead through the drifting men, lowering his seaboats as
he went and with the ship’s company hauling onboard those men
who were able to hold onto the ropes thrown to them. Eventually
he was able to put Challenger’s forecastle head alongside the
troopship’s port quarter. Though it was calm there was a swell
running and the relative movement of Challenger’s bow and the
troopship’s stern was considerable. Although hammocks were
got up to break the fall of those who jumped from the Anselm
onto Challenger’s forecastle, the troops preferred to step across
to welcoming hands each time the Challenger’s bows came level.
It was a difficult job for Commander Jenks to keep the bows
9
108 CHALLENGER
well up to Anselm’s stern, more particularly as he was thinking
of the future. He hoped to rescue a very large number of men and
it was vital that he should not damage Challenger so much that it
might prejudice the carrying of them many miles across the
Atlantic to safety.
The Captain was utterly cool, giving his orders calmly to the
Coxswain in the wheelhouse as he manoeuvred his engines to
keep Challenger in position—his calm bearing was infectious, and
all, rescuers and rescued, were behaving magnificently as the
numbers of men onboard Challenger increased minute by minute.
All this time Anselm’s bows were settling slowly and steadily but
after about 125 men had stepped across onto Challenger’s fore-
castle the stern began to rise into the air as the bows submerged
more rapidly and the sea began to flow in over her foredeck. It
was obvious now that she was about to plunge. Only a hemp rope
held Challenger to Anselm and when Jenks saw that she was about
to go he shouted to the troops to jump for it as he slowly moved
astern, parting the hemp rope as he did so. The stern of the
troopship reared vertically into the air, men leaping offall the time
in a great fan-shaped mass of humanity. Many landed on the fore-
castle of Challenger, breaking their ankles and legs as they landed,
despite the layers of hammocks laid out to break their fall. The
trooper’s stern was now 200 feet above Challenger’s bows and the
rudder and screws looked strange in such a position, yet still men
were jumping off, hitting the sea with a great splash.
As Challenger went astern Anselm reached a completely vertical
position as her funnel met the water; then she slid down like
a giant lift to the accompaniment of the noise of crashing gear
and bursting bulkheads. No vortex was created on the surface of
the sea—she was there one second and gone the next, leaving
the heaving surface littered with a mass of human and material
debris.
All Challenger’s boats and those of the third corvette were now
in the water collecting and bringing onboard many of the hundreds
of survivors who were clinging to the wreckage. The other two
corvettes were hunting the submarine far away on the horizon:
the shudder of their distant depth charges being felt from time to
time. The calmness of those in the water was almost unbelievable:
many who were on rafts or clinging to substantial pieces of
par
WAR AT SEA 109
wreckage waved the rescue boats away and pointed to survivors
more in need of immediate attention. Discussing the scene after-
wards, many realised that they had seen one survivor who had
been sitting on an upturned table calmly reading a book and
apparently oblivious of the scenes of chaos all about him.
Challenger and Starwort became fuller and fuller and the counting
of survivors became difficult as the men climbed onboard up the
scrambling-nets hung along both sides of the ships. Over 800 men
were definitely embarked in Challenger, making, with her own
ship’s company, almost a thousand men onboard the little ship ;
the even smaller Starwort had rescued nearly 300. By 9 a.m. no
further survivors could be seen among the flotsam, and it had
reluctantly to be assumed that the four hundred or so now missing
must have gone down with the ship. There was no longer any
oint in remaining stopped in this area, a sitting target for U-boats,
and so both ships set off with their human cargoes, slowly at first
because of the gross overloading and tenderness of the vessels,
but gradually increasing speed as confidence was gained, until
12 knots was reached. Any undue movement of the steering wheel
caused the ships to heel alarmingly. That the weather should con-
tinue calm was vital to survival.
The scenes below in the ship, now packed with wet, bedraggled,
wounded humanity were indescribable: every hole and corner
held its party of shivering men as they waited patiently for clothing
which Challenger’s crew provided from their personal belongings,
and for hot food from the galley where the ship’s cooks were
working with a will.
Many were injured and the ship’s Medical Officer, Surgeon
Lieutenant W. A. B. Cooper, R.N.V.R., aided by Squadron
Leader Monro, a survivor from Anselm, worked unceasingly for
the next 24 hours. Only two men died onboard, and Cooper
earned a Mention in Despatches for his great night’s work.
A few lines from Commander Jenks’ report made soon after
the sinking of the troopship are well worth quoting:
Crammed into every inch of space between decks and on the upper deck,
the survivors settled themselves down patiently and quietly for some 24
hours of discomfort and by their ready obedience greatly assisted the ship’s
officers and company in their endeavours to provide sustenance and warmth.
Particularly admirable was the conduct of the Royal Marines detachment who
I1o CHALLENGER
had been picked up, they took pains to sort themselves into a regular unit
and took over a section of the food distribution duties from the ship’s
company, and throughout behaved as if on the parade ground.
It was a source of great personal satisfaction that Captain Elliott, Master of
s.s. Anselm, was among those rescued by Challenger. This fine officer was swept
from his bridge as the ship plunged under, but arrived on the bridge of
Challenger after his rescue completely unshaken and physically fit despite his
years. He was most anxious to be of any assistance possible and his cheerful
bearing was a great asset.
Captain Elliott was 73 years of age.*
Commander Jenks’ immediate task must be to rid the ship of
her great burden of humanity before bad weather made her
unseaworthy. He hoped to rendezvous with the armed merchant
cruiser Cathay that night, but overcast weather had precluded the
convoy getting their position by sights during the last two days,
and to rendezvous on the high seas when one’s position is doubt-
ful is a chancy business. When approaching the position of the
rendezvous towards dusk a momentary sight of Cathay was ob-
tained about four miles away to the south-east. Spirits soared but
it would have been dangerous to pass a signal either by wireless
or by flashing lamp in these U-boat infested waters, nor was it
known if Cathay had sighted the little convoy. Jenks knew
Cathay’s course and it soon became obvious that there was nothin
to be done but to follow through the night, hoping to find the
merchant cruiser at dawn; occasional traces of Cathay’s wash
meeting the prevailing rel assured the Captain that she was still
ahead, and at daylight contact was made with her.
Whilst the three corvettes circled round, Challenger went
alongside the armed merchant cruiser and discharged her human
cargo, the 35 seriously injured men being hoisted in a cradle
worked from one of Cathay’s cargo derricks. A swell was still
running and Challenger’s external boat davit supports ground and
rumbled hideously against the great liner’s side despite the mass
of tattered fenders that were constantly thrust between the two
ships. However, no serious damage was done and when the last
survivor had been routed out from the remotest corner in the
* Captain Andrew Elliott, O.B.E., served a life-time at sea, He survived
two World Wars afloat and retired to Woodcombe in Somerset in 1949. He
died in February 1957.
WAR AT SEA III
little survey ship she joined the circus with the other two
corvettes while Starwort disembarked her survivors.
With the survivors out of the ship a great weight seemed to
have been shaken off. Challenger no longer seemed to those on-
board to be the No. 1 target. It was absurd, of course, but
everyone felt that the enemy would know that Challenger had
snatched these survivors from their grasp and that every U-boat
in the North Atlantic would be closing in on her. But, as always
in the war at sea, the passing of one worry is soon replaced by
another ; fuel now became the important factor. With the delay
and much extra steaming necessitated by the sinking of the troop-
ship the corvettes and Challenger needed fuel, for who knew how
many more diversions and emergencies might overtake the little
convoy before they sighted the shores of Africa? Distances were
measured on the charts, calculations of fuel consumption made,
and a decision reached to fuel in the neutral Azores. So while
Cathay steamed on to Freetown, Challenger made for Punta
Delgada in the island of San Miguel, where the ships could fuel
two at a time while the other pair patrolled outside the three-
mile limit.
The lights shining from the neutral towns and villages and
from the isolated homesteads high on the mountainsides seemed
lit to welcome the sailors from the horrors of life on the Atlantic,
which now seemed neutral no longer but hostile and bristling
with death. Foolish jokes brought easy laughter—the tension
which had existed onboard was broken in a moment. The ship
would be in harbour for only 24 hours, there was no chance of
going ashore, and rumour had it that a U-boat was fuelling at the
nearby island port of Horta; but all were living in the present.
The green hills, with here and there the red soil of the ploughed
land, reminded the men of the West Country at home ; the white,
yellow and even pink houses scattered on the sunny hillsides gave
the country an exciting look and remained long afterwards in
the memory of many as a heaven that was reached but which
it was forbidden to enter.
For three at least of Challenger’s crew there was no time to
lie on deck and drink in the sunlit scene. Lieutenant J. M.
Sharpey-Schafer, the ship’s Electrical Artificer and the Leading
Te? CHALLENGER
Torpedoman had work to do. The corvette with the faulty asdic
gear lay alongside ; a corvette’s resources are small and everything
possible must be done to have her anti-submarine equipment in
order by next day, when the ships would face the U-boats again
together. Sharpey-Schafer had a talent for anything mechanical or
electrical, his name being a byword among surveyors for his many
inventions; once before during the war he had worked at sea in
an asdic compartment for 36 hours to repair an asdic set to such
good effect that a successful attack was made on a U-boat the
very next day. His knowledge and initiative in this matter resulted
in the corvette’s equipment being put right, and it was a more
confident little party that set sail for West Africa after dark that
evening.
x
Gambia River
Atlantic changed to brown as the ship entered the mud-laden
water from the Gambia River spreading far out over the sea.
Later in the day the low-lying, dark green mangrove forests
could be seen stretching away to miraged vagueness on either
bow. The ship steadily closed the land and threaded the shallow
channels of the estuary before she turned southwards into the
river itself and came to anchor in the swirling brown waters off
the town of Bathurst.
With the Mediterranean virtually closed, our convoys to the
East were taking the long route round the Cape. Bathurst lay on
the very flank of this route, an ideal base for escort vessels and
aircraft. But Dakar, which we had failed to capture from the
Vichy French nine months before, lay less than roo miles to the
north and at any moment the Germans might have flown in air-
borne troops and built up the defences of Dakar so that this
former French base, and not Bathurst, would dominate the
convoy route to the Cape. The defences and facilities for vessels
and aircraft must be built up at Bathurst so that she could meet
any threat from Dakar.
There were no surveys whatsoever of the colony except the
old Admiralty chart ; hydrographic surveys were urgently required
for laying the controlled minefields, booms, navigational buoys
and beacons, while land surveys were needed for planning the
siting of the guns, airfields and barracks. Challenger had therefore
to pay as much attention to the topography as to the soundings.
Short-cut base measurements were unacceptable in sucha survey
where an extensive triangulation would have to be built up across
the wide estuary and onto the off-lying islands and up the winding
creeks through the mangrove swamps. So a base of 12,311 feet,
or just over two miles, was measured on the flat road leading
north-westward along the shore from the town. The two measure-
lj
] ss before the African Coast was sighted the blue of the
Il4 CHALLENGER
ments, one in each direction using steel tapes, differed by only
13 fe aha, which even Commander Jenks considered good
going, for it was the longest base measurement in hydrographic
history.
The seaward approach to the river was the first area to be
surveyed so that the light floats and navigational buoys could be
moved to mark the route that carried the deepest water across
the sandbanks of the estuary, where little more than 26 feet of
water at low tide was found. Some of the surveying marks erected
along the shore-line were made into permanent navigational
beacons so that a vessel could more easily fix herself when closing
this featureless coast, and so that the light floats and buoys could
be re-laid with ease and certainty at any time. The proximity of
the Vichy French was brought home when one of these shore
beacons had to be erected right on the border between Gambia
and Senegal, only five miles northwards along the coast from
Bathurst. On two or three occasions Vichy planes came in low
over the surveying boats, or circled the ship outside gun range,
apparently looking to see what was going on. Sometimes an
enemy plane would fly high over the anchorage off the town and
every ship would bang away with her guns until the pilot decided
to return northwards,
On completion of the work outside the river entrance the
survey moved into the river itself, where every square yard of
deep water was required to be known so that anchor berths
could be planned and mooring buoys laid with the maximum
economy of space. Here the real difficulties began. Up till now
the surveyors had been concerned with the estuary, the shores of
which were solid earth, where marks could be erected and angles
observed with ease. The river, however, which was several miles
wide, had no clearly defined banks and on either hand flowed
through vast areas of unexplored mangrove swamp. Along the
fringe of the mangroves there might be from two to eight feet
of water over the soft muddy river-bed, depending on the state
of the tide.
It was at points along the fringes of the mangroves that triangu-
lation marks had to be erected; they had to be over 60 feet in
height so that they would be visible up to 10 miles away, and at
the same time a firm wooden observing platform had to be sunk
GAMBIA RIVER 115
into the mud beneath the mark to support the surveyor and his
theodolite.
Much thought by the Captain and hard work by the shipwrights
and the survey recorders resolved these difficulties. A standard
survey mark of giant proportions was designed and a number were
pre-fabricated onboard. Three long, heavy spars formed the basis
of each mark, erected in a tripod; the heads of the spars were
held together by passing them through an iron triangle having
holes designed for this purpose, while their heels were weighed
down into the mud by heavy concrete sinkers. A tall mast was
passed up through a fourth hole in the iron triangle and a large
flag hoisted upon it, while the sides of the tripod were boarded
up and painted white. This formed strong resistance to the wind,
and as fierce squalls were frequent, wire guys were run from the
mast and the head of the giant tripod to further concrete sinkers
which were laid out as holdfasts.
The many components of these marks were taken to the
selected site in a pulling boat known as a ‘whaler’ by a crew of
eight men or so; but once in position it was necessary for the
team to wade, sinking into the ooze well above the knee at every
step. To lay out the concrete sinkers in their correct position
for securing the guys was a herculean task; once dropped, they
sank beyond recovery into the soft mud. Staggering with these
concrete blocks, wrestling with the heavy tripod, feeling beneath
the muddy water to reeve the guys through the eyes in the sinkers
and to sink the observing platform, the workers floundered and
fell on all fours or got stuck while rescuing one another. They
returned to the ship at nightfall covered in mud from head to
foot, every one of them, as their Captain had been on that fateful
day when he had taken the mud pattens away.
When the officers returned to take the theodolite observations
at these stations a man with a rifle was posted high on the tripod
mark itself to ward off the crocodiles which lay not far away,
watching the observer hour after hour as he made his six rounds
of theodolite angles, with all the care that this task requires.
Steady nerves were needed and a blind faith in the marksmanship
of the protector above.
Lieutenant Jack Paisley and his surveying recorder have good
cause to remember these survey marks in the Gambia River.
116 CHALLENGER
On this occasion they were left at one of the marks to
observe in the early afternoon. It had been arranged that another
survey party returning to the ship by boat would collect them
before dark, but something went wrong with the planning and
as night came on the two men could see no sign of a boat on
the broad river.
They climbed up to the cross spars and looked longingly at the
distant twinkle of light which marked the ship at anchor some
five miles downstream. ‘The fall of night had made the crocodiles
very active and several were in the water directly beneath the
[
SaaS Wi wih =f. iN nN —
racemninene EN in a Gb River
mark. One lashed with his tail against one of the main spars and
the whole structure shook terrifyingly. It grew bitterly cold, and
to keep themselves warm, clad as they were in their tropical rig,
they cut calico from the guys to wrap around themselves, and
with rope from the mark they lashed themselves to the spars
lest they should fall as sleep overtook them.
Hours later, it seemed, they saw a finger of light searching
the mangroves along the river bank. It was the rescue boat using
her Aldis signal lamp to search for the lost surveyors.
It was a happy moment for Paisley and his assistant when the
light at last picked out the dazzling white of the mark against
GAMBIA RIVER P17
the dark trees and the boat moved slowly in on the high tide
to rescue them.
The survey parties shot one or two crocodiles and when they
did so they towed them to one of the riverside villages where
the menfolk came out of their mud-and-thatch houses and with
knives and hatchets made quick work of skinning the beasts and
chopping up the meat which they appeared to relish. Parts of the
tail were most sought after as making excellent steaks. The
surveyors took the crocodile skins and hoped to have handbags
made later for those at home.
Crocodiles were not the only dangers to be encountered when
mapping the maze of creeks winding through the mangrove
swamps to the bush beyond; there were deadly black and green
mamba snakes, and every man carried a razor blade to cut open
a snake bite, and potassium permanganate crystals to rub into it,
the only efficient antidote. The anopheles mosquito present
almost everywhere in the area necessitated mepacrine being
included in the daily diet, while the tsetse fly was said to carry
germs of sleeping sickness, and one member of the ship’s com-
pany had soon to be invalided home with this disease.
The sick list had risen steadily until in October the average
daily number was nine. Abscesses and infection of the ears,
ulcerated legs, and septic wounds, malaria and dysentery were the
complaints, perhaps not surprising when the officers and men
spent so many hours wading and working in the mangrove swamps
on either side of the river.
The climate was hot and very humid, with frequent torrential
rain squalls and occasional fierce tropical storms. The powerful
tidal streams, strengthened on the ebb by the fast flowing waters
of the river, made the steering of the boats along the sounding
lines a difficult task.
But as the officers and men worked on under these difficult
conditions no one forgot that ‘there was a war on’, and Com-
mander Jenks, reporting on the behaviour of his men on com-
pletion of the survey, said:
I cannot mention too highly the continued cheerful and willing spirit of the
Ship’s Company as a whole, and their exemplary behaviour during their short
spells of shore leave. These men have endured six months, four of which were
118 CHALLENGER
at a trying season of the year, of very continuous, and to them monotonous,
hard work over long hours each day and with little opportunity for recrea-
tion, with unfailing loyalty and response to all calls made for further efforts.
It is submitted to be particularly to the credit of each individual rating that
the work has no appeal in war-time when most of them desire more positive
and exciting service.
Fixing the coastline can often be done in the way that has
already been described, that is by walking along the high water
line and fixing oneself at frequent and regular intervals by a
sextant and station pointer fix using three of the visible surveying
marks; however, this cannot be done when a twist of the tree-
fringed coast cuts off the surveying marks from view, nor when
mapping inland roads, villages and jungle tracks. To do such
work ‘traversing’ is used, and there was much of this going on
during the surveying of the country on both banks of the Gambia
River.
A traverse starts from a known position on the survey and
consists of a number of ‘legs’ at the end of each of which a peg
is driven into the ground. The direction of the first leg is found
by observing a reference angle at the starting point between it
and another mark in the survey, while the direction of each
subsequent leg is found by observing the angle between the leg
already traversed and that which lies ahead. The length of each
leg is also measured so that the positions of the pegs may be
plotted. This is done by the surveyor standing at one peg using
a theodolite to record the distance to a stave held by a seaman
over the next. Such a method is well known to the surveyor,
being called “tacheometry’, while the curiously marked stave
which makes such measurement possible is known generally as
the ‘tack’ stave.
Such a traverse can be progressed along winding roads or
tracks, the surveyor obtaining subsidiary bearings and distances
of features such as houses, conspicuous trees or streams, etc., so
that topography is built up along either side of the traverse.
Traverses eventually terminate on another of the main triangu-
lated marks of the survey, or even the original one from which
the traverse was begun. The less important topography such as
the remoter jungle tracks are traversed by measuring the legs
by pacing them out and finding their direction by pocket compass.
GAMBIA RIVER 11g
Such secondary traverses were started from a peg of known
position in one of the major traverses, and perhaps closed on a
peg some two or three miles distant. In this manner the details
of the hinterland were gradually mapped as the network of
traverses was threaded through the thick jungle, or across the
open parklike land where villages abounded and small black
children ran out to stare at the sweating sailors carrying their
strange apparatus.
Commander Jenks was following his usual war-time routine
of employing the same teams of officers and men on the same
tasks each day, finding this most conducive to speed with
accuracy. By 8 o’clock in the morning they were in the field in
their khaki tropical rig, trudging through the long forenoon as
the day got slowly but steadily hotter. By 1 o’clock the little
party would be ready for their sandwich dinner beneath a shady
tree; a short sleep was usually terminated by an African centipede
or perhaps red ants crawling over the face or arms, and then the
party would work on till sundown.
To an able seaman carrying the stave who had never trained
as a surveyor, nor yet had ever imagined himself on duty outside
a ship at all, this endless tramping through the African jungle
seemed the last thing that he would ever find himself doing when
he joined the Navy. Being on ahead he never saw the field board
and lost all sense of direction, his only duty being to walk on
and place the next peg where he was directed. It never ceased to
be a source of wonderment to him when the little party came
from the bush suddenly out onto a familiar road—‘Blimey,’ said
one of the stavemen to his officer on such an occasion, ‘I reckon
there’s no one knows Africa like you do, Sir!’
There were two rulers on the north bank of the Gambia River
who were anxious to see the ship which had now been moving
up and down the river and excited their curiosity. So, anchoring
off Essau near the river mouth, Nomandu Sonko, Seyfu of Lower
Niumi, was entertained onboard. He was most interested in
all he saw, Challenger being the first ‘warship’ he had ever
boarded. Commander Jenks furthered the survey by obtaining
from the Seyfu a great many place names for his chart—Kunku-
della, Latra Sibige, Mandinari, Kinkujung, Willingara—a surveyor
120 CHALLENGER
pencilled them in on the chart as the Seyfu pointed them
out along the river banks. The morning terminated with the
Captain’s hiring a number of canoes from the Chief so that even
more surveying parties could be put into the field to explore and
map the numerous creeks and waterways.
Hearing of Nomandu Sonko’s visit, the Seyfu of Upper Niumi,
who lived 20 miles further up river, expressed his desire to come
onboard and the ship anchored off Albreda on a Saturday so that
this could be arranged. He came onboard accompanied by a
number of his headmen, and before leaving expressed his wish
that the ship should visit Albreda again on the following Saturday
so that he could entertain the Captain, his officers and men in
a way befitting them.
Accordingly the next Saturday the Captain and his officers,
accompanied by 30 men, landed at Albreda and took up their
position around the Seyfu. A great many dances were performed
to the accompaniment of music played on drums and reed in-
struments. When at last the dances were ended the Captain was
presented with an embarrassing number of gifts. It was a strange
sight, Commander Jenks sitting rather self-consciously in his neat
white tropical kit surrounded by a crowd of colourful Africans
interspersed with the white-clad sailors, while boys, old men and
girls carried in baskets of fruit and eggs, and live poultry tied by
the legs, or led in goats and finally a huge grey bull. After the
bull came two fine young girls, lightly clad and bearing no gifts,
but walking boldly towards the Captain while the Seyfu held out
his hand in a gesture towards them. Commander Jenks’ embar-
rassment overcame him and he rose, turned and started to thank
the Chief, while the girls hesitated, looked baffled, and suddenly
fled into the crowd of onlookers. No one onboard eyer really
knew whether or not these girls were to have been the final
gift.
i On Christmas Eve the Seyfu of Lower Niumi was appropriately
in a giving mood and the ship called again at Essau to receive a
fine cow.
The idea of an attack on Dakar from Gambia was never far
from the planners’ minds at this time. Aerial reconnaissance
showed a deal of open parkland north of the Gambia River in
GAMBIA RIVER 121
French Senegal, the boundary of which lay little more than five
miles from the river bank in many places upstream.
However, it was only in a few places that it would be possible
to land troops on the north bank and these must be investigated
before any plan to attack Senegal from inland was developed.
Native hearsay indicated a number of small landing places which
might be suitable between Albreda and Kuntaur, a township about
150 miles upstream.
In 1826 Captain Owen, during his famous four-year survey of
the coast of Africa, had sent his nephew up the Gambia River as
far as Kuntaur and his chart was the only existing information in
1941. Much could have changed in the past 100 years. So
Challenger was ordered to survey the river up to the limit of
navigation and at the same time to carry out inspections of the
landing places on the north bank, said to exist at Salekine Point,
Mendora Creek, Kasban Creek, Devil Point, Bombale Kaua and
Nianmaru.
This expedition would serve a double purpose as the ship was
by now heavily covered with growth below the water-line and
her speed was down to 74 knots when steaming at her normal
revolutions, instead of 10. Challenger would require 12 knots
steaming at full speed if she was to keep up with the convoy when
she set out for England again. Commander Jenks believed that
if he spent a week at Kuntaur in the fresh water the ship would
shake off the heavy growth which had accumulated in the brack-
ish water of the lower reaches of the river. In fact this proved to
be the case.
Off Albreda there was a small island, composed mainly of the
ruins of an old fort, and on this had been placed the furthest
upstream triangulation station. St. James Island was to be the
fixed point of departure for the long river survey. Here both
echo sounding motor boats were lowered and took station 45
degrees on either bow of the ship, keeping their distance by
maintaining a constant vertical sextant angle between the ship’s
masthead and her water-line. The ship streamed the taut wire and
on every occasion on which she altered course a sinker was slid
down the wire to anchor it on the turn. By steering gyro compass
courses and using the taut wire distances the length and direction
of each leg of the long, long traverse were obtained.
Ti CHALLENGER
An African who had navigated these waters in small craft came
to indicate the passages through the sandbanks which the ship
followed, sometimes having as little as two feet of water beneath
the keel, but often as many fathomis as she entered the deep water
close off the downstream bank on the river bends.
Every half mile the taut wire measuring dial was read and a
simple flag signal indicated to the boats that this was a fix so
that they marked their echo sounding records accordingly, for
both ship and boats were sounding continuously. On the bridge
an officer was obtaining the width of the river at frequent intervals
by using a light rangefinder, while cross bearings by the gyro
compass were being used to intersect the position of any topo-
graphical feature. This was a ‘running survey’ and there was no
time for mistakes and oversights as the little fleet pressed relent-
lessly on upstream. It was a blessed relief for those on the bridge
when one of the landing sites was reached. The ship came to
anchor, and while relief crews manned the boats to survey the
approaches to the landings a quick meal was snatched onboard.
It took four days to reach Kuntaur, 122 miles from St. James
Island, for there was thankfully no chance of furthering the work
by night. At Kuntaur the ship came to anchor with barely room
to swing, further up the Gambia River than any modern ocean-
going steamship had been before.
And while the fresh water did its work cleansing the ship’s
bottom the surveyors took astrolabe sights ashore on New Year’s
Eve to fix the Kuntaur end of the long river traverse, and con-
tinued the drawing of the surveys of the lower river in order
that copies could be left in Bathurst before the ship sailed for
the United Kingdom.
The taut wire traverse from St. James Island was plotted on a
sheet of drawing paper over 6 feet long, and the final position of
the landing at Kuntaur differed less than half an inch on the paper
from the position found for Kuntaur by astrolabe sights. Thus
the traverse was satisfactorily closed, but the various landing
places inspected during the passage up river were shallow and
backed by mud and were of no use for landing transport or even
infantry if they were to take many stores with them. They could
not be recommended as beach-heads over which to pass a con-
siderable military force.
ee a aN ee
PASSING THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL
LVOSNW ddO GAWOHONV
GAMBIA RIVER 123
The headmen of Kuntaur had heard much of the great warship
working in the river and were delighted to welcome her and
demanded that they should be allowed to come onboard.
Challenger’s reputation as a man of war was so well established
in these parts, from hearsay carried upstream by canoe, that it
was felt in the ship that something special must be done during the
headmen’s visit to uphold the reputation.
A member of a local trading firm brought the desired answer ;
he asked Challenger if she would demolish an old warehouse which
stood in a state of decay beside the river bank a little downstream
from where the ship was lying. This gave the Gunnery Officer
an excellent idea. He arranged to send the Boatswain ashore to
set demolition charges below the building on the day of the visit
by the headmen. Ata pre-arranged flag signal the Boatswain would
light the time fuse behind the warehouse and make his retreat
into the jungle. Just before the time fuse was due to ignite the
demolition charges the ship’s pom-pom crews would open fire on
the building, and, if all went well, the small two-pounder shells
would appear to demolish the warehouse with an incredible
explosion.
The guns’ crews were as tense at their posts as if the warehouse
had indeed housed the enemy as the seconds ticked away on the
Gunnery Officer’s stop watch. A few yards behind, the headmen
of Kuntaur watched with eagerness as ‘Open Fire’ was ordered
and the two guns stuttered into action. The tracer bullets had
hardly reached their target when there was a deafening explosion
and the shed itself was completely obscured by smoke. The head-
men began to talk excitedly, the guns’ crews smiled at each other.
It was only as the smoke drifted away revealing the warehouse
much as it had stood for years that the smiles passed from the
faces of the guns’ crews and the Gunnery Officer hustled the
headmen off to see the chartroom.
Returning to Bathurst, copies of the surveys were turned over
to the local naval and military authorities, and copies also sent
off to the Hydrographer in case Challenger should meet her end
in the Atlantic, taking her valuable surveys down with her.
Despite the fact that the ship’s bottom was now clean,
Challenger’s best speed was not quite good enough for her to
) fe)
124 CHALLENGER
maintain her position in Convoy S.L. 98, which she had joined
for the voyage home. She therefore asked permission of the Senior
Officer of the 40th Escort Group escorting the convoy to ‘make
all plain sail’, and this granted, she hoisted her fore and mainsails.
At sea in war-time the afternoon watch was often the most
peaceful and the younger officers were usually on watch through-
out the convoy and in the escorts. Finding time heavy on their
hands their eyes would turn to the strange sight of Challenger
with her well-filled sails and they would decide to send funny
signals to her Officer of the Watch.—'I see the spirit of Nelson
is not dead’—‘Have you got your screw up?’ But they little knew
that it was a strict rule of Commander Jenks that he should see
every signal that came into the ship, however paltry its import
might be. At this time of day he would often be snatching much
needed rest after a night shattered by the alarm gongs and illumi-
nated by snowflake rockets. By the time the signal reached the
cuddy this humour was definitely misplaced!
Fuelling at Londonderry, the ship passed north and east about
and reached Sheerness, where she paid off her well-tried crew,
who had served Commander Jenks throughout two years of hard
surveying, and who had become welded into a great surveying
team. They went on their hard-earned leave, their crocodile skins
in their kitbags and a fine set of sailor’s yarns from darkest Africa
to tell in their homely ‘local’.
Challenger was taken into Dockyard control for a major refit
for further service overseas.
XI
The Eastern Fleet
threadbare, the pictures of spas and resorts had long since
disappeared from their frames above the seats; a dubious
drawing and a bawdy suggestion scrawled with untutored hand
replaced them upon the exposed cardboard backing. Three Royal
Marines—a sergeant and two corporals—sat in the compartment
gazing out across the flat, featureless marshlands of the Isle of
Sheppey, their kit in bags and suitcases stowed upon the racks
and the empty seats before them. The train crawled across the
forbidding landscape as dusk fell and the last light in the western
sky turned the mudflats of the Medway to sheets of lead.
The Marines had had a busy day for they had been turned from
civilians to members of this fine corps in eight hours, a process
which normally takes as many months. They were the chart
production staff of Challenger travelling to join her at Sheerness
on her commissioning day, the rst of May, 1942.
The ship was preparing to sail to join the Flag of the Com-
mander-in-Chief, Eastern Fleet. She was to be employed in making
surveys and charts of the bases and anchorages that the Fleet
would occupy during the course of the fluctuating battle being
fought in the Indian Ocean. To eliminate the delays that would
be occasioned by sending each survey back to England for re-
production as charts, the ship had now been fitted with a flat-bed
printing press. This same press had been used onboard the old
surveying ship Endeavour for reproducing her surveys during the
Dardanelles campaign in World War I.
Challenger was to produce her charts by a process of lithography
adapted to the equipment which it had been found possible to fit
into this already overcrowded ship. It was planned to draw each
chart upon tracing paper, and then, by placing this against a
specially coated zinc plate in a glass fronted vacuum frame exposed
to an arc-light or the tropical sun, to transfer the image to the zinc.
12¢
Te railway carriage was old, the upholstery worn and
126 CHALLENGER
The zinc is coated with an emulsion said to contain egg-yolk
and is a pleasing pale yellow in colour. The light makes the
emulsion exposed to it soluble in water while those parts covered
by the design remain insoluble. The soluble parts can then be
removed by washing and by a series of processes the plate can
be made to take bitumen where the image is required and the
plate is ready for use as a printing plate. The zinc plates are
manufactured in suitable sizes for reproducing charts and are made
with a distinct grain in their surface which retains moisture. This
in turn repels greasy substances such as printer’s inks; thus if the
plate is moistened, ink rolled over it will adhere only to the
bitumen-coated image. A piece of chart paper placed in pressure
contact with the printing zinc can then be made to accept the
image. The old proving press in Challenger did just this; the plate
and the paper were placed face to face on the flat bed and by
turning a handle a pressure roller was made to move across the
press to transfer the image. The plate had to be inked up by
hand after each copy of a chart was printed. There was little
mechanical and nothing swift about the method.
The most suitable persons to operate this equipment were
members of the civil staff at the Hydrographic Supplies Estab-
lishment at Taunton. Volunteers from this branch of the
Hydrographic Department were not lacking and a lithographic
draughtsman, a printer and a photographer had been selected for
this duty in the ship. But what naval rank or rating should these
men hold? Authority had searched for a precedent and found one
at last in the Royal Marines who had, for some long forgotten
purpose, employed a printer in their ranks. So the men from
Taunton must become Marines, but time was short and they could
only be spared for one day to make this startling transition.
Sergeant Crowford, tall and with a fighter pilot’s moustache,
was the draughtsman, cheery Cockney Laws was the printer, and
Corporal Lyons the photographer. They felt more like over-
harnessed and overladen beasts of burden when at last they
reached the ship lying at her berth in Sheerness Dockyard. In
their unfamiliar uniforms, webbing equipment and heavy field-
boots they stumbled under their loads of kit. For were they not
going overseas? The Royal Marines must be ready for anything
from ceremonial parades to commando attacks in any climate
THE EASTERN FLEET M7
from the tropics to the polar regions. Besides their bulging kit-
bags each carried a linen bag containing a white tropical helmet
and catching on every projection as they made their way up the
gangway to the ship.
All was last-minute bustle at Sheerness; the old well-seasoned
surveying crew who had been with Commander Jenks in the
Iceland and West African surveys were now scattered throughout
a hundred ships of the Royal Navy. The new crew were curious
as to their réle in this ship armed with but two Oerlikon guns,
which had now replaced the even more inadequate pom-poms.
The ship had been painted in camouflage, giving her a novel and
unusual appearance, mattresses had been hung around the outside
of the bridge to protect the personnel from attack from the air ;
new boats had been built to Captain Wyatt’s specifications,
modelled on the Labrador dories he had used when on that coast
in Challenger years before; they were designed for landing survey
teams through surf on the open coasts of the Indian Ocean. Still
the boom and gaff for the spanker remained, for the Captain
considered that his sails would be needed for that extra knot
during the long ocean voyages which lay ahead.
The ship had been fitted with a new asdic set and a small outfit
of depth charges. Lieutenant-Commander Robin Bill, short and
dapper, was the new First Lieutenant and was to take the ship
with her green crew to the famous anti-submarine working-up
base at Tobermory where evolutions and drills at all hours of
night and day were designed to ‘shake down’ the ship’s company
and weld them into a useful body. After that they were to go
on to Heysham where Captain Wyatt was to take command of
Challenger again and a trial survey, including the printing of the
chart, was to be completed before sailing for the East.
On the long lonely voyage to the Cape the crew spoke of the
unusual work ahead; they turned to the surveying recorders like
Petty Officer Charles Long with his pleasant smile and quiet
explanations or to Leading Seaman Jimmy Greenshields who knew
that the finest thing they would find at the Cape was the brandy,
for he dearly loved his run ashore.
There were many of the crew who were free with their advice
to the Marines as to what to do at sea and what not to do. The
Canteen Manager explained his theory that eggs should always be
128 CHALLENGER
placed in a net at sea and hung from the deckhead as anywhere else
in the mess they would get broken. Each night he set up his camp
bed beneath his precious cargo, but finally the cord holding the
net chafed through with the rolling of the ship and two dozen
eggs fell upon the sleeper’s face—like a scene from a custard pie
film.
On the afternoon of Friday, 28th August, 1942, Challenger sailed
into Table Bay and berthed alongside in the harbour beneath
glorious Table Mountain. But she did not dally long here, for
orders were awaiting her to go on to Kilindini to join the Fleet.
The British Eastern Fleet had at the beginning of April 1942
been composed of the aircraft carrier Formidable and two other
aircraft carriers, Warspite and four old ‘R’ Class battleships, seven
or eight cruisers and about twice that number of destroyers.
These ships were based on Trincomalee in Ceylon, Colombo and
Addu Atoll, a remote fleet anchorage on the equator south of
Ceylon. Very heavy Japanese forces were at sea in the Bay of
Bengal at this time, including a force of five aircraft carriers, four
fast battleships, cruisers, destroyers and tankers; but it was not
until this force had delivered heavy air attacks on Colombo and
Trincomalee and had sunk the British cruisers Dorsetshire and
Cornwall and the carrier Hermes by air attack that the size of the
Japanese Fleet in the Indian Ocean was apparent. The old ‘R’
Class ships were slow and with low endurance, and until greater
British forces were available it was reluctantly decided that the
Fleet could not be based again in Ceylon. Meanwhile the Eastern
Fleet established itself at Kilindini on the East Coast of Africa
so that the vital sea route from Britain to the Middle East by
way of the Cape would at least be protected.
Although the asdic apparatus was primarily developed as an
anti-submarine device, relying on the returning echo of a sound
impulse to detect and then range upon a submarine, the surveyor
also uses it as a deep echo sounding machine. A baffle placed
within the dome below the ship’s hull directs the out-going sound
vertically towards the sea-bed. By fitting an echo sounding recorder
to the asdic receiving apparatus soundings to the greatest depths
may be taken, as the sound signal emitted is a very much stronger
one than that issuing from the normal sounding machine. For
THE EASTERN FLEET 129
much of the long journey out to East Africa Challenger had been
sounding with her asdic apparatus, for, despite the war, surveyors
such as Captain Wyatt followed the tradition of the Surveying
Service that no opportunity be lost of increasing man’s knowledge
of the depths of the oceans. Shortly before reaching Kilindini the
asdic dome, the ear of the apparatus one might say, was struck
from the bottom of the hull by the ship hitting some submerged
object. The Captain’s remarks when reporting this matter were
as follows: ‘Apart from the lack of submarine look-out involved
by this loss, it was particularly annoying as it prevented my
carrying out a line of soundings past Europa Island and various
shoals in the Mozambique Channel.’
When the ship arrived in Kilindini nearly the whole Eastern
Fleet was in harbour and the port was very congested. Captain
Wyatt waited upon Admiral Sir James Somerville, the C.-in-C.,
and also upon the local Flag Officer. He discussed the surveys and
the future use of the port asa Fleet base and decisions were reached
with the officers on the various naval staffs as to what work should
be taken in hand. Two surveys, each on a large scale, were to
be made covering Port Kilindini and Port Reitz to allow the
closest possible berthing of ships. A survey of the entrance was
further desired on half the scale of the port surveys. The existing
chart was not considered adequate for approaching the harbour
from the eastward so a survey of a considerable area on a scale
of 1/75,000 (1 inch to a mile) was planned to take in those
features along the coast which would first be sighted by ships
making a landfall; the sounding on this chart would have to be
carried seaward for a distance of about 15 miles to embrace the
whole of the mineswept channel approach.
The survey of the Port of Kilindini was completed in the first
month. As in West Africa, the work was arduous indeed, and
sandfly fever and the effects of long exposure to sun and glare
brought about many cases of sickness. A daybreak start and an
earlier finish to the day’s work when the glare from the westerly
sun was at its worst curbed the rising sick-list. The new crew
were getting into the swing of things; camp parties were being
detached to progress the triangulation here or to watch the tides
there; the boats were away sounding and the ship herself was at
130 CHALLENGER
work outside the harbour. At night the surveyors had an immense
amount of work to ink in before they fell, wearied, into their
bunks for the short night’s sleep. But the pace of the survey did
not constrain the Captain to lower his standards of ship cleanliness ;
the regular weekly rounds of the mess-decks were carried out and
the upper deck was inspected on Sundays with the same attention
to detail as he had shown when inspecting the ship on her West
Indies commissions in those far-off peaceful pre-war years. The
white of her hull, the yellow of her funnel and upperworks,
were no more, but the Captain expected even a camouflaged
vessel to be ‘ship-shape and Bristol fashion’. A war-time habit of
plastering the decks with lime to whiten them had replaced,
in many ships with wooden decks, the age-old holystone, but
only once did the Chief Bosun’s Mate attempt this short-cut to
cleanliness.
As one of H.M. ships comes to anchor the Union Jack is hoisted
at the flagstaff on the forecastle head, the gangway is lowered and
the lower booms to which the boats will be moored are swung
out; all should happen in one synchronised movement as the
first rumble of the anchor chain is heard. This was not always so
in time of war but it certainly was so in Challenger. Despite a
week’s arduous work behind her, if the booms did not go out
instantly as the ship let go her anchor, then she weighed and came
into anchor again. Not only did she thus earn for herself a reputa-
tion as a ‘tiddly’ ship within the Fleet but the seniority of her
captain was soon widely known.
It is the custom in the Service that when one of H.M. ships
passes or is passed by another, the ship having the junior com-
manding officer pipes the ‘Still’ upon the boatswain’s call and
the crew stand to attention. The ‘Still’ is then piped in the senior
ship, followed a minute or so later by the “Carry On’, when the
junior ship may then do likewise. Captain Wyatt was by now a
very senior captain in the Navy List. One day a cruiser coming in
from seaward passed Challenger working at the harbour entrance ;
it never crossed the mind of the cruiser’s captain or the members
of his signals staff that such a small craft could be senior to their
own great ship, and no piping took place in either vessel. With-
out further thought the cruiser’s captain sent a sharp signal ad-
monishing Challenger for her failure to pay the traditional marks
THE EASTERN FLEET I31
of respect, but he received an even sharper signal in return,
drawing his attention to the Navy List.
One day Captain Wyatt, who was reconnoitring onshore for the
scheme of triangulation, came to a 100-foot high water tower
situated in a sisal plantation. Thinking that this would make a good
position for a triangulation station he climbed the fixed ladder to
the top of the tank where he began to make notes of what he
could see from this vantage point. He noticed bees swarming
round the top of a vent pipe on the tank and soon one of these
stung him. He killed it and was at once attacked by the whole
swarm. He beat a retreat down the ladder and ran through the
plantation to a house about a quarter of a mile away. The good
people let him in and plucked 30 stings from his head alone and
dozens of others from his arms and legs.
Swollen-faced in the wardroom that night he asked if anyone
was game for a go at making a theodolite station on the tank. Sub-
Lieutenant J. E. Moore said that he had kept bees and was willing ;
so next morning he and the Doctor set off with a Flit-gun filled
with chloroform and a mail-bag. They doped the bees inside the
vent pipe and tied the bag over the end, and returned to the
ship to report that all was ready for observing. Next day the
Sub-Lieutenant climbed the water tower confidently, his theodo-
lite on his back. But he had reckoned without the keeper of the
sisal plantation ; the wild bees were this man’s tribal totem and he
had removed the mail-bag so that the entire swarm was ready for
the Sub as he reached the top of the tank. When he got back to
the ship some hours later his head was in a bandage and his arm
in a sling.
Shortly after this incident the Sub volunteered and was accepted
for service in submarines; perhaps he thought enemy depth
charges preferable to African wild bees.
Those in the field had worked hard, but now the Royal Marines
were also busy. The chart of the Port of Kilindini was too large
for Challenger’s printing outfit, so that it had to be produced in
two halves, and two plates had to be made. After many difficulties
due to the high temperatures and the humidity of the atmosphere
both plates were ready on the 22nd November, only 12 days
after the survey was completed.
132 CHALLENGER
The Wardroom ante-room had been taken over ruthlessly dur-
ing the refit for use as a printing office and there were sinks,
vacuum frames, arc-lamps and a whirler for coating the plates all
packed into this small compartment. This left no room for the
press itself, which had been fitted on the upper deck, close for-
ward of the Captain’s cabin; when in use a canvas tent was rigged
around the press.
The day temperatures were far too high and fluctuating to
permit good printing, for the inks became too liquid and spread
over the surface of the zinc, so all-night printing was ordered.
The ship of course was darkened, and no glimmer of light
must emerge from the printing tent. Inside, stripped to the waist,
were Corporal Laws and a seaman from the duty watch. Laws was
rolling up the printing plate time and time again with the hand
roller like a pastry cook, while his seaman assistant turned the
handle of the press at required intervals like a housewife at her
mangle. The hours of the night slid by, the thudding of the
printer’s roller, the creak of the press and the murmur of con-
versation between the two men a background to the light sleep
of the Captain in his bunk only a few feet away through the open
square port. Any pause in this rhythm would awaken him and
he would come out to the printers’ shelter in his pyjamas and
bedroom slippers to see what the hold-up might be. Perhaps it
was a brief pause for tea, but more often it was a halt to clear the
hand roller, the ink-slab and the printing zinc, which had all
become hopelessly covered by invasions of flying beetles which
were struggling in the morass of sticky printer’s ink.
After seven days 56 copies of Eastern Fleet Chart No. 1 had
been printed and as each chart had to be printed in two halves
there was also the difficult job of joining them together. Paper
is very sensitive to differing temperatures and soon absorbs
moisture in a damp tropical atmosphere. This makes the paper
change its shape by contracting or expanding, and it often be-
came necessary to dry out the two halves of the chart in the
baker’s oven in the ship’s galley before they would fit exactly
together.
Printing under all these difficulties meant that some copies of
the chart were better than others but there was always a keen
demand for the new charts in the Fleet. The King’s Harbour-
THE EASTERN FLEET 133
master, whose job it is to organise the running of a naval harbour
and arrange the berthing of the ships, had an insatiable appetite
for the charts and every time a sub-standard chart came off the
press it was placed on what became known as the ‘Harbour-
master’s pile’.
E.F. 2, Manza Bay, surveyed by Lieutenant-Commander Cole,
R.N.R. before Challenger’s arrival, was next printed, and this
also required two printings, for a land tint was inserted in the
second printing and added greatly to the appearance of the chart,
although it was a difficult job, with the paper constantly altering
its shape, to make a good registration on the second printing
so that the land tint would fit exactly along the coastline in the
original print. So much had the printing technique now been im-
proved by experience of the difficulties onboard that the 60 copies
of E.F. 2 were completed in two nights’ work.
However, with the temperatures as they were in Mombasa at
this time, the difficulties of coating the plates in the whirler were
found to be almost insuperable, the only alternative being for
Sergeant Crowford, the lithographic draughtsman, to draw the
printing zinc completely by hand. So for E.F. 3, Port Mombasa
and Approaches to Kilindini, a zinc plate was sensitised with a
weak solution of nitric acid and alum and then, bit by bit, da
and night, Crowford drew on the plate with a brush and litho-
graphic ink the complete details of the chart. On a flat bed print-
‘ing press the printing image on the zinc must be reversed as the
contact between the chart paper and the plate is direct; so every
sounding and every letter in this chart had to be drawn back to
front.
On sth January 1943, 60 days after the start of the survey of
Port Mombasa, 125 copies of E.F. 3 had been printed from the
direct drawing on the plate made by Crowford. This, despite all
climatic difficulties, was war-time surveying as it should be done,
and Captain Wyatt and his surveyors were pleased with their
progress. Then E.F. 4, Approaches to Mombasa, was drawn direct
on to zinc, which took only 1¢ days.
In 44 months since the ship arrived in Kilindini she had com-
pleted four detailed surveys and produced five charts in quantity
sufficient to meet the immediate needs of the Eastern Fleet.
Orders to sail for a refit in Cape Town were received with
134 CHALLENGER
jubilation onboard. The following letter from the Flag Officer,
East Africa, speeded Challenger on her way to the Cape.
Office of the Flag Officer
East Africa
Royal Naval Base, Kilindini.
The Commanding Officer,
H.M.S. CHALLENGER.
On your leaving Kilindini I wish to express to you, and the Officers and
Men serving under you, my appreciation of the work carried out by H.M.S.
Challenger during recent months.
2.—The survey work carried out during this period will be of the utmost
value to ships of the Eastern Fleet, and the expeditious manner in which so
many charts have been produced is worthy of the highest praise.
3.—I hope that your forthcoming refit period will provide an opportunity
for Officers and Men to take leave which has been well earned.
4.—The numerous survey marks in the vicinity of Kilindini Harbour will
probably remain a constant memorial to your activities.
C.Stuart,
Rear Admiral.
A few were left behind under Lieutenant Gordon to form the
Kilindini Surveying Unit, for dredging and the building of new
wharves would necessitate many corrections to the E.F. charts
as time went by. (General Gordon was once again serving in
Challenger, in which ship he finally spent seven years of his life
as a naval surveyor.)
There had been frequent U-boat scares when on these lone
voyages and while the ship was steaming down from Kilindini to
the Cape the Commander-in-Chief attempted to divert her as,
according to sinking reports, she was sailing right into a pack of
submarines ; but this diversion signal never reached Challenger who
at that very moment was busily attacking a whale which she had
located with her asdic gear and had mistaken for a U-boat.
Later she passed right through the centre of a cyclone in the
southern end of the Mozambique Channel. It was late at night and
the trucks of both masts and yardarms were sizzling with St.
Elmo’s fire. There was no wind at the cyclone’s centre but the
ship rolled drunkenly in the huge confused seas which came at
her from all directions. Suddenly the wind rose again and with
a swishing sound the lashings at the bottom of the protective
THE EASTERN FLEET aig
mattresses outside the bridge parted and the mattresses flew up
and inboard on the bridge like leaves of a calendar, narrowly
missing those huddled on the bridge, and making a noise like a
clap of thunder.
The mattresses were pushed outboard but flew in again with
renewed ferocity, first one side and then the other. The anemo-
meter, which normally emits buzzes at diminishing intervals as
the wind rises, was now making a continual noise indicating that
the winds were not far short of 100 knots. But the ship came
through unscathed, and reached Cape Town in good order.
The hospitality of the good people of the Cape is too well
known by every serviceman who passed that way during the war
for a further description to be given here. No better place could
have been found for the ship’s company to relax while their ship
was being repaired. Miss Lucy Bean was in charge of the hospit-
ality, and she had a delightful home planned for every member of
the crew when his leave became due. Men were asked whether
they preferred rural or city life and their hosts were chosen
accordingly.
Information was already coming in from the Kilindini Survey
Unit about new buoys and navigational beacons and many other
changes taking place at Mombasa, which meant correcting the
plates of the E.F. charts and printing new editions to be packed
and sent off to the Chart Depot at Kilindini. So the Royal
Marines could not take their leave until all this work was behind
them. But daytime printing was possible in this cooler climate
and they were able to spend many a long night in the famous Del
Monico, drinking beer and listening to the orchestra under the
domed and star-studded ceiling.
The zinc plates were now getting worn smooth and the im-
portant moisture-retaining grain had to be re-imposed. This is
done by putting the zinc in a trough full of marbles which is then
agitated mechanically. The constant rolling of the marbles this
way and that imposes the grained surface. No apparatus of this
nature was carried in the ship but the Marines found one in the
printing offices of the Cape Times and approached the Manager.
He was delighted to help them in this matter, more particularly
as his ambition at that time was to be invited onboard a naval
136 CHALLENGER
ship. The Marines said that they would arrange for the Captain
to invite him onboard for luncheon. This had seemed easy at
the time, but somehow the Marines never plucked up the neces-
sary courage to tell the Captain that they had issued an invitation
on his behalf.
By the time the refit was completed at Cape Town in April
1943 the tide of war was turning in the Indian Ocean and the
Japanese Fleet were never again to range freely in these waters.
The naval base at Trincomalee was coming into its own as the
land forces moved into Burma and our naval forces moved east-
wards in support.
So when the ship sailed from the Cape only a brief visit was
paid to Kilindini, to collect the Survey Unit which had been left
there, before she sailed onwards across the Indian Ocean, and
in early May she was surveying in the Palk Straits between India
and Ceylon. Preparations were already being made for the Allied
invasions which were eventually to take place in Burma and
Malaya; the first requirements for large-scale combined operations
are spacious anchorages in which the convoys can assemble, and
well-surveyed sea training grounds where the combined operations
exercises may be carried out in realistic conditions without en-
dangering the numerous craft taking part. Such exercises will
include bombardments and the landing of troops over beaches,
Charts of such remote and spacious locations are unlikely to
exist on anything likea large enough scale for these purposes ; such
areas must first of all be selected and then surveyed and operational
charts prepared at an early stage.
The surveys in the Palk Straits were followed by a visit to the
Seychelles, the incredibly beautiful group of islands which forms
the British Crown Colony far out in the Indian Ocean. It was to
be used as a fleet oiling base and it was required to survey three
approach channels across the reef plateau upon which the islands
stand. On 25th June the ship anchored off Port Victoria, the
capital, situated on the island of Mahé, and a triangulation scheme
for the Seychelles group of islands was being vigorously planned.
A month later Captain Wyatt left the ship to travel to Colombo
to discuss with the Commander-in-Chief the future hydrographic
organisation of the Eastern Fleet Command, Great moves by the
THE EASTERN FLEET 137
Fleet were now being planned, and as well as surveys to be made
there was an expansive programme of operational charts to be
produced and the re-printing of existing charts on the Station,
for to send to England for every chart requirement at this stage
meant endless delays. Although Challenger, with sufficient small
craft acting as tenders, would probably be able to handle the
surveying side of the work, her small press was quite inadequate
for the chart printing requirements which were now growing
day by day. What was now wanted was a shore organisation to
cope with the printing, distribution and correction of locally
produced charts. Captain Wyatt was the Fleet Hydrographic
Officer and he was ordered to prepare such an organisation which
would serve the Fleet as the war crept down the Straits of Malacca
and into the China Sea.
How Captain Wyatt organised the Hydrographic Office in
Colombo and arranged for the printing of chart maps by the
Survey of India and the Survey of Ceylon and how he set up a
Chart Production Unit working first at Dehra Dun and later at
Kandy is not really the story of Challenger. But from now on his
attentions were divided between his Colombo office and the ship,
which carried on under her temporary captain, Lieutenant-Com-
mander Bill, during his long periods of absence. Some of
Challenger’s men, including Petty Officer Long and the Royal
Marines, were landed to assist with the production work which
was now carried on with the more modern equipment available
there, while the faithful old flat-bed press lay shrouded in canvas
covers and forgotten on the ship’s forecastle.
The work in the Seychelles had been going forward steadily,
with brief periods for recreation ashore in Mahé, where the
officers and men were welcomed by the friendly people. Cricket
matches became a weekly feature of life, after which iced beer
was served from the pavilion. The prisoners from the gaol were
usually there and watched the matches although they were sup-
posed to be cutting the long grass around the field, but there was
a war-time shortage of warders and they were in charge of a
charming rascal who was himself a prisoner, but who used to sit
and drink beer with the sailors.
One evening, when the work for the day had been completed
onboard, a sing-song developed in the wardroom, the songs getting
138 CHALLENGER
louder and bawdier as the evening progressed. No news of Cap-
tain Wyatt’s return had been received and it was a surprise to
the coxswain of the boat which went inshore at 10.30 p.m to
pick up the libertymen to see his Captain, who had just arrived
from Colombo by flying boat, pacing up and down the jetty
awaiting a passage off to the ship.
As the coxswain brought the boat alongside the gangway of the
ship the sound of a well-known naval song issued from the ward-
room portholes where every singer was trying to outdo the next.
To the amazement of the Officer of the Day the Captain came up
the ladder from the boat, and even before the coxswain had
shoved off from the gangway he heard the song cease with a
startling suddenness and silence reign.
One day when Lieutenant-Commander Tripp was ship sounding
off Seychelles he saw to his horror the brown, ominous shape of
a dangerous rock only a few feet below the surface and a few yards
from the bows. As he watched aghast the pinnacle of rock passed
down the port side. What could he do? Guy Wyatt, who happened
to be on the bridge at the time, soon told him. ‘Fix, man!’ said
he.
A month later the work in the Seychelles was completed as far
as it was now desired to carry it, and Challenger sailed north-
eastwards. She called briefly at the lonely atoll of Fadiffolu to
appraise its value as a Fleet anchorage, but in haste as he was, the
Captain found time to run a line of soundings through and away
from the atoll on the other side, fixing his position with reference
to the centre of the atoll by running taut wire. In this manner
he obtained an excellent profile across an atoll, that strange coral
structure which rises so abruptly from the depths of the true
oceans.
Challenger had always sailed alone in the Indian Ocean, for she
was really too slow for the ocean convoys. Her armament of two
Oerlikon guns was quite inadequate for these long, lonely voy-
ages; true, the First Lieutenant had rigged a most convincing
looking gun on the forecastle using canvas for the gunshield and
a beacon pole for the 4-inch barrel, but once that bluff was called
there would be little left with which to fight a well-armed sub-
marine or raider, and Challenger’s speed would not help her escape.
Above: SHEIKH KHAMIS BIN HILAL APPROACHES WITH HIS ‘ARMY’
Below : COMMANDER BAKER WITH SHEIKH KHAMIS BIN HILAL AND HIS BROTHERS
of61 ANn( ‘auolaIVAH JO GV4H AHL LV ANOITV GAWOHONV
THE EASTERN FLEET 139
About half an hour after daybreak on the day following her
departure from Fadiffolu, and when the Captain had just gone
down to have his morning bath, a submarine was sighted on the
horizon. The Captain rushed to the bridge with only his bath-
towel about his waist, and even this was in imminent danger of
slipping off. He sized up the situation: with no guns larger than
Oerlikons and the low speed available there was no hope of a
successful action, and all that could be hoped for was that the
submarine would see the mock gun on Challenger’s forecastle and
reach a similar decision. All eyes were on the low, ominous,
distant shape. The minutes ticked by and the submarine made no
move to close the range. For a whole hour the ship’s company
awaited the attack that never came. When the masthead look-out
had at last lost sight of the submarine the Captain made a large
alteration of course and broke W/T silence to report. On arrival
at Colombo, it was learned that the submarine was a British one.
The First Lieutenant’s gun must have been very realistic, how-
ever, for one of the first persons to visit the ship on her arrival
was the Port Gunnery Officer who had been passing the ship and
had come onboard to inspect the 4-inch gun which he saw she
carried.
One day the Fleet Royal Marine Officer passed a Sergeant and
Corporal of Marines in a Colombo street. There was something
unusual in their salute which drew his attention to them and
he called them over. They had never had one day’s training since
that first day in the barracks at Chatham and it was an easy task
for the officer to find faults with their uniforms and the way they
were wearing them. He questioned them as to their unit and said
that in all his days as a Royal Marine Officer he had never seen
two such unorthodox Marines. They would be called in for guard
and drill duties forthwith. Captain Wyatt got wind of this painful
interview and saw that unless he acted swiftly he would lose his
lithographic draughtsman and his printer. Consequently he sent
for the Fleet Royal Marine Officer and the two Marines were
spared the guard duties which they had not been relishing.
Two more sounding boats were on their way out from England,
and a motor launch was allocated for survey duties. Extra men
were recruited from the Fleet for training in Challenger to man
these craft. By now the ship was at Trincomalee, where there
II
140 CHALLENGER
were floating dock berths, dredged areas and anchorages to be
sounded.
At the end of 1943 the British XV Corps held Cox’s Bazaar
on the Arakan coast and a survey to locate the channel over the
bar was required to admit supply vessels to that port. The enemy
was close at hand and it was decided that a detached party should
be sent from Challenger to do this work, taking with them one of
the ship’s echo sounding launches.
Volunteers for this expedition were quick to come forward
from the ship’s company once they heard that Charles Grattan
was to be their leader, for he had earned a fine reputation for
cool deliberation in such enterprises. Leading Seaman Jimmy
Greenshields was to be the surveying recorder and second-in-
command of the small party of five ratings.
They left Trincomalee in November 1943, sailing with their
boat to Chittagong in a merchant ship. On arrival there Grattan
did some hard talking before he found himself in possession of
a base ship. She was the old river steamer Esther, her captain a
British Army sergeant and her crew twenty Indians, one of whom
was a cook who could disguise corned beef a hundred different
ways.
Things went smoothly, there was no interference by the
Japanese and the channel was surveyed and marked within
a week. Fast going, and Lieutenant Grattan flew direct to Delhi
with his work, there to have it printed as a chart.
On 19th January, 1944, the British 5th Division commenced
an advance southwards along the coast and Tek Naaf, on the
western bank of the Naaf River, was occupied. A small bridge-
head was also established on the eastern bank but the Japanese
continued to hold the remainder of that bank, and the coast south-
wards from the river mouth. The Naaf River flows southwards
parallel to the coast and but a few miles inland from it. Inside
the river was deep and easily navigated, but to enter it supply
vessels would have to thread their way along the shifting channel
through the breakers and shallows of the Cypress Sands, which
stretched five miles to seaward.
This channel had to be located and marked and Grattan’s party
TE) EAS TE RUN SEE BET Aa
moved forward nearer the enemy. Escorted by a motor launch
of the Royal Indian Navy, the survey boat steamed from Cox’s
Bazaar southwards 50 miles through the night to St. Martin’s
Island, which lay close south of the Naaf River entrance and five
miles off the enemy-held coast.
Luckily there were no Japanese on St. Martin’s Island, only a
few Burmese, and Grattan took possession quietly, anchoring his
boat off the casuarina lined shores and taking over a native hut for
his headquarters. No lights or fires were permitted on the island
by night, whilst the sky to the eastward was illuminated by the
flash of artillery and falling bombs.
Close as the surveyors were to the enemy, the base had to be
measured with the usual care, and this was done on a low sandy
spit at the west side of the river entrance. Then the triangulation
had to be observed, which meant landing by day on the enemy’s
shore. Sometimes Zero fighters flew so low over the party that
they could plainly see the pilot in his cockpit, and they were
happy to think they may have been mistaken for Japanese. Once
ashore Charles Grattan used his theodolite and Jimmy Green-
shields booked the angles ; the other two members on shore stood
guard with the entire armament, a stripped Lewis and a Tommy
gun, peering fearfully into the thick jungle. But for some strange
reason they were never discovered until they were once again in
their boat and bullets sung past them as they made off; on one
occasion they had only just left a Burmese village when the whole
place went up in flames, presumably as a reprisal for the slight
assistance that had been given to the surveyors by the villagers.
After about a week, when it seemed that the Japanese had
overlooked the activity on St. Martin’s Island, Esther arrived with
her helpful captain, gifted cook and comfortable bunks. However,
Esther did not distil her own water, nor was there any on the
island, so that every two or three days she must sail at full speed,
with all guns manned, into the river and upstream to a muddy
pool on the western bank where fresh supplies were taken onboard.
The surveyors got to know every yard of the coast south of the
river, and when the channel through the Cypress Sands had been
surveyed and marked for shipping the little party were delighted
to find themselves asked to guide in the commandos landing on
the coast to make a right hook. Charles Grattan led the landing
142 CHALLENGER
craft in a motor launch, while Jimmy Greenshields, happily com-
manding a massive American diesel craft, brought in the second
wave, a fitting ending to the Challenger’s activities on the Arakan
coast.
On 6th March the first large vessel, s.s. Engby, entered the river
by the new channel and berthed at the military base at Tek Naaf.
Lieutenant Grattan received a Mention in Despatches for the
fine work done by his team, and the Supreme Commander South-
East Asia wrote to the Naval Commander-in-Chief as follows:
My Dear Commander-in-Chief,
I wish to express my deep appreciation of the splendid work recently
carried out by the Naval Survey Party which surveyed the Naaf River Entrance.
By locating and charting a deep water channel the Survey Party has made
it possible during the monsoon season for seagoing ships to enter the Naaf
River and reach Maungdaw. The alternative, if no action had been taken to
locate the channel, would have been for vessels to discharge at Cox’s Bazaar
and for stores to proceed from there by road, thus placing a great additional
burden on Road Transport during the difficult monsoon season.
I shall be glad if the Officers and Men of the Survey Party can be informed
of the great value their work has been to the soldiers fighting in the Arakan.
(Signed) Yours sincerely,
Louis Mountbatten.
On Christmas Day, 1943, Captain Wyatt was once again in
Challenger on his way to Palk Strait to take in hand more surveys
of that area, which was required for use as operational training
grounds. The area entailed over 300 square miles of sounding.
Much of it was out of sight of land so that a triangulation scheme
had to be established using moored beacons, instead of the usual
landmarks, connected to the shore survey. This work was com-
pleted between the sth and 25th January, 1944. The surveyed
area was tinted in red on the existing small-scale chart of the
area and forwarded to the C.-in-C. to show him what good pro-
gress was being made ; his comment was that it did not look much
for three weeks’ work!
About this time the strategic importance of the Cocos-Keeling
Islands was realised, lying as they did utterly alone in the Indian
Ocean, about 600 miles from the Japanese-occupied territory of
Sumatra,
THE EASTERN FLEET 143
It was planned to survey the islands, the lagoons and the reefs
with a view to using the anchorages and laying down an airfield.
A party was assembled for this purpose at Colombo and consisted
of Lieutenant E. E. Croome from Challenger with a Petty Officer
Surveying Recorder, and three A.B.s to do the hydrographic
survey; there were also Royal Engineers and a Flight Lieutenant
to site the airfield. The party sailed in a fast minelayer, complete
with every item from Bren guns to tin-openers. They were to
be left some weeks on Cocos and it was by no means certain that
they would not be visited by the Japanese during the period. To
make their presence less conspicuous from the air they took no
survey boat but relied on ‘local resources’, a familiar and dreaded
term to the ears of any hydrographic surveyor.
It was upon these atolls that Mr. Darwin wandered with
Captain FitzRoy from the British naval survey ship Beagle in 1842
and pondered upon the construction of these low islands lying
around a shallow lagoon; whilst outside the lagoon Captain Fitz-
Roy had showed by his lead line soundings that the bottom fell
away precipitously to very great depths which he could not plumb.
Darwin and FitzRoy had met Captain Ross, who had settled
in the islands about 1835 with his family and a former ship’s
mate who had served with him. Soon Ross was employing as free
labour the Malay slaves whom a Mr. Hare had imported a few
years before. The islands have remained in the Ross family ever
since and the descendants of these Malay slaves are the inhabitants
of Cocos-Keeling today. The surveyors found the natives leading
an orderly and pleasant life, and despite the lack of outside
provisions and many articles of daily use, due to their remote
position and war-time difficulties, their standard of living appeared
to be above that of many dwellers in the East, based as it was
upon coconuts and pigs.
Almost on arrival Croome’s crew went sick with some form
of dysentery and he had to search the village alone for a boat and
a Malay crew to man her. The craft he finally found was a hard
chine boat, with a high freeboard and an unpredictable engine.
In this he went to sea for the hydrographic survey, first within
the lagoon, then through the entrance channel and along the
outside of the wave-battered reef. A Malay steered while his com-
panion coaxed the engine and a very brave and seasick R.E.
144 CHALLENGER
Sergeant, who had come as the geologist of the team, struggled
alongside Croome to take sextant angles with the unfamiliar in-
strument as the boat bobbed like a cork or drifted broadside
with the wind. The Flight Lieutenant (Radar) wrote down the
angles and recorded the leadline soundings being taken by the
two A.B.s who still remained on their feet. The Major (Airfield
Siting) was pressed into service to record the rate of tidal streams
through the entrance channel of the lagoon, anchored there in
a native canoe.
There were one or two occasions when the engine broke down
while they were working outside the reef; luckily the wind
was blowing towards the reef, or the craft and its oddly assorted
crew would have been borne away to the middle of the Indian
Ocean. So steep were the sides of the reef that the anchor failed
to hold the boat until she lay pitching and plunging a few feet
from the breakers pounding upon the edge of the reef itself.
There, in this perilous position, praying that the anchor might
continue to hold, the surveyors remained while the Malay engine-
man coaxed his unwilling charge into action again.
On returning to Ceylon Croome handed in his completed
survey. He was quite worn out with improvising and was happy
to be back. The bill for the hire of his boat at Cocos and the crew
that went with it came to about £200, and this was paid without
comment by the Naval Supply Staff, but a few days later Croome
received a bill for 14s. 3d. in respect of crockery he had failed
to bring back with him from those distant isles.
In April the approaches to the Naval Base at Trincomalee
were taken in hand for survey with H.M. Yacht Nguva, Motor
Launch No. 1248 assisting. Eastern Fleet charts had now reached
well over twenty in number. These, like all charts, need constant
revision and correction and Notices to Mariners had to be estab-
lished to correct them. The Admiralty Notices to Mariners have
been published for many years and go forth weekly to all holders
of folios of Admiralty charts, bearing the corrections which
Mariners should make to keep them up to date. Local Notices to
Mariners supplied by the Hydrographic Office at Colombo carried
to users of the E.F. Charts such corrections as became necessary
week by week and the first copies of these notices were printed
ee
on
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———_—
ELE EASTeE RIN (Bi Eee I4g
by Petty Officer Long on a Gestetner duplicating machine in early
May 1944.
By the end of June the shore Hydrographic organisation was
well established. The Admiralty had taken over a large yacht in
England called the White Bear, which was being fitted out with
the latest in chart printing and production apparatus, and she
was shortly to sail to become the hydrographic vessel with the
Eastern Fleet. Captain Wyatt, although still the Fleet Hydrographic
Officer, was now able to return to his ship and to sail in her for
Sydney, where she was to undergo a refit which was well overdue,
and where she arrived on 26th July.
XII
Torres Straits
under Quiros was in the South-West Pacific. The ships be-
came separated and eventually one of these, commanded by
Luis Vaez de Torres, passed through a reef-encumbered passage
between that part of Australia now known as the Cape York
Peninsula, and New Guinea. The second European to pass through
these straits was Captain Cook, who landed with Mr. Banks upon
a small island which he described as ‘mostly barren rock fre-
quented by birds such as boobies’. It was as he returned to the
ship on this occasion that he noticed the south-westerly swell and
realised that he was now ‘westward of Carpentaria’ and that he
had passed through Torres’ strait. Cook named this bare island
‘Booby Island’.
In 1944 the thoughts of both the British and the U.S. Navies
turned upon Torres Straits. The remaining passages between the
Indian and the Pacific Oceans were closed by the Japanese and
there was no other way open except by the long passage right
round the south of the Australian Continent. It might be neces-
sary at any time, as strategy required, to pass battleships and air-
craft carriers rapidly from one of these two oceans to the other.
More particularly at this time was it likely that the British Eastern
Fleet might be required to move rapidly to the Pacific from the
Indian Ocean to join the U.S. Fleet.
A navigable channel through Torres Strait had been surveyed
by Captain Blackwood in the survey ship Fly in the years 1843
to 1845, and it was his charts which were now investigated. His
channel was well used, lighthouses now marking some of the vital
turning points along the tortuous route. The channel throughout
its entire length of 100 miles from Booby Island in the west to
Dalrymple Island in the east seldom exceeds 100 feet in depth
and so it may be seen what a potential danger an undiscovered
coral head might be to a fleet of ships requiring a depth of water
146 e
I" 1606 a Spanish Expedition which had set out from Peru
Cg a ge ee ee
TORRES STRAITS 147
of 35 feet. Away from the channel itself the reefs still remain
practically uncharted. Such remarks as are still on the chart—
‘Reef seen by Mr. Ashmore in 1811 (not surveyed)’ and ‘Fly
entered here (dangerous)’—do not inspire confidence.
Much more recently Lieutenant-Commander Karl Oom,
R.A.N., who had served in Challenger in Labrador, had completed
a survey of the western end of the channel and H.M. Australian
Ships Moresby and Vigilant had sounded and swept a portion of
the Great North East Channel ; two former Challenger officers were
also serving in these ships, “Tancred Pass’ and ‘Lowry Islet’
bearing witness to their efforts.
It was now decided to sweep the entire channel for obstructions
and widen it wherever possible, the survey to be given utmost
priority.
Challenger’s Captain was placed in command of Task Unit
jo.5.2. under the operational control of the Commander U.S.
gth Fleet. The Unit consisted of the ship herself, the Royal Aus-
tralian Naval Trawlers Goolgwai, Samuel Benbow and Durraween, two
seine net fishing vessels, Polaris and Winter, and a motor launch.
All these vessels were fitted with echo sounding equipment and
an assortment of sweeping gear.
Lieutenant-Commander R. T. Tripp and General Gordon were
posted from Challenger to the Goolgwai and Samuel Benbow respec-
tively, and these two ships, forming the advance guard of this
strangely assorted unit, sailed from Sydney for Torres Straits on
13th September, 1944. Challenger was to hasten after them in early
October at the conclusion of her refit.
Captain Wyatt had time only to see this operation getting under
way before his orders came to return to England. In the following
year he was to take over as Hydrographer of the Navy from Vice-
Admiral Sir John Edgell. This meant that he had reached the
highest post it is possible for a naval surveyor to hold, but in spite
of this knowledge it was a sad day for Captain Wyatt when he
had to leave Challenger knowing that she was his last sea-going
command. He had always been a man of the sea. He loved the
ship and her company and there were tears in his eyes when he
said good-bye. He was going, he told the men, to become a ‘nine
o’clock sailor’, and so the First Lieutenant, Bill, took over com-
mand of the ship.
148 CHALLENGER
Challenger and the trawlers were fitted with gear called the
Oropesa sweep, normally used for the sweeping of moored mines,
but also used by surveyors to sweep for obstructions at various
depths below the surface of the sea. The merit of the apparatus
is that by means of steel ‘otter boards’ the sweep runs out to
port and to starboard of the sweeping vessel at a set depth and
thus the ship does not need a partner to sweep a wide swathe of
the channel. Challenger worked in the somewhat deeper water to
the eastward using this gear, but so shallow was the water of the
Prince of Wales Channel in which the trawlers were sweeping
that the otter boards themselves, which hang five or six feet
below the sweep wire, were fouling the bottom. So the trawlers
worked in pairs, dragging a chain bottom sweep between
them. This could not be done however where the sea-bed was
rough and so in such areas a wire sweep was rigged between two
vessels. The light wire used for the sweep is held down below
the stern of each ship by passing it through a block secured to
a heavy weight suspended from the stern of the sweeping craft.
Wires with floats attached to them are secured at intervals along
the sweep to keep the whole 1000 feet of sweep wire at the
correct set depth. Such work had to be taken very slowly: the
vessels did not sweep at random, for in one of these craft, each
swathe cleared was plotted upon the sounding boards by a sur-
veyor who repeatedly fixed his own ship by reference to the
survey marks which Challenger had now erected and co-ordinated
on the numerous small islands and reefs along both sides of the
channel. The second trawler maintained its careful distance of
1000 feet from the fixing vessel. Thus was the progress of the
work recorded day by day and gaps in the sweeping filled.
Challenger’s work consisted of the erecting and fixing of the
marks, the sounding out of the more intricate parts of the straits
with her echo sounding boats in order to locate the deepest
passages, and, together with the Royal Australian Naval mine-
sweeper Echuca, which had now joined the Task Unit, sweeping
the North-East Channel with Oropesa gear. Each time this equip-
ment fouled an obstruction the ships would have to be hauled
back and every effort made to salve as much of the sweep gear as
possible. There were many obstructions and the supply of sweep
gear arriving at Thursday Island barely kept pace with these un-
|
|
TORRES STRAITS 149
avoidable losses. Each time an obstruction was thus located it had
to be fixed and a search with the echo sounding boats made to
find the shortest way around it.
Soundings on charts show the depth of water the mariner can
expect at Spring Low Water, being as low as the tide is likely
to fall. Whenever the surveyor is sounding therefore he must have
a tidepole erected so that every sounding may be corrected to
the height of the tide above sounding level (or ‘datum’) before
it is inked in upon the sounding boards to become part of the
future chart.
The height of the established level ashore above sounding datum
is recorded, together with a full description of the fixed mark
which establishes the level; this mark is known to the surveyor
as a ‘benchmark’, formerly ‘bankmark’, then being a mark cut
in the bank of a river so that flood waters might be gauged, If
any future survey is undertaken in the same area at a later date
a tidepole can be erected, and as soon as it is levelled down from
the fixed mark the height of sounding datum can be established
on the pole without the necessity of re-observing the rise and fall
of the tide for the complete period of a lunar month.
So it is that in all the larger ports of the world benchmarks
have been established. In many remote native villages or in shel-
tered coves and bays on uninhabited shores such a mark is known
by the Hydrographic Department to exist and its description and
height above sounding datum may be found in the records and
supplied to the captain of a ship sailing to survey in the area.
Every one of these benchmarks shows the site of a tidal camp
where a small party of naval ratings has lived for at least a month
to watch the rising and falling of the tide throughout the lunar
cycle. Sometimes in recent years, sometimes well over 100 years
ago, these simple men, by performing their tide-watching duties,
have established a quantity of solid data for the study of the earth’s
tides. When recovering an old benchmark it is interesting to
visualise the party of men who established it 50 years before, to see
their camp and imagine them sitting with their clay pipes and
sennit hats as they converse with their native neighbours in that
form of pidgin English in which the sailor communicates freely
with those of other tongues the world over. There are many
CHALLENGER
150
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TORRES STRAITS ISI
stories of tide-watchers who are left for long periods to their own
resources, sometimes on uninhabited islands, sometimes in com-
munities far from what the sailor would call civilisation. Before
the days of radio they often had to nurse one of their fellows
through malaria or other ailments or deal with snake bites and
accidents ; today the ship can be called in such emergencies.
A tide-watcher had been established in the Wyre Lighthouse
to read a tidepole during the period when Challenger was surveying
at Heysham at the beginning of the commission. This man was
taken ill with severe stomach pains and a party from the ship
arrived by boat at the lighthouse to collect him. It was necessary
to lower him into the boat from the balcony of the lighthouse by
placing him in a Neil-Robertson stretcher, which is supplied for
just such a purpose. When secured inside this stretcher the
patient is incapable of moving hand or foot. The tide-watcher,
thus helpless, was being lifted over the parapet of the lighthouse
by the rescue party when he slipped from their grasp and fell
like a stone. The officer who was in charge caught a quick turn
with the rope with which it had been planned to lower the man,
and it was just in time, for the rope brought the stretcher up
with a sickening jerk a few feet above the waiting boat. The
lighthouse keeper was later heard to say that he had never seen
such a fine feat of seamanship !
A complete new crew were now arriving at Thursday Island
in dribs and drabs to relieve the men who had served a full com-
mission in Challenger. Commander Sabine took command and with
him came a number of surveying officers who were new to the
old ship. Among these was a young lieutenant, John Thomson,
and one of his first duties was to land on Cook’s Booby Island to
locate the benchmark established there in 1843 by the men of
H.M.S. Fly. It was said to be cut in ironstone rock at the mouth
of a cave known as the ‘Post Office’, which had been used as
such in former times, vessels going eastwards leaving their mails
in the cave for collection by vessels homeward bound. It was
many years, however, since this pleasing idea had been abandoned,
for even when the earlier Challenger visited the cave in 1875 there
was only one letter there, and that was a treatise addressed ‘to
whom it may concern’ describing the navigational difficulties of
152 CHALLENGER
the Torres Strait as the master of the vessel Banda had found them.
But although Thomson found no letters, he located the benchmark
and saw the name of H.M.S. Fly beautifully carved upon the walls
of the cave.
The tides of the Torres Straits are extremely complicated, for
the strait connects two areas in which, as the Admiralty Tide
Tables say, ‘the tides differ remarkably’. Sometimes it is high
water in one area when it is low water in the other, which causes
strong tidal streams to rush from the higher level to the lower.
Challenger, measuring the rate of these streams at frequent points
along the channel, found them to flow at times at speeds up to
eight knots, so that it can be imagined how difficult this made
the dragging of the sweeps along the channel.
To find the tidal reductions hour by hour throughout each day
so that the sweeps could be set to the required depths it was
necessary to establish a whole chain of tide-watching camps, for
the time of high and low water differed considerably along each
leg of the route, Starting with a camp on Booby Island, parties
were landed to make camp on Goods, Round and Hammond
Islands, Ince Point, Twin and Sue Islands.
Round Island is small and covered with dry scrub. It is only
about 400 yards across in any one direction, and this was one of the
places where two men were to camp for a month to watch the tide-
pole. A team from the ship helped to land their stores and to pitch
their tents, and then with much talk about Robinson Crusoe and
Man Friday the helpers manned their boat and headed out for the
ship, waiting impatiently offshore. The two men were left in their
own little kingdom, and after a brief look around they decided
to fall back upon the sailors’ stand-by and to make themselves a
cup of tea while they thought of the long days ahead and what
they would do when they were not actually reading the tidepole.
As Round Island was sinking below the horizon astern of the
ship the Officer of the Watch happened to look back. A billowing
cloud of smoke rose above the island; if atomic bombs had been
known at this time it would have been assumed that this was one
of them. The ship turned and made her best speed back to the
island while those on the bridge looked anxiously through their
binoculars to see what was happening. The whole island was
furiously on fire, and no sign of camp or campers could be seen.
TORRES STRAITS 153
A boat was lowered and hurried in towards the beach where
so recently the campers and their gear had been landed. As the
boat neared the shore the tide-watchers were seen standing up
to their necks in the sea off the blazing coastline. There was no
place on the island where they could have remained, and here
they were braving the sharks and the venomous sting rays.
Their paraffin cooking stove had exploded and this had ignited
the tent, and the dry scrub soon followed. It was a fortunate thing
that the ship had not been further away when the fire started,
for with the radio and all their food supplies gone the two campers
would have been in a desperate position.
The islands in the Great North-East Channel are small and
featureless apart from the usual clumps of coconut palms, which
so obscured the view that in many cases it became necessary to
build survey marks over 60 feet in height. The Admiralty Manual
of Hydrographic Surveying includes a set of instructions for erecting
such marks, and as Thomson had not built one of these before,
he took this book with him when he landed. ‘With resources
normally available’, reads the manual, ‘pole marks up to a maxi-
mum of seventy or eighty feet in height may be erected without
difficulty.’ Thomson followed the directions as they went on to
describe the procedure, using such resources as barlings, bamboos,
tail-blocks, mast-ropes, heel-ropes, smiting lines and five iron
stakes—‘nine if the ground is soft,’ said the manual. However, he
felt that the phrase ‘without much difficulty’ was perhaps an
understatement. By late afternoon the mark was up, towering
proudly above the palms, but unfortunately so was the gantline
and a boatswain’s chair with a sailor in it all lashed to the top
of the mark.
After a further hour or so this sailor had been rescued from his
pole-squatting position and the party were ready to return to the
ship. On the beach they found the coxswain of the motor skiff,
which they had left anchored offshore, shivering with fright. He
had got bored in the boat as she lay tossing gently beyond the reef
and had swum to the shore. The man swore that he had been
chased by a shark, and sure enough there was the beast in the
shallows waiting for his supper. With much splashing the shark
was frightened away into deeper water, and then of course some-
one had to go and get the boat. The men’s eyes turned meaningly
154. CHALLENGER
upon their leader; there was no option, and young Thomson
struck out for the skiff. Never had a 200-yard swim seemed to
him so long, and never had the difficulties of climbing into a
boat from the water seemed to him to be so insuperable. But
when he reached the boat he found that he was into it in a flash.
There was little social activity apart from the visits to Thursday
Island, where there was an open-air cinema. Here also was the
Pilot House, the headquarters of the pilotage service. Sunday
morning here was washing day and one or two Torres Straits
pilots and a few naval officers from the sweeping trawlers could
be seen on such occasions, clad in shorts, bending over enormous
bubbling cauldrons full of khaki ‘dhoby’. The heat and the sweat
of this work brought on a fine thirst for the Sunday forenoon gin,
for there were enough supplies to permit this weekly relaxation.
At this time there were no women on Thursday Island, except
for one Army nurse, so that it had become habitual for the men
from the trawlers and those stationed on the island to bathe in
the nude. Sometimes it would be rumoured that the nurse was
walking in the direction of the bathing beach, and this news would
send a hundred naked men running up the sands to reach their
shorts.
Friday Island, nearby, was swarming with deer. In normal times
these were protected, but there was usually a meat shortage in
the sweeping trawlers and it was extraordinary how often the
surveying mark on the summit of Friday Island fell down and had
to be re-erected by a party from these ships.
The ship anchored for a few days off Coconut Island in the
North-East Channel and the King came onboard. ‘King of Coco-
nut Island’—what a remote and romantic figure this title conjured
up! But when he came onboard he proved himself a man of the
world. When asked if he would take refreshment, he answered
without hesitation that he would have a gin and orange. The party
who landed from the ship at his invitation to take part in a feast
found that they were expected to go to church first.
The operation of sweeping the channel had begun in October
1944 and was completed at the end of April 1945, when the Task
Unit was disbanded—a good job done despite the fantastic tidal
streams and the very boisterous weather that had endured during
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TORRES STRAITS LENS
March, when for days at a time the smaller vessels of the team
were forced to remain at anchor in the channels waiting for the
winds to moderate. U.S.S. Mesquite arrived in March and, as a
result of the survey, laid buoys and erected navigational beacons
along the selected route.
Challenger returned now to Trincomalee in Ceylon and it
proved to be a nightmare passage across the Indian Ocean. The
main boiler room fan broke down, and the auxiliary fan was not
found to be up to the work. The temperature in the boiler-room
rose to 160 degrees and the stokers working there were able to
do tricks below of only about half an hour’s duration before they
had to be brought on deck to cool off. The ship’s speed was down
to about 31 knots and it often seemed to those onboard that they
would never cross that stifling ocean. However, at Colombo,
which was at long last reached, these defects were made good
and the ship once again returned to survey off Trincomalee.
V.J. Day found the ship in Singapore, bringing the charts up
to date by fixing the numerous wrecks and obstructions that had
accumulated during the time of the Japanese occupation and by
re-surveying those parts of Keppel Harbour and the approaches
to the Naval Base that were likely to have altered during the war.
Relieved at Singapore by H.M.S. White Bear, which had been serv-
ing with the Eastern Fleet during the recent Burma and Malayan
landings, Challenger sailed with the minesweepers to carry out
what was termed a ‘rehabilitation’ survey of the river bar and
approaches to the port of Saigon. From there she went on to
Hong-Kong for similar work, and a complete new survey of the
whole of that port was made. In January, 1946, she was re-
surveying the approaches to the North Borneo and Sarawak ports
of Jesselton, Brunei Bay, Labuan, Muara and Kuching. Many of
these places had been the recent scenes of fierce fighting and were
cluttered with wrecks, while the river approaches to others had
changed during the war years. Such surveys facilitated the import
of food and clothing, which at this time was a vital necessity in
this part of the world where the local populations had suffered
so badly and for so long at the hands of the enemy.
These were the last surveys of the commission, and in March,
1946, the ship once again reached Portsmouth with her paying-off
pendant flying.
12
XII
The Persian Gulf
of Sheikhs who ruled territory stretching from Muscat at
the entrance to the Persian Gulf westward along the south-
ern shores of the Gulf as far as and including the Sheikhdom of
Qatar, which covers an extensive peninsula running northwards
from the Arabian shore. To the west of the northern tip of Qatar
lies the island Sheikhdom of Bahrein, and it is on this island that
Great Britain, by arrangement with the Sheikh of Bahrein, main-
tains a small naval establishment housing the shore headquarters
of the Senior Naval Officer in the Persian Gulf. The British
Political Resident for the Gulf area has his residency within the
naval base.
Our agreement with the so-called Trucial Coast Sheikhdoms
bind us to protect them from outside interference, and a small
naval force is stationed in the Gulf for this purpose. Under the
Political Resident there are a number of Political Agents who are
stationed in the various Sheikhdoms and who keep in touch with
political matters in those states. The Royal Navy and the Political
Resident thus find themselves working very closely together in
this interesting area.
The great bay which lies between the Qatar peninsula and the
entrance to the Persian Gulf, and which is bounded on its
southern side by the Trucial Coast, was, in 1946, little surveyed.
It is studded with a mass of shoals and coral reefs interspersed
with a labyrinth of deep navigable channels. Sand suspended in
the water after the storms which are frequent in the winter
months gives the appearance, when the sun is shining, of shoal
water, which adds to the general difficulties of navigation in this
area, where it is desirable that our naval ships should be able to
move swiftly and safely when the occasion arises.
The area was already on the post-war survey programme when
urgency was further added to the task by the decision of the
156
\ CENTURY ago Great Britain signed truces with a number
THE PERSIAN GULF sy)
Petroleum Development Qatar Ltd., an associate of the Iraq Pet-
roleum Company, to develop the oil field which their prospectors
had proved in the Qatar peninsula in 1940, but which had remain-
ed unexploited throughout the war. Now, with the approval of
the Ministry of Fuel and Power, it was hoped to export crude oil
at an initial rate of 1,000,000 tons a year at the earliest opportu-
nity.
The oil field had been discovered in the south-west of the
peninsula and the company had carried out a preliminary survey
at the time to find out how best the oil might be shipped from
this difficult area. The Dohat as Salwa, the bay which lies between
Qatar and the Saudi-Arabian coast running northwards towards
Ras at Tannura, was far too shallow and reef-encumbered to permit
the approach of tankers, although barge routes were found later
in this area through which the equipment for sinking the wells
was shipped from Bahrein. So the company surveyors looked to
the eastern shores of Qatar and found two or three places where
deep water came fairly close to the shore, and where there
seemed to be some hope of the deep draught tankers approaching
the coast sufficiently close to permit them to embark oil through
pipelines led out to the buoys at which the vessels might lie
secured.
The north-west winds, which blow frequently in the winter
months and are known as ‘shamals’, have already been described,
and it is these winds, often prevailing for days at a time, which
raise short, choppy seas that would seriously interfere with the
embarkation of oil through these loading lines.
Of the various east-coast sites investigated by the oil company
surveyors, the place where the deep water came nearest to the
shore was about 15 miles south of the town of Doha, the seat of
the Sheikh of Qatar. Here deep water had been found within 200
to 300 feet of the shore, with a long reef known as Fasht al Arrif
running to seaward close north of the position which gave that
vital protection from the north-westerly shamals. If only this
anchorage had suitable access for ships through the maze of reefs
which could be seen offshore, then it might prove the ideal
position, to which the oil could be piped overland from the west-
coast wells, a matter of 50 miles distant.
But this offshore surveying was beyond the capabilities of any
158 CHALLENGER
but a large sea-going hydrographic unit, and the Iraq Petroleum
Company applied to the Admiralty for assistance in this matter
at just about the time that the Hydrographer, now Admiral Wyatt,
was completing his post-war survey plans for this area. Challenger
was in fact on her way to the Gulf and was at this time carrying
out a survey of the Daimmiyat Islands before proceeding to carry
out surveys off the Trucial Coast ; so that it only needed a directive
to her to give priority to that part of the coast directly south of
Doha where it was hoped to find a channel leading into the
sheltered deep water south of Fasht al Arrif reef.
Captain Sam Southern was now in command of the ship and
he had with him several old Challenger officers. The First Lieut-
enant, who had been in charge of the ship during her recent refit,
was responsible for the great amount of useful additional gear the
ship now carried, for he had found a simple way of obtaining
such things in the dockyard at Chatham. He had carried a piece
of chalk with him and had put the ship’s name on anything useful
he saw lying in the yard, and sooner or later this resulted in its
being delivered onboard by the authorities. Charles Grattan was
the Navigator and he was proud of the fact that he had been in
the Gulf in Challenger before the War; this led him to remark to
a junior officer on the bridge, as they approached Bahrein and
saw the oil flare at the refinery at Sitrah, that he had sighted this
on occasions at a distance of 100 miles. The Captain, who always
enjoyed a leg-pull, at once said, without a smile on his face, that
he had seen it 101 miles distant, and turning on his heel left the
bridge and Grattan in a fury.
A visit was first paid to Bahrein, where the Captain obtained
a letter for the Sheikh of Qatar from Sir Rupert Hay, the Political
Resident, so that the Sheikh should know what this strange white
ship was doing, and that her men who would come ashore in the
wastes of Qatar were not evilly disposed but would be hastening
the day when the first barrel of oil would be exported and the
first royalties become available to the Sheikh, who had ruled his
barren lands for so long and was about to see his desert flower
indeed.
The ship came to anchor off the crumbling stone township of
Doha, which is scattered along the shores of a lagoon protected
by off-lying coral reefs. A shallow channel through these reefs,
THE PERSIAN GULF 159
marked by a stone beacon long since fallen into decay, and used
for centuries past by the trading dhows and vessels sailing to the
pearling banks, permitted the entry of the ship with only a foot
or so of water below her keel. The letter was carried to the
Sheikh in his cool dark quarters in the town and to it he gave
a verbal and unenthusiastic acknowledgment.
Next day the ship sailed southward and anchored off the Fasht
al Arrif reef to appraise the situation and commence the work
which would prove whether or not there was access for shipping
to this place, otherwise so well suited to become the oilport of
Qatar.
The unsurveyed sand dunes of this desolate place stretched awa
to the westward like waves of the sea; to seaward patches of blue
and light green water showed the complexity of the work in
hand. The low, bare island of Al Bushirya was to be the site of
the base and the starting point for a triangulation which was,
during the next five years, to be carried right up the east coast
of Qatar, around the end of the peninsula to Fort Zubara, and
thence across the shallow reefs to the Island of Bahrein, where it
would close on a position, long since fixed by an earlier surveying
vessel, in the garden of the Political Agent in the town of Manama.
However, in December, 1946, that day of closure was very far
distant, and by the time this was achieved other more modern
vessels would have taken over the task from Challenger. But
thoughts onboard were on the job in hand and the little recreation
that was available to officers and men.
Sam Southern was an enthusiastic fisherman and at the week-
ends he usually went off on an expedition with a small party of
officers to the Hat Islands, which lay to the southward, girdled
by steep-sided coral reefs, along the edge of which the motor skiff
slowly made her way as the fishermen trolled over her stern with
home-made lures. The Engineer Officer was always encouraged to
come upon these trips, for motor skiffs are temperamental things
and a fishing party lost much of its pleasure if the fishermen spent
the heat of the day churning the starting handle instead of
watching their lines trailing into the green waters astern. Often
the catches were good but sometimes the biggest fish were at-
tacked even while they were being played on the line and a huge
160 CHALLENGER
head was all that was taken aboard. It was even more difficult to
persuade the Engineer Officer to come on these trips after an
unfortunate incident which occurred when the skiff had returned
one night. He was standing on the gunwhale of the boat and
holding onto the ship’s side; slowly the boat began to leave the
ship and slowly the figure of the Engineer became more horizontal
and less vertical until the big splash came. All the onlookers were
highly amused and Sam Southern’s well-known smile spread across
his face until it was realised that his cherished fishing rod had been
in the Engineer’s grasp and it had sunk beyond recovery.
The ship’s Medical Officer, Surgeon-Lieutenant P. T. Ruther-
ford, R.N.V.R., tall, athletic and red haired, was also a great
sportsman and was in on all the fishing trips to the Hat Islands.
He specialised in making his own lures, which lay about his cabin
in differing states of completion together with his home-made
tools for their construction; here and there hung a bird’s wing
which had been collected for making lures but now lay rotting
and forgotten. His desk, which was stained from much use and
spillage of photographic materials, was piled with the wardroom
wine accounts, of which he was the custodian. Fishing rods and
gun tackle were slung up here and there and stowed in the corners
of the cabin. In his washbasin lived two small turtles.
One day when the Medical Officer was sitting in this crowded
compartment busy at his lures the Petty Officer Steward brought
onboard some peculiar looking domestic ducks which he had
bought in the souk (market) at Doha and he was busy despatching
them on the forecastle. One of these was taken down to the doctor
freshly killed and he was told that there were hundreds of such
birds passing over the ship. He seized his shotgun and forcing two
cartridges into the barrels as he ran up the ladder, he raced here
and there about the decks searching the skies in vain for a ‘right
and left’.
Ship’s sports were organized to take place one week-end on a
sandy expanse ashore and Rutherford won each event steadily until
he decided to cancel his entry for the later events so that some of
the others should have a chance. Tug-of-war, that most barbarous
of all sports, was on the programme and the Wardroom team
struggled and heaved their way into the final against the stokers.
They might even have won this, but whenever they looked like
THE PERSIAN GULF 161
winning the supporters of the stokers’ team got carried away and
clapped onto the rope to save the situation. Finally this idea caught
hold, and despite the protestations of the referee, the whole
Ship’s Company were soon on the rope pulling the Wardroom
away across the sands.
This was an uninhabited part of Qatar; not even the ruins of a
village were to be seen, but upon the reefs were built long low
stone walls which formed a crude type of trap to catch the fish
on a falling tide, and to these would come the solitary fishermen.
They wore a loincloth pulled up between their legs and a cloth so
casually wound about their heads that it was difficult to under-
stand how it remained in place as they waded about the reefs
inspecting their traps and occasionally bending down to effect
repairs to the walls. They paid little or no attention to the survey-
ors nor did they interfere with the tempting marks which the
surveyors were now erecting upon the shallows.
At first it was very difficult to use the ship for sounding at all,
for there were indications of shoals on every hand. On more than
one occasion the ship was pulled up or turned within feet of a
coral outcrop, and once the log, which protrudes below the hull,
was bent as the ship grazed over a shallow area. Charles Grattan,
the Navigating Officer, considered this technically a case of
grounding and ostentatiously filled in the necessary official report
forms which he submitted to Sam who cast them into the waste-
paper basket as often as they were handed to him. On the field
boards the boats were slowly drawing the complex picture of the
reefs with the deep channels between them and indicating areas
where the ship could safely work. Most interesting of all, a deep
channel was found running northwards between Fasht al Arrif reef
and Fasht al Odaid through which it would be possible for tankers
to pass when its narrow limits had been marked with buoys.
The oil company had a survey launch of their own to which
Lieutenant Trapper Croome was now sent to assist with the
positioning of the buoys along this channel. On the first morning
of his stay onboard the launch he was surprised to be offered
brandy for breakfast, and on his protesting that the sun was not yet
over the yardarm the Captain of the launch went on deck and
lowered the offending obstruction to the sun’s steady progress.
162 CHALLENGER
And so the winter months of 1946-47 passed in the Persian
Gulf with occasional visits to Bahrein, where the officers found
a welcome at the charming home of Sir Rupert and Lady Hay.
Here they met many interesting personalities, for the Hays kept
open house every evening between 6 and 8 p.m., and here came
all men of interest who were travelling through Bahrein, oil
prospectors, oil company executives, sheikhs’ advisers, and
Arabian travellers. Sharp at 8 o’clock one took one’s leave, for
the evening meal was served at exactly quarter past and on this
Sir Rupert was very firm. He was a man of majestic stature and
healthy appetite. He had served many years in India and on
one occasion had attempted to bring hostilities between two
warring tribes to a halt. It was said that he first visited the chiefs
of one tribe, with whom he took a meal of considerable propor-
tions. He then crossed the valley to the camp of the opposing side,
and again had to take hospitality in a similar form. Two hours later
he reached his home and was at once anxious to know if luncheon
was ready.
Sir Rupert himself was in touch with every aspect of the
complicated political life of both shores of the Persian Gulf; a
visit to the Residency was refreshing indeed and sent one away
with a new interest in the ramifications of life on the coasts of
Arabia.
Occasionally a visit was paid to Basra to fuel. This meant enter-
ing the Shatt el Arab through the dredged Rookah Channel, for
although Basra once lay on the shores of the Persian Gulf it is now
situated 70 miles upstream. The silt-laden waters of the Shatt are
still thrusting a sandy shelf out into the gulf and the adjacent
coastline creeps steadily out to sea, while at the entrance Man
toils unceasingly with dredges to keep open this vital river
serving the three oil ports of Basra, Abadan and Fao.
The river flows between banks which are clothed with forests
of date palms which support a great industry in Basra, and for
many hours the ship steered her twisting course among this un-
familiar green. Berthed at Basra, the men were able to enjoy the
amenities of the small R.A.F. Station and the doubtful pleasures
of the tawdry cabarets which serve the vilest of ‘Scotch’ accom-
panied by the most dismal of floor shows. The artistes who have
travelled eastwards across the Mediterranean have reached their
THE PERSIAN GULF 163
nadir and final resting place, for there is nothing for them any
further to the east.
The officers spent their time at Basra in an orgy of buying
Persian rugs. This is a pleasing pastime, if somewhat expensive.
They sat for two or three hours in the cool high room of the
carpet shop, sipping the hot black coffee which burned the tip of
the tongue as the merchant and his assistants pulled down from
their shelves carpet after carpet which they unfolded upon the
ever-increasing pile. A small boy was constantly on the run to the
nearby coffee shop, hurrying with the small hot cups and the
glasses of iced water to go with them.
Then there were the never to be forgotten duck shooting
expeditions in the boundless marshes around Hammer Lakes,
conducted by Mr. Angoorli, the King of Iraq’s game warden, who
is well known to every naval officer addicted to this sport who has
served in the Persian Gulf.
By May the weather had become too hot for surveying and
the ship moved to Cyprus. Then, after a refit at Gibraltar, she
returned in December, 1947, to continue the survey of the
Gulf.
There had been a number of changes among the ship’s com-
pany at Gibraltar, for by now many of the men who had been
called up for the war were being demobilised, with the result that
the disturbed post-war conditions were rendered even more
unsettled by constant changes throughout the Service; General
Gordon was once again in the ship, having relieved Trapper
Croome, and Charles Grattan had been invalided home. His relief
was Lieutenant-Commander Bill Ashton, joining the ship for the
first time—bluff and jolly, this most likeable of fellows brought
life and good humour with him to the ship.
The voyage was delayed at Aden, where the ship arrived on 4th
December, 1947, to find serious disturbances had broken out
ashore between the Arabs and the Jews following the partition of
Palestine. There were many Jewish merchants and shop-keepers
in Aden and their shops had been broken into and set on fire.
About too people altogether had been killed in the subsequent
rioting.
H.M. destroyers Contest and Cockade had arrived the previous
164 CHALLENGER
day and had already landed armed patrols to which Challenger’s
modest party was now added.
Captain Southern, as the senior naval officer present, conducted
the naval side of the operations ashore, where the Navy were
assisted by the Royal Air Force and the Aden Protectorate Levies.
Gradually the situation began to come under control and it was
not long before the sailors on the barricades in the Crater area
were receiving coffee and tea from both Arab and Jew, the very
people upon whom they had been firing, without, it must be said,
much lethal effect, only 24 hours before.
One night, however, one of the naval sentries saw a figure
moving stealthily towards him through the darkness. He called
to the figure to halt, but this order went unheeded. A shot rang
out in the night and the figure stumbled and fell. The officer in
charge of this section of the town hurried to the spot and, with
the sentry, went forward to see whether Jew or Arab had fallen.
The figure which had ignored the order to halt, and had moved
unconcernedly during the hours of curfew, proved to be a goat.
The survey off the coast of Qatar was being continued north-
eastwards in order that a route might be located from the centre
of the Gulf into the port of Umm Said, which was already under
construction in the lee of the Fasht al Arrif reef.
A new ship’s Medical Officer was on his way as relief for
Rutherford, who was to return to England. This was Surgeon-
Lieutenant F. S. Preston, R.N.V.R., who was travelling in
H.M.S. Wren—one of the frigates forming the Persian Gulf
squadron—and Challenger made a suitable rendezvous with Wren
so that Preston might be transferred. As none of the officers was
known to Preston, it was decided that they should exchange
uniforms before he came onboard. The Paymaster became Doc.
Rutherford, awaiting relief, while the others exchanged uniforms
as they could; General Gordon was too small and the Boatswain
too large to wear anyone else’s clothes. Bill Ashton was in civilian
clothes and represented an American oil man who was taking
passage to Doha in the ship.
Preston came onboard before lunch and at once felt that he
was amongst a jolly but somewhat peculiar crowd of officers.
Doubtless they were suffering from too long a period stationed
ae
THE PERSIAN GULF 165
in the Gulf and there would be good material for psycho-analysis
later when he settled down. It was not long before the Sick
Berth Petty Officer, who was also in the game, reported to Mike
Harvey, the Paymaster, dressed as the Medical Officer, that a
stoker had broken his arm. Harvey rounded on the petty officer
and gave him a thunderous blast for disturbing him: ‘You know
my hours. Tell him to report at 9 o’clock in the morning,’ he
concluded. The new surgeon’s eyes goggled and he made mental
resolutions to change this amazing procedure as soon as he took
over.
Meanwhile the Sub-Lieutenant, who was dressed in the Pay-
master’s uniform, was twiddling with the safe combination in the
Paymaster’s cabin and to his surprise and delight it came open.
Taking a wad of notes from the safe, he walked into the wardroom
brandishing the money and asked who required a ‘casual’ pay-
ment. The real Paymaster was horrified at this and shot out to
change the combination under the guise of drawing his casual.
Ashton was all the while telling tales—in the broadest American
accent—of life in the oil fields of Texas, and Preston wondered
how far it was to Doha and how long it would be until this
insufferable bore was landed.
When the officers put on their own uniforms for dinner,
Preston was even more baffled.*
Doha would grow in importance as the oil fields in Qatar
developed, and so Bill Ashton was landed with a camp party on
Jazirat Safliya, an island on the north side of Doha harbour, to make
a chart of this area. As well as the usual stores of food, survey
marks and tents, water was a serious problem when planning any
camp in the Gulf, and many drums of water had to be landed with
the party. Everything went well, the stores were landed and
stowed, the moorings for the sounding boat were laid and the
tents were rigged. All was hustle and bustle; in fact, in Bill
Ashton’s phrase, ‘everyone was as busy as bird dogs’. By nightfall
the camp was a blaze of light powered by the portable generator,
but this was short lived, for in expectation of heavy dews a
* The removal of coloured distinction cloth from officers’ uniforms by order
of Their Lordships on 1st January, 1957, has robbed high-spirited officers of
the joy of inflicting this hoax on newcomers.
166 CHALLENGER
canvas sheet was laid over the generator for its protection which
succeeded in cutting off completely its air supply and it burnt out
and the lights faded. If there were heavy dews there must also
have been heavy evaporation, for the following evening the water
in the drums had shrunk alarmingly and discontinuance of shaving
by all hands was ordered. The campers at once began to assume
that scruffy appearance which comes to all beard growers in the
early stages.
Bill Ashton was soon friendly with the few dhow crews that
passed that way, and as he wished to have everything possible laid
on, he returned late from surveying one evening to say that he
had been arranging the camp fish supplies. At about 2 a.m.
Ashton’s assistant heard a gentle scraping on the canvas of the
tent, and lifting the flap saw in the light of his torch an Arab of
uncommonly evil appearance. He had but one eye and a few
straggling hairs for a beard and in his scrofulous hand he held a
coarse, grey sting ray. Its skin was dry and cracked, and here and
there it was coated with sand, which had adhered to it when it
had been set down upon the ground. ‘Fish, Sahib, Fish,’ said the
fisherman, holding up the ray into the full light of the torch.
Ashton was informed that the fishmonger had arrived and a long
conversation then took place outside the tent between Ashton
and the seller of fish. ‘Fish, Sahib, Fish’—again and again came
the dismal chant to which Ashton parried, ‘Yes, my dear fellow,
but I didn’t say at 2 o’clock in the morning.’ The fishmonger only
left the camp in peace for the night when he had been given some
tinned rations in return for the inedible fish which he left behind
upon the sand.
If water had been scarce in the early days of this camp it came
in abundance one night when a shamal of unprecedented ferocity
began to blow. At first the campers ignored the wind until the
tents began to flap and pull at their pegs, uprooting them from
the loose sand. The men then had to gather large stones to keep
down the edges of the canvas, and as soon as they retired again
into their camp beds the rain began to pour down ina way they
had not believed possible in the desert. It flooded every tent,
carrying sand with it into the bread supplies, the cooking
utensils and the bedding. And still the wind blew harder, till it
became a full-time job for every man to keep his tent from blow-
THE PERSIAN GULF 167
ing into the sea. It was a long night, and the campers were not
the only sufferers, for at daybreak they saw dhows and other
smaller craft, which had lain at anchor in Doha, scattered hither
and thither along the reefs, their crews struggling in the shallows
around them in their efforts to lay anchors and prevent their
craft being forced even further onto the reefs by the gusting
north-west shamal.
Far out off the Qatar coast lies the small island of Jezirat Halul,
named after the she camel, perhaps on account of its high,
humpy aspect. It is utterly bare and the party who were established
in camp here to take astrolabe sights and watch tides found it
strange that the tents were soon overrun with rats which scuttled
across the sleepers in the night and nibbled at the hard flesh on
the soles of the men’s feet if these happened to be exposed.
But they were soon to know how these rats lived where not even
a blade of grass grew. A dhow drew near the island one day and
white-clad Arab sailors landed from it in a small canoe they had
towed astern. They brought with them the body of a dead crew-
mate to bury upon the island, for this was the graveyard of the
dhow sailors of the Gulf.
In April the ship once more sailed thankfully for Cyprus, and
in July was refitted at Gibraltar, where fair charts of both Qatar
and Cyprus were drawn by the surveyors.
Sam Southern had been appointed to England as Assistant
Hydrographer and thus the time had come for him to leave his
last sea-going command. This was a sad day, for all liked Sam;
he loved a good leg-haul and he loved a good ‘run ashore’, as
the sailor says. On his last night a party of officers from the ship
took him over the border to La Linea, the little Spanish town
where many a good night had been spent during the ship’s visits
to Gibraltar. There was a fiesta on in the town on this occasion,
and after taking sherry in the different bodegas the party visited
the fairground. Bill Ashton, always in great form on these
occasions, was here there and everywhere, now borrowing the
microphone from a seller of raffle tickets and whipping up more
custom by touting for him in English, now taking over a barrel
organ from its operator, and all the while shaking hands with
everyone and welcoming them to the fair. For Bill was well known
168 CHALLENGER
over the border and a great follower of the bullring. At 2.30 in
the morning the party had bacon and eggs at the Rock Hotel
while Sam declaimed the ‘Hunting of the Snark’.
Commander J. M. Sharpey-Schafer was the new Captain; this
was to be his third and last commission in the old ship.
The United States Hydrographic Office were now to take a
hand with the surveys in the Gulf for they were interested in the
coast of Saudi Arabia lying to the west of Bahrein, where American
oil companies had been operating for a number of years. So it
was that the U.S. Survey ship Maury arrived in Gibraltar with her
three tenders on her way eastwards. Calls were, of course, ex-
changed between the Commanding Officers of the two survey
vessels. It was Maury’s captain’s first visit to the Gulf, and when
he visited Sharpey-Schafer he was anxious to hear as much as
possible about conditions there. Talk turned to tides in the Gulf
and Sharpey-Schafer, in his serious way, began to describe the
tidal complications of the area in considerable detail. He paused
from time to time to enquire if Maury was still following the
gist of this complicated discourse, to which he was able to say
Yes, Captain’, until at length, when the complexities of ebb and
flow, spring and neap and range and mean tidal level had become
really abstruse, he changed his stock reply. “Well, Captain, I
guess I’ve just about lost you now.’ Meanwhile, as it was early
in the day, tea had been made by the Captain’s steward and had
been set in its pot upon a tray in the cabin, becoming steadily
stronger during the course of this lengthy discussion. As Maury’s
Captain sipped the dark brown brew he remarked, “Well, Captain,
I’ve seldom drunk tea before. When I came through New York
I bought some as I knew I had to entertain the British. I guess
that it should be made much stronger than I was told.’
On completion of the refit the ship went to sea for full power
trials, these being so arranged that the ship visited Tangier for
a few hours, and a number of Dockyard officials were taken on
this day’s jaunt. When the ship came to leave Tangier in the
afternoon, a different pilot from the one who had boarded the
ship in the morning offered his services. He was a strange-looking
little man in a well worn Palm Beach suit and battered brown
topee. He did not inspire confidence, but as pilotage was only
a formality here he was accepted. By the time the ship passed
THE PERSIAN GULF 169g
through the entrance the pilot boat which was following had
broken down and was far astern. As the ship lay-to and waited for
the boat to come out, one of the officers said to the pilot in a
joking manner, ‘Why don’t you swim for it, Pilot?’ Without fur-
ther word the little man jumped overboard fully clothed and,
swimming shorewards on his back, waved good-bye to the ship.
In the Red Sea—at Tor in the Sinai Peninsula, at Suakim in
the Sudan and at Kamaran, a group of islands off the coast of the
Yemen—there are quarantine stations at which pilgrims journey-
ing to Mecca in the season are housed long enough to isolate those
with infectious diseases before they travel on by ship to Jeddah.
On her way south Challenger visited Kamaran, which is under
British control, so that the beacons and buoyage provided for the
navigation of the pilgrim ships might be improved. Here was
Colonel Thompson, who had been the Administrator for 18 years,
with a staff of Indian doctors and a company of Somali soldiers.
The whole station was run on the smartest military lines and was
frequently visited by persons of importance, for it was also the
calling stage for the Aden and East African air routes. At this
time the only such person present was a relation of the King
of the Yemen, who, fearing assassination for some reason, had fled
to Kamaran for a while, and was enjoying his stay, for he kept .
demanding the best brandy—only that which came out of the
‘three star bottle’, said he.
In the Gulf the survey was taken up where it had been dis-
continued earlier in the year. The first job was to carry the
triangulation northwards along the desert coast from the vicinity
of Doha. The ship carried two jeeps for such work. The country
north of Doha is more populated than elsewhere, a road of a kind
running from here to the northern tip of the peninsula, and for
about the first twenty miles or so this road passes through sub-
stantial villages built of stone and sunbaked bricks clustered
around the residence of a minor sheikh. Twenty-five miles north
of Doha, Khor is reached, a township formerly of some impor-
tance in the pearling trade, for it is situated at the head of the
landlocked harbour of Khor Shaqqiq. But of recent years this inlet
has become extremely shallow and the perimeter of the town has
tumbled into decay, its few inhabitants using the stones from these
170 CHALLENGER
ruins to bolster up the few habitable houses at its centre. To travel
the road to Khor is a slow business, for at each village the sheikh
or headman welcomes the traveller; his coffee maker is awakened
and is soon hustling round with his battered coffee pot and a
handful of cups no bigger than egg-cups. Into these he pours the
dark brown liquid, which is strained as it leaves the spout by
some fine vegetable fibre lodged there for the purpose. The coffee
is strongly flavoured with cloves and bears little resemblance to
coffee as the westerner knows it. But it is refreshing, and one is
apt to forget that it is customary to refuse a third cup.
Air photographs of the Qatar peninsula indicated the high
knolls and ridges that were the only features in the desert upon
which triangulation stations could be raised. The triangulation in
the form of quadrilaterals lay between the road and the sea, and
to reach these stations it was necessary to leave the road and
strike out across the stony desert ; sometimes the going was crisp
and fast, sometimes boulders the size of a football littered the
sand as far as the eye could carry and it was only possible to
cross this type of country in a jeep by going dead slow or at full
speed. Full speed too was needed to cross the areas of soft sand
into which the vehicle would sink axle-deep if speed was reduced.
The inshore sounding and triangulation camp was set up this
year on the shores of Khor Shaqgqiq, and so it was that two motor-
boats from the ship were feeling their way into the Khor one
sunlit day in January, 1949. The channel was narrow and tortuous,
with only about four feet of water. On either side coral heads and
amber-coloured coral flats lay shivering beneath the shallow water
in the light northerly breeze, which was blowing sufficiently only
to form the smallest waves upon the surface of the sea. Low cliffs
about five feet in height bordered the dun-coloured headlands,
which lay about half a mile to north and south of the channel.
Two porpoises moved with the boats, rising time and time again
just ahead and disappearing with short snorts like a man gasping
for breath; a solitary tern wheeled above them uttering its wild
shrieking cry. There was no other sign of life ashore or afloat.
Soon the channel bore round to starboard and led, between the
mainland and a somewhat higher island, into a landlocked har-
bour. The boats began to work along the south side of this bay
searching for a landing, but so shallow was it that they kept having
Sen ee
aa)
URVEY
S
LAYING A MOORED SURVEY BEACON
THE PERSIAN GULF 171
to go astern to avoid hitting coral heads just below the surface of
the water. At last the shore was reached and the unloading of the
equipment began. A mile to the westward lay the township,
barely distinguishable at this range from the brown desert itself.
As the party worked at erecting the tents a group of boys were
seen coming along the shore; arrived at the centre of the camp
they sat upon their haunches, where they appeared to remain for
the following six weeks.
Bill Ashton was again in charge of the camp, which this year
was of a greater size. Four officers and 25 men were housed in
three double-canvas marquees and five ridge tents. Two motor-
boats lay at moorings off the site, and both jeeps had arrived from
the south bringing with them a water distilling plant borrowed
from the oil company. Fuel to operate these craft and vehicles
had been landed in large quantities in chartered dhows.
North of Khor the road becomes less used and is harder to
follow; no more villages are encountered. The area is populated
thinly by beduins who move with their flocks and live in tents.
They are not always on the move, however, and they spend much
of the year camped in the vicinity of their wells, which are few
but good, and by employing donkeys for about six hours in every
day to haul up the water in goatskins from the bottom of the
wells, these small communities, under the guidance of their head-
men, are able to cultivate a small garden where green vegetables
and a few dates can be grown and sometimes even a small grove
of trees to give shelter. The water, once hauled from the well,
is precious and is guided by small runnels to every corner of the
garden as each plant requires.
The first day’s work in this area entailed the erection of a large
number of flags upon hop poles which were guyed in position.
These were placed on the knolls which had been chosen as
triangulation stations, each about three miles distant from the
next. At the end of the day the party were pleased with their
progress for they were ready to start observing the main angles
the next day at sunrise so that the main part of the work would
be completed before the daytime shimmer of the desert made
observing impossible.
As the teams motored across the sands in the cold morning air
they were surprised to find no trace of the marks which they had
13
172 CHALLENGER
laboriously set up the day before. So Ashton, with some members
of the camp, went that evening to see the Sheikh at Khor. The
township seemed deserted, but as the little party walked through
the ruins towards the centre of the town they caught an occasional
glimpse of the black-clothed figure of a veiled woman scuttling
for shelter like a nocturnal animal surprised away from its lair
before sunset. However, a small boy was headed off as he ran for
cover, and he was persuaded to lead the party to a wooden door
in the high, brown stone wall surrounding the Sheikh’s residence.
The party were admitted by a man of negroid appearance and con-
ducted to a cool, high room with whitewashed walls. The slave
at once began to pull down bundled rugs and laid them one upon
another on the floor, and then the Sheikh shuffled in. He may
only have been a headman but he was always referred to by the
camp party as the Sheikh of Khor, and it seemed a flattering title.
With sign language, a dictionary and the little Arabic he knew,
Ashton told his tale to the Sheikh of how all his marks had
vanished overnight. The old man seemed both surprised and dis-
tressed by the news; for he had heard from Doha that the survey
was connected with oil and he had hopes that in some way part
of the oil royalties would eventually reach him. In fact he planned
to spend much time in Doha when the oil began to flow, for he
was a relation, perhaps a little distant, of the Sheikh of Qatar
himself.
It was agreed that the old man would accompany Ashton on
a jeep next day when they would make a whole day’s round trip
visiting the beduin communities to the north of Khor. As each of
these sparse communities was visited the headmen would at once
deny knowledge of the stealing of the marks, but Ashton usually
caught sight of some piece of naval bunting or wire rope lying
unhidden outside the tents. With his cheerful approach to this
matter and his readiness to take coffee with those who had so
recently stolen his marks, Ashton made a good impression on these
people, who slowly produced the missing equipment, which was
loaded onto the jeeps. The day spent in travelling from beduin
encampment to beduin encampment was a considerable success,
for never again did these people interfere with the marks.
The Sheikh of Khor also supplied a small party of ruffians,
armed with an assortment of muskets, to guard the camp and they
THE PERSIAN GULF 173
were established in a naval tent on the perimeter. Their guard
duties did not lie heavily upon them and consisted of huddling
round a fire inside their tent over which they were attempting
to make Arabian coffee from the tinned variety provided by naval
stores. Two or three times during each night they would cast
back the flap of their tent sufficiently to poke a rifle out and fire
a shot into the night sky. This caused alarm in the camp on the
first night and much running hither and thither by the party to
ascertain whence they were being attacked, but it soon became
a matter of routine which did not even wake the sleeping
surveyors.
The Sheikh of Khor often came to visit Bill Ashton in the camp
and they became very friendly over cups of coffee which Bill made
over his small primus stove, which he had brought into camp for
this very purpose. In turn he was invited to take roast mutton
with the Sheikh. Two whole roast sheep were laid upon a great
dish of yellow saffron rice four feet in diameter, and around this
the party were seated upon the carpeted floor. With the right
hand pieces of meat were torn from the carcasses and eaten with
small balls of rice, which were moulded with the fingers. The
stomachs of the beasts were stuffed with eggs which the Sheikh
pulled out with his hand and tossed to the party; often he and his
fellows would tear delicious morsels from the backbone and,
sampling them themselves and finding them excellent, would
pass them to their guests.
As the mutton cooled it became greasier, and the merit of the
coffee which followed was apparent in the cleansing effect it had
upon the palate; the wreckage of the feast was then carried to
the next room where the so-called slaves and the boys picked it
over before it passed to the women’s quarters.
Shortly before the camp party packed up to leave, the Sheikh
came one night to present a carpet to Ashton. He brought with
him two of these, and as it was after dark they were inspected
both by lamplight within the tent and by moonlight, so that Bill
might choose between the two. When he had made his choice
the chosen carpet was slung upon a pole before the tent. In the
morning, as Ashton looked out to the eastward he saw the light
of the rising sun showing clearly through the several holes that
were in his gift carpet. He packed the carpet on the jeep and
174.
CHALLENGER
eee ert
c
oo
o
PEE ARE NAT ST OS etre oy
ONT at tied
top
Sandy
plain
at High
Naga\abu Anfus
2
(ee
1K in “
Portion of Fair Chart ‘ Approaches to Umm Said’, as surveyed by H.M.S.
Challenger. Drawn by Lieutenant P. J. D. Hayter, Royal Navy.
THE PERSIAN GULF 175
Portion of Admiralty Chart 3787, published 9th April, 1948, from the survey
by H.M.S. Challenger. The pipeline and mooring buoys at the oil export
terminal of Umm Said are shown.
176 CHALLENGER
travelled to see the Sheikh and over coffee the offending holes
were pointed out. It was with some reluctance, Bill thought, that
the Sheikh exchanged the carpet for the other, which by day
appeared infinitely superior in that it was intact.
Throughout Challenger’s three surveying seasons in the Persian
Gulf there had nearly always been one or two men in the sick
bay suffering from what was known onboard as coral ulcers. There
was much walking upon the coral reefs to be done, both while
erecting the triangulation marks and when wading along the
reef’s edge to delineate it as one would the coastline. On such
occasions those who had been walking i in the shallows might com-
plain within 24 hours of severe pain as they stood. Soon a deep
ulcer would form, usually in the vicinity of or a little above
the ankle. Such persons might for weeks be incapacitated and be
in considerable pain on setting foot on deck. Surgeon Lieutenant
Preston made a study of this ailment and wrote up his findings
for the British Medical Journal. He found little literature upon the
subject although he found the condition well known among the
local fishermen and those who had been employed in pearl diving
in the Gulf. Wyville Thomson, the scientific leader of the
Challenger Expedition of 1872-76, had referred briefly to the
condition, which had been contracted by sailors from that vessel
walking upon the reefs without wearing stout boots.
The corals which form these extensive, almost vertically sided
reefs are attached creatures living in great colonies, built up of
calcium extracted from sea water and feeding upon small marine
organisms. Preston found that in order to secure its food each
coral polyp possesses specially adapted outer cells known as
nematocysts ; these stinging organs contain a coiled thread ending
in a dart-like silica head which is filled with powerfully toxic
fluid. The whole apparatus is developed in a cell called a cnido-
blast which is at one point elongated into a so-called cnidocil or
trigger-hair. When this is broken by a passing organism or body
the cnidoblast ejects the dart with considerable force into the
victim, which is completely paralysed by the rapidly spreading
poison.
These darts are probably unable to penetrate the human skin,
but when this has been lacerated by contact with the sharp
THE PERSIAN GULF 89,
coral, and even when the cut is too small to be noticed, then these
poisoned darts enter the flesh and the ulcer soon follows. Stout
boots alone were insufficient to arrest the complaint: stout leg-
gings would also be required by the surveyors if they were to
remain immune while working on the coral reefs.
On 2nd May, 1949, Challenger left Bahrein for the last time,
having spent three surveying seasons in the Persian Gulf. She had
surveyed an area of many hundreds of square miles and had located
a new deep-water oil port and the necessary approach channels
leading from the centre of the Gulf to the desolate shores of
Qatar, which, owing to the development of the oil wells, were
moving rapidly from obscurity to the limelight of strategic im-
portance as each month passed. In addition her boats had surveyed
the harbours of Umm Said, Doha and Khor Shaqgqigq as well as
assisting in surveying the barge routes from Bahrein to the oil-
fields through the Dohat as Salwa, along which the mass of
material for the building of the refinery and the oil township was
now being carried.
Much of the offshore work in the last Gulf season was completed
with the use of radar, for a suitable set had been fitted during the
ship’s last refit at Gibraltar. Radar targets affixed to the floating
beacons allowed fixes to be obtained regardless of the visibility.
But it was still the early days of radar surveying and there were
many frustrations and breakdowns of the apparatus and then the
traditional methods once again came into their own.
XIV
Cyprus Interlude
Challenger was rapidly becoming old fashioned and life on
the mess decks was far from comfortable. As the years had
gone by more and more equipment had found its way into the
little ship and less and less space was consequently available for
purely recreational purposes. The men were messed on an old-
fashioned system known on the Lower Deck as “Canteen Messing’,
in which each mess plans its own menus according to the meat
it has received as its ration from the butcher, and the delicacies
it is able to buy at the ship’s canteen. The dishes were made up
by the amateur cooks in the mess, the only duty of the two ship’s
cooks being to see that they received the correct treatment when
they reached the galley. Life was always something of a picnic as
these dishes were served out on the mess deck to the members
of the mess. The men longed to get ashore from time to time to
eat and drink in more spacious surroundings, and with different
company from that of their shipmates with whom they jostled
day in and day out in the narrow passages or on the minute
quarterdeck which formed their recreation space. In the Persian
Gulf this was almost impossible, for Bahrein was the fortnightly
port of call, and this being a strictly Moslem state, the men could
only get beer, and that only in the little canteen within the naval
area where the laws against alcohol were relaxed to this extent.
But each spring, as the weather began to warm up, the last
floating beacon was weighed, the camp parties with their jeeps
and tents were embarked, and to the delight of every man on-
board the ship’s bows turned eastwards, barren, humped Jezirat
Halul sinking below the western horizon as the ship headed for
the Indian Ocean and the long route to the Mediterranean.
A° new vessels with modern amenities joined the Fleet,
The survey of the coasts of Cyprus had been pushed forward
slowly for a number of years before the War, this work being
178
CYPRUS INTERLUDE 179
thoughtfully kept as a summertime task for the ship which was
toiling in the Gulf or the Red Sea.
There are many who love the land of Cyprus with her wealth
of ancient buildings, her history, her rocky hillsides darkened by
the olive trees, her sparkling blue sea, her snug golden-ringed
harbours, her monasteries upon the pine-clad mountains and her
independent people ; but none could have watched the twin spires
of the old cathedral, now a mosque, in the ancient city of
Famagusta rising above the horizon with such joy as did the men
of Challenger as their ship drew nearer to this green oasis, which
meant refreshment to them after months spent in the sandy wastes
of Qatar.
In spring of 1947 and again in 1948 Sam Southern took his ship
into Famagusta. She steamed in past the golden, sun-drenched
walls of Othello’s Tower, turned to starboard and berthed along-
side the ancient, stone quay where lateen-rigged caiques lay with
their anchors down and their sterns to the wall as they had done
for a thousand years.
To beer-starved sailors Famagusta is a paradise. Cyprus does
not appear to be trammelled with licensing laws and the numerous
bars and drinking gardens along the main street of Famagusta are
ready at any hour to serve cool, quenching brandy sours made
from the excellent Keo and Hadjipavolou brandies which are the
delight of the sailor. With each round of drinks, plates of ‘mezzi’
are set before the drinker—tit-bits of goat’s milk cheese, onions,
cucumber or octopus and a hundred other appetising and thirst-
provoking morsels. There the men sat as the warm evening closed
in and the kebab merchants set up their crude street stalls and
impregnated the night air with the exciting smell of their grilling
meat. At this hour the streets were full of people, stepping from
the pavements to avoid the family groups seated upon chairs about
their doorways, their backs to the street; or stepping back onto
the path to avoid the horse-drawn gharries which passed with a
gentle jingle of bells and a clap of hooves, or to make way for
the overloaded buses which are always on the move in Cyprus,
their passengers leaning from the windows and their drivers bent
over the wheel as if driving for their lives.
Famagusta made all these months in the Gulf worth it, for the
men had saved money there and could now spend at will, and so
180 CHALLENGER
they moved on with the night to the small, friendly, almost
homely cabarets, so different from the garish rooms with their
grasping harsh-voiced women which passed for entertainment in
Basra.
When the jeeps had been landed and the crew had enjoyed a
few nights ashore in Famagusta the work began. For this the ship
was based on Limassol in the south-west of the island, and the
search for Cyprus Lands and Survey triangulation marks began in
the brown cornfields and the olive groves which sloped steeply
to the sea.
Enosis never seems to have affected the personal feelings of the
people towards us, and surveyors have always found them, both
townsmen and villagers, overwhelming in their hospitality. The
first day that the Sub-Lieutenant went away coastlining he returned
with his board as virgin white as when it had left the chartroom.
Sam Southern searched in vain for any indication of the shoreline.
‘What the hell have you been doing all day?’ asked Sam.
‘The villagers where I landed were so hospitable with their
wine and food, Sir, that I dared not move off until the boat came
back for me in case I hurt their feelings.’ Sam’s smile was not
evident on this occasion.
General Gordon is a serious philatelist, to whom not only is
the stamp important but also the postmark it bears; it appeared
that the postmarks placed upon the stamps by the rural post
offices in the villages of Cyprus were exceedingly valuable. Each
officer who landed and set off in the jeep for a day’s work with
his theodolite in the mountains carried also with him a packet of
letters addressed to Gordon. One of these was handed in at each
small post office along his route; the General was particularly
pleased if his “‘postman’ would supervise the franking, ensuring
that the name of the village appeared as clearly as possible upon
the stamp. This game of ‘General Post’ reached such proportions
that it was decided to pull a hoax on Gordon.
The Limassol Post Office conveniently kept a pile of old
headed stationery available as scribbling paper so that the less
literate could compose their message upon it before committing
it to the official telegraph form. A piece of this paper was thus
easily obtained and a letter purporting to come from a Mr.
CYPRUS INTERLUDE 181
Papadopoulos of the Postal Department was written upon it and
sent through the post to the philatelist. Mr. Papadopoulos wrote
that he had noticed an increasing volume of letters addressed to
Lieutenant-Commander Gordon from the western districts where
Communism was taking some hold. This, he went on, aroused
suspicions and he reminded Gordon that it was illegal to use
His Majesty’s Mails for seditious purposes.
There were several officers in the mess when the letter was
opened. Gordon read it in silence and his expression became more
sullen as his eyes cast down the page. Bristling with rage, he
bustled off to his cabin to write a stinker to Mr. Papadopoulos in
reply. He told officialdom at Limassol that theirs was a case of
unwarranted interference with the freedom of the individual and
that if there were any more such accusations he would write to
the Postmaster General in Nicosia.
The Postmaster at Limassol was equally indignant and replied
that there was no Mr. Papadopoulos on his staff and that as far
as he was concerned Gordon could write as many letters as
he liked to himself, if that was his particular form of amuse-
ment.
Gordon realised now that his leg had been hauled well and
truly. But he said nothing, except that the postal authorities sus-
pected a hoax and were instituting police enquiries. A few days
later a chance for sweet revenge fell right into the General’s lap.
He thought that the Medical Officer had been the ringleader of
the hoaxers and so when he saw the Limassol Police launch making
its way out to the ship at anchor he said, ‘Hullo, Doc, here come
the police to investigate the postal hoax. I’ve told them I think
ou were the instigator.’ Doc tried not to appear alarmed, al-
though his heart was thumping, and he sneaked from the quarter-
deck before the two policemen came up the gangway. They said
they wished to see the Captain and after Gordon had taken them
up to the cuddy he went down to tell the Medical Officer where
they had gone and inferred that things looked pretty black. The
minutes ticked slowly by; Doc said nothing and became paler.
At last the Quartermaster came to the wardroom door, “The
Captain wishes to see the Medical Officer in his cabin,’ said he.
Even Gordon was surprised by this move and the Doctor moved
off to face the police.
182 CHALLENGER
‘Now, you’re the Sports Officer,’ said Sam as Doc entered the
cuddy; ‘the Police want to take us on in a shooting match.’
From the heights along the north coast of Cyprus the Turkish
mountains may be seen on a clear day. The Hydrographic Depart-
ment at this time was anxious to fix the position of the Island of
Cyprus with reference to the Turkish coast, and this could be
satisfactorily achieved by observing angles between the various
Turkish peaks from the survey stations along the Cyprus heights.
General Gordon was despatched with Geoff Simeon, one of the
junior surveying officers, to attempt this task while the ship went
down to Port Said to refuel. Geoff was a quiet young man, with
a fine sense of humour and an easy-going personality. Later, when
Simeon became First Lieutenant of Challenger and she re-visited
Canada, a friend told the author there that ‘Geoff is the most
relaxed guy I ever saw.’ He had been one of the postal hoaxers,
but now he and General set off together from Pyrgos on the jeep
with a packet of letters as usual to post by the wayside. They
first of all went to Nicosia to visit the Police Department, who
made arrangements for them to stay in the police station guest
rooms which are provided for visiting government officials, for
there are no hotels in the remote villages. Then they motored on
across the great dusty plain to the mountains towering beyond
and commenced zig-zagging up the hillside roads, which left the
cornfields and melon farms behind and passed upward through
the olive groves, crossing and re-crossing the mountain streams
which were at this time of year no more than a trickle. Rizo-
Karpaso on the tip of the long peninsula which forms the north-
east end of the island was the first objective, and there they arrived
to be welcomed by the constabulary and what appeared to be the
whole population of this large village. They entertained the sur-
veyors until an early hour on the roof-garden of the local cinema-
restaurant. The staff of this establishment had all at one time or
another served in a Soho café or a London night club, and the
person who set himself up as the interpreter had only recently
returned to this distant sunny village after two years’ service in
the half-light of the Embassy Club.
In the police guest rooms their companion was Peter, the
Customs man. His greeting on arrival in the village had been
CYPRUS INTERLUDE 183
somewhat different from that which the villagers had given to
the two surveyors. He had been showered with stones and abuse,
for it was known that he had come to assess the tobacco crop and
it was further rumoured that he had invented a machine for ex-
tracting small pebbles and other dross from the wheat crop before
it was weighed by the government buyers. But such a reception
was only that which he had come to expect and he accepted it
as a normal part of the Customs officer’s life.
For many days a haze lay across the waters dividing Cyprus
from Turkey and there was nothing to do but sit in the beautiful
garden at the police station which had won first prize in an island-
wide contest the previous year. It was tended by a man who was
under open arrest and awaiting trial for stealing some poles. The
local chief of police prayed that the garden judges would reach
Rizo-Karpaso before the visiting magistrate.
The mist did not lift, so the little party decided to move
westward and the village turned out to see them on their way.
They were made to promise that they would send a message if
they were returning so that a sucking pig could be prepared for
the occasion. They travelled to Yialousa and then on to Acanthou.
There is no police station at the latter place, which has a very
great and magnificent church to which pilgrims come from all
over the island. The surveyors spent the night in the pilgrim’s
rest-house in company with a host of bed-bugs. Next day, with
little hope of visibility increasing over the sea and with a longing
now for comfortable, uninhabited beds, they journeyed on to
Kyrenia and moved into Catselli’s luxurious Dome Hotel, the
bedroom windows of which look conveniently out towards the
Turkish mountains.
A slight improvement in the weather a day or so later en-
couraged the General and Geoff to take to the mountains once
more, and after a brief visit to Nicosia to buy more stamps for
the letters, and send a message to Rizo-Karpaso that they were
on their way, they motored on with the certain assurance that
they would have sucking pig for supper.
Unlike Gordon’s many letters, the telegram failed to reach its
destination and the villagers stared in consternation as the two
dusty travellers drove unannounced into the village square. The
lack of the sucking pig must be made up for with wine, and the
184 CHALLENGER
alcoholic reception was soon under way. To this day Geoff
Simeon swears that he spent the evening drinking one star brandy
and that the General drank ouzo, while the General avers that
the reverse was the case.
Perhaps it was not surprising that the mists were still upon the
waters when the two surveyors reached the observing station on
the mountain next morning. The joining of Turkey to Cyprus had
failed but it had been an honourable attempt.
XV
World Voyage Begins
by the end of 1949, saw her end in sight. Four new sur-
veying vessels had been completed since the War and
now there was talk of one or even two newer ships being planned
for the Surveying Service. Challenger was by far the oldest sur-
veying ship and her end could not be far distant. It must have
been pleasing for the old ship to realise, on her return from the
Persian Gulf in 1949, that she was to be prepared for something
unusual. This was to be a world cruise, and how better could she
complete her career than following in the track of her famous
predecessor ?
It had been planned that Challenger should carry out a two-
and-a-half-year sounding cruise, visiting the three main oceans
and the Mediterranean.
The great number of charts maintained by many of the countries
of the world are devoted almost entirely to depicting the depths
of the inshore waters on the continental shelf, such charts having
navigational value. But since the end of World War II interest
in the topography of the deep ocean floor has been growing.
For long such areas had been considered, by those who thought
about them at all, as having a flat and featureless sea-bed, carpeted
with sediments. But the earlier Challenger’s soundings, although
she was able to obtain only about 400 of them with her laborious
methods of rope and sinker, already showed that there were many
features, hills and valleys, on the ocean floor. With the laying of
the first trans-ocean cables at the end of the last century there
came a steadily increasing knowledge of the features forming the
ocean bed, and such knowledge was rapidly augmented by the
introduction of echo sounding machines in research and sur-
veying vessels in the early 1930s.
During World War II the neutral Swedes had time to think
about oceanographic research, but their practical experiments
185
N LTHOUGH not an old ship by many standards, Challenger,
186 CHALLENGER
were restricted within the Baltic; however, soon after the War
was over they were ready to take the field of world-wide oceano-
graphic exploration, and, under the enthusiastic guidance and
leadership of Professor Hans Pettersen, the now famous Albatross
expedition set out.
This expedition was following many lines of investigation, in-
cluding continual echo sounding of the ocean areas to be crossed,
but perhaps the most interesting part of the work to the layman
was the proposal to obtain cores, or long vertical samples, of
the sediments lying on the ocean bed. This was successfully
achieved by using the Kullenberg piston corer. The device is
lowered on a wire hawser from a winch to the sea-bed, and if the
ship is properly handled, a small pilot weight reaching the sea-bed
first releases a larger weight which drives the coring tube into
the sediment. A piston within the coring tube is attached directly
to the wire from the winch, which has been braked as the bottom
is reached. The piston thus remains still while the tube goes into
the sediment. The partial vacuum so formed assists the sediment
to enter the tube. The resulting core samples of the ocean floor
sediments can be seen in plastic containers giving a cross section
view, the sediments seen at the lower end of the tube having
been laid down hundreds of thousands of years before. The dif-
fering colours of the predominant sediments, whether it be fine
wind-blown sand or the calcerous skeletons of countless plankton
forms, when viewed as it were in cross section give the im-
pression of looking at a layered cake having an infinite variety of
cream fillings.
The Challenger cruise being planned in 1949 aimed at taking
a very considerable number of soundings in the oceans, as well
as carrying out searches for a number of shoals reported in such
areas, particularly in the latter years of the War when thousands
of ships were running their echo sounding machines—many of the
operators interpreting their sounders correctly while others
‘discovered’ shoals which never existed.
At the same time it was arranged to take a small party of
scientists from the Department of Geodesy and Geophysics, Cam-
bridge, to explore the structure of the ocean bed itself. This was
to be done by using seismic refraction methods already in use
on land but now adapted for use from a ship with over 2600
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WORLD VOYAGE BEGINS 187
fathoms of water separating her from the ocean bed. To carry out
such experiments a ship must be fitted with special apparatus.
———— 6 To 20 miles
SONO-RADIO BUOYS
en LZZ2
A seismic refraction experiment, showing the paths by which various sound
waves travel from explosion to the hydrophones
A comparatively flat area of the ocean bed having been found,
four sono radio buoys are laid about half a mile apart. Each buoy
has a hydrophone slung beneath it in the water and within the
buoy itself is a receiver and transmitting wireless set, with bat-
teries. An aerial is carried on the buoy’s mast. Having laid the
buoys, the ship moves off to a distance of eight miles or so and
fires a depth charge. This forms a source of sound which travels
out in all directions in the sea.
One path of sound travels horizontally through the water to the
hydrophones below the buoys whence it returns to the ship as a
radio signal. An accurate timing device in the ship records the
time of the firing of the depth charge and the returning signal
from the buoys. The speed of sound in sea water is known (5000
feet per second) so that a range of the buoys has now been found.
Other paths of sound lead towards the sea-bed and then hori-
zontally through the layer of sediment. As this sound passes
14
188 CHALLENGER
beneath the buoys it can be picked up through the water by the
hydrophone and again a signal is sent to the ship. The depth of
water both beneath the buoys and beneath the ship has been found
with the sounding machine, and the time of the passage of sound
from the ship to the sea-bed and from the sea-bed to the buoy
hydrophone can be calculated. This time is subtracted from the
total time for passage of sound, the resulting time being that taken
by the sound to pass horizontally through the sediment layer for
a distance of eight miles, so that the speed of sound in the sedi-
ment layer has been discovered.
Yet other paths of sound pass through the sediment layer to
the harder, more compressed layers beneath, in which sound
travels more quickly. The time of the passage of sound through
these lower layers is also timed, and a speed of sound for these
layers found. When the speed of sound in a material is known
then geophysicists get a pretty good idea of the type of rock
forming this material, relating it to their experiences on land
where borings can be made and samples of the material inspected
after measuring the speed of sound by seismic methods.
By carrying out these seismic refraction experiments at a num-
ber of increasing ranges from the sono radio buoys, and knowing
the speed of sound in the material forming the layers, the vertical
thickness of the layers may be measured.
Thus a picture is built up of the types of material which form
the layers of the earth’s crust beneath the oceans, and such ex-
periments, carried out at a number of different positions in the
various oceans, can be seen to be complementary to the researches
of the Albatross regarding the sedimentary layers.
In the winter of 1949-50 Challenger lay in Chatham Dockyard,
enduring the usual discomforts of a refit and preparation for an-
other voyage. The crew were joining in twos and threes as they
were appointed from Portsmouth Barracks. They were living in
Chatham Naval Barracks and marching to the ship both morning
and afternoon, never a popular part of the commission, more
particularly on this occasion, as the men were from Portsmouth
Division, where Challenger’s crew always came from: so that after
a day spent in the unheated store-rooms and in offices with scuttles
missing and rain dripping through the empty rivet holes, and after
WORLD VOYAGE BEGINS 189
being maddened by the roar of pneumatic riveting hammers and
the general frustrations of working in a ship ‘in dockyard hands’,
the men had no prospect of home comforts at the end of the day.
The crew for this world voyage were volunteers and were
anxious to be away, but the inevitable delays took place and week
after week the sailing date was postponed. Soulsby, the Leading
Sick Berth Attendant, who proved to be quite a wit during the
voyage, requested to see the Captain for a ‘foreign service draft’.
Petty Officer Greenshields was once more onboard Challenger,
this time as the Senior Recorder.
When one reads the accounts of voyages of scientific explora-
tion it is seen that naval officers and scientists do not often see
eye to eye on all things, particularly at the beginning of a voyage.
This is not really strange, as the naval man’s ideals are usually a
definite programme to work to and a ship of a smart and seaman-
like appearance. A concession on both these points has to be made
to the scientist if the advantages of good weather and of locating
an interesting area are to be seized, and if scientific equipment,
assembled with labour and enthusiasm, is to remain in position
despite its unseamanlike appearance.
Tom Gaskell and John Swallow, the scientists who sailed in
Challenger, were both outstanding in their way, although com-
pletely different in outlook. Tom was hard-working in the ex-
treme when he had work to do, but when his experiments were
complete and his records made up, then he would enjoy life as
few others can; his enthusiasm for every new project was un-
bounded and carried others along with him. Whenever one did
anything with Tom he made it seem really worth while doing.
He was an inveterate sightseer in the scientific field or any other:
as the voyage went on his cabin became fuller and fuller of
souvenirs which he picked up at every port of call. John Swallow
was serious, never happier than when he was working on the
results of his experiments, and he was intensely interested in all
forms of science and in natural history. John could relax, how-
ever, and when he started mixing highballs a good evening la
ahead. He was a good trencherman and was to uphold the ship’s
reputation when faced with giant steaks in the restaurants of
Victoria; B.C.
John Swallow’s arrival did not portend good relations between
190 CHALLENGER
the naval and scientific staffs. It was the week-end, and the First
Lieutenant had given leave to a large number of the crew, leaving
only a small fire party of about half-a-dozen men onboard. He had
also decided that on that Saturday it would be appropriate to give
a small farewell luncheon party onboard for a few of his friends.
The gin had been enjoyed and the party were about to be seated
around the luncheon table. The calm of a ‘make and mend’ had
settled on the ship, when the quartermaster announced the arrival
on the dockside of a Mr. Swallow, who had driven up in a huge
vehicle loaded with about a dozen sono-buoys and associated equip-
ment. So what was to have been a quiet and pleasant afternoon
was busily employed in embarking the scientist’s apparatus.
By May all was ready and Challenger set out from Chatham on
the first leg of her journey. Bermuda was the first port of call,
and was in fact used as a base for three cruises into the North-West
Atlantic. On the last of these cruises Challenger ran for her life.
The author had only recently joined the ship and this was his first
voyage in command, for he had taken over in Bermuda from
Commander Bill who had been taken ill there and had returned
to England. Challenger sailed northward over the Great Newfound-
land Bank and on into the North Atlantic. She was intending to
stay at sea as long as possible to carry out investigations before
returning to Bermuda for fuel. This is a risky business in a low-
speed ship in the hurricane season, and after steaming southwards
for some days on her way back to Bermuda a hurricane warning
was received. Before the last war, the first a ship often knew about
a hurricane was the falling of the barometer and the presence of
an ominous calm. Today, at the suspicion of a circular storm
forming in the hurricane breeding area, which lies eastward of
the West Indies, United States ’planes search for and locate the
storm, which, if it proves to be a hurricane, is given a girl’s
name and assumes a personality. The storm is followed daily by
the patrol ’planes, which often fly boldly through the storm,
fixing their position and estimating their course and speed, until
the hurricane enters the mainland of the United States or peters
out in the North Atlantic.
Such storms usually set out in a north-westerly direction and
if they do not reach the mainland turn slowly northward and then
WORLD VOYAGE BEGINS I9I
north-eastward, when they are said to have ‘recurved’. Bermuda
often finds itself in the hurricane area at the time of recurving.
Some ships have of course passed right through the centre of a
hurricane, experiencing winds of well over 100 miles an hour
and mountainous seas. Such ships have often lived to tell the tale,
usually with calmness and much understatement, one feels, when
reading these accounts in the meterorological journals. But well-
found vessels have gone to the bottom as the result of meeting
with a hurricane or a typhoon at sea, often as a result of a giant
wave pouring down the funnel, as the ship is tossed madly in
a confused and towering sea. So it is well to avoid these circular
storms if one can, and this is difficult of accomplishment in a
low-speed ship.
On this occasion the hurricane was reported coming north-
wards between Bermuda and the coast of the United States. Her
name was Doris. A little later she was reported to be recurving
and then to be moving in a north-easterly direction. Challenger
was just south of the Grand Banks and the Captain and Navigator
had decided to head due westwards and later southwards towards
Bermuda, getting round behind Doris. But as the next 12 hours
wore on the feeling of ominous calm became gradually apparent,
and by evening, as the ship sailed westwards into the setting sun,
it was unmistakable. Cirrus clouds stretched in wispy bands right
across the sky, and lower cumulus clouds cast leaden shadows on
the glassy surface of the gently heaving sea. A flock of storm
petrels fluttered in the wake of the ship, which was flanked by
the waves caused by the ship’s bows rippling outwards on either
quarter as far as the eye could see.
Those on the bridge were not surprised therefore when a signal
was passed up which said that the last report of Doris’s movements
had been in error and that in fact she was still proceeding north-
wards. A simple sum in relative velocity showed that ship and
hurricane would eventually meet.
The course was altered to the south-east and Challenger began
to run a little faster, at her maximum speed of about ten knots.
For two or three days Challenger hustled south-eastwards and was
by now approaching the latitude of Bermuda, and she began
edging to the westward in heavy seas in Doris’s wake.
About this time the Wardroom invented a game called ‘Ships
192 CHALLENGER
and Hurricanes’. It was played on a squared board with the goal,
Bermuda, in the left-hand bottom corner. One player, repre-
senting the ship, dodged this way and that, being countered in turn
by the hurricane, the other player. A thrown dice gave the
number of squares which could be moved. The Captain, when
he visited the Wardroom to play the game, was depressed by the
number of times that the hurricane was able to keep the ship
from reaching Bermuda until the ship’s fuel, represented by a
certain number of dice throws, ran out. The game seemed more
and more like the efforts being made on the bridge to reach
Bermuda—a tiny speck in a vast ocean defended by a hurricane ;
and when a second hurricane was reported and it too was repre-
sented by a counter on the game board, the Captain’s visits to
the Wardroom abruptly ceased.
The second hurricane, Effie, was travelling northwards to-
wards Bermuda at a steady ten knots and a course alteration was
required in Challenger to come into Bermuda from the south
behind Effie. But about 150 miles south of Bermuda Effie came
to a grinding halt, and Bermuda signalled that conditions were
unsuitable for a ship to enter through the reefs owing to the
strong winds and high seas caused thereby.
Challenger’s fuel was now very low owing to the great amount
_ of dodging this way and that, and now Effe’s action in pulling up
seemed almost human in its malevolence. The seas were very high
as the ship steamed slowly into them, playing for time. The small
party on the bridge gazed upwards with awe at the oncoming
wavetops towering above them: some said the waves were 60
feet high, some 70, but waves are deceptive and now that a wave
recorder is fitted in a British Weather Ship it seems that waves
are often over-estimated. A wave of 50 feet in height would be
an exceptionally high one in the North Atlantic.
After three weary weeks the oil fuel tanks were nearly empty;
they were filled with sea water to maintain the ship’s stability.
Challenger fought her way on, using the fine oil supplied for the
lighting diesel.
At this point the Captain sent a signal describing his plight to
the Commander-in-Chief of the Station, who was at the time
visiting a South American port in his flagship: there was nothing
that he could do, but before a hurricane caught Challenger with-
WORLD VOYAGE BEGINS 193
out fuel and toppled her over it seemed that someone should be
told. But the C.-in-C.s reply, which simply said ‘Good Luck’,
produced quicker results than many a longer operational signal.
Almost at once Effie began to move northwards, and as signals
reporting this movement came in Challenger moved slowly for-
ward in her wake. Effie’s influence gradually cleared from Ber-
muda and Challenger steamed in on the very last of her fuel.
The beach felt good that night as the men stepped ashore for
a run).
Sounding and seismic work had gone on whenever the weather
allowed it during the ship’s cruises from Bermuda, but once the
winds reach Force 4 on the Beaufort Scale so much ‘water noise’
is caused by the sea slapping against the buoys that the signals
cannot be distinguished and seismic experiments are discontinued.
This is a frustrating business; the buoys laid in calm weather
may have to be lifted in an hour or two as the wind increases.
There are other frustrations too, such as the day a shark swallowed
and made away with the scientists’ favourite hydrophone as it
was being hauled onboard. Further dropping of charges must have
caused the shark considerable indigestion.
A visit of five days’ duration to Kingston, Jamaica, was memor-
able for the heavy and incessant rain which fell throughout the
stay. As at so many other ports visited, the local people said that
it was the worst weather they had known for years. It is ever thus.
The visit was also memorable for four inexpensive nights of
pleasure at the ‘Glass Bucket’, the swellest joint in town. Here
Kitty, a dusky beauty, was prepared to roll dice against the
patrons on a semi-circular green table behind which she sat with
inscrutable expression. The game consisted in the patron backing
a certain number to come up twenty times during ten throws of
five dice. Seeing that the numbers on the dice were scalloped out
of the surface the philosophers stated that it was likely that, as
the sides bearing the higher numbers must be lighter as a result,
then five and six would be good bets. And so they proved to be,
giving the Challenger’s men a pound back for five shillings on
nearly every occasion on which they played. But on the last night
Kitty sat, inscrutable as ever, before a brand new set of dice on
which the numbers were painted and not scalloped. The manage-
194 CHALLENGER
ment of the ‘Glass Bucket’ had found the flaw in their system
but the ship had had a good run.
Passing through the Panama Canal in October, 1950, Challenger
sailed northward in the Pacific towards San Diego. For the last
five days’ steaming before reaching San Diego the “deep scattering
layer’, as it is called, was seen at dawn and dusk on the echo
sounding machine. This is a common phenomenon in the oceans
and appears on the echo sounder as a false sea-bed echo. The
layer spends the day at about 200 fathoms, ascending steadily
through the water at sunset until it has reached a depth of 20
fathoms or so, where it spends the night, and whence it returns
again just before sunrise to 200 fathoms.
The layer may be caused by countless millions of tiny animal
plankton forms, hard-shelled, and known as euphausiids. These
animals, which, with many similar types, abound in the oceans,
are known to migrate towards the sea surface at nightfall. But
the echoes seen on the sounding machine may be coming from
vast numbers of fish which live in the deep ocean and are feeding
on the migrating plankton: such fish have air bladders and may be
a cause of the echoes being reflected. This may be the answer,
possibly combined with other, unthought-of, factors, and as one
watches the unbroken layer hour after hour on the sounding
machine one thinks of the wealth of life within the oceans.
At San Diego a very brief visit was paid to the Scripps Institute
of Oceanography, a department of the University of California.
From here, under the leadership of Dr. Revelle, the Director,
four great oceanographic expeditions have sailed out into the
Pacific since the close of the last war.
At Scripps the recent scattering layer records were being
discussed and one of their biologists investigating the cause of this
layer suggested that Challenger should take one of his depressors,
which, attached to a plankton net, would keep it at a constant
depth as the net was towed through the layer to capture specimens
of the plankton. The depressor was of brass, heavy, and of an
intriguing curvaceous shape. The inventor said that the inspira-
tion had come to him when contemplating his attractive secretary.
The party from Challenger, looking across the room to where she
was sitting, saw what he meant.
WORLD VOYAGE BEGINS 19f
Three months were spent working off the British Columbia
coast, using many of the small anchorages along the coasts of
Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands.
For two or three days the ship lay at anchor in Heater Harbour,
a little fjord-like anchorage lying between steep wooded hills, on
the east coast of Kunghit Island at the southern end of the Queen
Charlotte’s. Deer abounded on this island and could often be seen
on the beaches in the afternoon and early evening. They appeared
to be feeding on the seaweed. Small parties of the ship’s company
would land in the afternoon to try to get fresh venison, and on
such occasions were warned not to enter the bush. Thick forests
of sitka, Douglas fir and hemlock came right down to the water’s
edge. Beneath these stately trees lay a jumble of fallen trunks and
boughs, rotting stumps and thick undergrowth.
At 5 o’clock one evening, when the boat went ashore to collect
four stokers who had been ashore on such an expedition, only
two of the men were on the beach. The other two were said to
have entered the woods and had not been seen again. Until dusk
cries of ‘Hope’ and ‘Abel’, the names of the missing stoker
mechanics, rang out from searchers along the shore.
Although snow lay on the ground, the afternoon had been mild
and these hunters from the boiler-room were lightly clad. The
wind increased in the night, snow was falling and the temperature
was well below zero. All thoughts onboard were with the two
lost in the Canadian forests, and it was long before dawn when
the first men were ‘wetting tea’ in the galley and preparing to
land as search parties.
A full gale was blowing when a party of over 40 men, with the
First Lieutenant in charge, were landed to search the woods;
this was now Geoff Simeon, ‘the relaxed guy’, who like so many
others in this tale had returned once again to the old ship. By
noon he was back onboard to report that the woods were so thick
that he was in danger of losing members of the search party.
Without a compass, one lost all sense of direction in these forests,
and what was needed was a number of small parties, each in
charge of a leader with a compass.
The lost stoker mechanics had landed on the north side of the
harbour, the land here being a peninsula about half-a-mile wide,
the northern side of which looks out across a broad sea channel
196 CHALLENGER
between Kunghit Island and Graham Island, the next land to the
northward. The northern coast of the peninsula was searched by
boat, while small search parties, keeping only a few yards from
their leader, fought their way across the peninsula at maximum
speeds of about 400 yards an hour, so tangled and matted was the
undergrowth and so frequent and deep were the potholes left by
old decayed tree-stumps.
The second day ended without results and by now all onboard
were seriously worried as to whether their two shipmates would
survive a second night, ill clad as they were in light overalls, with
freezing temperatures, high winds and falling snow.
There is on Kunghit Island an abandoned whaling station, shown
on the charts. It lies on the north coast of the island but consider-
ably to the west of the limit of the north shore already searched
by boat. On the third day it was decided to send a boat to the old
whaling station, in the faint hope that the wanderers had found
shelter there. Meanwhile the search parties returned to the
woods, searching to the westward.
About noon the wireless operator ran into the Captain’s cabin.
A message had been received from the boat by R/T—Hope and
Abel had been found, and the boat was on her way back to the
ship.
The First Lieutenant had been in charge, and as soon as he
landed on the ruined jetty at the whaling station he saw footprints
in the snow and called out the now familiar names. A thin
answering cry came from one of the tumbledown huts, and there,
too cold and weary to stagger out to meet their rescuers, were
the two men.
They spent about a week in the sick bay and after a painful
interview with the Captain, who took the odd view that they
had been absent over leave for two days, they told their mess-
mates of their experiences. They had entered the woods for only
a few yards before losing their sense of direction. They spent the
first night huddled under a fallen tree, scared by the howling of
wolves; as no wolves are known in these islands, it must have
been the ship’s siren that they heard, which was sounded at
intervals to assist them to locate the ship. Hope was interviewed
by Soulsby on the ship’s internal broadcasting system. When
asked if they had considered eating berries to nourish themselves,
WORLD VOYAGE BEGINS 197
Hope replied: ‘No—I gets my food at the shop on the corner.’
So answered an English townsman after being lost in the Canadian
backwoods.
Among other places visited in British Columbia was Port
Simpson in the extreme north. This is a fine but little-used
anchorage, with a township inhabited by Indians of the Tsimpsean
tribe. A Hudson Bay Company store is run by two white men,
and one or two other white families live close about the store in
wooden frame houses. A white minister serves a somewhat
difficult flock.
About 30 of the men of Challenger enjoyed this place and
quickly made friends among the Indians, who arranged dancing
and games in the local hall almost nightly. There were no other
amenities in Port Simpson except the ‘diner’, which consisted of
the living room of a house with ‘B.C. Diner’ painted on the front
door; within this room was a wood-burning stove which was
always red-hot, and coffee was brought from the back room to the
customers clustered round it. Outside all was crisp and crunchy
with snow.
A sacred concert in the village hall was the highlight of the
ship’s visit. A silver band played hymns and sacred songs, some-
times on their own and sometimes accompanying soloists or
mixed choruses. Many of the hymns were dedicated to the men
of the ship, and finally an elderly Indian woman dedicated “Into
Battle’ to the ship herself, a somewhat inappropriate hymn for
unarmed and peace-loving Challenger.
A small band of beautiful young Indian girls hung over the rails
of the balcony, but the Chairman whispered into the Captain’s
ear that at least two of the girls had been run out of town for
their moral lapses and should not now be gracing such a solemn
occasion.
As the evening came to an end a finely painted wooden paddle
was presented by the Indians to the ship. This paddle had magic
properties—if the ship broke down or ran short of fuel, no
matter how far from land, the magic paddle could be used to take
her to port. This was a source of comfort to the Engineer Officer
for the rest of the voyage.
In 1908 the British surveying vessel Egeria had surveyed the fine
198 CHALLENGER
bay at Port Simpson, and Challenger’s Captain heard that Sam
Bennett, an old Indian, who had acted as a local pilot in the
Egeria, was still living at Port Simpson. With the Minister’s help
a meeting was arranged in old Sam’s wooden house by the shore.
Sam Bennett had been blind for many years, but he remembered
the happenings in the old days in Egeria and described them as
if they had occurred yesterday. He told his visitors where to find
his Bible and guided them to an old ship’s company photograph
still between the pages. There was Captain Learmonth, the officers
grouped around him in their old-fashioned small-topped uniform
caps, the men ranged behind them. The inevitable small dog lay
on the deck in front of the group, and at one side pune stood
Sam Bennett, the local pilot.
Things hee changed little in many ways in the routine of a
surveyor’s day. Sam described the early start in the mornings,
the boats going off from the ship in all directions, the climbs
through the woods, the clearing of the hilltops, fe erection of
flags and the long Hone spent around the theodolites. In those
days, as now, the ship’s doctor found time heavy on his hands
as the fit men manned the boats or climbed the hills, and Sam
Bennett told how he had taken the Medical Officer deer-hunting.
He described how he had led him unerringly to a fine coast deer,
the breathless minute as the doctor took aim, and how he had
skinned and carved up the deer, packing it in its own skin and
carrying it onboard on his back.
Coming south from Port Simpson the ship travelled down the
long fjord-like passage between Vancouver Island and the main-
land, which at its narrowest part passes through Seymour Nar-
rows. These are made more hazardous by having a dangerous
submerged rock in the channel and strong tidal streams swirling
past it. A vessel of Challenger’s modest power must wait for slack
water to make this passage between the hidden rock and the
steep snow-clad mountainside.
Whilst navigating the inner route the ship spent a night at Alert
Bay, a trading port on one of the small islands lying in the channel ;
a fine forest of Indian totem poles and a processing works for
turning herrings into fertiliser are the two most memorable
features of this little place. There was also, of course, a beer
WORLD VOYAGE BEGINS 199
parlour, and it was here that the Petty Officer Steward and three
shipmates made arrangements to get some herring. When the boat
went off to the ship that night at midnight all that had to be done
was to take the boat underneath a shute which overhung the water
and their new-found friend, who worked in the herring factory,
would release a small quantity of herring into the boat. As the
evening drew on, the idea seemed a very excellent one to the
four P.O.s and they thought how much the whole ship’s com-
pany, from the “Old Man’ downwards, would enjoy their meal
of fresh herring. They collected a number of cardboard beer
cartons to carry the fish.
The coxswain of the boat seemed strangely unenthusiastic and
the P.O.s had to assert their authority to make him take his boat
under the shute. The new-found friend had also indulged in the
parlour and having once released the stream of herring he was
unable to stem it despite the shouting of those in the boat below
this fishy waterfall. The fish poured into the open compartments
of the boat to a depth of two feet or more before the coxswain
could cast off and get his boat clear. When the boat reached the
gangway, the Officer of the Day could hardly believe his eyes, nor
could the Captain, who was roused from his sleep by the shouting
and argument which accompanied the inefficient methods the
P.O.s were employing to bring the fish up the gangway in the
slippery cardboard cartons, which were collapsing and showering
herring in every direction. The bowman stood disconsolately in
the forepeak, knee deep in herring, while he held the boat’s
bows in to the ship’s side.
It was a difficult morning for the First Lieutenant, who had to
‘forget the three fresh herrings he had enjoyed for breakfast when
he confronted the four P.O.s and ordered them to scrub out the
boat which hung miserably at the davits, so covered with fish
scales that she appeared to be under snow.
Christmas 1950 was spent in Victoria, where this festival is
celebrated in the old-fashioned way. The trees are easy to get
from the woods and on Christmas Eve everyone is out visiting
everyone else, carrying gifts to the Christmas trees.
A ‘friend’ of the ship put a personal advertisement in the local
paper to the effect that Challenger, whose badge is a challenging
200 CHALLENGER
stag, wished once again to have antlers on the fore side of her
bridge as she had had in her Labrador days. There are many
hunters in British Columbia, amateur and professional, and a new
and better pair of antlers replaces from time to time the pair
hanging in the front hall. The relegated pair goes into a back
room. Hunter’s wives could hardly believe their eyes when they
read of the opportunity to be honourably rid of their junk. For
a week around Christmas time, with the spirit of giving in the
air, every car and every van that pulled up on the quayside along-
side Challenger carried a load of antlers.
With a fine pair of caribou horns in front of the bridge, with
every member of the ship’s company possessing a pair of antlers,
and with the biggest stuffed stag’s head over Tom Gaskell’s
bunk, the ship sailed southwards towards the islands of Hawaii.
XVI
The Pacific
what one might have expected. Instead of the drab figure
who boards a ship for this purpose in most parts of the
world, this man was colourfully dressed in a gay aloha shirt,
palms and hula girls entwining themselves against an orange back-
ground. He wore a cap more suitable to a jockey than a man of
the sea and he leapt from his fast-moving launch with the agility
of a trapeze artist. Once on the bridge he said, “Let’s go, Captain.’
and soon the ship was steaming at her best speed through the
man-made passage in the coral reef which leads into the extensive
lagoons which now form Pearl Harbour, the greatest naval base
in the Pacific. She passed giant aircraft carriers and fleets of
destroyers moored alongside. The sound of orders, oddly phrased
to British ears, carried across the water as the boatswain’s mates
passed them over the loudspeakers.
It is fashionable for travellers to say that Honolulu is over com-
mercialised and that there is little pleasure to be had there, but
with its delightful climate and colourful people there is still much
of interest and enjoyment.
The ship was welcomed alongside by a party of Hawaiian girls
dancing the hula on the dockside and accompanied by a small
orchestra playing the music which is so much a part of life in
these islands. That this entertainment was laid on by the ULS.
Naval Welfare Services and that the girls danced where they could
among the thickly parked automobiles detracted little from this
Island Welcome and the sailors’ eyes were not upon the berthing
wires which they were handling.
The Captain’s first task was to call upon the U.S. Admiral
Commanding the Hawaiian area and so he landed in full white
uniform, buttoned close up below the chin, as British naval tradi-
tion demands. On this warm day he envied the Admiral in his
open-necked khaki uniform shirt and his rolled sleeves as he sat
201
Ts pilot who boarded the ship off Pearl Harbour was just
202 CHALLENGER
at his desk. “Sit down and relax, Captain,’ said he. ‘Why, you
sure look all trussed up in that outfit.’
Hot sun tempered by cool breezes endured throughout the
week’s visit. The days were spent in visiting the Bernice P.
Bishop Museum where Sir Peter Buck, the Maori anthropologist,
presided over the finest collection of Polynesiana; or in attending
a scientific symposium to which the Captain and the Senior
Scientist went smartly dressed in their Palm Beach suits only to
find that from the Chairman downwards the delegates were at-
tired in aloha shirts. It was refreshing to see an elderly scientist
of serious aspect dressed thus as he propounded his theories
relative to the height of the water-table on the Island of Oahu.
It is on the Island of Oahu that both Honolulu and Pearl
Harbour are situated. A party of scientists and officers flew from
Honolulu to the Island of Hawaii to visit the volcano observatory
on the rim of the crater of Kilauea. This was following in the
footsteps of the earlier Challenger, from which a similar party had
landed at Hilo, the capital of the Island of Hawaii, and from there
had ‘a tedious and monotonous ride’ on horseback across ‘a
weary expanse of open country devoid of any fine trees’ to reach
Kilauea, taking the whole day to get there. Challenger’s party,
alighting from their plane, soon crossed this gently rising land-
scape in a hired car, belonging to Mr. Ducky Goo. They did not
see the lava fountains in the crater which their predecessors had
described, but they were able to see the lava flows from the
eruption on the slopes of the higher Mauna Loa which had occur-
red about nine months previously, and which had lasted for 22
days, when 600,000,000 cubic yards of lava, the largest quantity
recorded in historic times, was disgorged upon the mountainside.
There are today a volcanic observatory and five stations around
the crater at Kilauea, which are fitted with apparatus to determine
the tilt of the ground in both north/south and east/west directions,
and these, together with seismographs which record both small
and large earthquakes, give indications of impending trouble. As
a result of increasing tilt and a number of daily earthquakes a
warning of volcano eruption was published in the local paper on
the day before the outbreak of lava on the slopes of Mauna Loa.
Even nine months after this eruption the lava was too hot just
below its surface to handle for long, and warm pieces of so called
2
Joe
OWIOVd HLYON
—YFAHLVAM AAVAH
OWIOVd
HLYON
—dIHS AHL
ACISONOTYV
SSOULVATV
Gi LOOA-AOVTA
— *
THE PACIFIC 203
‘Ah’ lava were carried back to the ship. Six different flows had
poured down the mountainside and the party were amused to see
that a house which had been missed by only 50 yards was now up
for sale.
Fine weather endured for some days after leaving Pearl Har-
bour, and the ship’s philosophers, refreshed by their scientific
and social contacts in Honolulu, turned to their seismic experi-
ments with renewed vigour. But the course was northwards for
Adak, a U.S. Naval Base in the Aleutians, and after a week or so
the weather grew more stormy daily until the ship passed through
the chain of the Aleutian Islands in a gale of great ferocity, cold
northerly winds shrieking in the rigging and over the top of the
bridge where the Officer of the Watch huddled in his corner and
peered over the windbreak at the cold white scene of countless
breaking seas joined by wind-blown streaks of foam which
stretched away on either hand to the snow covered mountains
of rugged aspect. Two or three Black-footed Albatross, still at-
tendant upon the ship, were sweeping across this seascape like
leaves in the gale, the only dark coloured objects in a grey-white
scene.
Although the country was bleak and snowbound the U.S. Naval
hospitality made up for everything, the few days spent at Adak
passing quickly, and once again the ship was at sea on her way to
Japan.
Day after day, week after week, as the ship sailed in the North
Pacific the sky was overcast, the visibility was down to a mile or
so and winds of gale force kept the seas high and the ship’s
motion violent. Ocean sounding was all that could be done on
such days although water temperatures and samples at depth were
taken with the reversing water bottles whenever the weather
moderated. But the sono-buoys lay snugly in their stowage and
the scientists cursed their luck and once again went over their
records made on calmer days.
There was one activity, however, which never ceased by day
_ and that was the watching of birds. Except in the tropics one
cannot sail for long unaccompanied by seabirds. In the more tem-
perate zones there are always birds in attendance or to be seen
flying past from time to time. At regular intervals the birds in
15
204 CHALLENGER
sight were logged and as the cruise progressed sub-arctic, sub-
tropical and tropical avian communities were encountered. There
are many seabirds which, unlike the coast-loving gulls, spend the
whole of their lives, except for the nesting season, at sea far
from land. Such are the Black-footed and Laysan Albatross which
attended the ship throughout her time in the North Pacific, al-
though they never followed Challenger west of the Nanpo Shoto
Islands which lie in a chain running southwards from the vicinity
of Tokyo Bay. The Black-footed Albatross were very numerous
and very curious. They insisted in clustering daily about the
wooden float which supported the 14-pound charge the scientists
drifted astern. When exploded, this charge gave a signal which
penetrated the sediment layer of the sea-bed, and returning after
the bottom echo, gave a thickness of the sediment on the ocean
floor beneath the ship. Despite considerable patience in waiting for
the birds to lose interest in the float it was sometimes necessary
to fire the charge while they still clustered round and inevitable
casualties resulted.
There are three species of albatross known to the North Pacific
as against about a dozen species known in the Southern Hemi-
sphere. The birds have only been known to cross the Equator on
very rare occasions, and even these may have been carried across
as captives in ships, for they are fairly easily caught at sea with
a fishing line and hook baited with a piece of fat. The albatross,
like most other oceanic seabirds, is very susceptible to the
changing temperature of the sea, and does not follow a ship far
outside the zones of his preference. It is probably the type of
plankton food living in such waters that limits the bird’s travel
rather than the change of sea water temperature itself.
Oceanic birds can therefore be regarded as tell-tales for the
changes of temperature, and hence ocean current boundaries, thus
systematic watching of the birds while travelling across the oceans
forms a useful type of oceanographic observing. It is a pleasing
occupation to watch the petrels as they skim endlessly and effort-
lessly between and over the wave crests to windward of the ship
and to try and pick out this or that peculiarity of colour or profile
which will serve to identify the species. Alexander’s Birds of the
Ocean, well thumbed and whitened with salt spray, lay to hand
on the bridge chart table.
THE PACIFIC 205
One day in the North Pacific, when the ship was about 250
miles eastward of the coast of the main Japanese Island of Honshu,
an albatross of unfamiliar appearance circled the ship and settled
upon the water, folding its long wings, which, so graceful when
the bird is in the air, appear unwieldy and out of proportion as
it gathers them to it after landing. The bird was white above and
below but with brown wings and a white back, and, most notice-
able, a yellow-tinged head and neck. There was no doubt in the
observers’ minds that this must be the Steller’s Albatross, named
after Behring’s naturalist. John Swallow was sent for with his
camera, but before he was on deck the bird had taken wing,
waddling at first across the surface of the sea, wiggling its stern in
a most laughable manner. But once the last wave top was cleared
the legs were snugged away, the wings set, and the bird became
at once a thing of effortless beauty as it sailed away into the mist.
Experience with albatross told the watchers it would probably
return again to the vicinity of the ship, so Swallow stood by with
his camera, and two hours later the bird was sighted coming in
low over the wavetops like an enemy torpedo plane. This time
the bird circled the ship again and again, never very near, but
close enough for John with his telescopic lens; his photos show
sufficient evidence for ornithologists to say that Challenger had
undoubtedly sighted this rare bird which had been thought ex-
tinct by some authorities for fifteen years or more. The story
goes that the Japanese fishermen had been in the habit of killing
these birds while they were at their nests on the Izu Islands. Here
they were easily caught, for they need a long run to become air-
borne. Their downy feathers brought a good price in Japan in
those days for use as stuffing for pillows and mattresses. Hearing
that legislation was being prepared to protect these fast vanishing
birds the fishermen struck first and cleared the few remaining
birds once and for all, it was thought, from the face of the earth.
Perhaps there is still a hope of revival for this much persecuted
lovely, lonely bird of the North Pacific.
The hundreds of fishing and other small craft met during the
day’s steaming through the Inland Sea to reach Kure, on the
island of Honshu, made the Challenger aware how much Japan is
dependent upon fisheries and how much inter-island traffic is re-
quired for the every-day running of the country. Kure is a former
206 CHALLENGER
naval base; the wrecked shipyards and the giant graving docks,
then fouled with wreckage, bore witness to the former great-
ness of this port where Japan’s largest battleships were once
built.
Tom Gaskell, the inveterate sight-seer, was soon active in
Japan and he and the Captain crossed the Inland Sea in a local
ferry boat for a few days’ holiday at the watering spa of Dogo,
near Matsuyama, the capital of the Island of Shikoku. Here they
lived in the luxury of a small Japanese hotel, being truly waited
upon hand and foot. The duty of one small girl was simply to turn
their slippers, discarded at the bedroom door, in a direction
suitable for stepping into when moving off again on leaving the
room. Each morning was spent in the hot sulphur bath, where
fellow bathers carried out their daily ablutions around the edges
of the tank which fell away so that the soapy water drained clear
of the bath and a fresh pannikin was taken from the bath itself,
and wherein a number of patrons were wallowing in the well-
nigh boiling water, constantly added to from a pipe jutting from
the side of the bath. Rest rooms were provided in the vicinity
of the baths where the bather could relax in a kimono, sipping
the small cups of tea and watching the coming and going in the
busy little shopping street which ran beneath the windows.
Their evenings were enlivened by the company of geishas, sum-
moned as a matter of course from the local geisha house by the
hotel manager. The geisha’s duty is to look attractive, tell stories,
play parlour games and assist her temporary employer to raise
his rice and sake to his mouth. How well established is the com-
fort of the male in Japan! It would be pleasant indeed if, benighted
at the Railway Hotel in one of Britain’s drearier Midland towns,
the traveller could summon a decorative companion and pay her
some trifling sum per hour to amuse him while he took his high
tea in the Commercial Room.
The Emperor has a private bath at Dogo and this empty tank
the visitors were shown with considerable reverence by a tooth-
less old man who was in charge of it, guarding it and cleaning it
in readiness for the infrequent visits of his Emperor.
One day Tom took a party with him to Hiroshima, where, from
the roof garden of a seven-storied departmental store which had
LHE PACIERIC 207
surprisingly survived the blast of the atomic bomb, they looked
down upon the dwarf city which had sprung up over the whole
area so recently laid waste. At the supposed centre of the devas-
tated area, a few small stalls existed for the sale of photographs
of the scenes of horror and the human wreckage which the bomb
had left behind. There were also more material relics on sale,
such as bricks and roof tiles, which showed signs of scorching
from the heat of the blast. Tom was surprised when the Captain
declined to buy one of these to add to his souvenirs, while he
himself bought two tiles, the glazing of which was blackened and
had air bubbles beneath its surface. At sea again, Tom came to
the cuddy with a tile saying that he still thought the Captain
should have one and he had bought this one for him; he knew
that the Captain would regret for ever having failed to get one in
Hiroshima. This tile survived the buffetings of the remainder of
the voyage in the Captain’s cabin, but although it had come
intact through the holocaust, it was fractured into a dozen pieces
with ease by his three-year-old son a few days after it had been
set upon a shelf at home.
From Japan the ship sailed southwards into the warmer
weather, encountering upon her way a most rugged sea-bed topo-
graphy, with mountain ranges interspersed with extensive plains.
The sounding and the seismic work went forward steadily with
the better weather. Hour after hour the deep sounder was
running, the ‘ping’ of the outgoing signal ringing and reverberating
from the loudspeaker on the bridge. There were few places on
deck where this could not be heard and the metallic and regular
sound formed a background to every shipboard activity. The echo
returning from the greater depths had to be listened for by the
Officer on Watch, for such a signal was often too weak to record
a mark upon the echo sounding paper. It was absorbing to listen
for the little click which represented the return of the robust
signal sent to the depths, and to note how its time taken to
return lengthened or became shorter as the valleys and mountains
of the ocean floor fell away or rose up beneath the ship as she
steamed southward towards the Equator.
A brief pause at Manus off the coast of New Guinea was made
to take in fuel from the Royal Australian Naval Base; then
208 CHALLENGER
onwards again and southward past New Caledonia to Auckland in
New Zealand where the ship was taken in hand for refit, for half
of her world voyage was now over and she had encountered weeks
of rugged weather.
Challenger was in New Zealand for seven weeks. It is, above all
else, a hospitable country and invitations were showered upon
the officers and men to stay on farms and sheep stations. Nearly
the whole company went for such country holidays and all made
friends. Two of the men even got married within the short spell
of time available. The author was invited to Te Aute Station in
the prosperous sheep-farming district of Hawke’s Bay in the North
Island. This station is owned by an old New Zealand family whose
great-grandfather was an officer in the Royal Navy, forsaking the
life to become one of the first Christian missionaries to settle in
New Zealand. His son, also a missionary, was bidden by the
Maoris of Hawke’s Bay to travel from Otaki on the West Coast
on foot and by canoe through the precipitous gorge and turbulent
waters of the Manawatu River to bring his religious teaching to
them. In Hawke’s Bay, 100 years ago, he founded a school which
became the famous Maori College of Te Aute, where many great
leaders have been educated.
It was now springtime, and all was green, except the golden
willows, delicate and beautiful, by the creeks. The lines of macro-
carpa trees forming the windbreaks showed dark against the lush
and vivid grass of the paddocks and the rounded, rumpled hills
beyond.
The whole country was uniformly dotted with sheep and their
lambs, and across every acre, twice each day, rode the shepherds
on their rough, unshod horses to see that all was well with new-
born lambs and mothers. Their teams of dogs followed the riders,
alert for a command to head or drive the sheep.
With one of these shepherds rode the author, a sailor on horse-
back, his ship forgotten. Sailing the sea seemed a dull business
when compared with these happy spring days on the sunny hills.
For the first time during the voyage the ship seemed unimportant,
the return to sea a dreaded undertaking. But the stocky Maori
tractor driver, the Maori boys fishing for eels in the creek, the
carved village meeting houses and the students at the college, all
were reminiscent of the Pacific, calling one back. Slowly the mood
ee —
THE PACIFIC 209
of discontent passed—there was yet so much to be seen in that
great ocean.
The author was asked to talk to the college boys about charting
the seas. The Headmaster welcomed him with the news that he
had been a prisoner of war in Germany with Buck Baker, and
thus knew something of naval surveyors. During the lecture the
author nearly committed a faux pas, but checked himself just in
time. He had been about to refer to the discovery of New Zea-
land by Captain Cook when he became aware of the dusky faces
of those whose ancestors had reached the Land of the Long White
Cloud some hundreds of years before Captain Cook set sail.
The real discoverers were depicted on the red-ochre pillars of
the school hall where the boys were gathered ; curvilinear carvings
showed them with lolling tongues, three-fingered hands and
flashing eyes of pawa shell. These forebears had sailed on a great
oceanic expedition long before Columbus was born.
The half-way break was soon over and the ship was at sea again
investigating the shoals on the western side of the Kermadec
Trench and the depths of the great trench itself.
The waters about New Zealand are a delight to the watcher
of ocean birds from the Northern Hemisphere, for he encounters
a new world of birds. The ship was usually attended by at least
half-a-dozen Wandering Albatross in their various plumages,
ranging from the scruffy brown youngster, through the brown and
white spotted ‘leopard stage’ to the magnificent old birds almost
white from wing-tip to wing-tip. There is also, in fewer numbers,
the smaller dapper Black-browed Albatross and the black and
brown Giant Petrel who tries, without success, to emulate the
soaring albatross; but where they have grace the petrel is un-
gainly, its wings being short and broad rather than long and
tapering. Other types of petrels abound, the most striking being
the Cape Pigeon with its wings spotted white on black, like a
domino, and the small Cook Petrel which reveals in its cart-
wheeling flight an under-wing surface of startling whiteness edged
with black.
As the ship journeyed northwards the birds became fewer until
quite suddenly one morning, in latitude about 25 degrees south,
Challenger’s men realised that they had seen their last Wandering
210 CHALLENGER
Albatross and not a bird moved in an empty sky. Later that day a
white flash against the distant blue above proclaimed the flight of
the first Tropic Bird and the ship passed into a new avian world;
the world of the Boatswain Bird, as sailors call the Tropic Bird,
of the Booby which crashes clumsily onboard at nights, and the
stately Frigate Bird which sails slowly above the atolls waiting for
the Boobies to return from fishing, when he will swoop from
above towards them, instilling such fear into these stupid birds
that they cast up their food to be caught in mid-air by the
attacker.
As they sailed in through the coral reefs which form the harbour
of Suva, in Fiji, this was for nearly all of the company their first
visit to the Islands of the South Pacific. The ship berthed on the
King’s Wharf and they smelt for the first time the rich sweet
copra which had been unloaded from the schooners and lay in
untidy heaps or in sacks alongside. The schooners themselves were
loading mixed cargoes and in their rigging were small blackboards
upon which were chalked the times at which each vessel would
depart for their romantic sounding destinations—Rotuma, Kata-
fanga, Levuka, Taveuni, Lakemba. The author has returned again
to the Suva wharf since those days to watch the schooners loading,
and has longed to stow away onboard. Despite the obvious lack
of facilities for either hiding below or for modest comfort on
deck, the destinations remain as romantic as ever.
Challenger’s arrival in Suva coincided with the festivities being
arranged by the Fijians to honour the Governor on his departure
from the Islands. These included the formal and colourful kava
ceremony and dances by large parties of men and women known
loosely as a “‘meke’. Such ceremonies may pall after many years
of life in the Islands, but to see them for the first time is a thrill
indeed. The leisured skill with which the group seated around
the kava bowl make the precious mixture from the roots of the
yanggona shrub, the drawing and the re-drawing of the hibiscus
fibre through the kava to extract pieces of solid matter, the rustle
of the leaves which form the green and brown skirts of the men,
the hollow rhythmic clap and the grunt which issue from the
seated elders to denote satisfaction with the words of their up-
standing spokesman, all these are but the preliminaries to the
THE PACIFIC Pag i
reverent serving of the kava. Before the mixing of the kava was
started, a grass rope encrusted with cowrie shells was led from
the bow] itself to the feet of the Guest of Honour, who was served
first. The other guests, seated within a green arbour, were served
next. The Captain was among these and watched the inscrutable
faces of seasoned kava drinkers for any indication of the taste he
might expect, pleasant or ill. The ‘bilo’, or cup, in which the
‘yanggona’ is served is made from the lower half of a coconut
shell, highly polished; it is smooth to the touch. Soon the
Captain was draining the brown coloured liquid. Its taste is hard
to define; unattractive at first to the European palate, it soon
rows on one, for it leaves a sharp clean taste in the mouth. It
is drunk by Europeans and Fijians alike in the mid-morning in
many of the offices in Suva.
As the Captain came off the ship next day onto the wharf an
old Fijian in khaki shorts offered him kava. Feeling that he was
now a hardened kava drinker he readily consented to enter the
temporary shelter where, he found, this old man made kava for
the workers upon the wharf. Instead of the smooth, well-worn
kava bowl made from a solid tree trunk, the old man’s mixture
was swilling in the rusty interior of a battered half kerosene
tin. A brown chipped plastic bowl floated upon its surface, and
soon this was in the Captain’s hands. Fijians are nature’s gentle-
men, so he had been told, and thus there was now no turning back
unless he risked giving offence. Luckily yanggona should be drunk
at a single draught and soon the Captain was throwing back the
empty little bowl and clapping his appreciation. But his friend
did not end his generosity here, for every time the Captain left
the ship after this, whether dressed in plain clothes or in full
white Number ro uniform with sword, and to the shrill of boat-
swain’s calls, to call upon His Excellency, nature’s own gentle-
man tottered out with his rusty offering of kava, and the crew
paused on deck to watch the skipper in his embarrassment.
But if the formal dancing of ‘mekes’ on the green turf of Fiji
was thrilling, the impromptu dancing at Rotuma was the real
thing—the South Sea Island dancing one has dreamt about for
years. The anchorage off the village at Rotuma is exposed, and so
after landing the stores, which had been carried from Fiji, the
U2 CHALLENGER
ship weighed anchor and steamed to the bay known as Foviung
Emua at the eastern end of the island. There the boats were
lowered and, after dark, on a night of perfect calm and of white
moonlight, the keels grated gently on the coral shore and a party
landed to find two trucks waiting in the dark shadows of the palms
to take them along the rough road which wound between low
lava-stone walls to the village. Doctor Evans, the Administrator,
was the only European living on the island and with him the
Captain and members of the crew sat down beneath a palm-leaf
canopy that had been rapidly constructed in front of the general
store. The orchestra consisted of men seated around a pile of
rolled grass mats upon which they beat a vigorous rhythm with
their short sticks. The dancers were arranged in a rectangle, 42 of
them in rows of six, three men and three women in each row.
As the dances progressed without pause the front row would
from time to time turn and go to form the rear rank and the
second row of dancers moved forward into the limelight. The
whole dancing team sang continuously. Clad in bright red and
white lava-lavas, wearing the traditional grass skirts, with
wreaths of green interspersed with white flowers and the crushed
red fruits of the pandanus tree in their hair, the dancers made an
active and all absorbing scene. They went on and on; the rhythm
changed from slow to fast; men and women now began to come
forward singly or in pairs to perform some particular variation
of their own, hips swinging, arms moving, knees bending with
acrobatic agility. Sweat poured from foreheads and formed in
beads upon bronze chests, but still the ranks kept coming forward
as the music, now enlivened with an electric guitar, became more
and more insistent. The ship, the sea, the distant homecoming,
all were forgotten by the sailors as they watched, utterly absorbed,
wishing this Rotuman night to go on for ever.
At last the music stopped, as abruptly as it had started three
hours before. The singing ceased and the dancers sank where
they were to the ground. A moment’s complete silence reigned
and then Dr. Evans leant over to the Captain and whispered that
a few words were now expected of him. He rose, and speaking
slowly through the Government Clerk, who interpreted, he
thanked the people of Rotuma for this glorious evening. Never
had he seen dancing to equal it nor a setting so lovely, for the
————-
THE PACIFIC 2in
moon was now above the mountainous little island that lay in the
sea but half a mile from the village. These utterings, as they
were interpreted, were hailed with appreciative mumblings
from the exhausted dancers and the Rotumans who were sitting
round them. Then an elderly male dancer spoke to the inter-
preter, who turned to the Captain. ‘They ask if you have talcum
powder with you,’ he said. The Captain looked baffled, and the
interpreter explained that to sprinkle such scented powder upon
the dancers at this stage would have been the highest praise the
ship could have showered upon them. The surprised Captain re-
covered himself and said that next time he sailed to Rotuma he
would bring a cargo of such powder from Fiji instead of the
Public Works Department water tanks that he had brought on
this occasion. This caused a roar of applause and the speeches
were over.
Hours later the sailors reached the coral beach to embark again.
The sleepy boat’s crew who had been waiting on the shore were
surprised to see their messmates, grass skirts about their waists
and leis about their necks, being farewelled by the girls of
Rotuma as if they had been Rotumans themselves going out on
a journey to the world beyond the reef.
XVII
Atolls
uNAFUuUTI in the Ellice Islands is a classic coral atoll; shaped
fins a gigantic pear, the lagoon is 13 miles long in the north
and south direction and 9 miles from east to west. The
lagoon is about 25 fathoms deep and is surrounded by a thin line
of reef which is broken here and there, mostly upon the leeward
or western side; such channels permit vessels to navigate from
the deep ocean outside to a safe and secure anchorage within.
Time and the battering of the waves on the reefs have thrown
sufficient coral debris above sea level for floating coconuts and
other seeds to have established themselves as trees and bushes
from which organic matter has in turn fallen to form soil upon
which Man, travelling south-eastward into the Pacific some 2000
years ago, was able to settle, being guided by land birds such as
the Golden Plover on their migrations through Micronesia.
There is one village on Funafuti, and that lies on the main
island of Fongafale, which is about seven miles long but only about
S00 yards across at its widest part from the lagoon to the white
breakers pounding the eastern shore. It is here that the village is
situated; the cooking huts along the shore of the lagoon, and the
houses, widely spaced, among the tall coconut palms behind
them.
Challenger spent the night anchored precariously on a shallow
spit outside the lagoon, for it was inadvisable to navigate the
narrow channels through the reefs until the sun was well up in
the sky and illuminating the amber-coloured coral flats and the
pale green of the shallows between which the ship had to pass
in the deep blue water, turning this way and that as the channel
twisted its way into the safety of the lagoon. Once inside the
atoll the run across to the village was simple enough, and even
before the slip was knocked from the cable a little party were
seen in their boat well on their way off from the village to board
the ship.
214
ee
ATOLLS KG
It is always an exciting moment for the sailor when he makes
his first contact with people he has not visited before. The boat
brought Chief Clerk Kofe, the Assistant Medical Practitioner and
the island’s only policeman. There were no Europeans in the
Ellice Islands at this time and the Gilbertese District Officer was
far away on the other side of the world studying at Oxford. But
the local Native Magistrate, assisted by Kofe, was doing a fine
job of quiet, efficient administration. The Chief Clerk was now
making his official call in true Colonial tradition, neatly attired
in his white duck suit.
Whilst Kofe and the A.M.P. took tea with the Captain and
spoke of the activities in their little-visited territory, the police-
man on deck was subjected to many interested questions, for all
three men spoke English. The Supply Officer was interested to
know whether there was much crime in such an isolated com-
munity of 350 souls, and asked the policeman if there were any
prisoners in gaol. ‘Yes, we have one man in prison,’ he replied.
‘What for?’ asked the Paymaster, to which the policeman replied
in one word, common enough in a sailor’s vocabulary but not
looked upon as a crime in itself in the western world.
This was by no means the first visit to Funafuti of a ship carry-
ing enquiring scientists, for between 1896 and 1900 4 series of
expeditions had reached this atoll under the auspices of the Royal
Society's Coral Reef Committee; at first they had come in the
naval surveying ship Penguin and later in a number of other craft
to make deep borings below the islands around the lagoon.
Darwin’s theory of atoll construction was being challenged at this
time. He believed that the atolls had begun their life as fringing
reefs about the coast of high islands, which having been raised up
by volcanic action from the deep ocean floor had for millions of
years been sinking slowly back into the earth’s crust. As the
highest peaks had at last sunk beneath sea level there remained
a void at the centre of the reef where food for the polyp was
scarce and which became a lagoon floored with coral debris.
Murray, who had been on the earlier Challenger expedition, sug-
gested that the atolls were formed by coral growing upon clay-
like sediments covering submerged seamounts, which lay at a
depth less than 200 feet below the sea surface, enabling the
216 CHALLENGER
shallow reef-building corals to grow; for at greater depths these
polyps cannot remain alive, and in Darwin’s theory they are pre-
sumed to continue growing upwards on a platform of dead and
dying coral.
The Coral Reef Committee during their various visits to Funa-
futi made a series of borings, the most successful of which had
reached a depth of 1114 feet on the main island, not far from the
village. Borings to any great depth within the lagoon itself had
proved technically too difficult.
Analysis of the cores obtained from these borings showed coral
rock of a shallow water type to their greatest depths. At first
this seemed to support Darwin’s theory, for if Murray was correct,
rock other than limestone would have been encountered at com-
paratively shallow depths. The borings were, however, near the
seaward edge of the whole atoll structure, and followers of the
new theory claimed that such borings were almost entirely
through the talus or slope of coral debris which was being con-
stantly broken from the edge of the reef by the unceasing pounding
of the breakers. Such material would certainly fall down the steep
slopes towards the ocean floor and would form a sort of coral
rubbish dump to great depths.
What was needed to clinch either theory was a boring in the
centre of the lagoon, a wildly expensive and technically difficult
task. However, the seismic apparatus in Challenger was well suited
for this work, for it had been used successfully to measure the
thickness of the sediment layers upon the floor of the ocean and
could be used similarly in the lagoon at Funafuti to measure
the thickness of the coral limestone, overlying something
harder.
The technique was similar to that which the ship had used at
sea, but within the lagoon she lay at anchor using her photographic
device to record the times of the returning sound signals from
the floor of the lagoon initiated by the firing of charges from the
ship’s boats at varying distances from the anchored ship. These
returning signals were picked up by the sono-buoy hydrophones,
the buoys themselves being anchored on a line between the ship
and the far-away boat. .
The Captain went ashore to see the village and to tell the people
of Funafuti what was happening. An old man remembered the
\
}
ATOLLS 217
coming of the scientists of the Coral Investigation Committee 50
years before, and he led Dr. Gaskell to the site of the deep bore-
hole, the mouth of the hole being still visible but choked with
vegetation. Apart from the Native Magistrate, who was absent
from the island, there were two other important personalties to
call upon—the Pastor, and the keeper of the Government Store,
Mr. Reher, who sold cloth and bicycles and other commodities
whenever they became available to him on the occasional visits
of the government store-carrying ship. The Pastor was away work-
ing upon his taro patch, it was said, but the visitors must sit
down while he was sent for; and while they waited, the Pastor’s
daughters gave them green coconuts, their tops neatly cut off like
an egg at the breakfast table, so that they might drink the refresh-
ing, cold liquid which such immature nuts contain. Like many
London Mission Society pastors, he was a Samoan, massive of
build and cheerful of nature. He invited the Challengers to his
church the following Sunday, a service that everyone on the
island attended and where the singing was vigorous. The church
at Funafuti has two floors, the main part of the chapel bein
upstairs. Women with very small children stay below, but the
remainder of the little ones sit at the front of the congregation,
girls on one side and boys upon the other. There they are under
the eyes of two elderly sidesmen who, from time to time through-
out the service, walk among them to distribute a hearty bare-
footed kick to those who are misbehaving.
The Pastor had a blind brother who played the harmonium in
church and was also led to the meeting house in the evenings
during Challenger’s visit so that he might play for the hulas which
were danced in the intervals between the Ellice Island dances.
The women and girls invited the sailors to hula with them, much
of this dance here being done in a crouching position known in
physical training parlance as ‘full knees bend’, and somewhat
painful to untrained Europeans. A hissing noise between the teeth
is emitted by both dancers from time to time.
The local dances are acted by a line of seven or eight perfor-
mers, male and female, and consist of numerous actions which
become more vigorous as the dance gathers momentum,
accompanied by the rhythmic banging of sticks upon upturned
boxes. Eventually the dancers are exhausted and they sink to the
218 CHALLENGER
mat-strewn floor for a brief respite before the singing and the
insistent thumping starts again and the dancers rise once more.
The author asked an elder what the actions in these dances
represented, imagining that the actors were re-living great battles
or canoe voyages in their distant past. The elder replied, however,
without much conviction, that they were Bible stories, but failed
to put a satisfactory name to any one of these.
On the last night in the meeting-house at Funafuti, when all
were utterly exhausted after taking part in the many action dances,
the island girls began to lay a great quantity of shell ornaments,
necklaces, belts and hat bands as well as hats and fans at the
Captain’s feet, where he sat with one or two of the Kaubures,
or members of the Island Council ; it seemed that the presentation
would never end as more and more girls appeared and re-appeared
loaded with gifts. There were enough of these articles for every
one of the ship’s company to carry away some memento of the
glorious days and nights they had spent at Funafuti among its
charming and happy people.
There was time for much sport as well as science. A cricket
match, an outrigger canoe race and a sailing race were all con-
tested between the islanders and the sailors. The sailing boats at
Funafuti are of European design, doubtless introduced into the
island by some long-forgotten District Officer. There are about
fifteen of these boats now, all built on Funafuti, and as well as
taking a dozen or so of a crew they carry a great deal of canvas.
On the British Sovereign’s Birthday and on Boxing Day, a sailing
race is always held on the spacious waters of the lagoon. Such
a race was now arranged, Challenger’s own surf boat taking part.
These races are started in a novel manner. The prevailing wind
blows in over the village from the east and across the lagoon;
the boats, fully loaded, with whole families forming enthusiastic
sailing crews, are lined up off the village beach; the sails are fully
rigged and filled with the wind while one member of the crew,
knee-deep in the water, holds the boat’s stern. At the word ‘go’
each thrusts off his boat and leaps in and the whole fleet is quickly
running before the wind in a spectacular and even start.
While the scientists and their naval assistants became daily more
sun-tanned during their long days exploding charges from the
a
-
a)
I
nl
DANCE
7
TIOLV ILNAVNDA
NO NAYCTIHOD
ATOLLS 219
boat, the Medical Officer and the author went away in the small
motor skiff to collect living shells and seaweeds around the peri-
meter reefs of the atoll. Such collections had been requested by
the Museum and the University in Auckland and proved a fascin-
ating occupation. Different islands around the atoll had to be
visited each day so that the different molluscae and algae might
be sampled, both inside and outside the lagoon, to windward and
to leeward of the reef, for each had a different environment and
each would have its different communities.
To cross the lagoon on these expeditions might take two hours
and the small, palm-clad islet for which the party were bound
would be below the horizon for many miles of the voyage. It
sometimes appeared to the Medical Officer, Leading Sick Berth
Attendant Soulsby who accompanied them, and the author, that
the three of them were bound westward into the open Pacific
in their small, inadequate craft; but slowly the palms on their
objective would creep up over the horizon, and an hour or so
later they anchored off the reef and waded through the shallows
to the glaring white coral beach beneath the towering trees in
which beautiful White Terns fluttered like pigeons or sat re-
garding the intruders with one small black-ringed eye. Landing
thus on the first occasion Soulsby was reminded by the familiarity
of the scene, tall trees fringing the shore, of an earlier incident
in the commission and to the party’s amusement began to chant
the once familar call ‘Hope, Abel!’
The collectors then split up and walked the reefs, finding fre-
quent treasures. Shells there were of many types, and small
coraline seaweeds of brilliant green and red hues. Gradually, the
saltwater and formalin containing jars onboard became full of
specimens. At Fongafale the assistance of the children was ob-
tained, for they knew where to find the shells, which they
required for the making of necklaces and hatbands. The author
went with Reher, the storekeeper, on an expedition along the
shore in search of living cowries. They had chosen a time of low
water at dark midnight and Reher flashed a torch beneath the
large overhanging coral boulders for he knew where the cowries
would be, clinging like great slugs to the underside of the
rocks. He guided the author on as they filled the specimen
bottles, his gentle voice barely audible above the sound of the
16
220 CHALLENGER
breakers on the seaward side of the island a few hundred yards
away.
Although Challenger was at Funafuti only about a fortnight her
men became a part of the place; they spent their evenings in
the scattered, palm-thatched homes along the ‘main street’,
while Tom and the Captain, at the invitation of Chief Clerk Kofe,
occupied the empty District Officer’s house for a night or two
and imagined themselves administering these lovely atolls. It was
a sad moment when the ship’s boat left the wharf for the last
time, carefully navigating through the children splashing in the
water and leaping from the jetty into the sea ahead of her. Reher’s
big straw hat and the massive figure of the Pastor could be seen
above the group that stood watching on the wharf till the ship
had weighed and turned to the westward.
The Ellice group is formed of nine islands, the local name for
them, ‘Tavalu’, denoting this number. Nukufetau was the next
of the group visited, 60 miles to the north, and it appeared over
the horizon at first like the two masts of a ship, which resolved
themselves into towering trees as the island gradually took
shape. As at Funafuti, the ship was able to anchor within the
lagoon, which is enclosed by an almost perfect rectangle of
reefs and low islands, with the village situated at the south-west
corner.
A ship had been lost on the northern part of this atoll some
months previously and it was the surveyor’s task to fix the island
by star sights ashore, using the theodolite, as the wreck enquiry
had thrown some doubt as to the exact position of Nukufetau.
The scientists were delighted to visit another atoll similar in con-
struction to Funafuti, and they were soon at work with their
charges verifying the doubtful points which still remained after
their work at Funafuti.
Here there was no convenient wharf and, except at high tide,
those landing had to disembark from the ship’s boats at the edge
of the reef and either wade or be pushed in a narrow and shallow
draught canoe across the half-mile of shallows to the village. A
tried and trusted surveying recorder was landed to find a suitable
location for the taking of the sights and to find accommodation
for the party who would be observing throughout the night, and
ee ee
ATOLLS 221
therefore must live ashore. When the Captain landed next day
everything was in perfect order. The brass plate marking the
observation spot had already been cemented into position in the
open space before the court house, while camp beds and mos-
quito nets had been set up within; the chronometer which was
to play such a vital part in the sight-taking was ticking away snugly
in its case alongside the radio to be used for the time signals,
and which was now playing Hawaiian music to the delight of the
considerable crowd that had taken up its position around the
entrance to the palm-thatched court house to await developments.
Staff had been taken on and consisted of massive, bronze Toma,
who was busy in a nearby cooking hut preparing a meal of roast
chicken and taros for the party, and a girl of extremely comely
appearance, with a flowered garland in her hair, who was sweep-
ing the bare ground around the observation spot with a sort of
hand besom made of the mid-ribs of coconut leaves. A small
group of chickens lay tethered in preparation for the following
meal and a sucking pig secured by one hind leg was close-by.
Almost at once on the arrival of the surveying party some of the
crowd began an impromptu dance while the remainder made way
for them, and soon the dancers were screaming with delight as
the Captain walked among them scattering talcum powder, for
on this occasion he had come prepared.
Shortly after sunset on the second night ashore it became neces-
sary to signal off to the ship to send a battery in by boat, and the
shore party set out wading to the edge of the reef to meet it.
There was a strong north-easterly breeze blowing straight from
the ship towards the village, and as they felt their way in the dark-
ness of the cloudy night the waders could see the lights of the
motor skiff appearing and disappearing as she rose and fell on the
waves on her way inshore. The waders were unaware however
that a fleet of unlit sailing canoes was bearing down upon them,
speeding on their way before the wind towards the village. As
they neared the breakers at the reef’s edge they saw first one and
then another of the canoes, and there they stood, now waist deep
in the water, shouting to make their presence known as the
canoes swept past on either side. As they came in over the shallows
many of the male members of the crews leapt out to lighten their
craft that they might continue onwards towards the village. It was
222. CHALLENGER
a tense moment as the canoes came in, for those sailing them did
not notice the waders in the general excitement of coming
through the breakers, and it was lucky that they were not mown
down. The greater part of the island’s population had spent the
afternoon onboard buying, at the ship’s canteen, chocolates,
tinned fruit, cigarettes and, of course, talcum powder, of which
there now remained no tins whatsoever.
The inevitable dance took place in the meeting house on the
last night ashore, a party of youngsters being employed throughout
the evening alternately erecting the thatch screens on the wind-
ward side of the building, for it was a wild night, and taking them
down again as the dancers called for air after their labours.
When the campers returned to the court house in the early
hours the surveying recorder was absent, but by morning he was
with them again. It was many months afterwards before the events
of this night reached the Captain’s ears. As the Paymaster had
been told, sleeping with someone other than one’s husband or
wife is a punishable offence in the Ellice group, and the attractive
girl who had been laid on to sweep the court house was in fact
such a prisoner doing her daily prison tasks. The missing man
had fallen for the girl and had asked the jailer if he might release
her from prison on the night of the dance. This he had absolutely
refused to do, fearing retribution from the Kaubures; however,
he saw no harm in locking the sailor up inside the prison with the
prisoner for the night, releasing him again as dawn crept over the
island.
The scientists had finished their work in the lagoon, the
surveyors were content with their sights, farewells were said
once again, a frequent and oft-recurring duty on this voyage, and
the ship sailed out and away for Manus in the Admiralty Islands,
2000 miles to the westward.
Tom Gaskell and John Swallow turned to their mass of seismic
records—long, narrow sheets of paper with long steady lines,
here and there violently interrupted, showing the vital time of
returning sound waves from the floor of the lagoon, There was
much drawing of graphs in the chartroom, making of computa-
tions, gloom as pieces of scientific evidence failed to fit in,
excitement and renewed efforts when the data began to dove-
OO eee
ATOLLS B33
tail like pieces of a jig-saw to form the picture of the atoll
structure.
Doctor Gaskell has described this work in scientific papers and
has voiced his propositions at learned symposiums with a wealth
of detail which baffles the layman, but a few weeks after the visit
to the Ellice Islands he gave the Challengers, in an article in the
ship’s magazine, a simple account of the results of these experi-
ments. At Funafuti, he said, they had found a depth of 1800 feet
of rock in which the velocity of sound was 6000-8000 feet per
second, such a velocity being much as one would expect in coral
limestone. Below this lay material with a velocity of sound of
Old Borehole
| Lagoon
Coral limestone
--— Sea /evel
Speed of Sound
12,000 Feet per
Second.
Speed of Sound
6000 - 8000
Feet perSecond.
Volcanic hump
Speed of Sound
22,000 Feet
per Second
Hard Volcanic core
Structure of Funafuti Atoll as deduced from seismic experiment
12,000 feet per second, which could either be hard limestone or
volcanic rock. To clear up the matter he had carried the explo-
sions in Nukufetau right up to the edge of the reef and these
showed that the border between these two layers fell rapidly
away as the perimeter was reached, which gave a picture of a
supposed volcanic hump within the heart of the atoll structure.
Deeper again an even harder material was located, probably the
true volcanic core of the original volcano which had formed the
island.
Thus, on the seismic evidence obtained by Challenger it would
seem that as the coral cannot live at a depth greater than 200 feet
below the surface of the ocean, the atolls forming the Ellice
224 CHALLENGER
Group at least, are being built up gradually upon old, sinking
volcanoes as Darwin had proposed. As Gaskell and Swallow
concluded that there was 2500 feet of coral below Nukufetau, a
considerably greater depth than that under Funafuti, it would
seem perhaps that while Funafuti still remained an island about
500 feet high, Nukufetau as a volcanic island had passed from the
face of the oceans.
XVIII
The Deepest Depths
said that he wished to carry out one of his seismic experi-
ments in a deep trench in order to find out something of
the structure of the sea-floor in such an area. So, as the ship moved
into the Marianas Trench between Guam and Ulithi, John
Swallow was active with the seismic gear, using it purely as a
reflection or sounding machine to record the time of the double
passage of sound from the small charge he exploded until it
returned as an echo from the sea-bed to his hydrophone, thus
giving him the depth. The soundings rapidly increased and soon
Swallow was reporting over s000 fathoms and finally 5663
fathoms.
This was an exciting report, for it was known to be nearly as
deep as any sounding so far recorded. But unfortunately it was
about 1000 fathoms beyond the scope of the deep echo sounding
machine at this time. But using the taut wire machine, with 140
pounds of scrap iron attached to the end of the wire, as a sounding
machine, a depth of 5899 fathoms was recorded. This was a new
deep record for the world.
The history of deep sounding in the ocean is not a long one. It
was during Lord Mulgrave’s expedition to the Arctic in 1773
that some of the earliest attempts at deep sounding were made,
the greatest depth sounded being 683 fathoms, from whence a
sample of sediment was obtained.
In 1817-18 Sir John Ross, during a voyage to Baffin Bay, made
some deep sea soundings using a ‘deep sea clamm’ on the end
of his rope which brought up several pounds of greenish mud
from his deepest sounding of roo fathoms.
Sir James Clark Ross led an expedition to the Antarctic in the
ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839-43, during which time
he really started systematic deep sea sounding. He had a line 3600
fathoms long made up onboard, and this he allowed to run out
225
()- the way south from Japan to Manus Dr. Gaskell had
226 CHALLENGER
from a large reel fitted in one of the ship’s boats. The line was
marked every 100 fathoms and while the line ran out the time
was noted as each mark left the reel. When the time interval
between two marks appreciably lengthened the weight at the
line’s end was assumed to have reached the bottom and the
amount of line out taken to indicate the depth.
The procedure in the boat was necessarily one for calm weather
and this restricted the number of successful casts made in the
open sea; with this apparatus, however, the first ‘abysmal’ sound-
ings, as the oceanographic text-books call them, were taken and
2425 fathoms was plumbed in the South Atlantic in 1840.
One of the early snags of deep sounding was that a heavy weight
was needed to take the line down, but to recover such a weight
with the bottom sample adhering to it a very bulky line was
required. There was in the United States Navy at this time the
now famous officer, Lieutenant Maury, who had produced num-
erous wind and current charts and sailing directions for mariners.
Working under him was a Midshipman Brooke, who about the
year 1859 constructed an apparatus which took a sample of the
sea-bed and then detached the bulk of the heavy weight which
had taken it down, leaving only a light tube, inside which the
sample was retained, to be hauled back to the surface. This in-
vention speeded up the sounding of the oceans and in 1854
Maury was able to make the first bathymetric chart of the North
Atlantic. This apparatus, modified by Lieutenant Baillie, Royal
Navy, and named after him, is still in use today.
The earlier Challenger Expedition is said to have carried wire
for sounding purposes, but for some reason this was not used and
the method of using marked rope and time intervals was em-
ployed for taking the many ocean soundings which this vessel
made. Her deepest for the voyage was 4500 fathoms, recorded
in the Marianas Trench where the recent Challenger found her
deepest sounding referred to above.
The U.S.S. Tuscarora was also at sea employed upon oceano-
graphic work at the time of the Challenger Expedition and it
was from her that piano wire was first used for sounding great
depths. With this wire she sounded 4655 fathoms just east of the
Kuril Islands in the northern part of the Japan Trench.
The first ship to sound at a greater depth than 5000 fathoms
THE DEEPEST DEPTHS 227,
was the British surveying vessel Penguin in 1895. Her Captain was
Andrew Balfour, who had been a sub-lieutenant in Challenger
during the Expedition and ever since had been fired with en-
thusiasm to find a great depth. He took two soundings with piano
wire on a steam sounding machine which had by then come into
use ; these soundings were taken in the Kermadec Trench, in the
South Pacific, north-east of New Zealand. On the first occasion,
as so often happens, the wire parted while the Baillie rod was
being hauled to the surface. As the rod is comparatively light,
the parting of the wire is not readily apparent and it is only as
the hours pass that the surveyors, constantly feeling the wire,
Movable rod ———>
Catch passing inside
tube detaches the
weights when seabed
is struck.
—o
Detachable Weights WSN oe: \\Y
and Ring
Baillie Rod and Sinkers
begin to suspect that the worst has happened, for it takes over
four hours to haul in the sampler from s000 fathoms. It took
Andrew Balfour far longer, for when he recorded a sounding of
5155 fathoms he insisted that to avoid parting the wire again,
watches of two seamen at a time hove in the whole five miles of
wire by using the manual handles on the machine, so that no
undue strain of an unfeeling steam engine would be imparted to
the thin wire as the ship rolled in the heavy swell. He never left
the winch himself throughout the whole long day, and thankfully
and excitedly he ladled the sediment from the sampler onto a
plate he had kept beside him in readiness for this supreme
moment.
228 CHALLENGER
The German ship Planet shifted the scene of greatest depth
once again to the northern hemisphere—in the Philippine Trench
close eastward of the islands which give it the name. And here
some years later the Dutch vessel Willebord Snellius subsequently
found 5539 fathoms, using early audio-frequency sounding
methods.
The U.S.S. Ramapo moved the scene once more to the Japan
Trench with 5673 fathoms, using audio-frequency methods, but
the German Emden, returning to the Philippine Trench, found
just a few more fathoms to make it 5686.
This was the state of great depth sounding when World War
II came. But at the close of the Pacific War the United States was
once again to take the lead in the friendly rivalry of deep ocean
discovery. Dr. H. H. Hess, a University Professor, had studied
the shape of the ocean floor for many years and had produced the
best bathymetric chart of the North Pacific available before the
war. Like so many others of his calling, he joined the Services and
his knowledge of the sea took him into the Navy, where he
eventually commanded a large Fleet oiler, the U.S.S. Cape Johnson.
Commander Hess’s crew was composed of reserves and he had
no difficulty in persuading them that it was normal in the Navy
to carry out standard oceanographic observations as the vessel
proceeded upon her naval duties across the oceans. Thus this
ship was able to add much to the knowledge of oceanography and
eventually sounded with her echo sounding machine in the Philip-
pine Trench, recording there a depth of 5740 fathoms, now
known as the ‘Cape Johnson Depth’, from which the Danish
research ship Galathea later dredged up forms of life including
small sea anemonies, a number of worms and some living
bacteria.
The scene of the greatest depth having once again shifted to
the Marianas Trench, Challenger was determined to make a survey
of the deep area and to get a sample of sediment from the depths.
During the visit to New Zealand the ship enjoyed great assistance
from knowledgeable technicians in the Royal New Zealand Dock-
yard at Devonport who managed to boost the echo sounder to
record at the greatest depths; here also extra wire for the
sounding machine was obtained.
It was an exciting moment as Challenger steamed back into the
TEED hE RE Sie PEs 229
trench on the way northwards from Manus to Japan, for this time
she was not restricted to spot soundings here and there; enthus-
iasm rose as the water became deeper and deeper, and still the
officer with headphones sitting before the sounder could hear the
small answering signal returning from the depths first eight, then
slowly nine, ten, eleven, twelve and finally fourteen seconds after
the metallic sound of the outgoing signal had been heard. For
such is the time the sound takes to reach the sea-bed and return
from 5900 fathoms.
Sounding lines were run at right angles to the east-west axis
of the trench thus obtaining profiles across this giant crack on the
surface of the globe. Such trenches do not have spectacular slopes
as one might find in a canyon on land, but descend slowly and
steadily to meet in a small flat expanse at the bottom of the trench
from which the echo returns more loudly and clearly than from
any other part. On completion of the mapping it appeared that
there was a considerable area of a depth greater than 5900
fathoms and that a sounding of 5940 fathoms existed. But the
6000 fathom barrier remained inviolate.
A sample from the trench was obtained with the Baillie rod
after three attempts. It is difficult when using the steam sounding
machine in such depths to know just when the sampler has
reached the bottom, and during the short delay between realising
that the bottom has been reached and the application of the brake
to stop more wire running out, a certain amount of the wire will
have coiled itself upon the sea-floor beside the sampler. When
the winch begins to heave, these coils become kinks, and often,
perhaps hours later when the sample seems to be almost on deck,
the wire finally parts at the kink and the six-hour task has to be
done all over again. This difficulty was finally overcome by laying
up the whole of the last 100 fathoms of piano wire within a piece
of rope which obviated the kinking as the superfluous wire coiled
onto the sea-bed 63 land miles below.
Excitement on deck was tense when, at long last, the ceaseless
chugging of the winch was slowed and Petty Officer Greenshields
grasped the rope and hauled in hand-over-hand. Even before the
sampler could be clearly sighted a brown cloud was seen spreading
from it, indicating that the rod must contain a sample of what
the surveyor has termed ‘red clay’, the deposit of the great depths.
230 CHALLENGER
Very considerable areas of the ocean floor are composed of
ooze formed by countless millions of calcerous skeletons of micro-
scopic and macroscopic plankton which has lived its brief life near
the sea’s surface, and having died there, sunk slowly to form this
deposit. At greater depths than 3000 fathoms or so the calcerous
deposits are no more and only the skeletons of silicate forms of
plankton remain, for the calcerous forms have been eroded away
during their long slow fall and have become once again an integral
part of sea water. But the silicate forms continue unscathed to the
great depths, where are found the skeletons of diatoms, the plants,
and radiolarians, the animals, which, with red volcanic dust which
has fallen upon the sea surface miles above, form the really deep
ocean deposits.
Such a sample now lay secure in a pickle jar, and this the author
took home with him when he left the ship a month or so later
in November, 1951. Back in London, he made his way to that
ormolu building of many turrets which houses the British Museum
of Natural History in the Cromwell Road. It was the first of many
visits to this treasure-house, and he was taking the cherished deep
bottom sample to Dr. J. D. H. Wiseman, who is an expert in
such matters. To reach his lair a guide was followed who took
the author at once from the main hall, where stuffed elephants
stand with oversized statues of Darwin and Huxley, down to the
cellars beneath. Here they passed along a maze of corridors lined
with racks on which are stacked spare, and forgotten stuffed
animals, their horns, their hoofs, their heads and their bones,
like some nightmare Aladdin’s cave. At last the guide reached a
locked door upon which he rapped with a conspiratorial air, and
they were admitted to Dr. Wiseman’s presence.
The small pickle jar looked insignificant as it was placed upon
the table among many other jars of more imposing size and con-
tent. But Dr. Wiseman’s enthusiasm made up for this, and soon
he and his companions were inspecting the sample through micro-
scopes, searching for the skeletons of the planktonic animals and
plants which it contained, and which had once floated near the blue
surface of the far-away Pacific Ocean.
The search for greater depths still goes on and the Marianas
Trench may not remain for long the deepest known part of the
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The Western Pacific, showing positions of the main ocean trenches
232 CHALLENGER
globe. Even as this is being written there comes a report from
the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California that their
research vessel Horizon has sounded in 5814 fathoms in the Tonga
Trench, where she has carried out a considerable survey. A study
of their sounding records leads them to believe that depths of
at least 5900 fathoms probably exist here.*
Ever since Andrew Balfour brought up his cherished bottom
sample from the depths of the Kermadec Trench in 1895, the
deep places in the oceans which have subsequently been dis-
covered have exceeded in depth the height of Mount Everest.
Nor are those who will one day actually visit these deeps so
far behind the discoverers, for Professor Auguste Piccard recently
dived in his bathyscaphe to 1722 fathoms in the Mediterranean.
This record was later broken by the two French Naval Officers,
Lieutenant-Commander Nicolas Houotand Engineer Henri Willm,
who descended in their submarine-shaped craft to 2215 fathoms
off Dakar. They were confident that their bathyscaphe would have
withstood much greater pressures; so that in the not too distant
future Man may actually visit the great Pacific depths in the
Philippines, Japan, Marianas and Kermadec and Tonga Trenches.
* In July, 1956, it was reported that H.M. Submarine Telemachus had, whilst
on a gravity survey and carrying American and Australian scientists, sounded
with sonic methods to a depth of 5675 fathoms in the Tonga Trench. Her.
Commanding Officer was Lieutenant-Commander J. E. Moore who had had
the battle with wild bees on the water tower at Mombasa in 1942.
XIX
Homeward
who returned for a second commission in the Challenger,
this time as her last Commanding Officer. Almost at once
he took the ship to Ominato, at the northern end of the main
Japanese island of Honshu. This was not the Japan of green valleys
and blossoming cherry trees, for it was winter time and Ominato
lay deep under snow. It was a town of slushy streets, whose in-
habitants in padded coats and fur-lined caps hurried home to their
charcoal stoves and sukiyaki.
Ominato had formerly been a minor Japanese naval base and
at this time there was a proposal, since dropped, that the British
Fleet might visit there in the heat of Hong-Kong’s summer, much
as they had visited Wei-Hai-Wei before the War.
There was an interpreter here called Hamaya who assisted the
ship and introduced the various local figures. As the weeks passed
the ship became a part of the local landscape moored at her buoy
in the harbour while the boats were away on the survey, and her
men had many acquaintances in the township with whom they
drank sake, ate sashmi (raw fish) or learnt judo.
Tom explored the barren hinterland on skis, worn, as the locals
wore theirs, by pushing his feet into rubber boots which were
roughly secured with string to the skis.
During the visit the Wardroom were invited to Hamaya’s
wedding. Some discussion took place onboard as to what would
constitute a good wedding present. It was finally decided to give
him and his bride a ship’s crest painted on a shield, an item of
which Number One kept a large stock for all manner of gift-
giving occasions, a bottle of Scotch and a few odds and ends
from the canteen. Having checked their stockings for holes they
landed and made their way to the house where the wedding was
to be celebrated and where they found that the normal wedding
gifts were beautifully decorated envelopes containing money
233
Bu in Kure, Bill Ashton became the last one of those many
234 CHALLENGER
heaped upon a plate before a small shrine together with symbols
representing the various aspects of marriage. Rice cake to in-
dicate the domestic work which the wife would have to do; two
fish for the husband’s task as family provider; a painted scroll
with cranes and tortoises for patience and long life; a bowl of
fruit for fertility, two ceremonial sake flasks and two minute cups
with which to seal the marriage. Magnum-sized bottles of sake
formed the background of this display.
The bride’s dress is traditional and is often hired for the
occasion in these days. It consists of a black kimono and red obei
which is passed many times around the waist and finally made up
around a former or core at the back somewhat like a knapsack.
The back of the bride’s neck had been shaved and she wore a
gigantic wig of black hair set above the head in the traditional
Japanese style. Her face and neck had been liberally powdered,
only her faintly orange cheeks and scarlet mouth relieving the
whitewashed appearance. A silver-coloured shade with pendants
dangling from it hid her eyes from view.
The ‘matchmaker’ is an important personage at a Japanese wed-
ding, being the go-between for the groom and the bride up till
the time of their marriage. Although the guests wore Japanese
dress, the matchmaker wore tails.
An old member of the bridegroom’s family performed the
wedding ceremony, after which both bride and groom had to
drink nine cups of sake handed to them. The circulation of sake
then became general and relations and guests were each handed
the small cups which were drained in three noisy gulps. Then
each in turn had to offer a cup of sake to the groom with the
word ‘dozo’, well known to those who have visited Japan, for it
means ‘Cheers’ or something rather more forceful, urging one’s
companion to drink also. Then dozoing too became general,
everyone toasting everyone else in a flurry of sake drinking from
the thimble-sized cups.
While this was going on, others were preparing beautiful-
looking food on brightly coloured trays, for to the Japanese the
appearance of the food is equal in importance to the taste.
Eight colourful dishes were placed on each tray, ranging from
two rice cake ducks, representing the bride and groom and to
be taken away rather than eaten, to a bluey-green uncooked sea-
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ARRIVING AT PORTSMOUTH FOR THE LAST TIME. COMMANDER ASHTON POSES FO)
THE PRESS WEARING ONE OF CHALLENGER’S MANY ‘TROPHIES’
HOMEWARD 2316)
food. Twenty-six people attired in gay kimonos, each with one
of these well-provisioned trays and a bowl of fruit, sat cross-legged
on the soft tatami matting, a satisfying sight. But soft as the mat-
ting floor of a Japanese house is, it soon becomes painful for
Europeans to sit cross-legged, and after about three hours sitting
thus the party from the ship could bear it no longer, cramped legs
were stretched to the good-hearted amusement of their fellow
guests. Then the singing and dancing began and limbs could
really be relaxed. At 11 p.m. Challengers had their last glass
of sake, said farewell and left to find their boat. Forty-eight
hours later someone from the ship met Hamaya, who said that
some of his friends were still keeping the party up and drinking
sake.
Night after night, when work was over for the day, those of the
crew who were studying judo landed and made their way through
the snow-covered streets to the house of their instructor. At last
came the great day when the Anglo-Japanese Amity Judo Meeting
was held in the Assembly Hall. The Mayor was there, also the
President of the Shimoseki Judo Association, and certainly the
whole of the junior population of the town.
Dressed in judo kit—loose jacket and trousers—the members
of the ship’s company looked strange and unfamiliar as they formed
up with their Japanese opponents on the grass judo mats.
Speeches were made by all the personalities present, an oath of
sportsmanship was taken and the bouts were on. The first item
was a match between two Japanese, one a very small man, the
other very large. Time and time again the small man hurled his
opponent to the floor with a resounding crash, but each time
the giant picked himself up and came slowly back for more,
searching for the hold he never got.
Then followed the serious business of the evening, bouts be-
tween Challengers and the locals in which the sailors held their
own, winning as many contests as they lost. Lastly one of the
Japanese, a veritable champion, took on five Challengers one after
the other, casting each in turn to the floor, all except the last
man, Kirsopp, the officers’ cook. He and one of the electricians
were classed as ‘4-kyu’, a high distinction for Europeans, and they
received beautifully-illuminated certificates to prove it to those
who were capable of reading Japanese.
17
236 CHALLENGER
Soon the ship moved more rapidly to Hong-Kong, Singapore
and into the Indian Ocean through the Sunda Straits. Here good
weather allowed a feast of seismic experiments, and scientific
morale onboard rose accordingly. By now a considerable num-
ber of seismic experiments had been made in the Atlantic, Pacific
and Indian Oceans, and still there were some more to be made
in the Mediterranean. Tom and John had found much of interest,
but possibly the fact that the earth’s structure beneath the true
oceans is radically different from that beneath the continents is
the most striking result of seismic experiments at sea. In Challenger
they had measured with refraction shooting the thickness of the
sediment carpet on the ocean floor composed of the calcerous
or silicious skeletons of countless millions of planktonic animals
and plants finding a great difference in thickness from one part
of the ocean to another and also between oceans. These sediments
have a speed of sound through them little faster than in sea water.
In the Atlantic various thicknesses were measured from 3500 feet
to practically nothing, whereas a carpet depth of about 1 500 feet
was more usual in the Pacific.
The rate of accumulation of this sediment on the sea-bed has
been measured by inspecting core samples and identifying volcanic
ash strata blown over the surface of the sea from two separate
eruptions in historic times, the distance between these two dark
layers in the core being measured as one would measure the dis-
tance between two layers in a cream-filled cake. A little under
half an inch in 1000 years seems to be a popular estimate thus
obtained, but it seems doubtful if there are many places in the
oceans where the carpet is laid down from sediment falling only
from directly above. Sub-surface and bottom currents flowin
upon as yet undiscovered courses probably carry sediment, like
snow on the winds, to form drifts upon the ocean floor.
Beneath the sediments in true oceanic areas the first layer of
rock would appear to be of great hardness indicated by a speed
of sound of about 22,000 feet per second, which continues down-
wards until the earth’s true crust is reached about 36,000 feet
below the surface of the sea. The meeting of these two is known
to scientists as a well-defined discontinuity, which under the con-
tinents is not reached until nearly 100,000 feet has been pene-
trated. This startling difference in structure between continental
HOMEWARD 237
and oceanic areas would seem to suggest that the deep seas have
always differed from the land masses even though water may not
always have been contained in the former.
Visits to Colombo, again to the beautiful Seychelles, to Aden
and Port Said and Cyprus brought the ship to the Aegean to carry
out some weeks’ seismic work there. Athens was first visited and
then a number of the islands, including Lemnos, Skyros, Volos
and the Mount Athos Peninsula. This last was of fascinating at-
traction, for spread about the peninsula, in the most precarious
sites, sometimes over 1000 feet up on the sheer cliffs, are 20
monasteries. No form of female life is permitted anywhere on
the whole of Mount Athos, over 6000 feet high. Challengers
visited six of these monasteries, travelling up the steep, dusty
mountain tracks on sure-footed male donkeys. On reaching the
monastery all was kindness, and after a liqueur, turkish delight
or coffee, the tour of the building would begin. In these remote
locations beautiful domed chapels, painted with frescoes and hung
with ikons, had been built. In the altar shrine at Vatopede were
part of the sash worn by the Virgin Mary, a piece of the True
Cross and a finger of John the Baptist; manuscripts there were
too, dating back nearly 2000 years, and examples of the earliest
painted works.
Escaping prisoners had sheltered in some of these monasteries
during the War, and a letter of thanks from General Alexander, for
kindness shown to these people, was framed at Lavra Monastery.
These delightful visits over, the parties from the ship would
come out into the full glare of the sun and mount their donkeys
for the return journey to the ship which they could see anchored
far, far below them, a mere white speck on the rumpled blue of
the sea.
The end of the World Voyage was now very near, for there
were visits to be paid only to Malta and Gibraltar and then home
to Pompey. The ship had travelled 75,000 miles on this voyage
when she passed the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic once
again, and headed westward. But the old ship had different ideas,
she wanted now to go straight home, with no further delay on
oceanographic observations which the insatiable scientists had
planned for her on this last leg. It was after she had found and
238 CHALLENGER
surveyed a new seamount that she decided to do no more. When
the engine was put ahead nothing happened, no coaxing would
turn her single screw. The Engineer Officer tried everything he
knew as she lay wallowing in the long swell. At long last, by giving
her an immense amount of steam and opening the throttle with
a rapid movement, there followed a resounding bang like a clap
of thunder and she was on her way. There could be no risk of
a repetition of her single screw refusing to turn while still over
1000 miles from home, so her head was turned for Pompey and
the now willing old girl never stopped until she arrived safe and
sound in her own Home Port, after two and a half years on the
wide oceans of the world.
An oceanographic voyage remains today one of the last retreats
where man may observe and study unmolested. It is well known
that a captain’s troubles commence when land is sighted and
reach their peak as the ship is finally berthed to permit agents,
authorities, customs, press and tradesmen to surge over her like
an invading army, and all privacy is gone.
The peace which comes upon the commander of a deep-sea
expedition as the land slowly sinks below the horizon astern and
he heads for the limitless ocean is profound. The ship is clear of
all but those who are there with a purpose, no telephone is con-
nected, no unwanted midday caller will arrive ; all that matters is
the one job in hand, that of surveying and studying the ocean.
Even the wireless office is usually silent upon such a ship, for
the Admiralty sends few operational signals to a 1o-knot survey
ship with an extensive oceanographic programme ahead of her.
There is time to think, time to stop at a moment’s notice to
study some passing phenomena and to remain there a day if need
be to investigate the matter.
One night in the Pacific south of Japan the ship passed through
a great area of sea, brilliantly illuminated, the water glowing from
the ripple of the bow-wave across the gently ruffled water to the
very horizon. The ship was stopped and some of the phosphores-
cent matter in the water was netted and placed beneath the micro-
scope. Small spherical objects could be seen, each with a tail
sticking from it. These were dinoflagellates of the form Noctiluca.
Scientists have not yet decided among themselves whether this
HOMEWARD 239
is a plant or an animal. The light given off by countless millions
is a cold light producing no heat, a feat still beyond the scope
of human endeavour.
One morning in the Indian Ocean John Swallow found a small
squid about four inches long lying upon the upper deck. It
appeared that it must have been attracted by a light on deck.
It had been a flat calm night so that the surface of the sea would
have been about ro feet below the upper deck. To reach the
deck, therefore, John worked out that this small squid must have
been swimming at about 27 miles an hour before it left the water.
In the Atlantic a hawk sat quietly in the rigging, over 1000
miles from land. It watched the storm petrels fluttering in the
ship’s wake and of a sudden left the mast as it would a tree in
the English woodlands, and swooping upon its prey took and
devoured a petrel.
Few ships were ever seen upon the voyages Challenger made in
the course of her search for knowledge of the sea-floor ; she was
guided by the shape of the sea-bed rather than the trade routes.
The moon rising above the horizon like a ship on fire; the
stars so bright on a calm tropic night that silver threads ran
beneath them over the dark sea; the green flash from the setting
sun; the windrows and the calm unaccountable swathes upon the
surface of the sea when a gentle breeze begins after calm; the great
fleets of Velellas, pale white and blue, their sails set, and all
sailing purposefully before the Trades ; the dolphins racing before
the ship’s stem one above the other, turning upon their backs
to show their white bellies in pure ecstasy of enjoyment; the
steady, relentless progress of a giant swell generated by a distant
storm, passing across the surface of the sea; golden rafts of algae
being the species Trichodesmium, recognisable under the micro-
scope as a neat little bundle of sticks: these are the things one
has time to regard and time to ponder on when passing unhustled
across the face of the ocean.
Challenger’s arrival at Portsmouth was not quite the end of the
story. She paid off and took on a new crew for a last short com-
mission to carry out a series of seismic and sounding cruises in
the North Atlantic in an attempt to learn more of the topography
and construction of that great range of submarine mountains
known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. She sailed on her usual
240 CHALLENGER
three-week cruises, returning alternatively to Londonderry or
Portsmouth for fuel. She paid one visit to Punta Delgada, her last
foreign port of call, where on this occasion the men could get
onshore to enjoy the delights withheld from their predecessors
of 1942; and in the terrible gale at the end of January, 1953,
she was in the Shetlands again after so many years, riding out the
winds of 100 miles an hour, nearly the whole complement of
her officers and many of her crew suffering from raging influenza.
She lost a boat alongside in this terrible weather. Divers who
were flown up from Rosyth when the wind moderated were able
to recover this craft within a day or so.
The spring and summer of 1953 were unpleasant, gale after
gale swept the North Atlantic and the old ship lay many days hove
to, her old bones creaking as she rose and fell. One great wave,
s0 feet or so in height, rolled towards her. Those on the bridge
held their breath and stared, then it broke over her quarter,
making her falter as she rose to it and breaking and scattering her
boats stowed on the quarter-deck. But steadily she battled through
that last stormy summer in the North Atlantic and in September
sailed into Portsmouth, and paid off for the last time.
As she had taken over from the old Iroquois over 20 years before,
so now another new survey vessel was ready to take her place.
Vidal was complete at Chatham, a fine modern vessel with every
piece of up-to-date surveying equipment, including a helicopter
for landing survey parties upon the mountain tops, and a com-
plete chart reproduction outfit of the latest type, far removed
from Challenger’s old flat-bed press that she had carried with
the Eastern Fleet. How many surveyors had spent happy and
adventurous days in this well-loved ship! Each remembered the
ship as he knew her—white and spick and span anchored off a
tropic island in her early days in the Caribbean, the trade wind
bringing the scent of the land; grey and drab in war time, fighting
a gale in northern waters, the wind stinging the eyes of those
upon the bridge; camouflaged and curious, nosing through the
reefs of Torres Strait, the breeze warm as the blast from a
furnace.
The author remembers her far out on the Pacific, a blue dome
of sky above, great depths beneath, a white speck in an empty
world. It is the forenoon onboard and the lifebeat of the vessel’s
HOMEWARD 241
pulse comes from below as her engines push her ahead through
the long low swell; other sounds come racing back, the gentle
flap flap of the bridge awning in the breeze, the shrill of the
boatswain’s call and the song of a sun-tanned seaman at work on
deck. And smells, too, are there—freshly applied paint, tarred
hemp and the tang of navy rum which pervades the little ship
at noon. The cook is in his gleaming galley, serving out the
dinners, his white chef’s hat above a beaded brow; the quarter-
master, stripped to the waist, stands at the wheel; the navigator
is taking his midday sights upon the bridge; while on either bow
flying-fish skim away from the oncoming vessel.
For a time there was talk of a reprieve for the dear old ship;
she might become a drill vessel for the Royal Naval Volunteer
Reserve. She was inspected with this end in view but she was
done; her hull had worn paper thin below, the upperworks were
rusting beyond repair, and rust too was thrusting its way through
the timbers of her deck. Twenty-two years is not a great age for
a ship, but she had lived hard.
‘Approval has now been given for H.M.S. Challenger to be
handed over to the British Iron & Steel Corporation for scrap’,
ran Admiralty Acquaint Notice 4195, dated 7th December, 1953.
Blunt and materialistic was the epitaph written by those who had
never known her, but Challenger’s true epitaph is carried in the
titles of her many charts.
1931-32
1932
1932-35
1935739
ew imsie)
1939-42
1942
1942-44
1944
1944-46
1946-48
1948-49
1949-50
1950-51
1951-53
APPENDIX
CHALLENGER’S CAPTAINS
(Ranks and decorations when holding the appointment)
LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER E, H. B. BAKER
Captain A. L. JACKSON
COMMANDER A. G. N. Wyatt
COMMANDER ALUN JONES
COMMANDER E. H. B. Baker
COMMANDER W. C, Jenks, O.B.E.
LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER R. Bitt, D.S.O.
CapTaIn A. G. N. Wyatt
LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER R. Bi11, D.S.O.
COMMANDER C, W. SaBINE, O.B.E.
CapTaINn R. M. SOUTHERN
COMMANDER J. M. SHARPEY-SCHAFER
COMMANDER R, Birt, D.S.O.
COMMANDER G. S. RitcuiE, D.S.C.
COMMANDER W. AsHTon, D.S.C.
242
Index
(* Denotes Captains of H.M.S. Challenger)
Abadan, 162
Abel, Stoker Mechanic, 195-196, 219
Aberdeen, ro1
Aberdeenshire, 7
Achpitok Island, Labrador, 14, 55
Adak, Aleutians, 203
Addison, Dr., Minister of Agriculture and
Fisheries, 2
Addison, Miss, 2
Addu Atoll, 128
Aden, 163-164, 169
Aegean Sea, 237
Africa, East, 127, 129, 134, 169
Africa, West, tos, 112, 124, 127, 129
Agriculture and Fisheries, Ministry of, 1-3
Al Bushirya, Persian Gulf, 159
Albatross, varieties of, 204-205, 209-210
Albatross expedition, 186, 188
Albreda, Gambia River, 120-121
Alert Bay, B.C., 198
Aleutian Islands 203
Allack, Job, 49
Angoorli, Mr., 163
Anselm, s.s., 106-110
Antarctic Ocean, 55, 225-226
Arakan coast, 140-142
Arctic Ocean, 225
Argus, H.M.S., 94
*Ashton, Lieutenant-Commander W.,
R.N. (later Commander), 163-168,
171-173, 176
Athens, 237
Athos, Mount, 237
Atlantic Ocean, 7-9, 113, 123, 190-193,
226, 236, 237, 239-240
Auckland, New Zealand, 208, 219
Aulatsevik, Labrador, 16, 52, 59
Azores, 111
Baffin Bay, 225
Baffin Land, 56
Bahrein, 77, 156-159, 162, 168, 177, 178
Bahrein, Sheikh of, 77, 157
Baillie apparatus, 226-227, 229
*Baker, Lieutenant-Commander E. H. B.,
R.N. (‘Buck’) (later Captain), 2-5,
26, 36-37, 39-43, 45-49, 51-53,
55-59, 72; 76, 81, 209
Balfour, Captain Andrew, R.N., 227, 232
Baltic Sea, 186
Banda, 152
Banks, Mr., 146
Barbados, 72
Barbour, Able Seaman Harry, 99-100
Basra, 162-163
Bathurst, 106, 113-114, 122-123
Beagle, H.M.S., 143
Bean, Miss Lucy, 135
Belle Isle, 11
Bengal, Bay of, 128
Bennett, Sam, 198
Bermuda, 71, 190-193
Big Bay, Labrador, 56
*Bill, | Lieutenant-Commander Robin,
R.N. (later Commander), 127, 137,
147, 190
Bingham, Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander
E. W., R.N. (‘Doc’) (later Surgeon
Captain), 26, 32-33, 36-37, 42-43,
45-46, 49, 53, 55-56
Black Bear Island, Labrador, 11
Black Island, Labrador, 52
Black Point, Labrador, 56
Blackwall, East India Dock, 1o1
Blackwood, Captain, 146
Bombale Kana, Gambia River, 121
Booby Island, Torres Strait, 146, 151-152
Borneo, North, 155
Bridges Run, Labrador, 54-55
Bristol Channel, 86
British Columbia, 195-200
Brooke apparatus, 226
Brunei Bay, 155
Buchan Deep, 7
Buck, Sir Peter, 202
Burma, 137, 155
Cairo, 77
California, University of, Scripps Institute
of Oceanography at, 194, 232
California Standard Oil Company, 77
Cambridge, University of, Department of
Geodesy and Geophysics at, 186
Canada, 91, 182
Cape Harrigan, 13, 23
Cape Johnson, U.S.S., 228
Cape Johnson depth, 228
Cape of Good Hope, 113, 127-128, 134—
136
Cape Town, 133, 135-136
244
Cape York Peninsula, 146
Caribbean Sea, 72, 240
Carriacou, 27—30, 58, 60-61, 65
Cartwright, Labrador, 32, 58-59
Cathay, merchant cruiser, 110-111
Celerol, H.M.S., 71
Central Island, Labrador, 52
Ceylon, 24, 128, 136, 144, 155; Survey
of, 137
Challenger, H.M.S.: Captains, see Ashton,
Baker, Bill, Jackson, Jenks, Jones,
Ritchie, Sabine, Sharpey-Schafer,
Southern and Wyatt; planning and
construction of ship, 1-2; launching
and naming, 2-3; first crew, 3-5;
equipment, 4-7, 57, 84, 148, 178;
‘bottling stations’, 8—9; Labrador
survey, 8, I1—23, 26, 30-59, 60;
West Indies survey, 26-30, 57-58,
60-70; Trinidad surveys, 70-72;
Arabian survey (Muhammad Qol),
73-82; war channels survey, 83-84;
Thames tidal stream survey, 84;
armaments fitted, 84; Scottish survey,
85-90; Icelandic survey, 90-97;
voyage in convoy to East India Dock,
g8—101; in bombardment of London,
IOI-103;_ refits, 101-103, 124,
133-136, 145, 163, 167, 177, 208;
Londonderry surveys, 103-1043 voy-
age to West Africa and Battle of the
Atlantic, 105-112; Gambia River
survey, 113-123; Indian Ocean
surveys, 125-144; Torres Strait
survey, 147-155; Trincomalee sur-
vey, 155; Singapore survey, 155;
Saigon, Hong-Kong, North Borneo
and Sarawak surveys, 155; Persian
Gulf surveys, 156-177; in Cyprus,
163, 167, 237; Cyprus survey,
178-184; seismic experiments, see
under; world cruise begins, 185—
190; in Bermuda, 190-193; in
Kingston, Jamaica, 193; in San Diego,
194; in British Columbia, 195—200;
in Hawaii, 201-203; in North
Pacific, 203-206; in Japan, 206-207,
233-235; en route to Aegean, 237;
voyage home to Portsmouth, 237—-
240; ship paid off, 240; handed over
for scrap, 241; Royal Marines in,
see Crowford, Laws and Lyons
Challenger expedition of 1872-1876, 1,
202, 215, 226-227
Challenger Cove, 43
Challenger Rock, 23
Chatham, 1, 3-4, 139, 158, 188, 190, 240
Chidley, Cape, 11
INDEX
China Sea, 137
Chinnco, Lt. William, R.N., 25
Chittagong, 140
Clarke, Captain, 10-11, 14
Clarke, Mr., of Hudson Bay Company,
31, 39, 42
Clarke, Mrs., 39
Clausing, Captain, of California Standard
Oil Company, 77
Clyde, 86, 106
Cockade, H.M.S., 163
Coconut Island, Torres Strait, 154
Cocos-Keeling Islands, 142-144
Cole, Lieutenant-Commander,
133
Colombo, 128, 136-139, 143-144, 155,
237
Connell, Lieutenant T.,
Captain), 92
Contest, H.M.S., 163
Cook, Captain, 146, 151, 209
Cooper, Surgeon Lieutenant W. A. B.,
R.N.V.R., 109
Coral Reef Committee, Royal Society’s,
215-217
Cornwall, H.M.S., 128
Cornwallis, s.s., 65
Cox’s Bazaar, Arakan coast, 140-142
Croome, Lieutenant E. E., R.N. (‘Trap-
per’) (later Lieutenant-Commander),
143-144, 161, 163
Crowford, Sergeant, R.M., 126, 131, 133,
135, 139
Culmore, 103-104
Curacao, H.M.S., 98
Currents, ocean system of, 7-8, 63-64
Cypress Sands, Naaf River, 140-141
Cyprus, 163, 167, 178-184, 237
R.N.R.,
R.N. (later
Daimmiyat Islands, Persian Gulf, 158
Dakar, 113, 120, 232
Dalrymple Island, Torres Strait, 146
Dampier, Seaman, 7
Darwin’s atoll construction theory, 143,
215-216, 224
Davis Inlet, Labrador, 14, 30, 56
Dawa, Head Man of, 76
Deane, Lieutenant Dennis W., R.N. (later
Lieutenant-Commander), 26, 36, 40—
43, 45-47, 49, 51-52, 56, 58, 60
Dehra Dun, 137
Delhi, 140
Denham, Captain H. N., R.N., 25
Denmark Strait, 96
Devil Point, Gambia River, 121
Devonport, 4
Devonport, New Zealand, 228
Doctor Forbes Air Survey, 19
INDEX
Dog Island, Labrador, 14
Dogo, Matsuyama, 206
Doha, Qatar, 157-160, 164-165, 167,
169, 172, 177
Dohat as Salwa, Bay of, 157, 177
Dominica, 70
Domino Run, 23
Dorsetshire, H.M.S., 128
Douglas, Rear-Admiral H. P., 1
Dover, 83
Dungeness, 84
Durraween, H.M.A.S., 147
Echuca, H.M.A.S., 148
Edgell, Vice-Admiral Sir John, 103, 123,
147
Egeria, H.M.S., 197-198
Egypt, 74-75
E] Alito, oil tanker, 86
Ellice Islands, 214-224
Elliott, Captain Andrew, Merchant Navy,
110 and n.
Emden, German ship, 228
Endeavour, H.M.S., 124
‘Engby, s.s., 142
English Channel, 6
Ephraim, 47
Erebus, H.M.S., 225
Eros, s.s., 98-101
Essau, Gambia River, 119-120
Esther, river steamer, 140-141
Europa Island, 129
Evans, Dr., 212
Eyjafjord, Iceland, 96
Fadiffolu Atoll, 138-139
Fair Isle Channel, 7
Famagusta, 179-180
Fao, 162
Farmyard Islands, Labrador, 13
Faroes, 89-90, 96
Fasht al Arrif, Persian Gulf,
161, 164
Fasht al Odaid, 161
Fiji, 210-211, 213
FitzRoy, Captain, R.N., 143
Flinders, H.M.S., 60
Fly, H.M.S., 146-147, 151-152
Fongafale, Ellice Islands, 214, 219
Ford, Joe, 53
Ford, Willie, 53
Ford’s Harbour, Labrador, 20, 22, 31
Formidable, H.M.S., 128
Fort Garry, Hudson Bay Company schooner,
I§J-159;
56
Franklin, H.M.S., 90-91
Fraserburgh, 101
Freestone Islands, Labrador, 14
24.5
Freetown, I11
Friday Island, Torres Strait, 154
Fry, Amos, 56
Funafuti, Ellice Islands, 214-220, 223-224
Galatea, Danish research ship, 228
Gambia, 114, 120
Gambia River, 106, 113, 115-122
Gaskell, Dr. T., 189, 200, 206, 217, 220,
222-224, 225, 233, 236
Gibraltar, 73, 163, 167-168, 177, 237
Gillingham, Mr., 43, 45-46
Goo, Mr. Ducky, 202
Good, H., Lieutenant Engineer, R.N., 23
Goolgwai, H.M.A.S., 147
Gordon, Lieutenant-Commander D. L.,
R.N. (‘General’) (later Commander),
93, 102-103, 134, 163-164, 180-184
Graham Island, B.C., 196
Grattan, Lieutenant Charles, R.N. (later
Commander), 140-141, 158, 161, 163
Greenock, 105
Greenshields, Petty Officer J. (later Chief
Petty Officer), 127, 140-142, 189,
229
Grenada, 27—28, 58, 65, 67-69
Grenadines, 26-30, 57-58, 60-70
Grenfell Mission, 13, 32
Griffiths, Lieutenant R. H., R.N. (later
Lieutenant-Commander), 61
Grubb, Mr., of Moravian Mission, 31,
39, 42, 52, 56
Grubb, Mrs., 39
Guardian, H.M.S., 90
Halifax, 20, 23, 30, 33, 58-59
Hall, Lieutenant G. P. D., R.N. (later
Commander), 93, 95-96
Hamaya, Japanese interpreter, 233, 235
Hampson, Leading Seaman, 36
Hare, Mr., 143
Harvey, M., Lieutenant-Commander (S),
165
Harwich, 83
Hat Islands, Persian Gulf, 159-160
Hawaii, 200, 201-203
Hay, Lady, 162
Hay, Sir Rupert, 158, 162
Hebron, 42-43, 47-50, 51
Heliotrope, H.M.S., 23
Hen and Chicken Islands, Labrador, 59
Herald, H.M.S., 25
Hermes, H.M.S., 128
Hess, Dr. H. H., 228
Heysham, 127, 151
Hillsborough, Carriacou, 30, 58, 60
Hilo, Hawaii, 202
Hiroshima, 207
246
Hofdi promontory, Iceland, 92
Holgate, Officers’ Steward, 36
Hong-Kong, 91, 155, 233, 236
Honolulu, 201-203; Bernice P. Bishop
Museum at, 202
Honshu, 205, 233
Hood, H.M.S., 96
Hope, Stoker Mechanic, 194-196, 219
Hopedale, Labrador, 11, 13, 33, 55-56
Horizon, U.S.S., 232
Horta, Azores, 111
Houot, Lieutenant-Commander Nicolas,
French Navy, 232
Hoxa Sound, 90
Hrutafjord, Iceland, 96
Hudson Bay Company, 30-31, 36, 39,
42, 46-48, 56, 197
Humber, 83
Hurricane ‘Doris’, 191
Hurricane ‘Effie’, 192-193
Hyvalfjord, Iceland, 90-92, 94, 96
Hydrographer of the Navy, 1-2, 7, 24~-26,
103, 123; see also Douglas, Edgell,
Southern (Assistant Hydrographer)
and Wyatt
Iceland, 37, 89-97, 98, 102, 104, 127
Iceland-Faroe Channel, 96
India, 136, 162; Survey of, 137
Indian Harbour, Labrador, 11
Indian Ocean, 125-144, 146, 155, 178,
236, 239
Invergordon, 98
Iraq Petroleum Company, 157-158
Irish Sea, 86
Iron Bound Islands, Labrador, 13
Troquois, H.M.S., 4, 240
Islay, Sound of, 87
Itibliasuk, Labrador, 47, 49
*Jackson, Captain A. L., R.N. (later
Rear-Admiral), 5, 7
Jane Victoria, schooner, 65
Japan, 205-206, 225, 229, 233-235
Japan Trench, South Pacific, 226, 228, 232
Japanese Fleet, 128, 136, 140
Jazirat Safliya, Qatar, 165
*Jenks, Commander W. C., R.N., 84-87,
91-93, 95-97, 99, 101, 103-110,
TI4-115, 117-121, 124, 127
Jesselton, 155
Jezirat Halul, Persian Gulf, 167, 178
*Jones, Lieutenant-Commander Alun,
R.N. (later Commander), 60, 64-65,
68-70, 72
Kamaran, Red Sea, 169
Kandy, 137
INDEX
Kasban Creek, Gambia River, 121
Kauk Harbour, Labrador, 33
Kayaksuatlik, Labrador, 13
Kermadec Trench, South Pacific, 209, 227,
232
Khamis bin Hilal, Sheikh of Masira, 75—76
Khor, 169-172; Sheikh of, 172-173, 176
Khor Kaliya, 77
Khor Shaqqiq, 169-170, 177
Kidlialiut, Labrador, 13
Kiglerpait Mountains, Labrador, 43, 45,
49-50
Kikkertaksoak Islands, Labrador, 13
Kikkitavak, Labrador, 15
Kilauea, Hawaii, 202
Kilindini, 128-129, 131, 133-135
Kingston, Jamaica, 193-194.
Kingstown, St. Vincent, 65, 67—69
Kinkujung, Gambia River, 119
Kinnaird Head, 98
Kirsopp, Officers’ Cook, 235
Kirkwall, 87, 89
Kofe, Chief Clerk, 215, 220
Kristiansson, Bragi, 91-92
Kruger Island, Labrador, 40
Kuching, 155
Kunghit Island, B.C., 195-196
Kunkudella, Gambia River, 119
Kuntaur, Gambia River, 121-123
Kutallik Island, Labrador, 14
Kure, Honshu, 205, 233
Kuril Islands, 226
Kurukuluk, Labrador, 45-46, 49
Kyle, Newfoundland steamer, 32, 55-56,
58-59
Kyle Akin, 89
Kyrenia, 183
Labrador, 7-8, 10-23, 26, 28, 30-59,
60, 91, 127, 147, 200
Labuan, 155
Latra Sibige, Gambia River, 119
Lavender, H.M.S., 105
Laws, Corporal, R.M., 126, 131-133,
135, 139
Learmouth, Captain, R.N. (later Rear-
Admiral), 198
Leeward Islands, 72
Limassol, 180-181
Little Martinique, 28
Little St. Vincent, 28, 58, 64
Liverpool Bay, 86
Lizard, 86
London, bombardment of, 102-103
Londonderry, 103-104, 124, 240
Long, Petty Officer Charles (later Chief
Petty Officer), 127, 137, 145
Lough Foyle, 103
INDEX
Lough Larne, 104
Lucas, 45
Lyons, Corporal, R.M., 126, 131-133,
135, 139
Macmillan, 56
Mahé, Seychelles, 136-137
Malacca Straits, 137
Malaya, 136, 155
Malta, 237
Manama, Persian Gulf, 77, 159
Mandinari, Gambia River, 119
Manus, New Guinea, 207,
229
Manza Bay, 133
Marianas Trench, South Pacific, 224-226,
228, 230, 232
Marie Louise Mackay, cable ship, 86
Marlowe, Able Seaman, 36, 41, 52
Marshall, Able Seaman (later Chief Petty
Officer), 36, 39
Mary Nolander, schooner, 56-57
Masira Island, 75, 77
Sheikh of, see Khamis bin Hilal
Massie, Mr., 47-48
Matthews, Dr. D. J., of Hydrographic
Department, 8
Mauna Loa, Hawaii, 202
Maungdaw, 142
Maury, Lieutenant, U.S.N., 226
Maury, U.S.S., 168
Mayatib Island, Red Sea, 80
McKenna, Able Seaman Charles, 99—100
Mediterranean Sea, 74, 113, 178, 185,
232521216
Medway, 103, 125
Mendora Creek, Gambia River, 121
Menzies, Lieutenant-Commander Henry,
R.N. (later Captain), 70, 105
Mesquite, U.S.S., 155
Metcalfe, Willie, 46—47
Milford Haven, 89
Miller, Surgeon Lieutenant Sloan, R.N.,
76-77
Minnie B., American schooner, 32
Monaco, International Hydrographic
Bureau at, 9
Mokkovik Island, 13
Mombasa, 131, 133, 135
Monro, Squadron Leader, 109
Montrose, H.M.S., 86
Moore, Sub-Lieutenant J. E., R.N. (later
Commander), 131, 232 Nn.
Moravian Mission, 39
Moray Firth, 98
Moresby, H.M.A.S., 147
Mortimer Shoal, Labrador, 12-13
Motor Launch No. 1248, 144
Tole eM
247
Mountbatten, Lord Louis, 142
Mozambique Channel, 129, 134
Muara, 155
Mugford Range Mountains, Labrador, 47
Muhammad Qol, 79-82
Mulgrave, Lord, Arctic Expedition of
19735 225
Mull, Sound of, 87
Murray’s atoll construction theory, 215-
216
Muscat, 75, 79, 156
Sultan of, 75
Naaf River, 140-142
Nain, Il, 13, 16-17, 20, 30-33, 35-36,
38-44, 48-53, 55-56, 58-59
Nanpo Shoto Islands, 204
Nathan, 45
Natural History, British Museum of, 230
New Caledonia, 208
New Guinea, 146, 207
New Zealand, 208—209, 227-228
Newfoundland, 7, 10-11, 16, 23, 32, 56,
58-59
Newfoundland Bank, Great, 190
Nguva, H.M. Yacht, 144
Nianmaru, Gambia River, 121
Nicosia, 181-182
Niumi, Lower, 119-120
Seyfu of, see Nomandu Sonko
Niumi, Upper, 120
Seyfu of, 120
Noazunaluk, Labrador, 52
Nochalik, Labrador, 14
Nomandu Sonko, Seyfu of Lower Niumi,
I19—120
Nore, The, 3
North Sea, 7
Norway, 89
Nova Scotia, 30
Nukufetau, Ellice Islands, 220, 223-224
Nunaksaluk, Labrador, 13
Nutak, Labrador, 42-43, 46-47, 49
Nuvutannak, 58
Oahu, Island of, Honolulu, 202
Oman, 75-76
Ominato, Honshu, 233-235
O’Neill, Lieutenant B. G., R.N. (latet
Commander), 93, 95, 99-100
Oom, Lieutenant-Commander
R.A.N. (later Commander), 147
Orkneys, 87
Owen, Captain, R.N., 121
Karl,
Pacific Ocean, 7, 146, 194, 201-206, 208,
QlO; 2A, 227, 2128) 230, .232,) 236,
238, 240-241
248
Paisley, Lieutenant J., R.N. (later
Lieutenant-Commander), 115-116
Palk Straits, Indian Ocean, 136, 142
Palungitak Island, Labrador, 15
Panagonjak, Ama, 43, 45
Panama Canal, 72, 194
Paria, Gulf of, 70, 72
Parkivik Point, Labrador, 46
Patricia, Trinity House vessel, 84, 96
Paul Island, Labrador, 15-16
Pearl Harbour, 201, 203
Penguin, H.M.S., 215, 227
Pentland Firth, 98
Persian Gulf, 156-167, 168-177, 178-
179, 185
Peters, Hudson Bay Company trader, 56
Pettersen, Professor Hans, 186
Petunia, H.M.S., 105
Philippine Trench, South Pacific, 228, 232
Piccard, Professor Auguste, 232
Planet, German ship, 228
Plymouth, 6, 84-86, 89
Polaris, seine net fishing vessel, 147
‘Port A’, West Coast of Scotland, 85-87,
89
Port Manvers, 16-17, 59; Port Manvers
Run, 16-17, 19, 35, 43, 59
Port of Spain, Trinidad, 30, 71-72
Port Reitz, 129
Port Said, 74, 237
Port Simpson, B.C., 197-198
Port Victoria, Seychelles, 136
Portavogie, S.s., 86
Portsmouth (‘Pompey’), 3-5, 7-8, 23,
34, 57, 59 ©J, J, 72, 82, 89, 155,
188, 237-240
Portsmouth, W.I., 70
Preston, Surgeon Lieutenant F. S.,
R.N.V.R. (later Surgeon Lieutenant-
Commander), 164-165, 176
Prien, Lieutenant-Commander,
Navy, 90
Puerto Rico, 72
Punta Delgada, 111, 240
Pyrgos, 183
German
Qatar, 156-161, 164-165, 167, 170, 177,
179
Sheikh of, 77, 156-159, 172
Quebec, 59
Queen Charlotte Islands, B.C., 195-196
Ragged Islands, Labrador, 11
Ramapo, U.S.S., 228
Ramzam, Hassan, 76
Ras at Tannura, 77, 79, 157
Red Sea, 4, 79-80, 169, 179
Reher, Mr., 217, 219
INDEX
Repulse, H.M.S., 96
Revelle, Dr., 194
Reydarfjord, Iceland, 96
Reykjavik, 91, 94-97
*Ritchie, Commander G. S. (later
Captain), 182, 190-192, 197-199,
201-202, 206—213, 21§—222, 230, 240
Rizo-Karpaso, 182-183
Rookah Channel, Persian Gulf, 162
Ross, Captain, 143
Ross, Sir James Clark, Antarctic Expedi-
tion of 1839-1843, 225-226
Ross, Sir John, Baffin Bay voyage of
1817-1818, 225
Rosyth, 240
Rotuma, 210-213
Royal Oak, H.M.S., 87, 90
Round Island, Torres Strait, 152
Rutherford, Surgeon Lieutenant P. T.,
R.N.V.R. (later Surgeon Lieutenant-
Commander), 160, 164, 181-182
*Sabine, Commander C. W., R.N., 151
Sabine, tug, 101
Saigon, 155
St. George’s, Grenada, 27-28, 58, 65, 67,
71
St. James Island, Gambia River, 121-122
St. John’s, Newfoundland, 7, 10, 16, 32
St. Lucia, 69
St. Martin’s Island, Indian Ocean, 141
St. Vincent, W.I., 65-69
Salekine Point, Gambia River, 121
Samuel Benbow, H.M.A.S., 147
San Diego, 194
San Miguel, 111
Sararat, 80
Sarawak, 155
Satosoakkuluk, Labrador, 38
Saudi Arabia, 77, 157, 168
Scaale Fjord, Faroes, 90
Scapa Flow, 87, 89-91
Scotland, West Coast of, 85-86, 89
Scott, H.M.S., 84
Scripps Institute of Oceanography, see
California
Seismic experiments, 186-188, 215-216,
222-224, 225, 236-237, 239
Senegal, 114, 121
Seychelles, 136-138, 237
Seydisfjord, Iceland, 96
Seymour Narrows, B.C., 198
*Sharpey-Schafer, Commander J. M.,
R.N., 111-112, 168
Shatt el Arab, 162
Sheerness, 84, 103, 124-127
Shetlands, 89-90, 240
Shikoku Island, 206
INDEX
Shoal Tickle, Labrador, 56
Simeon, Lieutenant-Commander G., R.N.,
182-184, 195
Singapore, 155; Keppel Harbour, 155
Sitrah, Persian Gulf, 158
Smith, Mr., Hudson Bay Company trader,
42-43, 45-46
Sombrero Channel, 72
Somerville, Admiral Sir James, 5, 6, 129
Soulsby, Leading Sick Berth Attendant,
189, 196, 219
Southampton, 73
*Southern, Captain R. M. (‘Sam’), R.N.,
158—161,164, 167-168, 179-180, 182
Spithead, 89
Spracklings Island, Labrador, 14
Start Point, 85
Starwort, H.M.S., 105, 109, I11
Stevenson, Petty Officer, 26, 36, 42-43,
45, 49
Striped Island, Labrador, 13
Stuart, Rear Admiral C., 134
Suez, Bay of, 75
Suez Canal, 74
Sullom Voe, Shetlands, 89
Sumatra, 142
Sunda Straits, 236
Suva Fiji, 210
Swallow, John, 189-190, 205, 222, 224,
225, 236, 239
Switha Sound, 90
Sydney, 145, 147
Table Bay, 128
Taktok Tickle, Labrador, 15
Tangier, 168
Taunton, Hydrographic Supplies Establish-
ment at, 126
Te Aute, Hawkes Bay, N.Z., 208
Tek Naaf, Naaf River, 140, 142
Telemachus, H.M. Submarine, 232 n.
Terror, H.M.S., 225
Thames Estuary, 83-84
Thompson, Colonel, 169
Thomson, Lieutenant J., R.N. (later
Lieutenant-Commander), 151-154
Thursday Island, Torres Strait, 148, 151,
154
Tilbury, 103
Tikkerasuk Light, Labrador, 13, 43
Tobago Cays, 60
Tobermory, 127
Tokyo Bay, 204
Tonga Trench, South Pacific, 232
Torch, H.M. Steam Tender, 25
Torres Strait, 146-154, 240; North-East
Channel, 147, 148, 153-154; Prince
of Wales Channel, 148
249
Trincomalee, 128, 136, 139-140, 144, 165
Trinidad, 30, 58, 65-66, 7o
Trinity House, 83-84, 96
Tripp, Lieutenant-Commander R. T.,
R.N. (later Commander), 138, 147
Trucial Coast, 156, 158
Tuglavina, Renatus, 42-43, 48-49, 51,
58-59
Tuglavina, Willie, 47, 49
Tuktuinak Islands, Labrador, 14
Tunnungayualuk, Labrador, 14
Turkey, 183-184
Turnaviks, Labrador, 13
Tuscarora, U.S.S., 226
Tyrell Bay, Grenadines, 65
Udlik Point, Labrador, 46
Ukasiksalik Island, Labrador, 14
Ulgoklialuit Island, Labrador, 13
Umm Said, 164, 177
Vancouver Island, 195, 198—200
Venezuela, 70
Victoria, B.C., 189, 199
Vidal, H.M.S., 240
Vigilant, H.M.A.S., 147
Virgin Islands, 72
Voisey, Amos, 56-57
Voisey, Henry, 36, 43, 45-46, 51-52
Voisey, John, 55
Waldo, 55
Warspite, H.M.S., 128
Watts, Major, 75-76
Webeck Harbour, Labrador, 11
West Indies, 8, 23, 26, 70, 72
White Bear, H.M.S., 145, 155
Wight, Isle of, 73
Willebord Snellius, Dutch ship, 228
Willingara, Gambia River, 119
Willm, Engineer Henri, French Navy, 232
Windward Isles, 27, 65-66, 69, 723
Governor of, 27, 65, 69
Windy Tickle, Labrador, 13, 56
Winter, seine net fishing vessel, 147
Wiseman, Dr. J. D. H., 230
Wrecked Boat Island, Labrador, 13-14
Wren, H.M.S., 164
*Wyatt, Admiral A. G. N. (later Sir Guy),
J, 10, 13-14, 20, 23, 26, 32, 57>
60, 127, 129-134, I 36-1 39, 142,
145, 147, 158
Wyre Lighthouse, Heysham, 151
Wyville Thomson, Dr. (later Sir), 176
York Harbour, Newfoundland, 23
Zubara, Fort, Persian Gulf, 159
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