Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 363
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[Page 363]
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each other the ship would violently roll or pitch, and they would miss their opponent by a yard and crash heavily against the berths on the opposite side. Finally they got locked together in wrestling holds, rolling about on the floor among the dishes, buckets, loose potatoes and onions, and spilt coffee. Soon the Master at Arms, a tall sinewy ex-Marine, appeared and put an end to the contest.
After the big gold-rush to the Klondyke goldfields was over, Nome was in the doldrums, and full of destitute disappointed gold seekers hoping to get a free passage of any sort on a ship that might be going south, and being a burden on the town in the meantime. After a brief few hours at Nome to replenish water and fresh food supplies, we cruised out along the Aleutian Islands and then up towards the Bering Straits. Nearing St Lawrence Island, a terrific storm suddenly blew up from the North, and for nearly two days we lay sheltering in the lee of the southern coast of the island hoping very earnestly that our anchorage would hold. This storm subsided as suddenly as it had arisen, and with a favourable breeze we tacked, under sail, through the Bering Straits, across the Arctic Circle and along the north coast of Alaska. The weather was mild, calm and sunny, the only hazard being the glittering icebergs we passed every few hours.
The first job to be done was the erection of a wooden beacon on the shore, to mark the line of demarcation between Canada and Alaska, after a check survey to fix its exact position. For this purpose we had loaded a quantity of sawn timber at Seattle. When this task was finished, the "Bear", in accordance with recently received instructions, returned direct to Nome to take aboard as many as possible of the stranded miners, and rush them down to Seattle as "deck cargo", provided the weather promised to be favourable, which it was, all the way. After replenishing stores at Seattle the "Bear" was to cruise up to the North again, but I decided that this was the best time and place to leave the old ship. So the evening before she was due to sail again, I went ashore, leaving Uncle Sam's working clothes behind me, and got