August 13. . . . the most wonderful thing about the ship was the assortment of cats they had on board. There were actually twenty-eight live felines of every color and size, from a jet black Tom as big as a cat can grow to a little white kitten with its eyes still shut, the sole survivor of a recent lot, its brothers and sisters having been tossed overboard. Most of these cats were kept down between decks, and lived on rats, of which there were great numbers. This, in fact, was the reason for keeping so many, and it was an experiment of the captain’s, the rodents having heretofore damaged a great deal of cargo.
August 22.—We were again surrounded by the Cape pigeons. . . . The afternoon being nearly calm I baited a small fish-hook with pork, and scattered some small bits about in the water. The pigeons promptly ate all the loose bits, and then turned their attention to the piece on the hook. A great many picked at it, but for an hour I couldn’t hook one. At last, however, one unlucky chap got the barb fastened in his bill, and was hauled on board struggling bravely. Being unfit to eat I let it go again, after shutting it up for awhile in the cabin along with our youngest cat. Puss has been almost crazy since the birds came around, sitting up on the rail at the risk of falling overboard, and following them in their flight with her eyes for an hour at a time, and occasionally uttering a dismal ‘meyow.’ She also sharpened her claws very often, which led us to think she would tackle a bird with great vigor. But when pussy was brought face to face with our pigeon she weakened. For a while she only sat and looked at it sitting on the floor, then she went a little closer, when the bird hit her a slap right across the face with its wing. That finished the encounter, for the kitten retired under the sofa, from which retreat she could not be coaxed.
”
ACCORDING TO BART
Dietary variety is important for good health, so it’s no wonder “puss” headed for the “prize” if she had been living off rats for weeks. She certainly would not have understood the need to simply collect stuff. Seafurrers travel light.
Sapiens don’t. They collect things. Sir Joseph Banks holds the single-voyage collecting world record, coming in at thirty thousand plants, shells, insects, and animals preserved in spirits, salts, or wax (Endeavour, 1769–72). Charles Darwin (Beagle, 1831–36) was no slouch, amassing a vast collection including nearly five hundred bird skins, whole birds preserved in spirits, various bird parts, and a small number of nests and eggs. What happened to all this stuff? A fair bit of dust gathering and crumbling to dust in drawers on the downside. On the upside, a lifetime of sorting and systematic labeling following the Linnaean system, which led to game-changing ideas about who we are, where we come from, and how we fit into the great scheme of things with the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (November 24, 1859).
Carl Linnaeus was no globe-trotting collector; he was the man with the plan that gave collectors like Banks and Darwin an effective way of organizing their collections with his system of families, genera, and so forth. Observing the lower jawbone of a horse at the side of a road he was traveling in Lapland was apparently his “road to Damascus” moment. “If I only knew how many teeth and of what kind every animal had, how many teats and where they were placed, I should perhaps be able to work out a perfectly natural system for the arrangement of all quadrupeds,” it’s widely reported he thought to himself, though he doesn’t seem to have written it down anywhere. However, it makes a nice story.
Young Morton MacMichael III, entertaining himself on a long sea voyage before the days when cruise directors came up with alternative plans to fill the time, was also a collector—Linnaeus would probably put him in the “idle curiosity, pick it up and drop it” category. The Portuguese man-of-war he hauled aboard in a bucket didn’t live to tell the tale, but the Cape pigeon caught on a small fishhook possibly did. It was certainly a feisty bird with the good fortune of being labeled unfit to eat.
The Portuguese man-of-war is also unfit to eat—there’s not much of it to eat, as it’s 95 percent water. MacMichael called it a nautilus, but it’s not. Nor is it remotely related to either the chambered nautilus, with its series of gas-filled chambers and an external shell lined with mother-of-pearl, or the paper nautilus (or argonaut), with its webbed, sail-like arms, the female of which secretes a thin, coiled papery shell to protect eggs. Nor, despite being boneless and drifting along with the crowd, is it a jellyfish, though it’s distantly related. It isn’t one organism but a whole colony of specialist organisms (“polyps” or “zooids” in tech speak) that have successfully teamed up since they can’t survive on their own. On top is the harmless gas-filled bladder floating above the water that gives the Portuguese man-of-war its name; the sting, as is so often the case, is in the tail—the tentacles are thirty-three feet (ten meters) long, with venom-filled nematocysts (stinging cells) for paralyzing and killing prey such as fish or plankton. Being made up mostly of water, it’s not a collector’s item, whereas any sort of pearly shelled nautilus long has been and still is—just check out eBay.
Track nautilus back and you’ll find it’s ancient Greek for “sailor”—nautilos. Google it and you’ll discover it’s a popular name for everything from restaurants by the sea to weight-training machines in gyms far from the sea (though they probably have them on cruise ships). It’s also the name for four rather famous submarines:
• Robert Fulton’s submersible funded by Napoleon (1800)
• Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
• Andrew Campbell and James Ash’s electric-powered submarine (1886)
• USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered vessel (1954).
Incidentally . . .
The opening of the Panama Canal was still thirty-five years away when MacMichael went a-voyaging, so the options for sailing from an Atlantic coast port to a Pacific coast port were going through the Strait of Magellan or rounding Cape Horn (see map). As far as we know, the first sailors who rounded the Horn were Jacques Le Maire and Willem Corneliszoon Schouten. They went looking for the fabled southernmost continent. They didn’t tick that box, but they discovered something rather more useful on January 29, 1616:
Wee saw land againe lying north west and north north-west from us, which was the land that lay South from the straights of Magellan which reacheth Southward, all high hillie lande covered over with snow, ending with a sharpe point which wee called Kaap Hoorn [Cape Horne]. . . .
Despite its storms, waves, icebergs, and deserved reputation as the graveyard of ships, sailors, and seafurrers, rounding the Horn became the preferred route from Atlantic to Pacific for sailing ships. Steam ships from the nineteenth century generally opted for the more protected waters of the Strait of Magellan until the Panama Canal opened in 1914.
INCIDENT 8: Flying Cephalopods
“Dr. Clarke’s Fish Story”
San Francisco Call, August 9, 1904
“
The liner Ventura on her outward voyage, when between this port and Honolulu, passed through a shower of squid, which delighted the ship’s cat and puzzled everybody else. Dr. Clarke, the liner’s surgeon, vouches for the story, and volunteers the information that the wingless, finless, piscatorial curiosities must have been lifted from the ocean in a waterspout and traveled to the Ventura’s deck in a shower of rain. In proof of his story he has two of the fish preserved in a bottle.
Professor J. E. Deuriden of Ann Arbor University, who was a passenger, corroborated Surgeon Clarke’s diagnosis as to the family the fish represented. They can neither jump nor fly, he says, and as the sea was smooth, their presence on deck was a mystery. Then Dr. Clarke volunteered the waterspout theory.
It was the ship’s cat that discovered the squid. She was on deck for an early morning constitutional. Suddenly from the sky came a mess of fresh fish, all alive. The first squid the cat tackled squirted an ink-like fluid in the feline’s face, and for a while this fountain-pen feature of the heaven-sent meal mystified puss.
When dis
covered by a sailor the cat had got away with all but half a dozen of the squid. Her face was stained with the dark-hued fluid with which each squid was plentifully supplied, but she was having the feast of her life, and, anyway, had learned early in life how to wash herself.
”
ACCORDING TO BART
Dr. Clarke’s home-delivery theory is a possibility. It can rain fish after a waterspout. The whip-fast winds suck them up out of the water and into the cloud, sometimes carrying them miles before they fall to back to sea or crash on a passing deck. But that’s not the most likely explanation for the Ventura’s shower of squid.
As waterspouts are essentially tornadoes at sea, you would expect those on board to be commenting on such an alarming meteorological event, even if it were merely a fair-weather waterspout, which develops on the surface of the water on a seemingly calm day and works its way upward, rather than a serious marine hazard—a downward-developing tornadic waterspout with full-on thunder, lightning, high winds, and hail.
The smart money is on flying cephalopods here. No one knows why some squid fly, but they may be fleeing predators, an entirely plausible reason to change direction and take off. They don’t have to do anything special. They stick to their swimming technique, squirting a high-pressure jet of water out of their mantles and shooting out of the water. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, a graphic showing how they do it is warranted.
While flying may be common for some squid, catching them in the act is rare because it all happens so fast. How fast? Olympic-medal fast for the Japanese flying squid, which can do the 30-meter dash in three seconds. To put some numbers on that: Usain Bolt, who won gold in London in 2012 by zipping along at 10.31 meters per second, would come in a poor second behind their 11.2 meters per second. However, the seafurrer’s cousin the cheetah would have easily lapped them, coming in at 29 meters per second.
As for landings: not always happy. Flying squid obviously intend to drop back into the briny, but sadly (or fortunately, depending on your standpoint) some occasionally thump down on the deck of a ship where an altogether other fate awaits. All are edible.
Incidentally . . .
Currently around six species of cephalopods are known to fly. Some fly solo, while others burst from the water as a squadron. Some spread out their fins and arms in a radial pattern; others keep their arms folded tightly while rapidly flapping their fins. A few seem to keep jetting water while flying. Here’s a not-definitive “you’ve been spotted” or “we’ve caught you on camera” list:
• Dosidicus gigas—Humboldt squid, jumbo squid, jumbo flying squid, pota, or diablo rojo
• Nototodarus gouldi—commonly called red arrow squid, Gould’s squid, or Gould’s flying squid
• Ommastrephes bartramii—commonly called neon flying squid, akaika, red squid, red ocean squid, red flying squid, flying squid, neon flying squid, or Bartram’s squid
• Sepioteuthis sepioidea—commonly called Caribbean reef squid or reef squid
• Sthenoteuthis oualaniensis—commonly called purpleback flying squid, tobiika, or purple squid; and its orangeback cousin, S. pteropus
• Todarodes pacificus—commonly called Japanese flying squid, Japanese common squid, or Pacific flying squid.
INCIDENT 9: War on Rats
The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic
Expedition in the “Fram,” 1910–1912
Roald Amundsen, 1913
“
We had a considerable collection of various families [on board]: pigs, fowls, sheep, cats, and—rats. Yes, unfortunately, we knew what it was to have rats on board, the most repulsive of all creatures, and the worst vermin I know of. But we have declared war against them, and off they shall go before the Fram starts on her next voyage. We got them in Buenos Aires, and the best thing will be to bury them in their native land.
”
“
Never since leaving Madeira (September 1910) had we been troubled with animals or insects of any kind whatever; but when we were in Buenos Aires for the first time, at least half a million flies came aboard to look at the vessel. I hoped they would go ashore when the Fram sailed; but no, they followed us, until by degrees they passed peacefully away on fly-paper.
Well, flies are one thing, but we had something else that was worse—namely, rats—our horror and dread, and for the future our deadly enemies. The first signs of them I found in my bunk and on the table in the fore-saloon; they were certainly not particular. What I said on that occasion had better not be printed, though no expression could be strong enough to give vent to one’s annoyance at such a discovery. We set traps, but what was the use of that, when the cargo consisted exclusively of provisions?
One morning, as Rönne was sitting at work making sails, he observed a ‘shadow’ flying past his feet, and, according to his account, into the fore-saloon. The cook came roaring: ‘There’s a rat in the fore-saloon!’ Then there was a lively scene; the door was shut, and all hands started hunting. All the cabins were emptied and rummaged, the piano, too; everything was turned upside down, but the rat had vanished into thin air.
About a fortnight later I noticed a corpse-like smell in Hassel’s cabin, which was empty. On closer sniffing and examination it turned out to be the dead rat, a big black one, unfortunately a male rat. The poor brute, that had starved to death, had tried to keep itself alive by devouring a couple of novels that lay in a locked drawer. How the rat got into that drawer beats me.
On cleaning out the provision hold nests were found with several rats in them: six were killed, but at least as many escaped, so now no doubt we have a whole colony. A reward was promised of ten cigars for each rat; traps were tried again, but all this did very little good. When we were in Buenos Aires for the second time we got a cat on board; it certainly kept the rats down, but it was shot on the Barrier. At Hobart we provided a few traps, which caught a good many; but we shall hardly get rid of them altogether until we have landed most of the provisions, and smoked them out.
”
ACCORDING TO BART
Rats have an uncanny ability to lie low, which is why a three-pronged approach to pest control can be necessary. Seafurrers provide a complete catch-and-clean-up service, with an able-bodied seafurrer dealing with around three a day, but it will depend on the cat (some are more experienced than others) and the rats (wily old ones are a different ball game from the young and naive). There does seem to be a world ratter record. Naturalist Desmond Morris reckons in his book Catwatching that a tabby landlubber working at White City Stadium in London from 1927 to 1933 holds it, raking in five or six a day for a grand total of 12,480 rats over the years of service. The only question about this tally is what did they count? Leftover tails?
Traps can be squeezed into very small spaces no ship’s cat can get at. But they are a passive device—they need a passing rat to take the bait before they spring into action. And then someone has to retrieve the trap, dispose of the body, rebait, and replace it. There are also clever rats who seem to know how to get the bait and avoid the trap.
For serious infestations, the answer is smoking or fumigating, but back then these were jobs done in port. Fram wasn’t back in port very often over the two years of the expedition. In that time she sailed two and a half times round the world, covering about 54,400 nautical miles and only stopping off in Madeira, Buenos Aires (three times), and Hobart, along with her main destination, the Bay of Whales, to drop off and collect the explorers.
Such adventures were all part of the “heroic age of Antarctic exploration”—heroic in the “doing it tough” sense, with few mechanical aids. Over some twenty years of trekking, trudging, climbing, mapping, and flag planting in Antarctica beginning in 1898, the power to pull sleds laden with kit and provisions was four legged—horses (Scott) or dogs (Amundsen, Shackleton, and Mawson), and/or two legged—men (Shackleton and Scott). Thirtee
n men died—washed overboard, fallen from a mast, fallen into a precipice, fallen through sea ice, starved, or frozen (the famous five of the Scott expedition). Two men from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition succumbed to nutritional diseases from the limited diet. Hypervitaminosis A (eating too much animal liver) took out Xavier Mertz, and Arnold Spencer-Smith died of scurvy (and cold).
For Amundsen, being first to the South Pole was the big one, the one that would give him fame and—more importantly—fortune to fund his plans for future Arctic exploration. He and his lot got to the pole thirty-three days before Scott’s lot, planted the Norwegian flag on December 14, 1911, pitched a tent, left a note for Scott to deliver to the king of Norway (in case they were never seen again), and headed back to base, the waiting Fram, and home.
There’s never been a tally of all the other animals (the nonhuman ones) who didn’t make it home during the “heroic age.” Numerous horses and dogs died or were slaughtered, and some were eaten. Mrs. Chippy, the ship’s cat on Shackleton’s icebound Endurance, was shot in 1915 because they couldn’t take him to Elephant Island. (Mrs. Chippy’s job was helping the ship’s carpenter, Harry McNeish. “Chippy” is a British nickname for a carpenter. The “Mrs.” was either a bloke joke or an inability to determine the sex of a cat.) It’s an utter mystery why they shot Fram’s reliable ratter on the Barrier.