Passat weathering the hurricane of 1938 in the North Atlantic. The author-artist was aboard.
in the winter we ice-boated. But I really got the deepwater fever when I read Alan Villiers' account of his voyage in the Grace Harwar, and I hunted up his books about his sailing in the Herzogin Cecilie, and finally with Captain Reuben de Cloux when they bought the Parma. And who can forget Anton Otto Fischer's ilillustrations in the Saturday Evening Post? How I would study his work and try to paint water such as his! My parents sent me to the best art schools, though I was far from the best student. The depression of the thirties was upon us, and Dad would say: "What are you going to do? There is no way you are going to make it in art." In 1936, in my first year at the Yale School of Fine Arts, it could be seen that I was floundering. My parents got me a paid-for student berth in the Effie M. Morrissey, an old Gloucesterman, 108 feet, clipper bowed, built in Essex, Massachusetts for Clayton Morrissey. The Morrissey was purchased by the Explorers Club of New York and other financiers for Bob Bartlett so that he might continue his Arctic explorations. This particular voyage was to capture two musk oxen for the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, in addition to taking oceanographic specimens, readings and other studies. I photographed, I sketched, I learned to handle the heavy rigging of Gloucester schooners. And in the watch below I read everything about square rig. Carl Cutler's Greyhounds of the Sea became my Bible. Returning to Yale that fall, I was a new man . I talked in sea jargon and joined the Yale gymnastic team to get in shape. The following summer, 1937, I missed a chance to go to the Arctic as galley boy in the Gertrude L. Thebaud under Commander MacMillan, because I was out fishing in the Teazer under Johnny Placanica at the time. I stayed three trips in her and then got a site 58
in the Grand Marshal, a big knockabout schooner. Her Old Man was Albert Grimes. I learned a lot that summer, and I felt I was ready for the big Cape Homers. Through Villiers' books I wrote to H. Clarkson and Company, Bishop's Gate, London, agents for Gustaf Erikson's fleet, for information about signing on. I also wrote to Alan Villiers who was living at 72 McKay Street, Brooklyn at the time. Villiers told me to sign in Passat, that she was the best in the fleet, now that the Herzogin was gone. I was lucky, and my request was answered. So, in the summer of 1938 my mother and I took the Vulcania on a Mediterranean cruise over to Italy, where we visited all the archives, cathedrals and galleries that I had studied for three years at art school. I then signed on in Passat on September 20, 1938, for a voyage in the grain trade to Australia and return via Cape Horn. The average age of the crew was 21, my age at the time. She carried 31 hands in all: ten in each foc'sle, the Capt. Linus Lindvall, three mates, a steward, a cook, galley boy, sailmaker, carpenter and a donkeyman. The crew, mostly Finnish, except for three Yanks, Sheathed against ice, and short-rigged for Arctic sailing, the Effie M. Morrissey in Muske Fjord, 1936. Photo: Tom Wells.
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