Aeronautics -- Flights; Arctic regions; North Pole
Back to the spot where I began to glide.
None of our goods were delayed anywhere, not even the tiniest little
case. And for this we owe much gratitude to the Railway Goods Managers,
the Bergen Steamship Company’s Despatch Managers, and the Nordenfeld
Steamship Company’s Despatch Managers in Trondhjem, and also Einer
Sundbye of Oslo, and to Horten’s Quay.
In Tromsö our “Goods Manager,” Zapffe, collected and stored everything.
When we checked our lists everything was in order.
We should have taken over “Hobby” on the 30th of March. At that
date it lay at the shipyard without cylinders in the engine, but by
Tuesday the engines were in order. When, however, the boat should have
proceeded to the quayside to begin loading, the engines refused to
turn the propeller round. The explanation was that they had changed the
propeller for a new one which was too large. The boat went back into
dock and was fitted again with its old propeller. Fortunately the S. S.
“Vaga” was belated on account of stormy weather. This delay, therefore,
did not inconvenience us. As there were no cranes in Tromsö we had had
to order the S. S. “Vaga” to Narvik.
During Wednesday, the 1st of April, “Hobby” finished loading everything
which should go into the hold, and we left at night for Narvik,
arriving Thursday evening. On Friday, April the 3rd, “Vaga” arrived
at 6 A.M. The cases were undamaged to our great joy. The “Vaga” had
indeed had bad weather on several occasions during the journey, but
Captain Eriksen forgot the interests of his owners and steamed slowly
on account of our goods.
By Friday afternoon we had all our cases ashore and on the railway to
be run along under the cranes, and the loading of S. S. “Hobby” began.
The cases with the reserve parts went down into the hold.
The engine cases should also have gone down into the hold, but we found
that my measurements were for the outer edge of the hatches instead of
for the actual dimensions of the opening. The cases would not go down,
not even when we tried them on the slant. We took the engine gondolas
out of the cases, thus dividing them in two, and placed the first part
down in the hold, with the second part stowed on top of it.
On Thursday we had one case stowed away in the large hold and speedily
set about building a foundation for the wing cases, which should lie
on top of that hatch. The aft mast stood a foot further forward in one
sketch than it did in reality, therefore we could not get sufficient
room to lay the wing cases behind each other alongships. This was a
bad business. Either we must lay the cases across the decks where they
would stretch out one and one-half meters each side, or we must charter
an additional ship. I approached a Shipping Company, which had a small
boat lying at Narvik, but as they wanted 20,000 kronen to carry one
wing case to Spitzbergen, I had no choice left in the matter but to
carry on as well as possible with S. S. “Hobby.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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