Captain Bur dick Attends an Auction 

 and Meets a Discoverer 



During the ten days' absence of Cecilia on her exploratory cruise, Captain 

 Burdick of the Huntress had experienced a number of more than usual inci- 

 dents. He duly recorded them all. On January 28, he wrote: 



". . . the Stonington shallop {^Hero, Capt. Palmer] came in from a 

 Cruce to the northward and Eastward of 14 days and Reported they 

 had found no seal. . . ." 



This, then, disposed of one direction where seals had formerly been found. 

 As there were vessels based at Harmony Cove and Potters Cove, on King 

 George Island, northeast of Yankee Harbor, the seals in this part of the South 

 Shetland chain had been hunted to almost complete extermination. 



Two days later Captain Burdick went up Yankee Sound with Captain Bar- 

 nard, of the Charity, in his shallop to Clothier Harbor, on the north shore of 

 Greenwich Island, where he attended an auction of goods from the wrecked 

 Clothier. His report of this event is both interesting and important. Leaving 

 Yankee Harbor at 10:00 A.M., they arrived at Clothier Harbor at 4 that 

 afternoon. 



Captain Burdick wrote on the first day of February 1821 : 



*'. . . This was the Vendue and things sold very high . . . bought nothing 

 but the ship's Bell and armorer's Bellows." 



One can visualize the scene. The several sealing masters gathered at the 

 scene of the wreck, examining the salvaged stuff on the beach, calmly bidding 

 on something from the wrecked vessel which they wanted, against the wild 

 backdrop of the desolate shore of Greenwich Island, with its rocky heights 

 showing black above the white covering of the perpetual snow and ice, bleak 

 and cold. 



There was no mention of the gloomy prospect of the wreck itself or of the 

 sealers' sympathy for Captain Clark, master of the wrecked Clothier. Life was 

 rough and hard, and such misfortunes were taken with the same philosophic 

 acceptance as was success or a broken voyage. 



But, while in attendance at the "vendue," Captain Burdick met some famous 

 sealers. First, was Captain Jonathan Winship, of Boston, in the ship O'Cain.'^^ 

 Winship was one of the most successful American sealers, a "Nor'westman" of 

 note, and he had arrived at the South Shetlands about the same time as the 



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