WE GO TO LABRADOR AND START WORK 41 



Bound home. From St. Johns to Start Lighthouse. 

 Twelve days. 



1893. Bound out. From Fastnet Rock to St. 

 Johns. Seventeen days. 



Bound home. From St. Johns to Great Yarmouth. 

 Twelve and a half days. 



Our best twenty-four hours' work was 240 miles, 

 registered on two harpoon logs. The fact that we 

 registered under 100 tons, allowed us to carry 

 an uncertificated mate Skipper Joe White, so 

 well known in the North Sea. It also made my 

 certificate as a competent master of some practical 

 use. After visiting the mission vessel Edward Birk- 

 beck, at work among Manx and Irish fishermen off 

 the south-west coast of Ireland, we followed the 

 course taken by Cabot in his caravel, the Matthew, 

 nearly 400 years ago, and made a landfall directly 

 opposite St. Johns Harbour. Here a scene of the 

 wildest confusion greeted us. The prosperous city we 

 expected to see had been almost blotted out by fire ; 

 and still amidst the ruins of churches, public build- 

 ings and private dwellings, smoke and flames arose in 

 all parts of the city exultant and unsubdued, looking 

 at night-time like glutted vultures over their help- 

 less prey. Warehouses, wharves, and even vessels 

 at anchor, had shared the same fate, so that landing 

 at all was a difficult matter at first. In the streets, 

 here and there, were disconsolate groups of men, ex- 

 cavating from tons of fallen masonry, safes which 

 had proved none too safe, and which, lying burnt, 



