LABRADOR I9 



water. A portable galley had been rigged ashore to provide a good 

 midday meal for the party, and the junior ship's cook had been 

 established in a tent to do the cooking. He had never cooked 

 under such conditions before and soon he came out into the 

 pouring rain carrying a little billycan: 'Where do I go for 

 water?' he asked a seaman who was drenched to the skin. 

 'Water!' shouted the sailor. 'Why, you just keeps on walking 

 till your ruddy cap floats.' 



How do the men like this kind of work? The great majority 

 find it a welcome break from life in the Fleet for it is certainly 

 something altogether different, and in the days before the war, 

 when the drafting authorities did not appear to be so tied to 

 regulations, surveyors were allowed to keep the same men in the 

 ship commission after commission if they volunteered to do so 

 — which many of them did. Those who really like the work can 

 become Surveying Recorders, which means that they will always 

 serve in surveying ships. Such men are trained in the simpler 

 surveying work and are invaluable leaders, who are able to teach 

 the newly appointed surveying crews what surveying is all about 

 in the first baffling days of a new commission. 



Through August and early September the work went forward, 

 the base was measured, a party in camp observed stars with the 

 astrolabe after waiting many nights for clear visibility; and then, 

 the position being known, a true bearing with reference to the 

 sun was observed between two of the triangulation stations in 

 the survey. Two and sometimes three camp parties were estab- 

 lished in the Port Manvers Run area and on the barren islands to 

 seaward. The pack ice had cleared and the ship was often under 

 way among the islands, navigating day after day in uncharted 

 waters. 



Apart from the day-to-day organisation of the hill marking and 

 theodolite observing teams, there was the welfare of those in 

 camp to be thought of, replenishment of the camps with food 

 and sometimes water on the more barren islands, and there was 

 wood to be chopped on the mainland and carried to camps where 

 no wood existed. 



The Doctor Forbes Air Survey seaplane and a party in an 

 attendant schooner arrived one day and provided welcome new 

 faces ; besides which the seaplane took a number of air photo- 



