acniemmer ana nr. ruauLK, a uiaunc tuuiu- 
gist with the Tanager expedition, rest a mo¬ 
ment by their skiff at Johnston Island, 1923. 
d then some! 
jf* 
di 
Nov. 13: The day ice found the first 
gooney egg and having nothing to eat 
for the last three weeks we made it 
into pancakes. We also found some 
more of the wreck of the Kellogg on 
the beach. 
Nov. 25: The day we hoisted the 
Stars and Stripes for Mrs. Schlemmer 9 s 
birthday. I sent Eric and Harold 
around the beach looking for more 
wreckage and to my surprise they 
came home with a tin of dried pota - 
tos which washed ashore. It had some 
salt water in it but was mostly dry in 
the middle and 1 must say it came like 
a Godsend to us as we have nothing 
else to eat, and ham: not had a potato 
for the last four months. The day we 
also ate our last grain of sugar. 
Time and again, day after day, the 
following entry appears in Max 
Schlemmer’s log: 
“The day we went around the is¬ 
land but found nothing new.” It 
describes more graphically than poetic 
words could ever do, the desolation, 
loneliness and monotony of those end¬ 
less weeks of waiting. 
Nov. 21: The day we strained our 
eyes for a ship but no ship came . 
Nov. 29: The day we cleaned up 
around the place and kept a sharp 
lookout for ships. My boys are getting 
very homesick but I keep on encourag¬ 
ing them to say their prayers and the 
ship is bound to come. 
Dec . 1: The day we all kept a sharp 
lookout for a ship but no ship came. 
It is getting very hard on the boys as 
they are not used to the kind of living 
we have had for the last three months. 
It takes all I can do to keep their 
courage up. I told them, hoivever, not 
to be discouraged and they should 
pray to God who is the only Friend in 
Need, which they are doing. 
Dec. 2: At 6:30 a.m. we saw the 
smoke of a steamer and at 7:45 o'clock 
she dropped anchor about one mile 
from shore. 
And thus ends the log of the yacht, 
Helene, kept both at sea and ashore for 
five months and 13 days. As a footnote 
to the adventure, the Helene was 
destroyed while she lay at anchor on 
Midway during a storm. 
It seems impossible to try to top 
this story of courage and dcimnina- 
tion but another adventure began the 
following year when Eric shipped to 
sea on the four-masted bark, John 
Ena. As apprentice, he was low man 
on the totem pole, target of taunts 
and doer of the dirtiest work. Of his 
21/2 years on board, Eric remembers 
being shaved, tarred and feathered 
during initiation rites when the ship 
crossed the equator. 
And he'll never forget the rainy 
night he was setting sail at the top of 
the mast. Handholds were uncertain 
and the footropes sagged. He lost his 
balance, made a frantic grab for the 
yard, missed—and fell! Like a bird 
picking up prey in flight, the sailor on 
the yard below reached out and 
grabbed him as he fell past! 
It was back to sea again in 1923 
when Eric accompanied a scientific ex¬ 
pedition to Hawaii's leeward islands 
aboard the Tanager. He and a Dr. 
Wetmore had been ashore on Nihoa 
...—ir.i itn 
MMM 
Photo—Courtesy of Hawaiian Historical Society 
The bark, John Ena. Eric was just 13 when he shipped aboard. (See Schlemmer today on page 10.) 
for several days, but when it came time 
to get them off a storm was brewing. 
An account of the rescue in a National 
Geographic gives a graphic description 
of the surf-boat trying to reach the 
Nliimdcd men: 
“As the distance between vessel and 
surf boat grew we strained our eyes 
watching the mere speck in the moun¬ 
tainous seas, until the tiny craft, the 
whitecaps and the rain merged into 
an impenetrable mist. The men 
crawled out on the ledge as close to 
the water as they dared. Suddenly a 
huge wave rushed in with unbeliev¬ 
able power and volume. There was no 
time to retreat or spring for the boat. 
Schlemmer, seeing the danger, 
dropped flat on the ledge and clung 
to the wana holes with all his strength. 
He completely disappeared beneath 
the mass of water which foamed five 
feet above his head up onto the cliff. 
He managed, however to hold both his 
breath and his grip." 
Charmed life? What else? 
Schlemmer next spent a year at Ha¬ 
waiian Electric in the wiring depart¬ 
ment before shipping out on a Coast 
Guard cutter for Alaska. They were 
called upon to do everything from 
counting seals to feeding the starving 
Eskimos. Then on to the East coast 
to enter the battle of the rum runners 
during Prohibition. Mr. Schlemmer 
recalls the whine of bullets in a three- 
way battle between his ship, the boot¬ 
leg vessel and a hi-jacker waiting on 
shore. 
And then what? And then in 1925 
Eric Laysan Schlemmer finally said, 
“It's time to settle down." He re¬ 
turned to Hawaii, married the girl of 
his dreams, became the father of two 
sons and a daughter, and now after 
42 years he’s retired from the daily 
grind. 
But knowing just these few high¬ 
lights from his fascinating background 
we'll wager there'll be other adven¬ 
tures to come for this far-from-old man 
of the sea. 
7 
