BEATING TO WINDWARD

Abstract

BEATING TO WINDWARD BY OTTO M. BRATRUD EDITED BY SYERRE ARESTAD One day a white-haired, tanned man of medium height, neatly dressed, with a twinkle in his sharp eyes that hornrimmed glasses could not hide, came into my office with a rather large package under his arm. I soon learned that my visitor was Captain Otto M. Bratrud, Retired, master of sail and steam, of Seattle, Washington, and that the package contained his log, "Beating to Windward." Captain Bratrud, who was born in 1879 at Hof in Jarlsberg (now Vestfold), left Christiania in 1895 as an apprentice seaman of sixteen to join the crew of the bark "Glencoyn," lying in Gothenburg, Sweden. On that ship he sailed south past the Cape of Good Hope, east to India, and beyond to Australia. He once arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, on a ship which was bringing prospective gold miners to the Klondike from Australia and New Zealand. He returned to Australia and finally went to Seattle in 1902 via Honolulu. With Seattle as his home port, Captain Bratrud continued to sail almost continuously for another half century, in the Orient trade, to Australia once again, on the Pacific coast and Alaska runs, and to Europe. In 1905, for example, he served as quartermaster on the Great Northern steamship "Dakota," Captain Emil Francké; and he was on board when this huge vessel ran aground on Devil's Shoal, a reef off the Japanese fishing village of Katchiyama. The "Dakota" was a total loss. For more than fifty years Bratrud called every sea and ocean in the world his country and many a ship his home. He tells what life was like on board ship sixty, fifty, even forty years ago, when brutality often was the order of the day. On the other hand, he also mentions officers who were kindly and considerate and humane. Although he writes extensively about his experiences at 58 BEATING TO WINDWARD 59 sea, Captain Bratrud does not neglect the people whom he encountered in the many lands he visited. He always had his "weather eye" open for conditions ashore, and almost everywhere he went he met Norwegians - in Australia, in Hawaii, in Alaska - some of whom had prospered and others who had not. In writing in detail about individual personalities, Captain Bratrud adds greatly to our knowledge and appreciation of the trials and vissicitudes, the successes and the failures of men who left Norway to seek their fortunes elsewhere. In 1911, after sixteen years at sea, Captain Bratrud visited his mother in Chicago and other relatives in Iowa. With this visit, the present chronicle ends. Athough Captain Bratrud's reminiscences as a sailor and officer continue beyond his days on sailing vessels and his river-boating experiences in Alaska to the end of his seagoing career, no selections have been included from the later era. There is a particular interest attached to the first sixteen-year period covered by the "log" of the Norwegian youth who almost fifty-five years ago set sail from Christiania for "all points of the compass." When he returned to Seattle from the Middle West in 1911, Captain Bratrud was to continue his seafaring life for another four decades. He sailed again to the Far East, and revisited Australia after many years' absence. Subsequently he got his master's license and in due time his first command, a shipping-board vessel, the "Całusa," which was built during World War I near Portland, Oregon. His second command was the "Western Glen," an 8,800-ton vessel which was built by the Ames Shipbuilding Company of Seattle for the Cunard Line, but requisitioned by the United States government upon our entry into the war. In 1920 Captain Bratrud sailed the "Western Glen" to French ports, the nearest he got to Norway during his more than a half century at sea. He was eventually to get pilot endorsements for all the ports and bars on the Pacific coast, including Puget Sound and adjacent waters (the latter, according to Bratrud, no longer being issued) , Columbia River Bar, San Francisco Bar and Bay, 60 OTTO M. BRATRUD and San Pedro, Long Beach, and San Diego bars...