An Indelible Decade: E.R. Huntington, Apprentice Under Sail and Arctic Constable, 1908-1918
Book Details
Author(s)
Beverley Huntington Rogers
Publisher
Mudscout Media
ISBN / ASIN
0973955023
ISBN-13
9780973955026
Availability
Usually ships in 24 hours
Marketplace
United States 🇺🇸
Description
Hilarious adventures some of them illegal served as a foil to E. R. Huntington s harsh life afloat a hundred years ago.
Orphaned at the age of fourteen, Huntington was apprenticed aboard the three-masted, square-rigged ship, Cambrian Princess. In the next four years, he went around Cape Horn eight times more than enough to be considered a real seaman. At eighteen, he knocked the unendurable first mate over the ship s rail and into the harbour at Portland, Oregon, so he had to skip ship.
Ashore without money, he tried several occupations and narrowly escaped being picked up by the marshals who were after him when they discovered that the popular young saloon owner was underage.
By the time World War I began, Huntington was in Canada, where he joined the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. He spent the war years as a constable in the arctic. Fascinated by photography, he left behind an album from this era, filled with pictures that he took and developed himself under very primitive conditions. These pictures of a Spartan life bring us face to face with the north and its people, and offer insight into a disappearing lifestyle and a corner of Canadian history that might not otherwise be documented.
Fifty years later, E. R. Huntington told his family and grandchildren of this life while a tape recorder ran beside him. In this book, Beverley H. Rogers pieces together snapshots of her father s life, both as an apprentice aboard a sailing ship, and stationed in Canada s north with the RNWMP, and invites readers to listen in as her father shares his hardships, hopes, and the youthful hijinks that made this decade in his sometimes-grim life bearable.
Orphaned at the age of fourteen, Huntington was apprenticed aboard the three-masted, square-rigged ship, Cambrian Princess. In the next four years, he went around Cape Horn eight times more than enough to be considered a real seaman. At eighteen, he knocked the unendurable first mate over the ship s rail and into the harbour at Portland, Oregon, so he had to skip ship.
Ashore without money, he tried several occupations and narrowly escaped being picked up by the marshals who were after him when they discovered that the popular young saloon owner was underage.
By the time World War I began, Huntington was in Canada, where he joined the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. He spent the war years as a constable in the arctic. Fascinated by photography, he left behind an album from this era, filled with pictures that he took and developed himself under very primitive conditions. These pictures of a Spartan life bring us face to face with the north and its people, and offer insight into a disappearing lifestyle and a corner of Canadian history that might not otherwise be documented.
Fifty years later, E. R. Huntington told his family and grandchildren of this life while a tape recorder ran beside him. In this book, Beverley H. Rogers pieces together snapshots of her father s life, both as an apprentice aboard a sailing ship, and stationed in Canada s north with the RNWMP, and invites readers to listen in as her father shares his hardships, hopes, and the youthful hijinks that made this decade in his sometimes-grim life bearable.
