27

Q. Well, this was after you were out. What did you do when you were confined to your bed?

A. Oh well, there were some crayons, and if I was old enough I did some reading. Beforehand, I don't know what I did. I must have been rather a good child, because well, I stayed in bed because I knew I had to. Everybody was disciplined on the boat and of course, I was disciplined along with the rest. I mean, I never saw anybody disobey my father. So it never entered my head not to obey him. I knew he had to be obeyed because everybody else obeyed him.

28

Kathryn entertains chickens to tea.
1904
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

29

Q. But you were in that stateroom all by yourself. Weren't you scared?

A. Oh no, not scared, not a bit scared. When I first went to sea I would be a little bit scared, the first night hearing the racket, and I would think oh my father is in charge and he didn't act scared, why should I, I should be ashamed of myself. I was a great admirer of my father, so consequently if he wasn't scared I wasn't scared.

30

The 'Belmont' in port.
1905
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

31

Q. What kind of 'racket' are you referring to?

A. Well, the vessel chattering. You can't imagine what a noisy thing a sailing vessel is. And she creaks and the ropes creak, and the sails creak, and she screeches and she howls and she yells. Really, when you are all by yourself in this complete silence, the racket that she's chattering, she's doing, and growling and grunting, you wouldn't believe it. And you'd hear all this, not to the point that you couldn't talk over it, but when there's complete silence it sounded like an awful lot. After awhile you don't notice it.

32

Grace Ladd with daughter Kathryn
1905
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

33

Q. You were telling me before about roller-skating on deck. How did that come about?

A. Well, we'd go down to Buenos Aires, apparently there is a lot of roller-skating down there, and when we would be in port, mother would take me to the roller-skating and I learned how to roller-skate, so they bought me some roller-skates. And when we went to sea, on fine days really which was more up around the equator, I would skate. After a few times I wasn't allowed to skate during the day because the sailors couldn't sleep with the racket going on, and the watch who were sleeping simply couldn't get their sleep and they complained to the Captain, so father said I could skate during the dog watches. The dog watches are the two four to six, and six to eight watches where the sailors have time off and do what they want to. Some have their supper at 5:30 and the others have their supper at 6. When they are off duty they just sit around and do what they want. Maybe they do some mending or wash their clothes or maybe just play on the mouth organ or talk or play cards, or do whatever they want to do. And at that time I could roller-skate all I wanted to. And the dog, my darling dog, he would go rushing around with me and we would have games together. So that was one of the exciting things.

34

Kathryn scrubbing deck
1904
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

35

Q. What kind of cargo were you carrying?

A. We carried - I don't remember carrying anything but lumber, down to Buenos Aires from Boston, or from New York, but we did come back with bales of wool. The 'Belmont' was a big vessel, fourteen hundred tons, and she took a lot of cargo. And other times we came back with quebrache. (A very heavy wood, extensively shipped from Argentina for use in tanning purposes, etc. usually shipped in short lengths. Quebrache Extract was a powdery substance obtained from Quebrache, and was shipped in bags.) Now one time we came back in ballast. Times were very bad and there was nothing we could get, and we stopped at Turk's Island, the famous island in the West Indies, and loaded with salt. Of course, I thought that was lovely. I was at the age when through loading I could go down in the hold and slide up and down on the hills of salt, you see. It was the nearest thing I had to sliding in the snow. Of course, I had to have permission to do that, but I did do it. This great big course salt, not fine salt but great big coarse salt they had.

36

Kathryn, Forrest and 'Pilot'
1905
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

37

Q. How old were you when you made your last trip?

A. I was twelve. That was the beginning of the Great War. They changed the vessel from being a British vessel, when they were down in Buenos Aires, to an American vessel. It took about three months. So we came out of the harbour in the fall of 1914, came down the River Plate to Montevideo we didn't go to Montevideo, we just went past, and that's where we dropped the pilot, and then we went out to the mouth of the River. We didn't know it, of course we were flying an American flag for the first time. We saw these vessels from a distance, these steamers. A huge, huge steamer, and as it came nearer we realized it was a destroyer, and there was great excitement - was it a German, was it a British destroyer? Even father and mother were concerned about that, and they were always very, very brave, you know. We watched, possibly an hour or so, while this vessel steamed, and it turned toward us, and as it did it demanded to know who we were, so we had our colours up right away, and of course our new name, we were from Boston instead of from Nova Scotia. There was quite a lot of conversation back and forth. And they didn't say whom they were at all, they just demanded to know who we were. So we had to guess, they had no flags flying, and way off in the distance again we saw another ship, another destroyer coming along. I don't know if they were destroyers or battleships, but they were great big ships, any way. This one suddenly said, 'Good luck', and left us, and father said, 'Thanks God, it's a British ship.' And they went on south. That was when those ships were there to avenge the loss of their ships off Chile, and they fought the Battle of the Falklands, in the fall of 1914. Probably we were the only ones who ever saw them going, and there was one destroyer after another all day long. We would see one going, and about six miles behind would be another coming over the horizon, and about six miles another would be coming over the horizon. I don't know how many we saw. But, as we turned north they were going south.

38

Kathryn and 'Pilot'
1905
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

39

Q. Were there any animals on board?

A. We always got a dozen hens. They were kept in the hencoop with a little run for them. Plymouth Rocks, incidentally, was the ones they always bought, I don't know why. And then we had a pig. We'd take a little piglet, of course, and he had his little pen, and when he grew large enough, of course, he would be killed for fresh pork, which was a great change from the salt beef, you see. And so would the hens be killed before we got to port, and the eggs were kept in a large box filled with salt, and they put the eggs in there, you see, and they had them dated so we would take the old eggs first, you see. But they would build up eggs so that we could have nice cakes and all sorts of things like that, that other vessels often didn't have. And of course, we had a dog, which I grew up with, my dog. And we had several cats for the rats and mice. But the time I was taken out of school when I was seven on account of having so much bronchitis, and taken back to sea again where I was much healthier, mother had the idea that I would take a nice hot water bath every morning. My brother was on that one particular trip, so he would have to fill the tub and he got very, very bored with filling the tub. So one day he arranged with the cook and they got the tub filled and I was standing there with the water coming over me, and suddenly I realized there was a little pig squealing on the other side. I yelled at the top of my lungs. I was furious to think that I was having a bath with a pig. And I called my father to come, because he, of course, would have rescued me. Instead of that he left me and got a camera and took a picture of us. The pig yelling, and my yelling at the top of our lungs.

40

Kathryn in the barrel
1905
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia