"Signalhorn" sets Vesteris record

In a newspaper interview as a 70th birthday celebrant, Bjarte said that his favorite ship was the "Signalhorn". That sounds plausible. It was the first ship he was skipper on, and he was skipper on board for about 15 years. In addition, it was with that ship that he set the Vesteris record, as the shipwrecker called it.

“Signalhorn” was built in 1914 and rebuilt in 1934. In 1951 the ship was rebuilt again, with a properly raked ice bow. The stern was of the cutter type. It was a fine ship, with the round bow and the low overhanging stern. The superstructure stood almost directly above the keel. The ship was painted white, with yellow masts and a yellow chimney.

The ship was 112,5 feet long and 21,7 feet wide. The main engine was a Crossley 52 mod, Diesel 2SC SA 6cy 265×345 – 450 hp, with a fixed propeller.

The crossing was as usual, that is, without any special incidents. The ship had its mainsail up. As so often before, they were carrying mail and goods to the station on Jan Mayen.

After Jan Mayen they headed northwest. After a while they encountered the ice and began to enter through it.

As they went through the ice, they saw more and more seals. This one was partly newly born. They were the only ship. In the evening, they saw three ships at the edge, they lay with their lanterns out, wondering if they were still alone on the first day of fishing. That was them, they were just starting to catch. The ice was great to catch on, flat as a kitchen floor, it has been said, it was relatively mild, but a bit foggy. Shooters and the trappers are on the ice with hakapiks and towing ropes. The pups were killed and dragged in large clumps, there could be clumps of over 100. Afterwards, the ship arrived, and a man jumped out of the ship to the clump with the dinghy. The pups were then placed in a rope net – “Piselestnett” which was then hooked onto the dinghy – the wire, and pulled aboard the ship.

The fishing proceeded at a breakneck pace from the early morning until late evening. If you were lucky enough to get close to the ship during the day, you could go on board and grab some food, and then it was time to get back on the ice. When darkness came, and it was no longer possible to catch more, the fishermen would return to the ship in droves. Sometimes it could be difficult to see, but they knew that Bjarte had them in his sights. He worked on dinghying the boats on board while he was on his way to fetch the fishermen.

"Then it was time to get to the mess hall to have a late dinner and a Red Mix. Then it was time to get on deck and start skinning the day's catch," Birger Brandal recalled.

The whole ship was full of animals. It was just a matter of finding a place to start skinning through the thicket. Just skinning down to the deck, so that you could stand properly, was a big job. The work of skinning took a long time, so it was late at night before they had been skinned away. The number of animals on deck was not so great compared to Newfoundland. But the space on the ship was only a small part of the Newfoundland ships. In addition, there were some newly skinned animals, and they are difficult to skin. Luckily, it was relatively mild, otherwise it would have been even worse. After the animals were skinned, the skins were rinsed and washed, and then laid out to cool down. Then finally it was time to get some sleep before it was time for a new day. There were not many hours of sleep during the first week of the trapping.

To get a good start on such days, it is important to have a hearty breakfast. After breakfast, it was time to go out on deck to sort out the hides from the previous day so that there was room for new animals and hides this day.

They continued this work for nine days. From the first day on, they did not use the radio. "Signalhorn" was alone, and they did not want the entire fleet of ships to track them, and with that they came to the point where they were now alone.

"At night we all lit lanterns, and were also very careful with other lights. If you lit a cigarette, Bjarte would go crazy dancing if you didn't shield the flame with your fist. Occasionally we could see lights from other ships passing by on the edge. But they didn't see us. In addition, there was sometimes a bit of fog, and the occasional snowstorm meant that visibility wasn't the best," said Birger Brandal.

Kjell Myrene was an assistant engineer. "Several nights when I was alone on duty, I took a walk around the ship and picked some fish. I quickly realized that this was not a good idea, but the catch was big, so I have to blame it on that and that I was young and inexperienced."

Ottar M. Brandal, who was the skipper of "Aarvak", answered my question as follows if they didn't wonder where "Signalhorn" was: "Of course we did, but Bjarte wasn't the one who was on the radio most often, so it probably took a few days before we started wondering."

As the days passed, there was little space on deck. To prevent the rails from turning sour, it was important that they were really cold before they were flattened into the tanks or in the hold.

On March 27, skipper Bjarte Brandal sent a telegram to the shipping company stating that they had passed 5000 whitefish. He promptly received a telegram back from the shipping company asking if it was one zero too many? Then they were sighted by the other ships, so from then on everyone knew where “Signalhorn” was. They caught until they had 5800 whitefish. Then they began to move outwards towards the edge. The ice was dense and tough, and it was much worse to get out of than it had been to get into for the cast.”

After the edge they started looking for blueback, within a good week they picked a good 400 blueback. Then the ship is more than fully loaded and is going home. Then the storm came, so they had to wait for better weather before starting on their way home.

"Aarvak" was in the same area as "Signalhorn" during the storm. An ice floe hit the rudder of "Aarvak", the rudder spun uncontrollably. One man's hand was broken in two places, and the steering was damaged. When the weather calmed down, "Aarvak" rigged up emergency winches to go to Iceland for repairs. The two skippers agreed to go south together towards Iceland before heading their separate ways.

"Signalhorn" arrived in Brandal on April 17th, they had been gone for a good month. In the diary, skipper Bjarte Brandal noted, 6273 skins, catch value 468,000,-. The crew's salary was just over 10.000,- kroner.