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destroyer’s whaleboat and walked through the surf toward the
lagoon.
This pioneer exploring was totally the best fun of the whole
project, and Ernie loved fun, especially banging away at a
coral ledge with dynamite. Bundling a couple of sticks of gel
together, his Kanakas would string a wire to the plunger box
and scatter, then watch water and solid chunks hurl
themselves into the sky. When everything had come down
again, they waded back to see what damage they had done. It
was encouraging to find that the coral here wasn’t quite so
adamant as at Johnston. Dynamite properly used could do a
good job. Bulldozing, though, was no good this first stage. You
needed at least eighteen feet of water to “load” a charge and
force it downward into the rock.
So Ernie set his men to hand drilling on the reef and thus
sank a hole several feet down. Loaded with explosive, this
produced the wide slope-sided gash in the ledge that he
needed. The [110] blasting problem, then, was not serious. After
a quick look around on the larger islands, the party headed
back for Hawaii.
In a quick consultation with OpCom and Weeber, Gary laid
the problem on the table. The Palmyra channel would
definitely start as a hand job. “We’ve got to do it properly,
too,” Ernie said. “The only way we can get ashore now is to
walk through the ocean for half a mile. Our boys will have to
live aboard ship in the open sea till they can cut a ditch at
least big enough for a rowboat to haul in supplies and set up a
camp. That’s going to be a little rugged for the landlubbers.”
Weeber had a bright idea. At Kaneohe there was a stretch of
reef of the kind Ernie had described. Why not assemble the
dynamiting crew and set them to work over there practicing?
Good old Kaneohe! Always the Laboratory for PNAB. Gray got
his men together and worked out a technique; Barney Powers,
the future Palmyra Superintendent, took charge, assembled
the equipment, and tackled the trial reef, trying one
experiment and then an other until he was sure he had found
the best possible method. It was a good test, for the coral
shoals were wide open to the northeast trades and the surf was
often heavy. If men could survive it here they could do still
better at Palmyra, where the southwest corner of the island
was at least protected from the prevailing winds.
In mid-January the pioneer work party of twenty-four men
shoved off, this time on the minesweeper Quail, and made the
970-mile trip in great anticipation. The men believed that
Palmyra was different – something directly off the Fox lot in
Hollywood itself. They half expected to find a real Lamoure
under every palm. But coming to anchor on the twenty-
seventh, they were a trifle disappointed. Two miles away
there was the fringe of trees all right, but in-between laid an
unbroken stretch of angry [111] white water. The Quail’s skipper
would not permit his boats and where near the shore. So the
pioneers lounged on the deck and waited. It rained fifteen
separate deluges that day, and the intermittent sun caked the
salt spray in the men’s bodies like a harsh dressing of saddle
soap. Nothing
lagoon.
This pioneer exploring was totally the best fun of the whole
project, and Ernie loved fun, especially banging away at a
coral ledge with dynamite. Bundling a couple of sticks of gel
together, his Kanakas would string a wire to the plunger box
and scatter, then watch water and solid chunks hurl
themselves into the sky. When everything had come down
again, they waded back to see what damage they had done. It
was encouraging to find that the coral here wasn’t quite so
adamant as at Johnston. Dynamite properly used could do a
good job. Bulldozing, though, was no good this first stage. You
needed at least eighteen feet of water to “load” a charge and
force it downward into the rock.
So Ernie set his men to hand drilling on the reef and thus
sank a hole several feet down. Loaded with explosive, this
produced the wide slope-sided gash in the ledge that he
needed. The [110] blasting problem, then, was not serious. After
a quick look around on the larger islands, the party headed
back for Hawaii.
In a quick consultation with OpCom and Weeber, Gary laid
the problem on the table. The Palmyra channel would
definitely start as a hand job. “We’ve got to do it properly,
too,” Ernie said. “The only way we can get ashore now is to
walk through the ocean for half a mile. Our boys will have to
live aboard ship in the open sea till they can cut a ditch at
least big enough for a rowboat to haul in supplies and set up a
camp. That’s going to be a little rugged for the landlubbers.”
Weeber had a bright idea. At Kaneohe there was a stretch of
reef of the kind Ernie had described. Why not assemble the
dynamiting crew and set them to work over there practicing?
Good old Kaneohe! Always the Laboratory for PNAB. Gray got
his men together and worked out a technique; Barney Powers,
the future Palmyra Superintendent, took charge, assembled
the equipment, and tackled the trial reef, trying one
experiment and then an other until he was sure he had found
the best possible method. It was a good test, for the coral
shoals were wide open to the northeast trades and the surf was
often heavy. If men could survive it here they could do still
better at Palmyra, where the southwest corner of the island
was at least protected from the prevailing winds.
In mid-January the pioneer work party of twenty-four men
shoved off, this time on the minesweeper Quail, and made the
970-mile trip in great anticipation. The men believed that
Palmyra was different – something directly off the Fox lot in
Hollywood itself. They half expected to find a real Lamoure
under every palm. But coming to anchor on the twenty-
seventh, they were a trifle disappointed. Two miles away
there was the fringe of trees all right, but in-between laid an
unbroken stretch of angry [111] white water. The Quail’s skipper
would not permit his boats and where near the shore. So the
pioneers lounged on the deck and waited. It rained fifteen
separate deluges that day, and the intermittent sun caked the
salt spray in the men’s bodies like a harsh dressing of saddle
soap. Nothing
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Paradise Island
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