By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 9, 1938.
“Since I don’t swim,” said Jimmie Frise, “I guess we had better order nothing but rowboats for the cottage. No canoes.”
“What?” I protested. “Break our backs sculling rowboats all over the lake? Nothing doing.”
“The older I get,” said Jim, “the less I feel like being dumped out of a canoe.”
“The older I get,” I retorted, “the less I feel like straining my heart heaving 200-pound rowboats around when I can get a sweet little stream-lined canoe that weighs only 65 pounds.”
“Most drownings,” said Jim, “are from canoes.”
“No, sir,” I stated emphatically. “Most drownings are because people leave canoes.”
“How do you mean?” demanded Jim.
“All canoes float,” I informed him. “Even upset canoes. Even canoes absolutely full of water. They float. They float even in a heavy sea. No matter what happens to an upset canoe, it is still one of the greatest life rafts in the world.”
“Then how do all the drownings occur?” demanded Jim.
“Because foolish and excited people try to swim to shore,” I explained, “instead of clinging to the canoe either until help comes or until they patiently kick the canoe to shore.”
“Suppose,” suggested Jimmie, “they get a cramp. Suppose they have just eaten a meal before they’re upset1, or suppose the shock of the sudden dump gives them a cramp?”
“A canoe,” I advised, “can be completely emptied of water by an expert. But even a complete dub can half empty an upset and swamped canoe. It’s very simple to do. And then, if the slightest sign of cramps appears, all you have to do is crawl quickly into the canoe and lie there until the cramps disappear or until the canoe floats ashore.”
“It all sounds very expert woodsmanny to me,” submitted Jim.
“Look,” I explained. “The canoe upsets. You and I are in it. Instead of glaring wildly around to see how far from terra firma we are, the very first thing we do is grab the canoe and get a good, easy hold on it.”
“Yeah,” agreed Jim. “I can see me spouting water like a whale, gasping and yelling.”2
“All right,” I said. “Now, the canoe, being streamlined and light, it very easily rolled over, right side up, see?”
“I’ve got goose flesh all over me already,” said Jim.
“We roll the canoe over, right side up,” I described. “It is, of course, as full of water as a tub. So we both work our way along the sides, holding on firmly, until we are at the one end together. This causes the other end of the canoe to stick high up out of the water.”
“A distress signal,” agreed Jim. “Sticking up and calling for help.”
All So Very Simple
“Yes,” I admitted. “But now the two of us, hanging on to the one end together, bear down with our arms and at the same time kicking out with our legs, shove forward as hard as we can. This causes half the water to flow out towards us.”
“Swamping us,” said Jim.
“No,” I explained. “We relax our weight and shove, and the canoe rights itself, half emptied. Then we work our way around to opposite sides, about the middle of the canoe. And we start alternately rocking the canoe, causing the water to splash out heartily over the sides. Experts do it another way. They get it partly emptied and then crawl cautiously in over the end of the canoe, creep along to the middle, and resting their feet on one side and their hands on the opposite gunwale, give the canoe a sudden complete flip that empties it entirely. At all regattas, you can see expert canoe men upsetting a canoe and then emptying it by this flipping method.”
“I can’t see you and me flipping canoes,” gave Jim as his opinion.
“No,” I confessed. “But the way I have told you, the pressing down of one end and shoving forward and then the subsequent rocking of the canoe, with such flapping out of water by hand as you care to do, will sufficiently empty a canoe to make it safe to get in and paddle it cautiously to the nearest shore.”
“How do you get back in?” asked Jim.
“At opposite ends,” I explained. “First one crawls carefully in over the end while the other fellow, still in the water, balances it as best he can. And then the other fellow worms his way in the same style, the man who is in balancing it for him.”
“Suppose I’m in the canoe alone?” asked Jim.
“One man can do it almost as well,” I stated. “He can get enough water out to let him crawl in and get to shore.”
“Suppose I have lost my paddles? Should I have swum after them?” asked Jim.
“Never swim after your paddles,” I cried. “Try to grab one as you tip. But never, never swim after one. Use your hands to paddle to shore.”
“Yes, but suppose there is an offshore breeze?” said Jim.
“If there is an offshore breeze,” I informed him, “you shouldn’t have been out in a canoe, and in any case a canoe is not to be used on big lakes or wide, open waters. It is an inshore craft, a craft for rivers and small lakes and channels. Even the Indians never went on big water in two-man canoes. They had a great, big travelling or war canoes for venturing on wide water, and they’d hold six to 20 men.”
“I suppose Indians upset often enough,” said Jim.
“Did you ever see an Indian,” I demanded, “sitting the cane seats or thwarts of a canoe?3 Never. He rests his hips against the thwart but his knees are on the bottom of the canoe, and so is his weight. Only amateur white men sit up on the cane seats or thwarts.”
“I still like a rowboat,” mused Jim. “Suppose I forget to bring my canoe cushion? Do I have to kneel with my knee-bones on the hard bottom of the canoe?”
“All you’ve got to do,” I said, “is what the Indian does. Take your jackknife and cut a little bundle of balsam boughs or ferns and make a cushion for your knees. You don’t even have to carry that cushion across a portage. You just cut yourself a new one and a springier one at the far end of each portage.”
“I Hate Sudden Water”
“I still like a rowboat,” declared Jim. “A good wide, fat rowboat, preferably the stern seat, with an old kitchen chair, with its legs pulled out by roots, screwed down for a nice comfortable seat and back rest.”
“And who,” I inquired, “will be rowing?”
“I don’t like to mention any names,” said Jimmie.
“Jim,” I announced, “the greatest fears in this world are the fears of the unknown. Meeting a bear isn’t half as bad as thinking of meeting a bear. I declare that at every regatta in Canada there ought to be a canoe-dumping demonstration, and that every family that owns a canoe ought to hold a canoe-dumping exercise on their own beach, with plenty of help and advice handy, so that every member of the family who uses that canoe will have felt what it is like to be dumped and know what to do. On every canoe that is sold, there ought to be painted, right on the deck, in clear, strong letters, the words, ‘in case of upset, hang to the canoe. Do not try to swim to shore, however near.’ That is the greatest truth of all.”
“I’ll watch you, up at the cottage,” said Jim, “stage a dumping demonstration for me.”
“Better still,” I cried, “some hot night this week, when we feel like a swim anyway, instead of going to a public swimming pool and getting kicked all over by children, let’s go down to Sunnyside and rent a canoe, in our bathing suits, and go quietly out and stage a little dump ourselves.”
“I hate sudden water,” replied Jim. “I like my water inch by inch, I like to submerge a joint at a time, my ankles, my knees, then my hips, then my waist, and so on.”
“Jim,” I advised, “you’re not so old yet that you will never be in a canoe again. And I want you to know how it feels to be dumped. We’ll go down to Sunnyside and do it in shallow water. Just up to our necks.”
“Up to your neck,” said Jim, stung by my reference to his age, “and up to my waist.”
“It will be an interesting experiment,” I said. “As two sportsmen in our prime, we ought not to be afraid of any experiences that are likely to happen to us anyway.”
“We don’t want a lot of people looking on,” said Jim.
“We’ll slip down around supper time,” I suggested, “when there is nobody around, and we’ll pick a quiet spot.”
Jim thought it was just another of the suggestions I make and then forget. But Thursday was so hot and humid and the thought of immersion, however sudden and however cold, was so grateful to the imagination, that I went up and got Jimmie just as he was taking the thumb tacks out of a cartoon.
The Element of Surprise
At the Sunnyside bathing pavilion, we rented bathing suits from the gentleman, explaining what we were going to do and he let us take the bathing suits away with us. We rented a canoe, one of those dizzy little city sissy canoes that are rented to pillow cushion paddlers, and since it was tippier than ordinary camping canoes, it would make our experiment all the easier, both coming and going.
We left our clothes at the boathouse and set forth on the quiet lake, I steering. Far and wide, a drowsy evening hung. In the distance, a motor cruiser with a party on board was
drifting slowly.
“It’s certainly quiet enough,” said Jim, peering overside into the water. “But it’s pretty darn deep.”
“Now, now,” I said. “This isn’t going to hurt you. Just grab the sides when we go over.”
“Not yet, not yet!” cried Jim, agitated.
“There has to be an element of surprise,” I said, “to make it realistic.”
“Yeah,” said Jim, “I’ll be the only one surprised. Don’t you dare do it until I tell you, or I’ll come right back and duck you.”
“We’re both going to be ducked,” I smiled, teetering the dizzy canoe slightly.
“Wait, wait,” roared Jim. “I’m not in the mood. I feel a little cramp already. In my foot.”
“Heh, heh, heh,” I laughed, sinisterly.
“Look,” pleaded Jim, turning cautiously to fix me with his eye, “I don’t feel like dumping tonight. Let’s put it off. I’ve felt kind of dull and dopey all day. I’ve had a slight sore throat….”
“Are you ready?” I called sternly, laying my paddle inboard.
“Wait, wait,” bellowed Jim, grabbing the sides.
“One,” I said, “two, THREE!”
And on the word ‘three,’ amidst wild shouts from Jimmie, I rolled hard a-port, giving my weight to the gunwale, and despite Jim’s desperate bearing to the right, the canoe cheerfully sank its lip under the smooth water and with a series of terrific splashes, roars, spouts, gulps and yells, we capsized, and there was Jimmie clambering on to the far end, and I to the stern.
“I’ll,” gasped Jim, “I’ll get you for this!”
“Now,” I explained, very business-like, “first we roll her right side up.”
“Come on down to this end,” said Jim, grimly.
“Jim, forget it,” I commanded. “Let’s get on with the experiment. This is deep water we’re in.”
“Heh, heh, heh,” laughed Jim, sinisterly, in his turn.
I started around the side of the canoe when I became aware of a tremendous sound approaching. I could faintly hear the air filled with shouts and cries and the hum and thunder of engines. From behind I saw a great cloud of spray and a small nose bounding amidst the white smother. It was the sea flea.4
From the other direction, I made out the shape of the motor cruiser, a bone in its teeth, all the party aboard leaning far out, coming helter-skelter in our direction, with a man on the bow waving frantically and yelling encouragement. From nowhere at all, another small motor boat, with a lone sportsman in it, was boring in our direction.
“Look,” I called to Jim, “the whole thing is being spoiled.”
“You wait,” prophesied Jimmie malignantly.
The sea flea reached us first, and overshot the mark, coming around us in a terrific smother of spray and kicking up a swell five feet high.
The first swell smacked into the canoe and washed my hold loose. A second terrific swell, as the sea flea curved past again, ducked me deep under and filled me with terror of being out of sight in case the crazy machine’s propeller would hit me. I rose to the surface with a wild yell of warning, only to see the bow of the cruiser, in a welter of foam, just over my head.
“Get away, get away,” I bellowed, waving.
But everybody was helping. The cruiser’s bowman heaved a big round life-preserver that narrowly missed my head. The sea flea addict was still furiously charging in short curves, this way and that, trying to get in close enough to cut my head off. The third motor boat had run its nose fair into the middle of the muddle. And Jimmie, who had been astraddle the canoe, now slid off the end of it and stood pleasantly up to his neck on solid bottom, still wearing on his face an expression of the uttermost malignance.
“It’s over my head,” I roared.
“Hold hard to the canoe,” he yelled.
“I’ve got it,” I spluttered, as another of the storm of swells of all our rescuers engulfed me.
“Good,” yelled Jim, and gave the canoe such a twist that what hold I had on it was wrenched from my grasp, and deep down I went.
It was, however, Jimmie, aided by several willing and friendly hands from the deck of the cruiser and the small boat and the sea flea, who finally dragged me in three various directions into safety.
“We heard your cries, fortunately,” gasped the captain of the cruiser. And everybody was filled with tenderness and care for us and threw blankets around us and pounded us on the back, and several of the ladies thought we should be sat upon and resuscitated by their gentlemen friends.
“If we hadn’t heard your cries for help,” said the fellow who had flung the 30-pound life preserver at my head, “you’d be goners by now.”
“It was my friend,” I stated, “who did the shouting. We have him to thank.”
“If I hadn’t been looking in your direction,” said the sea flea addict, who had climbed, life jacket and all into the social atmosphere of the cruiser’s cockpit, “I’d never have seen you go over, you went over that easy. Ah, a canoe is a wicked craft.”
“No doubt you are quite right,” I informed him stiffly, and glancing overside at the absurd animated shingle he rides on.
“Gentlemen,” said the captain of the cruiser, who had the word captain embroidered in gold on his cap, “we’ll tow your canoe ashore. But I might recommend to you both as an old hand on water, that unless you are familiar with canoes, you should never risk your lives in them.”
“Thank you,” I assured him. “Again, thank you.”
“George,” said the lady who appeared to be the real captain of the cruiser, “I don’t believe the little one realizes how near disaster he came.”
She was quite better-class about the whole thing.
But they took us both ashore in the cruiser and towed the canoe behind, and we paid the canoe owner 50 cents, and got dressed in the boathouse and went for a hot-dog and other amusements of Sunnyside, not talking about canoes at all.
Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on July 1, 1944 as “In the Drink”.
- This is the old myth that you should wait 30-60 minutes after eating before going in the water. Apparently it originated in an old Scout handbook. ↩︎
- Of course, nowadays, the best advice it to wear a properly fitting life jacket. ↩︎
- The cane seats are the mesh seats in a canoe. The thwarts are structural crossbars that prevent the hull from warping. ↩︎
- The Sea Flea is a small homemade motor boat popularized in Muskoka. ↩︎
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