– Then it was pretty quiet for a while, yes.
There is something called the Moment. When something happens and everyone sees it happening and everyone knows that what is happening can have terrible consequences, and they can do nothing to prevent it. The moment Knut Harald Kvammen was unloading dynamite at Polar Star in Canada in 1964 when a cylinder of explosives fell off the hoist. Those were the seconds it took for the cylinder to break loose and fall over and back into the cargo hold, where four men stood watching the fall with wide eyes. Pretty still.
Kvammen (b. 1944) from Elnesvågen in Romsdal was a sailor on board. He had been with the ship since the previous year and had crossed the North Atlantic several times already. Carried provisions and Christmas trees from Copenhagen to Holsteinborg in West Greenland, and salmon and Greenland char back, squid from Brønnøysund to the Faroe Islands and salted fish from the Faroe Islands to Grimsby in England. And then to Newfoundland to hunt seals. Immediately after the catch had been delivered in Brandal and the ship had made a quick trip to the dock for lubrication, the trip went to Canada again to participate in oil exploration with seismic off Nova Scotia.
The technology required at least two ships, one to blow up and one to pull the cable and listen. On the mission of Polar Star there were three ships with them, an extra one that was to be blown up together with the Norwegians. In Halifax, they received Polar Star the hold full of dynamite packed in cylinders, which were then picked up on deck and the drill at the back of the ship as it was to be fired out to sea.
– We had the rudder, and on the fryer we carried dynamite. And that's how the day went.
– How did the dog communicate?
– There was a beeping signal when we were about to disarm. It was our own people who were responsible for that. Americans.
But then it was like this: Polar Star The ship leaked once, and the ship had to be taken to a repair shop. Then the explosives were unloaded before the repair. All the dynamite had to be transferred to a railway car while the ship was in dock.
It was when this happened that it became so quiet on Polar StarThe crew had been impressed from the start that they were handling dangerous matters, and it was not without reason that the cargo had worn on their nerves.
– There were a lot of Americans and we in the crew who unloaded the railway cars, and the last haul that was going to be loaded was a bit too full. There was one such container, a plywood box that we unloaded, and then when we were about to swing out the last haul, a cylinder fell out and into the room. Hehe… I was standing on the railway car, I saw ahead of me that now there was a terrible bang. But it didn't happen at all. And the four guys who were standing down in the room, they almost went into shock, you know. It was quiet for a long time, yes.
– And these Yankees who were driving and shooting, did they have cowboy instincts?
– No, they were good people, so to speak. But that other boat that was carrying dynamite for us, it blew up.
– Was it from the dynamite?
– Yes. He caught fire in the engine room, we saw the smoke, but no flames to begin with. But they abandoned the boat at once. So he was now lying there drifting. And it burned. You could tell where it was burning when it caught fire in that room. I think he was five nautical miles away. And then it hit something really hard, yes. Then the whole room burned, and he had the fuses, the igniters on the ground, too. And when that thing came crashing down and fell close to the room, that's when it hit.
– And the boat disappeared?
- Yes, then he'll just go away. Didn't look again. There was almost no wreckage at all. We saw a few frames and a few handlebars that were flat, just a few small bits.
– How did the fish fare when the dock was shot?
– We had sonar, you know, that was probably one of the reasons we got the job, faith, so when something in particular with fish was registered, the shooting stopped. But fish did come up, yes, of course it did. Oh, if we were a little deeper, some redfish came up. So then we were there with faith and got it.
– Did the doctor send the dynamite out through a pipe when the doctor had lit the fuse, or what was it like?
- No, it's not a pipe. It was like a line-layer you could say, like a platform that you put them on top of, then they lashed together as many as there were, then they attached the bladder before they towed it, and then it went on and on from far away, then the signal came, and then they turned the switch and it went down. Because the fuse it came with out, the firing wire.
- How deep was the dynamite when it was small, then?
– I imagine it could be about 15 meters, sometimes less. I don't remember exactly, it was a little different. We were told that now we would load so and so many cylinders and so and so deep. But then it wasn't that deep where we were then.
– Did you continue with the seismic work throughout the summer and autumn as well?
– We kept going until the end of August anyway. At the end of that time we went north outside Newfoundland and were going to shoot there. And it was deeper there, so the loads were longer and bigger. But there was such bad weather that I think we finished a little earlier than we were supposed to.
– Did you understand that you were pioneers at that time?
– No, it wasn't that much of a soft talk, but we knew that there weren't that many people who had been doing that. And so it was a bit of a secret. But yeah, 'take care'. It's definitely a good idea.
– Everyone who has been on Polar Star, says she never lay still. Was there a lot of wiggling?
– Yes, she did wobble. Oh, she didn't have a wobble keel either, you know. But it was a good boat, then.