Bone Deep Read Free

been expelled from my room, and then I got reamed out over some crumby old broken teapot and cups, followed by Aunt Beatrix’s snide observations about my sloppy posture and lack of fashion sense. If that wasn’t bad enough, I got shrieked at again just before bed when Aunt Margaret found out the towels she gave Aunt Beatrix were the wet and dirty ones I’d used for cleaning the bathroom.
    How was I going to survive two weeks of this? I needed to find a way to stay clear of Great Aunt Beatrix and Aunt Margaret. I was actually glad there was school the next day. Just then I remembered my class had a field trip in the morning to the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Maybe by the time I got home everyone would be calmed down.
    â€œWelcome,” beckoned a pretty young woman as we stepped inside the museum. Usually on museum field trips we got retired grandmothers who led the tours, but this one wasn’t old at all, maybe mid-twenties. “I’m Amanda Marsh, your guide today here at the Vancouver Maritime Museum. If I can just get you to leave your bags here we’ll get started in the main gallery by viewing the museum’s pride and joy — the St. Roch — a schooner built a hundred years ago.” We followed Amanda into a high ceilinged room filled from top to bottom with an old sailing ship. Its size took me by surprise and I felt dizzy looking up to the tip of the mast.
    â€œHow did they get this ship inside the building?” TB asked Amanda.
    â€œThey didn’t put the ship in the building. They built the building around it. A lot simpler, don’t you think?” Amanda told us more about the St. Roch ’s history, like how it used to be a Royal Canadian Mounted Police ship. Then we got to go aboard. As I looked over the deck and up to the top of the sails I thought about the sailing lessons I’d taken the summer before. We only got to sail tiny skiffs, but the instructor, Vic Torino, or the Tornado as we called him, had a really nice boat he took us sailing on. Even though he was a seriously weird guy, I did learn a lot of things, like how to maneuver the rudder and set the sail, how to read the gauges and maps, and mastered at least eight different kinds of knots.
    As we toured the St. Roch , Amanda told us stories of adventure and danger of the old seafaring men of the past. We learned about Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver too. Vancouver surveyed and mapped the West Coast in the late 1700s. We learned that his navigational charts helped to open up the Pacific Ocean to a lot of other explorers and put the West Coast fur trade into high gear.
    â€œBeing an explorer was an adventurous lifestyle, but it was dangerous too and took men far from their homes and families for long periods of time,” explained Amanda.
    With everyone at home so mad at me, the idea of sailing away on a ship sounded like a good plan. Maybe not for months or years, but a couple of weeks would be nice. By the time I got back Great Aunt Beatrix would have gone home, the broken china forgotten, and things back to normal. Just then I had an idea. “Are we going to learn anything about sunken ships?” I asked.
    Amanda smiled at my question. “You’re jumping ahead of me, but as a matter of fact we are going to learn about a field of study that involves sunken ships. Can anyone tell me what archaeology is?”
    Amanda’s question caught me by surprise, but my hand shot up. When it comes to archaeology I’m practically an expert. That’s because one of my best friends is an archaeologist. Her name is Dr. Edwina McKay, but I call her Eddy. I helped her with two professional investigations — the first involved digging up the remains of an ancient Coast Salish man in Crescent Beach where I live. And the second was rescuing a disturbed burial in the historic cemetery of Golden — it’s one of those old railway towns in northern B.C. On top of that I’m a