by Ruskin Bond
It was an agonizing voyage. The vessel had not a minute to lose if she was to reach the open Pacific before the ice closed in. Yet, for all her two thousand four hundred horse power, a head-on crash with an ice pack would have stove in her bows, and she had to dodge incessantly the huge floes which, drifting towards her, might at any moment smash her sides in like matchwood.
The squat little vessel twisted and turned clumsily through one narrow channel after another. Chief-engineer Toikin flew like a shuttle from the telegraph handle—to answer the order from Captain Voronin on the bridge—to the lever to alter the speed. The least mistake in speed might spell irretrievable disaster.
Ice splintered and darted in a vortex from the thrashing screw. Every now and then there would be a crash; a winding crack would flash ahead over the ice, and the vessel would quiver as if mortally stricken. But worst of all were the jams, when the Chelyuskin would lie clamped by serried walls of ice, closing in, crushing remorselessly. Then the frenzied crew would spring about the looming, grinding floes, scaling them desperately, sometimes falling into the icy water, as they planted the cans of explosive that alone could blast a way through to safety.
At night, the vessel had to lay-to. Schmidt dare not waste the precious coal for the boilers when even from the crow's nest nothing could be seen through the darkened fog. And in one jam, the Chelyuskin could not move for a whole week, though the screw was kept spinning, in case it froze into the water.
The stock of coal was diminishing rapidly. Lack of water, too, became another problem. After passing Kolyouchin Island, the water supply was all used up and the crew had to melt down ice and pump the water into the ship's cisterns.
The polar night now began to close down on the lonely ship. In October, the day had still been fairly long, but by December it had shrunk to three or four hours, and by the end of the month there was only about an hour and a half of what seemed like a dim twilight, with only a few fog-wreathed orange bars in the sky to suggest that, hundreds of miles away, there was sunshine over the world.
Meanwhile, the fight through the ice went on. Every ship, no matter how strongly reinforced, becomes damaged after a time by jagged floes. Even great icebreakers like the Krassin, renowned for its part in the rescue of survivors of the Italian airship Italia, have to go into dry dock for repair every year.
Captain Voronin spent more time in the crow's nest than on the bridge in his endeavour to spy out the best course, and signal this down to the watch helmsmen, who navigated the Chelyuskin as painstakingly as if every floe were a dangerous reef But it was impossible to avoid heavy ice drifting swiftly into the ship under the pressure of powerful currents.
On one occasion, a large floe struck the Chelyuskin as she was entering an area of ice from clear water. The damage was not very serious, as the ship's plates took the blow at an acute angle. But the shock swung she ship sharp to starboard, and another floe, huge and formidable, smashed at right angles full into her starboard plates.
The collision shook the vessel as if she had been rammed by a liner. If the sharp point of the floe had been below the waterline, the end would have been swift. Luckily, it was a foot above, and though a large gaping hole was torn in her side, the crew were able to repair it successfully.
The steamer struggled on, the weather became clearer, and the spirits of every one on board rose to a fever of joy and excitement as the Bering Strait drew nearer and nearer. But fate was to reserve its malice until the victory of the daring little host of adventurers was almost in sight.
The Chelyuskin was only six miles from its goal, the open Pacific. A gentle breeze was blowing, and fugitive sunshine now illuminated in kindlier hues the sombre grey and white tones of the omnipresent enemy, the ice. The floes seemed to glisten and take fire. Reflections of aquamarine and turquoise glittered from the freshly-broken 'young' ice. Crystals of snow glittered like diamonds, and, here and there in the primal chaos, were depths of emerald and sapphire that made the voyagers catch their breath in ecstasy.
Suddenly the breeze dropped, a raging blizzard began to blow straight from the distant coast. The ice packs, as if ploughed by a giant hand, began to pile up in massive serrated and impenetrable ridges, drifting inexorably northwards. And a few hours later, the Chelyuskin had as much chance of reaching open sea as if she had been miraculously transported to the North Pole itself
Floes ground and tore into each other now, packed ever closer together by the immense underswell. Any ship that tried to make headway through them would have been smashed to pieces. The Chelyuskin was trapped and helpless. She could only drift with the ice masses, shoring and topping one another in savage melee, and it was only a question of time before they whelmed and crushed her.
Just one hope of salvation remained for the men and women on board the Chelyuskin—the radio. On January 16, 1934, the world learned for the first time of their plight and Soviet Russia made preparations for a rescue attempt without parallel in history.
In a few quiet and simple words, Professor Schmidt informed listeners in their radio watch-towers that the expedition was in good health, but that their vessel was trapped, and that the Chelyuskin was in danger of being crushed by the pressure of surrounding ice.
During the three months which followed, many more messages were received by an enthralled and horrified world. These stated, in the dry and unemotional terms of scientists who were more interested in their fatal conditions than in themselves, that the vessel was gradually being carried further and further away from all hope of human aid.
The Arctic had gathered all its fury against the little band of daring adventurers. A terrific blizzard was raging, and the cold was sixty degrees below zero, as the Chelyuskin drifted northwards. Her ribs were broken at the bows, a hole had been torn in her forward, and her rudder had been snapped off by the heavy ice of the Choukchi Sea.
Expecting every moment would bring the final break-up, Schmidt now had emergency stores ready to be unshipped instantly down to the ice. On the port beam of the boat-deck were piled sacks full of clothing—sleeping-bags, warm underclothing, fur breeches, thick shirts, and so on. On the starboard side, two months' supply of foodstuffs, covered with tarpaulins, were placed.
Emergency orders were also issued: one press of the button on the captain's bridge and bells would shrill through all living quarters, engine-rooms and stokehold, and every man and woman would go straight to an appointed station and carry out a preordained task.
Once a terrifying ice-jam, when it seemed nothing could avert disaster, forced the captain to press the button. Stores were swiftly unshipped, and the Chelyuskin abandoned. Then suddenly lanes of water split the ice in all directions, the expedition, almost engulfed, rushed aboard again, and by amazing luck the vessel managed to get clear of the crest of ice that crumbled and ricochetted in huge boulders upon the ship.
It was at half-past one in the afternoon of February 13 that doom finally came to the beleaguered vessel. 'Under our eyes here and there the ice rose up in high ridges, 'said Professor Schmidt afterwards. 'Ice fields kilometres in extent were being crushed together. It was obvious that the most powerful ship could not stand that pressure. It crumbled immense masses of ice and piled them one on the other. The only thing we did not know was whether the line of some extremely powerful pressure would pass through the ship's position or not. There was no way of preventing the crushing.
'While waiting for the crushing, the captain and myself, together with the workers appointed to watch the ice, stared hard into the blizzard, listening to every sound from the ice—'
'The ridge of ice-pack to our port side shifted and moved down upon us. The floes were tumbled one over another, like crests of sea surf. The oncoming wave of ice towered twenty-six feet above the surface of the sea—'
Crash! The whole ship staggered beneath the onslaught, listed slowly over. A woman screamed as an enormous blue-grey floe loomed through the side of her cabin. No one heard her; no human voice could have prevailed
over the slow rending thunder of the ice barrage.
Rivets cracked and flew as the plates were torn from the seams like so much paper. In a flash, the port side was rent open at the fore hold.
Ice burst like torpedoes below the water-line, and water flooded the engine and boiler rooms. To the deafening rumble of destruction was added now the terrific roar of the steam tearing out of the burst steam-pipe. Steam, as it happened, was up in the port boiler right under the ice. The ice shifted the boiler, ripped away the connecting pipes leading to the emergency pump system, and cut off and jammed the valves. But as the steam could now escape through the broken pipes, there was fortunately no explosion.
Crash after crash shook the reeling ship. The water was rising; already men in the holds were knee-deep. Schmidt had expected that, when the end came, it would be a slow foundering. This swift annihilation took him by surprise. But he did not lose his head for one moment, he gave his orders coolly, swiftly, concisely.
The polar night had set in over a month before. It was dusk as the ship was abandoned; the dynamo was crippled, and all lights were out. The fury of the blizzard had reached its height.
Men and women toiled rapidly at unshipping the stores down ladders laid against the starboard side. Each knew the ship had only a few minutes to live. But there was no panic.
Water was now pouring into the fore holds, and her bows began to settle. The last radiogram for help was sent out, and the radio apparatus dismantled and taken off
The water reached the passenger deck. In another minute it would be pouring from the bridge down on to her stern. 'Every man on the ice!' shouted Schmidt.
Captain Voronin and Schmidt were going down the gangway, as the stern of the Chelyuskin rose higher and higher—her bows were already under the floes. A falling timber knocked Voronin forward on to the ice.
Then the white face of Boris Mogilyevitch, the quartermaster, was seen at the ship's side. He put one foot over, ran back, and fell under a crashing pile of deck structures. His was the only life lost in this Arctic epic.
There was the cracking of smashed timbers and metal, the stern, wreathed in smoke, rose high in the air, then disappeared. Only a mass of ice and upturned ship's boats and wreckage remained of the Chelyuskin.
The expedition found itself on an ice floe many miles in width and length. Stores, scientific instruments and wireless apparatus had been rescued.
The first task was to erect a hut for the shelter of the women and children from the blizzard and appalling cold. Then the men put up tents for themselves.
With the aid of a newly-formed 'radio brigade,' the wireless operator, Ernest Krenkel, set about erecting a mast. The pegs did not reach through the snow to the solid ice, and would not hold. At first, the mast whipped about like a fishing-rod.
When he had made it firm, Krenkel crawled into a tent and began assembling his set. He had to work without gloves, it was seventy degrees below zero; and soon the pliers, knife and leads were burning his hands. But at last the set was ready for reception. He donned his ear-phones, turned the tuning-knob— and the first communication Schmidt Camp had from the rest of the world was a merry American foxtrot!
He went on searching the ether, and eventually picked up the mainland, eighty-seven miles away. The woman operator, Lloudmilla Schrader, at Wellen, was asking Cape North, 'Have you received no signal from the Chelyuskin? We are getting a dog-team rescue party ready.'
Krenkel switched in the transmitter and called both Wellen and Cape North. There was no answer. Desperately, he tried again and again without success.
He took the wave meter and measured the wave. It was three hundred metres and probably they could not get it. The aerial would have to be lengthened, but that was impossible in the blizzard and the darkness.
Next morning he tried again on a four hundred and fifty wave metre. Hour followed hour as the monotonous tap-tapping went on. The little camp sank deeper and deeper into despair. Suddenly, the operator gave a shout. 'Wellen answering! At last the marooned party were in touch with the outside world again.
But even as their first SOS went out, it must have seemed a forlorn hope indeed to those men and women lost in the Arctic waste. The ice-floe was steadily drifting northwards. Moreover, at any time it might break up into innumerable smaller floes, or might be whelmed and crushed like the Chelyuskin itself in another tremendous packing of the ice.
Though the mainland was only eighty-seven miles away, Schmidt wisely decided after prolonged discussion that it was out of the question for the expedition to make for it on foot. In the first place, every mile over pack ice is equivalent to eight or ten miles on an even track.
High floes have to be clambered over, and coming down on the other side one fell into unseen holes and crevasses. Men often had to be pulled out after sinking to their waists in water. The going was so rough that such a journey would have to be reckoned as eight hundred miles rather than eighty-seven.
Some people, such as women and invalids, Schmidt argued, would find the journey very trying, and a few would have to be taken on sledges. In these circumstances, the expedition would only make three or four miles a day, which would mean between twenty-five and thirty days' struggle over the ice.
Food and supplies needed for such a journey would work out at a hundredweight to be carried or dragged by each person, an impossible load for even the strongest. And the idea that the ill and weak should be left behind to a certain death in order that the others should survive was one that never entered Schmidt's mind for a moment.
And what if the expedition encountered fissures, lanes, and open water? Either a boat would have to be taken or the open patches would have to be circumvented. The expedition had no canvas or rubber boat, and each of its heavy ice-boats would need the strength of the men for dragging over the ice. Circumventing open patches, moreover, would lengthen the journey by dozens of miles. Moreover, it would mean deviating from the true course, and dog teams or aeroplanes might miss the expedition, unless radio equipment were carried.
Though a hundred dog teams were speeding towards the camp, Schmidt rightly predicted that they would be unable to reach it. They would have to be driven from the mainland by Choukchi natives, who will not risk even known tracks when there is the slightest chance of bad weather. They would encounter countless cracks and open lanes in the ice field which might be difficult or impossible to traverse.
Then, how could they steer to the camp? They would carry no radio. Compass readings would be useless, for the ice was constantly drifting, and the position of the camp after twenty-five days, the time needed for a dog team journey, would be considerably altered. If the course deviated by quite a small angle from the true one, the dog team might pass the camp too far away to see the smoke from its signal tower.
Schmidt decided he had no right to risk the lives of rescue parties in such desperate ventures, and wirelessed the mainland to that effect.
The only hope of rescue was by aeroplane, fantastic as it seemed at the time to all who had had any experience of the coldest and stormiest areas of the Polar seas.
So the men in the little camp set to work like Trojans constructing an aerodrome on some level ice nearly four miles away. There was only a limited number of shovels, so the carpenters made some big mauls to break up the ice. But most of the tools in making the aerodrome were human backs and arms. Hundreds of tons of ice were shifted to make a level landing ground. Often a sudden ice pressure would destroy the labour of a week. But the little party would set to work again with courage and energy undimmed.
They had provisions, which, scantily eked out, would last two months. Breakfast was tea and a biscuit, dinner a thin soup or porridge or rice, supper the same again.
And so the little party settled down on the ice to await the incredible advent of a 'steel bird' (as they called it) winging its way through fog and blizzards and cold from thousands of miles away—or for death in the illimitable icy waste.
Meanwhile, from all ove
r the Soviet Union, aeroplanes manned by picked airmen were hastening to the shores of the Arctic. The world shook its head in admiring incredulity; it was impossible for both men and engines to conquer such difficulties as were involved in long-distance flights over Siberia and the Arctic.
Seven young Soviet airmen proved the experts were wrong, effected a rescue without parallel in Polar annals, and added a new chapter to the mastery of the air. They were Anatoli Lyapidevski, Vassili Molokov, Sigismund Levanevski, Mavriki Slepnyov, Nikolai Kamanin, Mikhail Vodopyanov, and Ivan Doronin.
The aeroplanes were ordered to air bases at Wellen and Vankarem on the Siberian coast. Polar fliers with experience of flying at Siberian aerodromes told the young airmen they were attempting suicide. True, they had only to fly ninety miles to the marooned camp. But there were blizzards, dense fogs, and Polar night all the way, temperatures dropped as low as a hundred degrees of frost, freezing both lungs and engines, and landing anywhere on the ice fields meant certain death.
Lyapidevski was the first of the heroic seven to arrive at Wellen, late in December. Before his water-cooled machine could rise into the air as he took off for Schmidt camp, the oil had to be boiled.
There were sixty-one degrees of frost fahrenheit,' he said afterwards. 'The hot water literally began to chill while it was being poured. I took my place in the cabin. I could feel my eyelashes freezing together. I was almost blind.
As I took off the machine bumped her right runner, but still she took off, began to climb. I set her up. I felt a piercing pain in my face. Then the left engine began to cough, so, willy-nilly, I had to turn back, or it would be the end of me. I began to plane down. I clenched my teeth against the terrible pain and tried to keep my grip on the joystick and land her. I succeeded. Flight mechanic Roukovski grabbed some snow from the fuselage and rubbed my cheeks. The next day I was sitting about with a bandaged dial and felt rotten, my skin burning and bleeding.'