by Sten Nadolny
The Dorothea and the Trent were to sail through the opening between Spitsbergen and Greenland, then cross over the North Pole to the Bering Strait, and call at the port of Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula, where Cook had landed in his day. From there, duplicates of logbooks, travel notes, and charts were to be sent to England by land, while the ships would continue to the Sandwich Islands to spend the winter, returning to England the following spring, preferably once again across the North Pole.
A second expedition was to find a way to the Pacific along the rim of the North American continent. But it was believed that this route was more problematical.
How interested these politicians and merchants were. John put his papers down on the cabin table and spun them round with his fingers. Excitement pulsed in his throat. From the North Pole on, everything would be new; you just had to get there.
He also learned his ship by heart, memorising whatever leeway figures he could lay his hands on. He checked the calculations of anything that had to be calculated: weight of the load in relation to total weight, trimming, sail area, draught. He had already hit upon the first detail: the Trent’s draught seemed to increase more rapidly than could be accounted for by the daily increase of the load. He calculated it once more precisely, then called in Lieutenant Beechey, his first officer. Beginning immediately, he wanted a report from every watch as to how deep the ship lay in the water and how deep the water was in the bilge.
Did the lieutenant notice John’s insecurity and disquiet? But Beechey was tactful. When their eyes met, he turned away, blinking. When listening, he seemed to examine the condition of the deck; when talking, he would scan the horizon with his eyes narrow slits, his lashes white. His face betrayed nothing more than a kind of ill-tempered guardedness, and he never spoke one word too many.
So John’s calculations were correct. The Trent had a leak. It did not seem to be big, but the trouble was it couldn’t be found. The water flowed into the hold, but where it came from could not be determined. They kept on looking. They hadn’t yet left the port and the pumps were already making their noise. But John felt strangely relieved: a leak was at least a real worry.
The commander of the expedition apparently believed that John was a protégé of the secretary of the Admiralty. David Buchan, a red-faced, impatient man, never wanted to listen for any length of time and above all didn’t want to postpone their departure because of a leak.
‘Are you serious? You have a leak but can’t find it? Are we supposed to wait till the polar summer is over again? Let your men pump for a few weeks; they’ll notice soon enough where the water comes from.’
Buchan’s rudeness only made John calmer. Now he had a concrete adversary; that helped and was comforting. ‘Sir, of course I’ll go to the polar sea, even with a leak.’
That sounded so self-assured and cutting that Buchan became a little insecure: ‘If the topic isn’t exhausted by the time we get to the Shetlands we’ll take the Trent out of the water and look at it from the outside.’
25 April 1818, was the day of departure. The pier was bright with faces. Eleanor Porden turned up to wish an astonished John lots of good luck, slipping him a lengthy poem at the end of which the North Pole itself, speaking directly, declared itself conquered. John knew now: she really liked him. She even admired the long ice-saws and the equipment with which seawater was supposed to be desalinated. She was enthusiastic about research, mesmerism and electrical phenomena, and she implored John to observe whether there was a particularly high degree of magnetism in the air in the polar region and how this affected sympathies among people. When saying goodbye she fell twittering on his neck. With the best of will John could do no other than to reach round her waist. If only he didn’t always hold on to everything so long. He sensed that he ran the danger of being obvious to her and to others, and so he hurriedly withdrew into important calculations about the expedition’s course. Then they cast off. Daffodils were blooming. Even as a thin line in the distance, the shore was aglow with yellow.
The water poured in more voluminously every day, and there were not enough men. For a full crew the Trent lacked exactly one-sixth of her regular complement. Every man spent half his watch at the pumps.
In Lerwick, despite all his efforts John found neither the leak nor any volunteers to reinforce the crew. The people of the Shetlands lived off seafaring and whaling, and they knew well what it meant when a ship, reeling in shallow water, is looked over inch by inch. When they were told that only the copper plates were being fastened more securely, they laughed, embarrassed. Nobody wanted to be hired aboard a leaking ship. John began earnestly to fear that this invisible hole in the hull would cheat him of the North Pole.
Buchan thought of replacing the missing sailors by pressing men into service. But since this was now illegal he said to John, ‘I’ll leave it to you, Mr Franklin.’
When John was alone with his first officer, Beechey scanned the horizon with his grey eyes and remarked, ‘The crew will stick it out. It’s a good crew. Three or four forced men who don’t share their mood are worse than none at all.’
‘Thank you,’ John mumbled, perplexed.
The good thing about Beechey was that he spoke his mind when it was needed.
Seaman Spink, from Grimsby, knew how to tell more stories than three village oaks put together, and he had knocked about a good bit. At the age of twelve he had been pressed into service for a while. He had sailed on the little ship Pickle under Lapenotie ‘re, was taken prisoner by the French, had broken out, and, in the company of a man named Hewson, had fled across Europe to Trieste. He told of an Alsatian cobbler whose boots lengthened one’s steps so that with them one could march almost twice as fast as a Frenchman could run. He told of the peasant women in the Black Forest, who could hide two or three escapers from Bonaparte under their wide Sunday skirts. And in Bavaria they had rowed across the stormy Chiemsee in a boat with only one oar. Then, in a fishing village on the eastern shore, they had consumed a tender roast with a wondrous dumpling that allowed them to march on for a fortnight without a pause or a morsel of food, as true as his name was Spink.
They all rushed on deck: a narwhal had been sighted. His horn stuck out distinctly. That was a bad sign. There was only one thing worse: when the ship’s bell started ringing on its own. But that never happened, or it could never be told because soon thereafter the ship would sink with mouse and man.
It was not mentioned again. After all, in the open polar sea beyond the ice barrier, completely different creatures of gigantic dimensions awaited them. The Admiralty even thought that after the pack-ice had melted these creatures might penetrate southward to the Atlantic trade routes and devour a ship or two. Even if nobody in the Trent’s crew was superstitious, nobody could be entirely without fear.
There was not a soul on board who was rebellious or lazy. John had prepared himself for the fact that sooner or later he would have to order his first punishment, but so far that sort of thing was not in sight. For some time now every commanding officer had had to keep a Logbook of Punishments. John opened his book every evening and wrote in it, ‘No infractions of rules today.’
He could not make head or tail of George Back, or rather, as far as Back was concerned, he did not know his own mind. There remained a shyness, an awkwardness, a guardedness. This could not be explained in official terms alone. John put it out of his mind. It was better not to understand Back at all than to misunderstand him. Back might possibly save his life someday. Instincts were good, but only when expressed clearly.
A slight guardedness remained.
* * *
He now had the courage to request that statements be repeated,- that impatience not be allowed, that his own pace be imposed on others for the good of all: ‘I’m slow. Please adjust accordingly.’ Back clearly heard this remark delivered in a perfectly friendly tone, and his subsequent reports were relayed distinctly. Man overboard, Fire in the ship? No reason to swallow entire syllables. It was mo
st important that the captain understood where, what and when. Confusion was more dangerous than any emergency, and the captain’s confusion was the most dangerous kind. They all learned that.
Endurance. John needed no sleep. He practised phrases and words as he had as a ship’s boy. The way orders should begin: for example, Mr Beechey, please be so good as to let …; Mr Back, would you be so kind as to … Kirby, see to it at once that …
He again thought about the fixed look. It was and remained dangerous. But when this look was not part of war service and was used only rarely, it no longer determined a slave’s speed but rather represented the power to act instantly exercised by a good commander who usually relied more on the study of details and on dreaming. Slowness became honourable; speed became the servant. The large overview was not a good view, for it overlooked too much. Presence of mind, raised to a law, created neither a present moment nor a specific point of view. John opted for absent-mindedness and was sure of himself. He thought of devising a system by which one could live and lead ships as well.
Perhaps a new era would begin with him, John Franklin? Seventy-four degrees, 25 minutes. They had reached the latitude of Bear Island.
Beyond latitude 75 degrees north it began to snow. John sniffed outside his cabin door and looked at the quarterdeck covered with white powder. It had smelled exactly like this when he had seen snow for the first time. He looked around furtively, then dared to go outside and began to do an ungainly bear dance in order to see whether his feet left imprints. He felt so young that he had to think about it: perhaps it was real. How do I know, then, he wondered, that I’m over thirty just like the others? If I’m slow like a clock, it takes longer, too, for me to run down. So perhaps I’m only twenty. Abruptly he ended his bear dance, because Midshipman Back was staring at him from the mainyard, seriously, almost as though admonishing him. John wanted to ignore him but couldn’t help looking at his own footprints through Back’s eyes and calling to mind his own movements. He had to laugh, and he looked at Back again.
The other laughed back with white teeth. A handsome fellow. ‘The snow is wonderful, sir!’
No, it wasn’t possible to detect irony in that statement. Yet … He put captain’s wrinkles into his face, turned away brusquely, retiring into his cabin, slightly irritated.
He recalled polar magnetism. But how could one measure that?
Now it became seriously cold. The rigging iced over; ropes in use froze so stiff they couldn’t be distinguished from fixed lines. The men on watch had not only to pump but also to beat the lines with sticks to keep them moveable. All manoeuvres with sails turned into adventures, and the cold got worse. Everybody coughed, heartbreakingly. John, on the other hand, was delirious with joy.
Since there continued to be no infractions of rules, he studied the snow and entered the shapes of snowflakes in his Logbook of Punishments. ‘In principle, snow is hexagonal,’ he wrote. After all, research was the purpose of the trip. Amused, he thought of the admirals’ faces when, after a long detour through Mother Russia, the Logbook of Punishments of the Trent would finally reach them.
For the first time the ships sailed through drift-ice. The floes clinked and scraped along the sides of the hull.
Nobody wanted to sleep. No one was used to this phenomenon of night being so bright. The low sun shone upon the white sails, the ice sparkled as if it were made of diamond caps and emerald grottoes; a frozen city grew and unfolded in wild shapes. Nautical language was almost superfluous: they sailed from the ‘church’ to the ‘fortress’, then, bearing past the ‘cave’, to the ‘bridge’. Ice shimmered below the surface of the water, reflecting light. The sea was cloaked in creamy white; seals swam in it as in luminous milk. The crew hung on the rigging and stared at the sparkling hunks of ice that kept pushing behind the ship’s keel as though wanting to catch up with it. The sun sank toward midnight, red and weird: the largest banana in the world. It didn’t even actually sink – it only went into hiding for a short time, took a bath, and reappeared to dry itself.
Beechey said, ‘All this is well and good, but how do we persuade the next watch to get some sleep?’
It was an evening sky of infinite duration, shadows becoming gigantically long, and when swathes of mist rose they turned at once into reddish clouds, changing colours up to the northern horizon.
John looked out on the ice, studied its forms, and tried to understand what they meant. It was true, then, that the sea could surpass itself with its own power. Here was the proof. Here he discovered the meaning of his dreams.
Hour after hour he drew shapes of icebergs in his Logbook of Punishments. He added colours: ‘Green on the left, red on the right, the reverse ten minutes later.’ He tried to invent names for what he saw, but that didn’t work very well. Rather, the sights were like music which would have to be transcribed in a score. The fine-ribbed sea lapped playfully round the ice shapes and bore them along in a rhythm, while they themselves seemed to make up a harmony as of musical sounds, although they were also in a sense splintered and split. Yet their effect was to create a feeling of calm and timelessness. Nothing like this could be ugly. Here it was peaceful. Far behind them, somewhere to the south, men worried about the misery of man. In London, time was a despot whom everyone had to obey.
Above 81 degrees of latitude the ice-floes turned into platforms, and those into islands. At one point, under the most favourable crosswind, the Trent simply stood still and didn’t budge. ‘Why don’t we go on?’ Reid called from below, and a few minutes later the second mate, Kirby, came on deck: ‘Why aren’t we moving?’
Waiting made the crew restless. Yet in this case there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to be done about waiting. Perhaps the two ships locked into the ice-field might actually drift with it in the right direction. But then came the signal from the Dorothea. Buchan ordered, ‘Chop ice! Haul ship!’
Ten men tried to open up the ice ahead of the bow with axes and spades, ten more strained to pull a rope two ship-lengths ahead. A few hours later they were so exhausted that at the end of the watch they were giggling to keep from crying. And yet the whole effort was mounted only to satisfy their and Buchan’s impatience. They tried even the most senseless actions if that gave them the feeling they were in motion.
But what if the ice-field was drifting south instead of north? Even then it would have been an open question whether Buchan noticed it. He liked to navigate ‘by instinct’.
John ordered music to give the hauling crew at least some cheer. Seaman Gilbert led the way, fiddling. He was just the right man for the job. His musical skills could indeed produce a limited range of distinct tones, yet they were not good enough to make anyone stop and listen.
Oddly, the closer John came to their objective, the more strongly he sensed that he no longer needed it. The complete silence, the absolute timelessness – what, seriously, should he do with them? He was a captain and had a ship; he no longer wanted to be a strip of shore, a coastal rock which looked on for millennia without guilt. Clock time was as essential as weights and measures, because goods and labour had to be distributed justly in this world. The hourglass had to be turned, the ship’s bell had to be struck every half-hour so Kirby didn’t have to pump longer than Spink and Back didn’t have to freeze longer than Reid. That wouldn’t be any different at the Pole, and John was content with it because he was content now with everything, except perhaps with Buchan’s overall command.
He was ineluctably drawn to the Pole, but not because he wanted to start all over again from then on. After all, it had already begun. The goal had been important only for the sake of finding the path to it. He had now taken that path, and the Pole reverted to being a mere geographical concept. He longed only to remain en route – just as he was now, on a voyage of discovery – for the rest of his life. Franklin’s System of Life and Travel.
Buchan had taken their bearings in relation to the stars and had made his calculations. So had Franklin. Buchan arrived at 81 degrees 31 mi
nutes; Franklin at 80 degrees 37 minutes. Flustered, Buchan calculated once more and met John by a few minutes, just to save face. Evidently the ice was drifting southwards more quickly than they could chop their way open to the north.
Then two gigantic ice-fields slunk toward each other and took the Dorothea in the middle, squeezing her until the timber of her frame cracked and the ship was even slightly lifted. A short while later the same thing happened to the Trent, only less severely. Now they sat tight, as though riveted in place. An iceberg approached more and more closely from aft as if to mock them.
‘I’d like to know how the iceberg does it,’ said Spink. ‘Perhaps someone’s pulling him from below.’ He pointed down to the sea and meant it as a joke, but they all remembered the narwhal and remained silent.
At all events, it was still as never before; the ship didn’t move an inch. Suddenly Gilfillan, the ship’s doctor, stormed out of his cabin, shouting, ‘I think some liquid is running under my bed!’
Franklin went down with the carpenter and asked to be shown the place. Below Gilfillan’s bunk was the spirits store. ‘Nothing’s allowed to run there,’ the commander concluded. They listened inside the chamber where rum was stocked: yes, something’s running there! The supply master checked their inventory. Nothing was missing.
Thus they found the leak. A worker at the shipyards had taken out a rotten bolt and had simply smeared some tar over the gap, rather than putting in a new bolt and securing it. The tar didn’t stop the water, but it prevented the gap from being seen from the outside. When the Trent had been made waterproof again some liquid of a sort still ran down a few gullets. Hours later they got back on their feet and realised that the ship floated again in the open sea.