Suddenly the watch shouted out, “The ice is coming!”
All immediately sprang to their feet and sprinted for the shore. They had hardly cleared the ice when the heavy floe, full of hummocks, came on with such force that it shattered one of the bergs, which fell with a thundering crash, crushing the boat to pieces. At the same time the pack ice crowded in, coundess blocks of ice overlapping each other. It seemed that they would lose all, but after a while the pressure ceased and they managed to get out on the ice and save some of their belongings, although Chester lost the journal he had been keeping since the expedition had started.
Tyson could imagine how pleased Buddington would be at the fiasco when he heard about the fate of Chester’s boat expedition. He would go around to the remaining crew telling everyone, “I told you so. I knew they would make a mess of it. Let them get a belly full! Let them get all the North Pole they want!”
Two days later, after Chester and his men had left for Polaris with a sledge driven by Joe, clearings in the ice suddenly appeared. Surprising his men, Tyson announced that they would launch immediately.
Before Joe had left for Polaris, he had given Tyson advice on navigating the ice in a small boat. The Eskimo also said that if Buddington made good on his threat to leave for home without waiting for Tyson’s boat party, he and Hans had agreed they would disembark from the ship and wait for the stranded men. They would winter together if need be, said Joe, and then strike south come spring. It was a very kind and thoughtful offer, and a brave promise. Tyson felt less vulnerable knowing that the experienced native hunters, whose Arctic expertise would be needed to get through a winter without the provisions and shelter the ship afforded, would not desert them—even if their captain and ship did.
As Tyson’s boat skirted the ice and plowed through virgin waters, it was a humbling sight to see their little boat, powered by sail and oars, flying along under the dark shadows of the lofty and precipitous mountains above them.
They arrived at Newman Bay—twenty miles farther north—in two days without much trouble, as Tyson deftly worked the boat through openings in the ice until stopped by a solid ice pack. They hauled up the boat and camped, waiting for an opening to the north. Bessels became incapacitated almost immediately by snow blindness and could do nothing to help.
A week later, Chester followed them, arriving at Newman Bay with his party in a flimsy canvas boat fit more for children to paddle about on a placid lake than for service in Arctic seas. Determined to make another try by boat, they had brought the small boat by sledge to their original launching site. The canvas boat would have been easily crushed like an eggshell in the ice pack, and was dreadfully slow, making only three miles an hour and taking on water in the least wind. With one man having to bail constantly, they had labored for five days to get to Newman Bay.
Chester arrived with news of the ship: she was in the same leaky condition, pumping by steam and consuming coal fast. It was the first mate’s dire opinion that when Polaris was finally released from the ice holding her, she might not even float.
The boat crews waited for open water to the north. Since the ice continued to move south, they hoped the channel northward would be cleared before long. The weather turned pleasant. Little willows that were more like vines than trees and rose only a few inches from the ground were found in the ravines. Mosses and wildflowers, made all the more colorful against the stark backdrop, were now to be seen everywhere.
A number of attempts were made during the next week to get farther north, but they were unable to force the boats through the pack. Stricken by sudden snow squalls carried by a stiff northerly breeze, the crews remained hunkered down for days.
When the ice in the channel began to thicken and it became apparent that nothing could be done with the boats, Tyson proposed to organize a pedestrian exploring party. His plan was to forge ahead—alone or with one or two companions—and divide the remainder of the company into two-man teams that would follow as far north as the lay of the land permitted. Tyson remembered, when he had gone musk-oxen hunting the previous month, standing at the highest latitude they had reached and observing land rolling away to the north as far as he could see. It gave him great hope of a landward route to the Pole. Each party would leave caches of food at marked intervals so that they would have something to eat on their return. They would also take their guns with them to assist in procuring food. Tyson believed they might be able to walk, during the Arctic summer when game of various kinds was abundant, all the way to the North Pole. But he could get none of the men interested in his plan. They either opposed walking hundreds of miles or, inexperienced in Arctic geography, feared getting lost.
The boat crews continued to wait for the channel to clear. Two men returned to Polaris for provisions, taking with them Bessels, still suffering from snow blindness. His desire to return to the ship had been voiced nonstop since their arrival.
Before Bessels left, he again counseled Tyson not to be discouraged. “We must persevere,” Bessels said in a most serious tone.
Tyson looked at the little doctor who had been so useless on every journey he had undertaken in the Arctic. His large eyes, reddened and swollen, stuck out like a lobster’s. We must persevere? Tyson couldn’t help himself; he fairly roared with laughter. The doctor, not knowing the source of Tyson’s amusement, dropped his eyes. Tyson followed his gaze downward only to find the doctor’s two large feet—out of proportion to the rest of his undersized body—encased in Eskimo moccasins that made his feet look even larger.
Tyson could not control himself. He continued his outburst—the best laugh he’d had since leaving home—as he waved weakly to the doctor, who climbed into a sledge and carefully wrapped himself in blankets.
Looking up from the sledge, Bessels vowed to return as soon as his eyes improved. Tyson read it as an empty promise; the doctor, he could see, had had enough of ice exploration. In any case, his absence would be no great loss.
“Fear not, Doctor,” Tyson said as the sledge got under way. “Persevere we shall.”
Forty-eight hours later, the two men returned with a note from Buddington ordering everyone to come back to the ship immediately, and explaining that Tyson and Chester were needed to help keep the vessel afloat. The men reported that the captain had nearly detained them and blocked their return, and had relented only when they urgently requested to be allowed to round up their shipmates.
Tyson well remembered Buddington saying he intended to head south as soon as there was an opportunity even if it meant stranding men on the ice. Regrettably, he believed that the Polaris captain was capable of doing just that. They had no choice, Tyson told his crew, but to return to the ship right away. His men were in agreement, but Chester said he and his crew would remain in the hope that the ice might yet open up, although Tyson could not see them accomplishing anything in the canvas boat.
The state of the ice in the channel was now such that they were unable to proceed any direction by boat, not even back south. Tyson’s crew carried the heavy wooden launch overland for two days of fatiguing labor before finding a secure place to leave it, and walked the rest of the way to the ship—some twenty miles—arriving July 8.
Buddington swore when he saw that Chester’s crew had not followed orders. “With or without those men,” he told Tyson, “I shall start south at first opportunity.”
Tyson said nothing but resolved that he would have something to say about the matter should the captain give orders to leave any of the crew behind, although he could not be sure who, among the officers, would support him against Buddington.
Upon his return to the ship, Tyson found Polaris still leaking badly. No one had made another attempt at repairs. Determining that most of the water was coming from the forward leak where the stem was broken at the six-foot mark below the water line, Tyson proposed carrying all the ship’s stores aft so as to put the stern down. Then they could try to lay her bow on shore at high water so that they could get to the leak and fi
x it.
Buddington said there was not tide enough to raise the bow and refused to try.
Tyson next recommended that the ship stop making steam for pumping. The crew could man the ship’s four excellent hand pumps and thus conserve coal, which was rapidly disappearing. No such orders were given.
Several days passed, and everyone kept a lookout for Chester’s crew. Finally, they came walking over the plateau. All were fit, except for Chester, who had come down with scurvy and was very discouraged. They had waited until the ice cleared, he explained, and tried to sail the little canvas boat south. In the roughness of the ice, they nearly capsized, and were forced to abandon the boat to save themselves.
“All is ruined,” the first mate said darkly. “There’s no earthly reason to stay here any longer. We should go home as soon as possible.”
His voice had been among the most ardent for staying another year to try for the Pole. That Chester, after the useless and exhausting boat expeditions, now wanted to go home meant that Buddington had won, Tyson realized.
Tyson recognized they had little choice now. Coal and provisions had been wantonly wasted, the vessel was leaking, and the continued thumping on the ice was endangering the ship’s superstructure. Polaris must return home.
But he did not have to go with her. Tyson went privately to Buddington and asked to be given four tons of coal. Tyson said he would endeavor to get four men besides himself and stay another winter. Since there were enough provisions in the Observatory to supply five men for one year, he asked only for the coal from the ship’s stores, along with sledges and dogs for which Polaris, on her way home, would have no more use.
His vision was the land that he had seen rolling away endlessly to the north. “I do not like returning without ascertaining where the land leads,” Tyson said. “With some coal, provisions, two sledges and dogs, a few men and I should be able to find out.”
Buddington eyed him suspiciously. “I don’t have coal to spare.”
Tyson stared down his commander. “You have it to waste but not to spare?”
“That will be all, Tyson.”
“The best chance ever known in Arctic exploration is lost,” Tyson penned remorsefully in his journal that night. “Why? Because the wretch in command is too cowardly and too incompetent to do anything himself and determined that no one else on board should do anything either.”
Two weeks later a gale from the north arrived, blowing ice out of Polaris Bay and partially opening a clear passage. More leaks were reported aboard ship, and several feet of water were found to have accumulated in the ship’s hold. Tyson, again pointing out the diminishing fuel supply, recommended that the crew be divided into watches, with everyone taking a turn at manning the hand pumps. Chester supported the plan—to save coal that would be needed to get home, he told Buddington, who finally agreed.
Some of the men grumbled, thinking that pumping should continue to be facilitated by steam. Soon thereafter, there was a sudden increase of water in the hold. It was reliably reported that someone in the engine room had willfully opened the stop cocks and flooded her so that the power pump would have to be employed. Such was the lack of discipline and respect for authority onboard that when Buddington went down to the engine room to check on matters, he had the hatch slammed shut in his face.
Once the flood of water in the hold was gone, the ship was kept free of water with five minutes of hand pumping every hour. Aiding the effort, some of the timbers appeared to have swollen and closed the seams that had worked loose during the winter.
With their departure to the south imminent, Tyson went ashore to check on Hall’s grave and put it in order for all time. When their commander had been buried eight months earlier, the ground was frozen too hard to do much except cover the grave with stones for security.
Tyson was assisted in the task by Chester and several crewmen. The men worked silently at shoveling soil, shaping the mound, securing the wooden headstone and cutting in it the simple epitaph that had been written on the plank in pencil previously:
TO THE MEMORY OF C. F. HALL,
LATE COMMANDER OF THE NORTH POLAR EXPEDITION.
DIED NOV. 8, 1871
AGED 50 YEARS.
When they finished, they stood and looked at their leader’s grave one last time. It still looked lonely and dreary, but not as forgotten and neglected as it had.
From the journal of George Tyson:
Aug. 1. Still in Polaris Bay. What opportunities have been lost! and the expedition is to be carried back only to report a few geographical discoveries, and a few additional scientific facts. With patience we might have worked up beyond Newman Bay, and there is no telling how much farther. Some one will some day reach the Pole, and I envy not those who have prevented Polaris from having that chance.
Several of the men went back to Newman Bay to try to recover some valuable scientific instruments and other items that had been left behind. Bringing back all they could find, they reported the channel beyond the bay was still full of ice. In all, three boats had been lost on the ill-conceived boat explorations, leaving Polaris with but two launches—each built for no more than eight passengers—in the event of trouble at sea.
On August 12, Merkut Hendrik, Hans’ wife, delivered a healthy baby boy that was named Charlie Polaris by acclamation of the crew, in honor of both their fallen leader and the ship on which they sailed. The birth came as a surprise to many in the crew, who had not realized the stout Eskimo woman was pregnant beneath all the loose fur clothing she regularly wore.
As centuries-old tradition dictated, Merkut had attended to the delivery herself, left alone to live or die in childbirth. Once recovered, she had severed the umbilical cord with her teeth. By custom, the clothes she had worn during the birth were never to be worn again, and were burned on the ice by her husband.
As if ordained by a master planner, within hours of the birth the ice magically opened, leaving a clear passage through the water to the south.
Reborn as a seagoing vessel, Polaris weighed anchor and steamed from the bay that had provided a safe anchorage for the past year and upon whose shores her commander had found his final resting place.
Turning her stern toward the Pole, she headed south, not for the safety of home, but toward impending disaster.
III
Ice Hell
11
Adrift in a Nightmare
As Polaris steamed southward through Kennedy Channel en route to Cape Frazier and the open sea of Smith Sound, she came in contact with shifting floes and chunks of ice broken off from massive bergs. Bumping, crushing, and grinding noises were heard throughout the ship—ominous sounds to even the most experienced sailors.
Tyson had the watch on the evening of August 14—her second day under way. He was keeping Polaris on course down the middle of the channel. He hoped that by early morning she would be out of the narrow, icy channel and into less dangerous waters on her homeward trek.
At nine o’clock, Buddington came topside to take the helm. He had obviously been drinking. With the ship’s supply of liquor long gone, he had been rummaging about everywhere, including the personal belongings of the crew, looking for anything to drink. To Joe’s dismay, the captain had even gotten into the camphor-based medicine that Hannah rubbed on the Eskimo’s back to relieve muscular pain.
For an hour the ship reeled under Buddington’s erratic orders, turning this way and that—virtually every point on the compass. Exhausted at last, he went below, leaving the ship a hundred yards off a floe she had passed an hour earlier. In the process a propeller blade had been badly bent, one of their small boats had nearly been wrecked when Buddington sent it out to check ice conditions, and they had burned five tons of coal.
Tyson put her back on course and remained on deck until relieved by another officer. By morning they had cleared the mouth of the channel and were moving into waters less concentrated with ice. They steamed southward at five knots, angling slightly toward the west shore be
cause the center was choked with ice.
Tyson finally went below to get some rest. When he awoke several hours later, he stepped on deck as a brilliant, red-sky dawn was breaking over the horizon. He was astounded to see the ship stuck in ice in the middle of the sound.
During the night Buddington had returned to the helm drunk, Tyson learned, and allowed the ship to fall off course again. Before she could get headed right and regain her lost momentum, the ice had closed in, locking her in its powerful grip.
A thick fog rolling down from the north soon engulfed the ship.
Buddington stood there, arms akimbo, smiling blandly at Tyson before staggering below as if to be sick.
We’ve reaped the fruits of drunkenness and incompetence, Tyson thought bitterly.
Bessels came on deck, passing Buddington as he lurched down a ladder. Horrified, the doctor ran from one railing to the other. “We are stuck in ice! He is drunk again! Where does the fool get liquor?” Bessels followed after Buddington.
At the helm, Tyson was told by the exasperated chief engineer Emil Schuman that he would no longer make steam for the captain unless advised to do so by Tyson.
“Mr. Schuman, let’s try to get out of here,” Tyson said.
Fatal North Page 13