Polar Voyages

by Gray, Gordon

  As we reach the entrance to the Inlet, the ship is ordered to stop by the Port Control and stay where we are, as a naval exercise is taking place with vessels leaving Severomorsk. We wait for about an hour or so before we are cleared to proceed. We finally come out of the Kola Inlet and reach the Barents Sea. As we head north, a westerly wind is blowing and the sea develops into a chop. The captain takes us well off to the west as we have been ordered to avoid the naval exercise areas just off Murmansk. It is not long before we are made aware of the one failing of icebreakers; they roll. As they cannot have any attachments on the outside of the hull as they do not have stabilisers or bilge keels and hence they roll a lot.

  North

  For two days we steam due north. During this time we are shown round the ship and meet our expedition leader, Dr Victor Boyarsky, a famous Russian polar expedition leader and the director of the Arctic & Antarctic Museum in St Petersburg. In 1995, he was part of an International Trans-Antarctica Expedition that crossed Antarctica using dog teams. They did so through the previously untravelled and coldest part of the continent, the ‘Pole of Inaccessibility’, as well as the Geographic South Pole. He has also taken part in many North Pole and Franz Josef Land Expeditions and runs the Russian ice station at 89 north, set up by Russia every year.

  During these two days steaming we have time to explore this fascinating ship. At the stern there is a big, open, working-deck area and right at the stern itself is a ‘V’ shaped notch, about 10 feet wide by 4 feet deep, built into the stern and well covered with heavy, flexible fendering. At the forward end of this deck is the winch room where a powerful towing winch is housed. The ship is equipped as an ocean salvage and rescue vessel so it needs a powerful towing and salvage winch, and a number of special workshops on board. It also accounts for her having so much passenger accommodation. I notice a large, black, pressure cylinder, about 4 feet long and about 2 feet in diameter mounted on the deck, firmly fastened to the deck at its forward end and with a securing eye at the other. It lies on heavy wooden shock pads. Just as I am looking at this thing and trying to work out its purpose, one of the sailors, a thin, middle-aged man, appears from the winch room wiping his hands on a rag. He sees me looking at the cylinder and stops. I point to the black cylinder, ‘Can you please tell me what that is for?’ He smiles at me but does not speak. He seems to understand what I am asking and after a moment’s thought, he kneels down on the deck, and takes out a small pencil from his dungaree pocket and begins drawing on the metal deck and explaining to me in Russian what happens. He is showing me that when they break ships out of the ice, the icebreaker backs the big V at the stern right up to the bow of the stranded ship. The ship is then secured hard and fast into the V at the stern of the icebreaker, hence the heavy wooden fenders. The securing cables are attached to the black cylinder. In the middle of his Russian I hear the English word ‘Damper’ and it all becomes clear. This cylinder is a form of giant spring designed to take up the sudden jerks and jolts that will undoubtedly occur during such an operation. I thank the sailor and we shake hands. He is delighted that I understood his explanation and I am delighted to have found the answer to my question with only one word of a common language.

  Above the winch room is the flight deck where the small red and blue helicopter is lashed. I walk forward and climb the eight decks up to the bridge. It is one of the largest bridges I have been on. It is fully enclosed from wing to wing and with deck-to-deck head windows at the ends. The ship operates an ‘open bridge’ policy on these expeditions and the rule here is that passengers can use the starboard side, the crew use the port side. The starboard side has a couple of chairs and plenty of ledges to sit on and it even has a slave radar display. Down below, the dining room stretches across the width of the ship. It is bright, decorated in warm pinks and cream colours and always set for the next meal with pristine white table clothes. The bar, one deck below, is a light, warm and cosy area with plenty of easy chairs and a small, but well-stocked, bar in the corner.

  The Islands

  We arrive off the southern end of Franz Josef Land late in the afternoon. The sea is clear of any ice and as we come on deck to look at the islands, just off to starboard, two humpback whales spout a welcome for us. The islands stretch across our path. One of them, Bell Island, is easily identified by its distinctive steep sides and a bell-shaped silhouette. The islands are all low and flat-topped as all are covered in ice caps and cloud. The sun shines brightly on the ship and, as we get closer, we can make out the cliff faces and glaciers where the ice caps flow down into the sea.

  We hope to make a landing at Cape Flora, on the south-west tip of Northbrook Island, but the heavy swell prevents this. It was here that Frederick Jackson set up a base in 1895 and where, in 1896, Nansen and Johanssen were rescued after overwintering nearly 100 miles further north. Maps of the islands did not exist then so they had no real idea exactly where they were. They were kayaking down through the islands hoping to meet a sealing ship or, if not, they planned to try and kayak to Spitzbergen, some 200 miles away across the open Arctic Ocean.

  As they paddled along the coast of Northbrook Island they were attacked by walruses that drove their tusks into the kayaks and tore them badly. The two men just managed to get to shore and then spent four days repairing the kayaks with what little gear they had. As they finished the work and were about to set off again, Nansen thought he heard a dog barking in the distance. Johanssen did not hear it but Nansen set off on skis towards the sound. Perhaps he had been mistaken but he was sure he had heard something and so he skied on. Then, he heard it again and skied further and sure enough there, beyond a mound, was a dog and beyond the dog, a man. It was Frederick Jackson of the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition, which had set up their wooden-hutted base camp at Cape Flora. The meeting was a miracle of chance. The Jackson Harmsworth expedition had left the UK long after Nansen and the Fram had been frozen into the polar seas so Nansen had no knowledge that there were any other expeditions there. It was the only one in the 191 islands at the time and had Nansen not been attacked by the walrus at that point or, had they sailed a few minutes before the dog barked they would almost certainly have perished trying to kayak to Spitzbergen. As it was, they went back to Tromso on a supply ship a few weeks later to be greeted as heroes.

  I am disappointed that we can not visit the site of this famous rescue but perhaps before we finally leave we may get another chance to try and go ashore there. We sail on, up through the wide British Channel past George Island. The next morning finds us off Hooker Island.

  Polar Bears

  As we wake up we can tell from the noises that we are now in the ice. We look out and the ship is moving slowly through the pack. Then, right by the ship, we see fresh polar bear paw tracks in the snow-covered pack ice. They are leading away from the ship, off into the snow. The ship has just crossed their track. Later that day we see the bears. They are resting on fast ice in a large bay. They are probably about a mile away from us so the ship moves slowly into the bay, breaking the ice as she goes. When we are about half a mile away we stop in the ice and we wait. Sure enough, curiosity is getting the better of the bears and they come out to see who we are. There are two of them, a mother and a cub. They walk right up to the ship looking hard at it: stopping then peering and stretching and sniffing to examine the new smells and sights that have arrived in their bay. Then they walk a few paces closer. The cub is timid, always carefully keeping its mother between itself and the ship as it peeps out from under her legs. We stand silently and excitedly on the fo’c’sle and watch them; the only sound the clicking of cameras and the sniffing and snorting of the bears. They walk right round the bows looking at both sides of the ship but not venturing further than the bow itself. After a while they become bored and wander off back to their resting spot. As we watch we can also see a number of seals lying on the ice all around the bay. The bears must have eaten recently or they would have been far more interested in the seals than in us.

>   Polar bears. A mother and cub survey the ice for seals. (Photo by kind permission of Carina Svensson of Polar Quest)

  The Ice Closes In

  A shore visit to Tichaja Station, an old Soviet polar station on Hooker Island, showed the speed at which conditions can change. As we arrive off the disused station it is calm and the water is free of ice and we all land by the Zodiacs. On a gloriously sunny afternoon we are enjoying the wild flowers and the scenery and exploring the few wooden buildings that make up the station. I stop and look out to sea and notice that the ice is now moving in towards the shore on the tide. Looking along the coast I can see that a huge area of loose pack is now on the move and coming into the bay. We call to some of the others and head back to the shore. We warn the guys running the Zodiacs that the ice will soon be onto the shore but they seem happy to stay there. Half a dozen of us get a Zodiac back to the ship as it is clear that in a few minutes the shore will be cut off from the ship by the ice. Most of the others choose to stay or they have wandered further along the shore and have not noticed the ice. Already the ice is drifting past the landing point and there is a raft of ice between it and the ship. Driving the Zodiac back is not easy and the driver has a real job to pick a route through the moving ice floes, which by now are moving thick and fast along the shore. The floes are big, about 4 to 6 feet high, so it is difficult to see the route ahead and the Zodiac driver has to stand on the side to get any view of the way through to the ship. We get back, but we were the last Zodiac to make it. After a while it becomes clear that the ice is here to stay so the remaining people ashore have to wait there while the helicopter is made ready and they are then ferried back six at a time in the helicopter. Without the helicopter they would have had a long wait.

  Loose pack ice of FJL.

  One of the sights of the Islands is Rubini Rock (Red Rock). This large, prominent rock, possibly a volcanic plug, rears straight up out of the water so it has deep water right up to its seaward sides. It is a haven for sea birds with thousands of kittiwakes, guillemots, little auks, and glaucous gulls nesting and screaming on the cliff sides. The captain takes the ship almost to within touching distance of the rock. His ship handling is impressive as the ship is in tidal waters but he keeps the bows close to the rock and just a few feet off, for over an hour. He keeps the centre screw running at slow astern and manoeuvres the ship forwards using just the two outer engines. This means that at any time he can put the outer engines to stop, and the ship will go straight back away from the rock on the centre engine alone. By doing this he is able to ‘hover’ the ship just a few feet off the rock for as long as he wants.

  Kapitan Dranitsyn in the ice near Jackson Island. (Photo by kind permission of Carina Svensson of Polar Quest)

  Doreen and myself out on the ice and dwarfed by the huge ship. (Photo by kind permission of Carina Svensson of Polar Quest)

  During the trip the ice conditions vary from clear water to heavy pack. None of it bothers the ship and we proceed as planned. The pack is made up of large flows, some with considerable ridging. The ridges are very jagged and in other places you can see where floes have ridden over one another to throw up peaks and cliffs on the ice. In many places, icebergs are trapped into the pack and drift along with it until they ground on the seabed and leave the pack to float on. All the while the land itself is ice locked. The ice caps meet the sea as sheer ice cliffs many tens of feet high and great smooth sweeps of ice take the eye across the icescape until they fall on another ice cliff edge or the broken area of crevasses where the ice twists round some deeply submerged rock many feet below. For all we can see we are looking at ice islands. In most cases there is no land or rocks to see. Everything is ice, complete islands many miles long and many hundreds of feet high made totally of ice. Watching the ice, either the pack or the land ice, becomes a totally absorbing occupation and we spend many hours just watching the ice crack, split and slide away from the bows as the ship moves relentlessly onwards.

  On the western shore of Rudolf Island, high on the black basalt cliffs, sits the remains of the Teplitz Station. This was a Russian weather station that was only closed in 1995. It looks desolate and lonely, the two or three dark buildings black against the ice clad hill behind it. Here, they were quite literally the last people on Earth as beyond Rudolf there is nothing but ice until you reach Alaska.

  Polar Ice Pack

  There is rarely a week goes by now without some TV commentator telling us that because of global warming the Polar ice caps will have all melted by next Tuesday and actually it’s all my fault for driving to the paper shop. This is usually on the basis of a photograph of a polar bear swimming in the sea and the commentator saying ‘There I told you so, the ice must have all gone!’ During this trip I asked our captain whether he had noticed the effect of global warming on the amount and extent of the ice. He said, without any hesitation, that in the fifteen years that he had worked in the Arctic Ocean, apart from the normal annual differences, he had not seen any definite changes. It is well known, and has been for centuries, that the amount of polar ice varies from year to year. In the summer of 2002 there was very little ice or snow in north-eastern Greenland. In Spitzbergen, in 2008, however, the polar ice was further south in June than anyone could remember. It is interesting too that, in September 2009, the papers and TV were carrying the story that two merchant ships had sailed through the north-east Passage and this was due to global warming melting the ice. What they did not report was that a Swede, Nils Nordenskjold, first did it in a sailing ship in 1878, or that two Royal Marines sailed and rowed through the north-west Passage the same month and reported there was twice as much ice as they had been told to expect by the weather bureaux. They had to drag their boat over the ice to get through. It is hard to know who to believe, the scientists who say that the global temperature changes are a reflection of the sunspot cycles of the sun, a well known and recorded phenomena, or the global warming disciples who believe that because we heat our houses we are guilty of melting the ice caps. As with all these things, there are merits in both sides and the truth probably lies somewhere in between.

  Cape Fligely

  On a grey, murky day we round Cape Säulen, the north-west point of Rudolf Island, which is dominated by two massive, ice-capped basalt pillars of rock rising high above the sea ice. The Russian explorer Capt Sedov vanished in this area in 1914 and a plaque on the shore commemorates him. We sail out into the Arctic Ocean and into the main pack ice. It lies across the ship’s bows and stretches as far as we can see. We are now out of the channels and, as we turn east, we are sailing along the north coast of the northernmost island. We are heading for Cape Fligely, the most northerly point of land in Europe and Asia.

  Cape Fligely on Rudolf Island. The most northerly point in Europe and Asia.

  Unfortunately, when we get there, the heavy ice means we cannot go ashore by boat and the low cloud, strong winds and constant snow showers mean we cannot go ashore by helicopter either. Doreen and I stand out on the cold, snow-swept deck and watch the Cape. It must be one of the most rarely seen and seldom visited spots on the planet. The number of people who have seen this point can probably be counted in the tens rather than hundreds. The ship moves round through the ice just off the point. We are now just 565 miles from the North Pole. From a mile offshore, the Cape itself is not the grand, high buttress of a headland you would think it should be as the last place on the planet. It is a fairly low point of land and ice that drops gently down towards the sea with only the black rock on the low cliff edges showing us that there is land there, as all as the rest is covered by thick ice. It is almost as if the land is submitting to the sea and ice and bending in submission before the Arctic wastes. The low cloud and snow flurries make the isolation even more total. To the North, the Arctic Ocean stretches away to the North Pole as a pack-ice-covered sea. The white ice merges with the grey cloud as the squalls of snow blow through. As the light plays on the pack ice it also plays tricks with your eyes. It creat
es effects that show ice-covered cliffs in the far distance. It is easy to see how the early explorers were fooled into reporting that a great continent existed to the north.

  We wait for over two hours for the weather to improve but it doesn’t. If anything it worsens, so we turn our backs on this memorable spot and head back towards the west. After the chill outside, we decide that a celebratory drink is needed to mark our furthermost north. On the way down to the bar we meet Victor Boyarsky. ‘Come’, he calls. ‘Let us celebrate our furthest north with Vodkas! Large, neat and very chilled Vodkas of course! Nostrovia!’

  Man Overboard

  We head back through the Islands the way we have come as the sea to the north and east of Franz Josef Land is too dangerous as it has never been surveyed. Later that afternoon we clear the pack ice and reach open water off Jackson Island where, if the weather allows, we hope to make a landing. It is dull and windy but otherwise fine enough for a Zodiac landing. The crew start to get the Zodiacs ready for the shore landing and we are in the cabin getting ready to go ashore when the ship’s alarm gives out six short blasts and we hear the running of feet past the door and urgent yells in Russian. From what we could understand later, the ship was stopping as we approached the landing beach. The deck crane lifted the first Zodiac from the deck and the driver was sitting safely on the ‘T’ bar that hangs from the main cable above the Zodiac itself. The Zodiac was craned over the side and was being lowered, but, as it got near the water the wind swung it round and up so one side dipped lower and was caught by the waves. Due to the speed of the ship, this flipped the Zodiac up in the air and the driver was knocked from his ‘T’ bar seat. He fell into the Arctic Ocean and was quickly left well astern of the ship.