Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival

by Les Stroud

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  Rabbit Starvation

  Protein poisoning is also known as “rabbit starvation,” and it’s actually a form of malnutrition caused by the combination of excessive consumption of lean meat (such as rabbit) with a lack of other nutritional sources. The addition of other stressors—such as being stranded on a tiny island in the middle of arctic nowhere—adds to the severity of the illness.

  Protein poisoning is characterized by a variety of symptoms, the most common being general discomfort, swollen extremities, diarrhea, headache, fatigue, low blood pressure, and low heart rate.

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  Interestingly, Stefansson would later point to the expedition’s vast stores of pemmican as the cause of the protein poisoning that afflicted so many of its members. Yet he never accepted any responsibility for the pemmican’s deficiencies. Clearly, he held a different view than did Admiral Robert Peary, who, in Secrets of Polar Travel, had this to say about pemmican: “Next to insistent, minute, personal attention to the building of his ship, the Polar explorer should give his personal, constant, and insistent attention to the making of his pemmican and should know that every batch of it packed for him is made of the proper material in the proper proportion and in accordance with his specification.”

  In my experience, the proper formula seems to be half fat and half ground or powdered dried meat, along with (if possible) some dried berries for flavor. When prepared correctly, fifty-year-old pemmican has been found to still be edible.

  On May 17, McKinlay decided to leave Icy Spit and join Mamen and the rest of his group at Rodger’s Harbor. Yet he was only about halfway to his destination when he came across Mamen in a ramshackle camp near a place called Skeleton Island. It was there that Mamen broke the devastating news to McKinlay: one of the members of his group, a man named Bob Malloch, had died the night before.

  I find it almost inconceivable that in mid-May—when the sun was shining long and bright in the sky, the weather was tolerable, and supplies of food and water were adequate (others in the party had been denying themselves to give Malloch extra) —that this man had to die. It seems that the will to live was quite low, and that there was more apathy than will. I find it surprising, with so many in the party, but it shows just how leaderless they were, and illustrates the beneficial effect a strong leader can have on a group—or, in this case, the detrimental effect of the absence of one.

  They were not helped by the fact that they had split up into various factions that kept moving from camp to camp according to their own whims. Nobody was courageous enough to take command and develop a cohesive, comprehensive plan of attack. Everything they did was reactive instead of proactive. So people started dying.

  McKinlay realized that both Mamen and his sole surviving camp mate were in very bad shape, so he decided to head back for more provisions. He arrived at Icy Spit a few days later to find that the mystery disease had spread. Many more survivors were now suffering with swollen extremities.

  By early June, a few more of the group decided to make their way toward Rodger’s Harbor; McKinlay accompanied them. While on the way, they encountered two other crew members who had ventured out some time earlier to check on the state of Mamen and his camp mate. Their news was predictably bad: Mamen had died on May 26. Although they were all upset at the loss of yet another in their party, McKinlay was the most stricken. Mamen had been the last of his scientist colleagues on the island.

  McKinlay dropped his plans to move to Rodger’s Harbor and instead worked like a dog at Munro’s command, helping the remaining crew at Icy Spit move to a location called Cape Waring, about halfway to Rodger’s Harbor. It was a monumental task. Many people were now suffering such pronounced effects of the mystery disease that they could barely walk, and the dogs were exhausted. Yet somehow, McKinlay helped get everyone moved.

  Once everyone was settled in at Cape Waring, the issue of food began to assume monumental importance. Their pemmican stores were getting extremely low, large game such as seals and polar bears were becoming scarcer as summer set in, and they were running out of ammunition. Perhaps not surprisingly, each of the various factions in the group had its own method of rationing food. The Inuit with which McKinlay shared his tent were expert rationers. They could turn one small bird into a meal for four people, while just a tent away, men would be gorging themselves on a bird each, only to be complaining of hunger a few hours later.

  By this time, the entire operation was breaking down. There were petty arguments over just about everything; it seemed that luck was the only thing keeping some of them alive. It got so bad that people started cheating on food, stealing from one another, and withholding information when a hunt had been successful. Now the lack of leadership had become a dangerous issue.

  And although everyone was certainly hoping that Bartlett would return in July or August with a rescue ship, I am amazed that nobody ever seemed to consider what they would do if he didn’t return. June, when the sun was high and the weather getting warmer, was the time for them to be thinking about winter. They should have been finding a place to spend the winter, building shelters, fortifying their camp, and collecting food. Instead, they were entrenched in trivial disputes and self-serving motives. It was like a historical episode of Survivor! Even Kuraluk, who became snowblind at one point and was not particularly happy when asked to work, seems like the old man in the neighbourhood who never grew up.

  The fact that Bartlett had put Munro in charge was the worst thing for the company. Not only was he incompetent, but he seemed to be corrupt, and used the power bestowed upon him to suit his own agenda. At one point, McKinlay learned that Munro and another crew member had killed ten birds and eaten them all without sharing with anyone else. Munro even went as far as to order Hadley, who proved to be a dogged hunter during their time on the island, to hand over some of his ammunition. There was a huge uproar, but eventually Hadley acquiesced, since Munro was in charge. When all was said and done, Munro had 170 rounds left for himself and two other men camped at Rodger’s Harbor, while there were 146 rounds for the ten people at Cape Waring.

  I also fault McKinlay and the others for not standing up to Munro. I realize there is a strict line of authority in the naval world, but there comes a point when someone has to stand up for what’s right. Munro’s authority should have been challenged. When it’s a life-and-death struggle, I don’t care who the captain put in charge. Munro was not fit for the job. The problem was that nobody else seemed up to the task, either.

  Yet they somehow managed to keep themselves alive. There were thousands of cliff-dwelling birds at Cape Waring, which provided enough meat and eggs to keep the crew alive, though just barely. There were still terribly disparities between the amount of food being eaten in the various tents. By late June, McKinlay and the Inuit, who continued to ration stingily, had enough food to last them five more days. The others had consumed their last bits of pemmican, seal, and birds, and were either hoping for a miracle or had more insidious plans.

  The next few hunting forays saw the residents of one tent keep all the spoils for themselves, while McKinlay and his mates relied on the stores they had been so carefully rationing. Yet the apparently short-lived bounty did not help bolster spirits much. On the morning of June 25, the camp was awakened by the sound of a shot, followed by shouts. Apparently, Breddy, a member of the other Cape Waring tent, had shot himself dead.

  It wasn’t long after Breddy’s death that the primary thought around camp again turned to food. Each tent had now completely exhausted its supplies, and hunting was the only available option. Fortunately, Kuraluk continued to have sporadic luck hunting seals, but even three seals seemed meager when divided among the seven men, one woman, two children, and three dogs still calling Cape Waring home.

  In what was likely one of the few strokes of brilliance the survivors had, someone realized they could make a kayak to help get them closer to the seals. Of course, they relied on Kuraluk to design and build the craft. He u
sed an ax head to fashion the sides and ribs of the frame from two large driftwood logs. Two weeks later, Auntie sewed a series of seal skins together over the completed frame. On July 19, the kayak was launched for the first time.

  In the meantime, Hadley and Kuraluk continued to hunt. They were occasionally successful, but not nearly as successful as you might think. In July, Kuraluk fired at eleven seals, killing six and missing five. That same month, Hadley fired at ten seals, killing four and missing six. And as McKinlay so rightly points out, those figures don’t account for seals that were stalked but escaped before the hunters could squeeze off a shot.

  Hunting is certainly a viable way to get food in a survival situation, but its success rates tend to be vastly overrated. People are always amazed at how unlucky I am when it comes to hunting during my survival experiences. The reality of the situation, though, is that even in the best circumstances, hunters often come up empty-handed. And if someone is trying to do it while exhausted, on the brink of starvation, perhaps injured, lacking a gun (or having one unsuited to the prey) —and, in my case, running my own cameras—it is easy to see how difficult it is and how lucky one needs to be.

  But Kuraluk was an expert hunter, had a good gun on hand, and was a member of a race that had been hunting those waters for millennia. At the end of July, he killed three huge bearded seals on consecutive days, providing a feast the likes of which the survivors had not seen since their days on the Karluk. McKinlay also added to the camp’s food supply by discovering a small edible plant that was plentiful near running water.

  Perhaps bolstered by this newfound bounty, the survivors finally began to consider the possibility of wintering on the island. They selected a site for a hut and began drying meat for the long, cold, dark days that lay ahead. Finally!

  But, while McKinlay and the Inuit continued to ration wisely, the men in the other tent did not. So, by the third week in August, the others were asking for a handout. Grudgingly, McKinlay’s tent agreed, but only in fixed and limited amounts, and only in exchange for some precious tea.

  The rations had to last a long while, as hunting would prove unsuccessful for the next four weeks. Again, however, when all hope seemed lost, it was Kuraluk who provided for the group. He realized that, although their waning ammunition was too precious to waste on the sea birds that swam in the waters off the cape, it might be possible to catch them with a net that had lain long ignored under a snowbank. The technique proved to be wildly successful, and I am utterly flabbergasted that it took them so long to remember they had this very valuable tool on hand. It’s a wonder anyone other than the Inuit survived.

  On September 6, the Inuit woman helped the food situation immensely by catching fish through a crack in the nearby sea ice. The pile of fish was beginning to build on the seventh, when the camp was shocked by a scream from Kuraluk: “Umiakpik kunno!”—Maybe a ship! Some three miles offshore, a small schooner was steaming to the northwest. Nobody could tell if it was a relief ship or a walrus hunter on the prowl for prey, but their hopes were dashed when the ship hoisted its sails. It was sailing off!

  The survivors didn’t wait for another signal. They knew this might be their only chance at rescue. Those on shore started screaming and waving for all they were worth. Hadley used up most of his ammunition firing his revolver into the sky, and Kuraluk went racing over the ice in hopes of heading the ship off. Then McKinlay and the others saw what they thought must be an illusion. The ship lowered its sails, and a party of men disembarked and began walking across the ice toward camp.

  Though salvation had come at last, the survivors could still only think of one thing: food. They immediately turned to their store of fish. When the rescuers arrived in camp, the survivors were just putting on pots for a meal of fish and tea, their last on Wrangel Island.

  Like many of those who suffer through a survival ordeal, McKinlay found it surprisingly difficult to bid farewell to the camp and the precious items that had kept them alive those many months. Dr. Francis Bourbeau, a survival expert and good friend of mine, once spent thirty days surviving in the boreal forest of Quebec. Once he was safe and sound in the plane at the end of the ordeal, even though he knew he was on his way home, he insisted that the pilot give him matches—just in case. I too always find myself reluctant to give up my survival supplies until I am actually back in civilization—again, just in case.

  As McKinlay had suspected, the ship—the King and Winge—was a walrus hunter whose captain had promised to look for the lost party if it ventured near Wrangel Island. It had first arrived at Rodger’s Harbor and picked up Munro and two others, who directed it to Cape Waring.

  At 11:30 a.m. on September 8, 1914, the survivors stood on the deck of the King and Winge and spotted a steamship, the Bear, approaching from the distance. As the two ships pulled alongside one another, Captain Bartlett could be seen standing on deck. After a seven-hundred-mile sledge journey through Alaska and into Siberia, Bartlett had gotten through after all.

  As for Stefansson, he continued his explorations over the Arctic Ocean and Beaufort Sea, living largely by shooting game. He continued exploring until 1918.

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  The Karluk

  ELEMENTS OF SURVIVAL

  Knowledge 10%

  Luck 30%

  Kit 30%

  Will to Live 30%

  A little bit of everything, partly the result of the diverse parties involved. Their collective knowledge was surprisingly poor, as most crew members and scientific staff were there for one specific purpose. Add the Inuit, and the knowledge rating goes through the roof! Luck did not play too heavily into their survival, although bad luck certainly got in the way of Stefansson’s return to the ship after his fateful hunting expedition. Although their kit was relatively poor (the product of Stefansson’s disorganization), they still had a fair bit of food and supplies. Will to live was neither inspirational nor pathetic, and seemed largely reactive to circumstances as opposed to being focused and driven.

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  Chapter 12 - Bottom of the World

  HE WAS THE POLAR WORLD’S MAN OF STEEL, A FIELD-HARDENED EXPLORER WHOSE ANTARCTIC EXPLOITS EARNED HIM WORLDWIDE RENOWN FOR HIS ENDURANCE, TOUGHNESS, AND LEADERSHIP ABILITIES. AND YET, THE NAME DOUGLAS MAWSON IS RECOGNIZED BY RELATIVELY FEW PEOPLE THESE DAYS. IT’S A SHAME, REALLY, FOR THE WAY MAWSON MANAGED TO SURVIVE IN THE FACE OF DIRE CIRCUMSTANCES FOR THREE HELLISH ANTARCTIC MONTHS IN 1912 IS ONE OF THE GREATEST SURVIVAL STORIES EVER TOLD AND A TESTIMONY TO THE ENDURING WILL TO LIVE.

  An Australian geologist and dedicated scientist, Douglas Mawson first proved his mettle in the world’s harshest climate as a member of Ernest Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition in search of the South Pole between 1907 and 1909. A few years later, Mawson set out on an expedition of his own. The Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911–14 had a wide range of scientific and exploratory goals, the most significant of which was to chart two thousand miles of previously unvisited Antarctic coastline directly south of Australia.

  As these things often go, Mawson’s expedition encountered troubles almost from its start on December 2, 1911. The first goal of the expedition was to drop a party of men and establish a base at Macquarie Island, a windswept spot more than six hundred miles south of New Zealand. Mawson’s team did this without incident in mid-December.

  From Macquarie Island, Mawson planned to continue to a point on the Antarctic mainland called Cape Adare, more than two thousand miles south of Australia. There he would establish the first of several bases, from which he and his men would begin their westward exploration of the coastline. Yet, as their ship, the Aurora, drew closer to the Antarctic mainland in early January, it became apparent that the countless icebergs that peppered the water would prevent them from making land safely.

  Day after day, the boat was driven westward, searching for a way through the maze of ice to shore. It was not until the Aurora was eight hundred miles west of Cape Adare that she finally found a suitable landing spot: a broad, ro
cky sweep of beach that Mawson named Commonwealth Bay. It was January 8, 1912.

  It was a less-than-ideal location: there were a few flat stretches of land where the crew could build its huts, and everything else was encased in a tomb of ice like none Mawson had ever seen before in the Antarctic. But with the brief summer passing swiftly and no other options, Mawson decided it would have to suffice. He named the place Cape Denison.

  That Mawson was forced to alter his original plans is a common theme among those who find themselves thrust into survival situations. He knew that the safest and most logical place to begin his expedition was Cape Adare, but the ice conspired against him and he was forced to Cape Denison. Situations such as this, where you are not able to stick to your well-conceived plans, often contribute to the downfall of otherwise well-organized expeditions and turn them into tests of endurance and survival.

  In Mawson’s case, Cape Denison itself did not create his survival situation, but it certainly didn’t make exploring the surrounding coastline any easier. The area proved to be numbingly windy and brutally cold, even by Antarctic standards. As January faded into February, the incessant gales became so strong that anything not tied down was lost. The average wind speed for the year they spent at Cape Denison was fifty miles per hour, but regularly gusted to well over one hundred and sometimes even topped out at two hundred.

  For the most part, life at the camp was busy. Mawson and his men undertook scientific investigations in a number of areas, including geology, cartography, meteorology, aurora, geomagnetism, and biology. Yet as fall rolled into the long, dark, cold days of winter, life sometimes proved boring and tedious for the men. But Mawson’s sense of preparation was unparalleled, and he used his downtime wisely. He established rigid training regimens in preparation for the arduous sled journeys he and his men would undertake once spring finally arrived. It’s something Captain Bartlett might have done with the crew of the Karluk to prepare for the ship being crushed in the ice.