The Last Viking

by Stephen Bown

  Despite the understanding that a Northwest Passage no longer had any significant commercial viability, the British Royal Navy in the nineteenth century engaged in a concerted, politically motivated and organized assault on its discovery. The numbers of men and ships involved in the quest, and the money that was spent, were enormous. Even so, these expeditions were not entirely successful in mapping the Arctic Archipelago. By Amundsen’s day, the location of a possible route through it from east to west could be more or less assumed, by linking the regions mapped by various expeditions, but none had ever put this geographical knowledge to the test by sailing through the Northwest Passage.

  It was Amundsen’s goal to put a period to this epic story of delusion and greed, to end it with the successful navigation of the treacherous waterways of the archipelago. His would be a symbolic victory rather than a practical one, but it would certainly fall within the mythology of the romantic quest that had characterized interest in the fabled waterway: a small ship of fearless adventurers, braving the unknown in a region that was a proven killer, returning with an uplifting moral victory—the conquest of an opponent with a first-rate pedigree of prior challengers. Surely such a feat would secure Amundsen’s fame and launch his career.

  Once free of land—and creditors—Amundsen steered the Gjøa across the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to Greenland. He was following a course with the best historical foundation. A sense of belonging to something larger and more powerful accompanied the seven mariners as their heavily laden ship sailed west, with dogs frisking about on deck. The dogs were more than useful; they were a great source of entertainment and amusement throughout the voyage. When the seas were rough and the Gjøa rolled (“and she can roll”), the beasts wandered about the ship trying to keep their balance and studying the faces of the men. Their ration was slim: a few pints of water and a dried cod daily, but still it must have been a chore to clean up after them on the crowded deck of the ship. Hungry and bored, they sneaked around looking for scraps to steal. Their relationships and hierarchy were well established before Amundsen had inherited them from Sverdrup—as was their propensity to quarrel, especially the “ladies—Kari and Silla. . . . Kari was the elder and exacted absolute obedience, which Silla, who was also a grown-up lady, found it difficult to put up with, so it often happened that they tore at each other’s hair.” The alpha male, Ola, tried to defuse the battles. “It was a rare sight to see old Ola, intelligent to an exceptional degree, jumping about with the other two, one on either side, trying to prevent them from fighting.”

  While the dogs fought as the Gjøa neared Greenland, the people worked harmoniously—an arrangement that would be reversed a year later. “Our daily routine was soon working smoothly,” Amundsen reported, “and everyone gave the impression of being eminently fitted for his post. We constituted a little republic on board the Gjøa. We had no strict laws. I know myself how irksome this strict discipline is. Good work can be done without fear of the law. . . . My comrades also seemed to value it, and the voyage of the Gjøa was far more like a holiday trip of comrades than the prelude to a serious struggle lasting years.” But it was still early in the voyage. Although Amundsen happily wrote of a republic where all shared the work equally and “were all captains and all crew,” he himself was the first among equals; none were truly familiar with him, truly equal or truly friends. He did not need to order them about; he had selected well-qualified men, and they all knew their business. Of course, this did not preclude interpersonal conflict.

  On July 25, 1903, the ship sailed into a small bay on the west coast of Greenland that was “beautifully situated with the lofty and mighty Disco [Disko Island] to the north and the sea to the south and west, from time to time filled with heavy icebergs.” It was the site of the town Godhavn, population 108. The crew loaded additional supplies that Amundsen had ordered through Danish suppliers in Copenhagen, including petroleum, sledges, kayaks, skis and ten new sled dogs. Within a week the Gjøa was heading west into open water again, “vying with sea-gulls in dancing on the crests of the billows.” The ship was riding low in the water, but the men were exultant and feeling free. “Surely the Arctic Seas have seldom seen such a spectacle as we presented,” Amundsen recalled. The Gjøa was a single-masted sailing ship with a mainsail and a couple of jibs. The most unusual aspect of the ship, other than the yelping dogs, was its motor. “We had a good auxiliary motor, though in those days gasoline engines were still so uncertain that we had been gravely criticised for risking the dangers of explosion and fire when I had the motor installed.” The Gjøa had a shallow draft, and the emergency engine was reserved to get it free from ice. Even the deck of the tiny ship was stowed with cargo, so that it “looked like a moving-van afloat” as it continued north along the Greenlandic coast.

  For two weeks the Gjøa lumbered across the choppy waters of Melville Bay through fog, pushing its way into ever more remote and ice-infested waters, as the crew tested the engines and reorganized equipment for the ordeal ahead. The peace on board was ruined when the dogs became sick. Their mental state provided the first clue that something was wrong. “They went about in a stupid state,” Amundsen wrote. “They never saw nor heard and had little relish for their food.” Soon their rear legs became paralyzed, and many of them could only drag themselves across the deck in bewilderment as convulsions wracked their bodies. Two dogs became so debilitated that “we were glad to end their lives with a bullet.” One they had to put down was the matriarch, Kari. The crew found the sickness and deaths to be disturbing, but Amundsen, always intrigued by canine psychology, observed that Silla, the quarrelsome underling who fought to escape the earlier browbeating of her companion, took this with “great satisfaction” and now “remained cock of the walk.”

  Amundsen’s running commentary on the dogs provides a light-hearted counter-story to the expedition and in many ways mirrors the spirit of the expedition. Amundsen seemed to express his views on the crew through his details about the behaviour of the dogs. “Our surviving dogs meanwhile began to be manifestly bored,” he wrote in good humour. “In the beginning they could study wind and weather and thus kill time; but now meteorological variations failed to interest them, and their thoughts sought new fields. Idleness is the root of all evil, it is said, and this applies just as well to beasts as to men.” He then detailed the curious jockeying for position in the hierarchy and the subtle methods the dogs used to annoy, intimidate or frustrate each other.

  One dog in particular, named Lurven, was “the most mischievous dog I ever knew. I can see him now with his head on one side, his little eyes blinking and tail cocked sideways, gliding along the deck meditating some new prank.” Lurven learned to confine his pestering of the other dogs to occasions when no one could or was around to observe. “If, for instance, we were busy with the sails,” Amundsen recalled, “we might be quite sure of a fight.” When hunters brought in seals or other game and there was surplus meat, the dogs “stuffed themselves as tight as drums” and rolled in the viscera until they were “smeared all over with fat and blood.” Amundsen took great pleasure in detailing all the dogs’ numerous fights, particularly how often Silla “would jump round the combatants making the most deafening noise and, by way of variety, snapping at their legs.”

  The most dangerous stretch of the first season’s journey was the crossing of Melville Bay on the way north. Following the navigational advice of whaling captains, the Gjøa worked through increasingly ice-choked waters, swerving around great frozen masses, blindly pushing through the fog, “ice’s faithful attendant,” and occasionally viewing jagged mountainous crags. When the crew spied the first enormous icebergs, they were amazed. Amundsen called them “solitary majestic masses.” The ice surrounding the ship made working on deck unpleasant because of the cold. “Perhaps as an Arctic traveller, I ought not to admit this,” Amundsen wrote, “but anyhow, I did feel perishing with cold. The fog settled down and drenched everything it came in contact with; it was sheer misery in the e
arly morning.”

  The men hunted and fished whenever possible, bringing in many seals. Lindstrøm the cook “thought seal liver one of the greatest delicacies in existence, and he treated us to it morning and night. It must be noted, it does not taste badly at all.” Though a bit of a tippler, Lindstrøm was an industrious man who took his job seriously; his pride was in preparing excellent and varied fare for the men. He frequently bragged “of his culinary exploits as chef” while regaling the others with mouth-watering tales of his bear sausages and steaks. Earlier, at Godhavn, Lindstrøm had traded some of the expedition’s mouldy spice cakes for fresh salmon and birds. But in contrast to Lindstrøm’s universally appreciated concoctions, the men also had to eat less-appreciated staples. When Amundsen noticed the ship’s bread was getting soft, he ordered all the mouldy bread to be brought from the hold and aired it on the deck, cutting off the ruined portions and saving the rest for later.

  On August 13, after nearly two weeks of enduring drifting ice and heavy winds, the crew spied land: “A gleam of light broke through the fog, and, as if by enchantment, there opened up before me a wide view out into the bright daylight; right in front of us, and seemingly quite near, the wild, rugged landscape of Cape York appeared suddenly like a scene from fairyland.” Amundsen ordered the ship to set sail for Dalrymple Rock, where he planned to pick up supplies that he had arranged to be deposited by Scottish whaling ships earlier in the season. Dalrymple Rock was an imposing conical islet of dark stone that jutted from the sea. It was a common meeting spot, a well-known feature for ships to use as a launching spot for crossing the northern part of Baffin Bay and an easily recognizable landmark for those seeking to orient themselves after having made the crossing back east to Greenland. Used by European whaling ships and by bands of Inuit cruising the coast of Greenland, the famous rock was also near the place where the Inuit gathered large quantities of eggs each year, Eider Duck Island.

  As the Gjøa approached Dalrymple Rock, the crew were startled by the sound of gunshots. Then, from an iceberg, two kayaks quickly set a course for the ship. As they approached, “We were very anxious to make the acquaintance of the North Greenland Eskimo, of whom many strange things are reported,” Amundsen wrote. “They were extremely lively, jabbered both together, threw their arms about and gesticulated. There was evidently something particular they wanted to tell us, but we, of course, could not understand a syllable.” Finally Amundsen deduced that they wanted to know about other Norwegians. There was more gunfire, and six more kayaks cruised from the iceberg, two flying a flag, one Danish and the other Norwegian. Improbably, these kayakers were Mylius Erichsen and Knud Rasmussen of the Danish Greenland Literary Expedition, which was then recording the customs of the Inuit before they were altered by trade and outside customs and lost to history. The two groups enjoyed a harmonious and celebratory meeting of “joyous confusion” while the Gjøa’s crew loaded the contents of the supply cache onboard. The dogs were let ashore to run, and “the old Fram dogs and the new ones from Godhavn seized the opportunity to settle all the quarrels they had nursed on board, in a battle royal. Many of them bore dreadful marks of the battle.”

  When the work was done and they said their farewells, Amundsen set a course west across Baffin Bay to Beechey Island and Lancaster Sound, at the eastern edge of the Arctic Archipelago, on the Canadian side. Here the small ship stopped to conduct some magnetic measurements in order to gain an indication of the position of the magnetic North Pole, which they estimated to be roughly located on the western edge of Boothia Felix, near where James Clark Ross had positioned it decades earlier. They were now at the entrance to the Northwest Passage. There are in fact many possible northwest passages, any number of routes through the myriad channels and islands of Canada’s north, but the one that seemed most promising in Amundsen’s time, and remains so today, was a generally southerly route following Lancaster Sound west, past several other dead-end options, into Parry Channel until the west coast of Somerset Island, and then south down Peel Sound and Franklin Strait, turning slightly east along James Ross Strait into Rae Strait, rounding the southern coast of King William Island, before heading west again through Queen Maud Gulf, Dease Strait, Coronation Gulf and Dolphin and Union Strait before exiting into what is now known as Amundsen Gulf. As this account indicates, it is not an obvious or simple route, even when one has an accurate map to follow. One false turn could lead to the destruction of a ship and probable death, there being no one around to launch a rescue.

  After days of sailing west into the barren, ice-ravaged terrain of the Northwest Passage, Amundsen steered the Gjøa into Erebus Bay on Beechey Island, a small island in Parry Channel that was the final known winter stopping point for Sir John Franklin’s ships Erebus and Terror in 1845. It was also the place where several men from the doomed expedition were buried. The Gjøa’s crew had no reason to stop in this desolate spot, other than to have a quick rest and to appreciate the history of the site. Amundsen stayed up late into the brief night, sitting on the deck of the ship, imagining the British mariners coming ashore in their boats and setting up camp, already suffering from scurvy, and perhaps lead poisoning, and eventually succumbing to “darkness and death.” He squinted, and the scene came alive for him: “The dark outlines of crosses marking graves inland are silent witnesses before my eyes as I sit here. . . . Franklin and all his men laid down their lives in the fight for the North West Passage. Let us raise a monument to them, more enduring than stone: the recognition that they were the first discoverers of the Passage.” He and his men silently re-erected a fallen gravestone, noting that “the heaviness and sadness of death hung over Beechey Island.”

  After their brief stay and some time spent in meteorological observations and measurements, the Gjøa pushed west and then south, heading toward waters where “no keel had ever ploughed.” As they silently sailed though Peel Sound and Franklin Strait, wending their way through the islands, the water remained calm, and storms did not materialize. Day after day the weather remained remarkably clear and the sailing was easy, although the distinction between days was somewhat academic under the midnight sun. Soon they reached the small cluster of the De La Roquette Islands. “Are we really going to get through so easily?” Amundsen wondered near the end of August.

  Then the pleasant weather disappeared, to be replaced by storms and fog. A few days later, on August 31, the Gjøa was hit by the first element of a disastrous troika: it ran aground in the darkness of the short polar night. Godfred Hansen, the Danish naval commander, was at the wheel. Many of the men later believed that he was incompetent and therefore the cause of the accident. A couple of Amundsen’s men disliked him and called him a fool and a “mommy’s boy” behind his back, and claimed he was a cowardly sailor in poor weather. But officially there were no real disagreements between the men, only grumbling. Amundsen called Hansen “cool and collected, a splendid fellow.”

  Later that night, when most of the men were asleep, a fire broke out in the engine room. A terrifying shriek for help roused the others and they instantly dashed below decks. Years later, during one of his lectures about the voyage, Amundsen chuckled about the incident and blithely noted that “I knew what this meant on board a small vessel carrying 7,000 gallons of petroleum, great quantities of gunpowder and explosives, and whose hull was, besides, saturated with tar.” The fire was adjacent to storage drums containing 2,200 gallons of petroleum. There was little time to contemplate the situation. “We all ran like mad for vessel and life!” Working furiously and with great risk, the crew managed after several hours to extinguish the flames with water and fire retardant. It was a near thing. An explosion would have set off the other combustibles on the ship and doomed them all. Amundsen noted that they had avoided being “blown to atoms like an exploded bomb.”

  The following day the ship ran aground again, this time on submerged rocks near Matty Island, and more seriously. A storm blew in, and large waves buffeted the ship for two days while the men laboured t
o get it off the rocks. Furious winds “blew with unabated violence” against the rock-bound vessel while the waves tilted it, threatening to swamp it and then grind it apart. “The spray was dashing over the ship, and the wind came in gusts, howling through the rigging, but we struggled and toiled and got the sails set.” The vessel pitched back and forth on the rocks, and pulverized chunks of wood floated to the water’s surface as the false keel splintered. Amundsen climbed into the rigging, clinging desperately to it as the mast swung wildly about with the motion of the ship: “As a matter of fact, I cannot say I did feel calm,” he admitted. “I had to hold fast with all my strength whenever the vessel, after being lifted, pitched down on to the rocks, or I should have been flung into the sea.”

  The ship remained stuck. Amundsen climbed down the mast and ordered the small boats to be loaded with provisions. They must abandon the ship before it broke up and they drowned or, worse, became stranded on a barren Arctic island without provisions just as winter was setting in. “On me rested every responsibility,” Amundsen recalled, “and the moment came when I had to make my choice—to abandon the Gjøa, take to the boats and let her be smashed up . . . or go to meet death with all souls on board.” At the urging of Anton Lund, the captain agreed to one final effort before abandoning the stricken vessel. In desperation, the men began to pitch overboard great bales of cargo, mostly pemmican intended for the dogs, to lighten the ship. The plan worked when their efforts coincided with a larger-than-usual wave, and the Gjøa was “lifted up high and flung bodily on to the bare rocks, bump, bump, bump—with terrific force. . . . In my distress I sent up (I honestly confess it) an ardent prayer to the Almighty.” The Gjøa, battered but free, slid off the rocks and into the choppy waters.