To the Ends of the Earth
Page 33
6. Wamsley, Polar Hayes, p. 351. Wamsley notes that little is known about Hayes's tutelage under Church. Most likely the explorer would have studied with him after Church's return to New York from South America in 1857. The two met probably met when Hayes was lecturing about the Arctic and raising funds to return there. Church had a keen interest in painting the polar world. They became good friends, subsequently occupying studios in the same Greenwich Village location, the Tenth Street Studio Building.
7. Hayes, Arctic Boat Journey, p. 97.
8. Ibid., pp. 110, 147, 286.
9. Hayes, Open Polar Sea, p. 24.
10. Hayes, Open Polar Sea, p. 25.
11. Loomis, prologue to Weird and Tragic Shores, p. 3.
12. Barry Lopez, introduction to Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986), p. xxviii.
13. Quoted in Francis Spufford, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), p. 93.
14. Hayes, Arctic Boat Journey, p. 331.
15. See Beau Riffenburgh, The Myth of the Explorer: The Press, Sensationalism, and Geographical Discovery (London: Belhaven, 1993), pp. 5–6.
16. Lopez, Arctic Dreams, p. 12.
17. Quoted in Spufford, I May Be Some Time, p. 6.
18. In the eight years prior to departure of the Jeannette, thirty-three whaling ships, carrying a total of over six hundred men, had vanished in the ice guarding the Bering Strait. Leonard F. Guttridge, Icebound: The Jeannette Expedition's Quest for the North Pole (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986), p. 161.
19. Lopez, Arctic Dreams, pp. 217–8.
20. Jean-Baptiste Charcot, The Voyage of the “Why Not?” in the Antarctic, trans. Philip Walsh (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911), p. 63.
21. Anthony Fiala, Fighting the Polar Ice (New York: Doubleday, 1906), pp. 63, 4, 6, 25, 28, 82, 86. Fiala noted, “The spirit of the Age will never be satisfied until the command given to Adam in the beginning—the command to subdue the earth—has been obeyed, and the ends of the earth have revealed their secrets to the eye of man.”
22. Jeannette Mirsky, To the Arctic! The Story of Arctic Exploration from Earliest Times to the Present (New York: Viking, 1934), p. 7.
23. Elisha Kent Kane, Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, ’54, ’55 (Bedford, MA: Applewood, 1856), pp. 347, 385.
24. Hayes, Open Polar Sea, p. 301.
25. George W. De Long, The Voyage of the Jeannette: The Ship and Ice Journals of George W. De Long, ed. Emma De Long, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883), p. 484.
26. Hampton Sides, In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette (New York: Random House, 2014), p. 177.
27. Elisha Kent Kane, Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack: From the History of the First US Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin (New York: Outing, 1915), pp. 202–203.
28. Hayes, Open Polar Sea, p. 223.
29. George Back, Narrative of an Expedition in HMS Terror, Undertaken with a View to Geographical Discovery of the Arctic Shores in the Years 1836–7 (London: John Murray, 1838), pp. 94–95.
30. Elisha Kent Kane, The United States Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin: A Personal Narrative (New York: Sheldon, Blakeman, 1857), p. 379.
31. Kane, Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack, p. 330.
32. Isaac I. Hayes, “Twice Alone: A Tale of the Labrador,” Century Magazine (November 1870): 82, https://ia601008.us.archive.org/7/items/TwiceAloneATaleOfTheLabrador/Twice%20Alone-A%20Tale%20of%20The%20Labrador.pdf (accessed May 28, 2015).
33. Quoted in Iain McCalman, Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution (New York: Simon and Schuster), p. 134.
34. Jacob Wassermann, Bula Matari: Stanley, Conqueror of a Continent, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: Liveright, 1933), p. 134.
35. Mirsky, To the Arctic! p. 9.
36. For a discussion of this medieval revival, see Robert Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). See also Diana Preston, A First Rate Tragedy: Captain Scott's Antarctic Expeditions (London: Constable, 1997), p. 39.
37. Quoted in Wilfrid Noyce, The Springs of Adventure (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1958), p. 87.
38. “He seemed to keep a mental finger on each man's pulse…. At all times he inspired men with a feeling, often illogical, that, even if things got worse, he could devise some means of easing their hardships” (Frank A. Worsley, Shackleton's Boat Journey [New York: Norton, 1977], p. 170).
39. Quoted in Roland Huntford, Shackleton (New York: Atheneum, 1986), p. 559.
40. Ernest Shackleton, South! The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914–1917 (London: Heinemann, 1970), p. 179.
41. Ibid., p. 174.
42. Worsley, Shackleton's Boat Journey, pp. 187–88.
43. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, introduction to The Worst Journey in the World (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1989), p. vii.
44. George Seaver, foreword to Worst Journey in the World, by Cherry-Garrard, p. lxxxiii.
45. Robert Scott, quoted in Cherry-Garrard, Worst Journey in the World, p. 132.
46. Cherry-Garrard, Worst Journey in the World, pp. 62, 231, 242.
47. Ibid., pp. 254, 267, 281, 252.
48. Ibid., p. 597.
49. Robert F. Scott, Scott's Last Expedition: The Personal Journals of Captain R. F. Scott, RN, CVO, on His Journey to the South Pole (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1923), pp. 395, 414, 424.
50. Cherry-Garrard, Worst Journey in the World, p. 525.
51. Biographer Roland Huntford claimed that Scott impregnated a young woman in 1889—after which there was an inexplicable hiatus in his career. (Roland Huntford, The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole [New York: Random House, 1999], pp. 113–14.) But this allegation has not been substantiated.
52. Robert F. Scott, “Sledging Problem in the Antarctic: Men versus Motors,” (typescript), British National Antarctic Expedition, vol. 2, 1901–1904, Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), Cambridge.
53. Scott, Last Expedition, pp. 28, 22, 242.
54. Preston, First Rate Tragedy, p. 161.
55. T. H. Baughman, Pilgrims on Ice: Robert Falcon Scott's First Antarctic Expedition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 199), p. 144.
56. David Crane, Scott of Antarctica: A Life of Courage and Tragedy in the Extreme South (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), pp. 140, 143.
57. In one of his final letters, to Wilson's wife Oriana (“Ory”), Scott wrote: “His [Wilson's] eyes have a comfortable blue look of hope and his mind is peaceful with the satisfaction of his faith in regarding himself as part of the great scheme of the Almighty.” (Scott, Last Expedition, p. 472.)
58. Quoted in Crane, Scott of Antarctica, p. 565.
CHAPTER FIVE: KEEPING THE BRUTES AT BAY
1. John Wilson, John Franklin: Traveller on Undiscovered Seas (Montreal: XYZ, 2001), p. 121.
2. John Franklin, journal entry of July 11, 1845, in H. D. Traill, The Life of Sir John Franklin, RN (London: John Murray, 1896), p. 344. With its nearly fourteen tons of canned food (in 29,000 cans), 58,800 gallons of beer, 4,500-plus gallons of West Indian rum, 3,588 pounds of tobacco, five tons of oatmeal, and one ton of East Indian tea (among other items), the expedition was the most “lavishly provisioned” of all Arctic voyages. (Scott Cookman, Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition [New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000], pp. 47, 49.)
3. Quoted in Sarah K. Bolton, Famous Voyagers and Explorers (New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1893), p. 264.
4. William Kennedy, A Short Narrative of the Second Voyage of the Prince Albert in Search of Sir John Franklin (London: W. H. Dalton, 1853), pp. 33, 52.
5. Robert McClure, The Discovery of a Northwest Passage (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1856), pp. 149, 222–23.
&nbs
p; 6. Elisha K. Kane, Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, ’54, ’55 (Bedford, MA: Applewood, 1856), pp. 443–45.
7. Wilson, John Franklin, p. 71.
8. John Hobhouse, Travels in Albania and Other Provinces of Turkey, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1838), pp. 20–21.
9. There were notable exceptions to this rigid class divide. James Cook, for example, rose from able seaman to become a captain and his country's most illustrious explorer of the eighteenth century.
10. William E. Parry, Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific: Performed in the Years 1819–1820, in His Majesty's Ships Hecla and Griper, under the Orders of William Edward Parry (London: John Murray, 1821), p. 126.
11. Katherine Lambert, The Longest Winter: The Incredible Survival of Scott's Lost Party (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2004), pp. 142–43.
12. George W. Stockard Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1987), p. 3.
13. Quoted in Pierre Berton, Arctic Grail: The Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909 (New York: Viking, 1988), p. 115.
14. Parry, Journal of a Voyage, p. 287.
15. William E. Parry, Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage (London: Cassell, 1889), p. 170.
16. George Back, Narrative of an Expedition in HMS Terror, Undertaken with a View to Geographical Discovery of the Arctic Shores in the Years 1836–7 (London: John Murray, 1838), p. 38.
17. William C. Godfrey, Godfrey's Narrative of the Last Grinnell Arctic Exploring Party in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853-4-5 (London: J. T. Lloyd, 1857), p. 45.
18. Quoted in Paul Nanton, Arctic Breakthrough: Franklin's Expeditions, 1818–1847 (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1970), p. 45.
19. John Franklin, Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1825, 1826, and 1827 (London: John Murray, 1828), p. 58.
20. Elisha Kane, The United States Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin: A Personal Narrative (New York: Sheldon, Blakeman, 1857), pp. 38–39.
21. Kane, Arctic Explorations, p. 354.
22. Quoted from Kane, “First Lessons from the Eskimos,” in Polar Secrets: A Treasury of the Arctic and Antarctic, ed. Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), p. 164.
23. In his biography of Hall, Chauncey C. Loomis wrote that Kane regarded the Eskimo way of life “as a temptation to be resisted when he and his men were in trouble; it was better to die a civilized man than to imitate the brutish savage” (Chauncey C. Loomis, Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971], p. 25).
24. “A New Arctic Expedition,” New York Times, June 1, 1860.
25. Charles F. Hall, Arctic Researches, and Life among the Esquimaux: Being the Narrative of an Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, in the Years 1860, 1861, and 1862 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1865), pp. 78, 137.
26. Loomis, Weird and Tragic Shores, p. 99.
27. all, Arctic Researches, pp. 79, 114, 123, 132, 133, 160, 219.
28. Hall's enthusiasm for the potential of the Inuit people knew no bounds. When an indigenous woman who had spent nearly two years in England complained to him that explorers swore too much, he turned rhapsodic in his admiration for her exceptionally civilized ways: “Here, one of the iron daughters of the rocky, ice-ribbed North, standing like an angel, pleading the cause of the true God, weeping for the sad havoc made and making among her people by those of my countrymen who have been, and ever should be, the glorious representatives of freedom, civilization, and Christianity!” (Hall, Arctic Researches, p. 162).
29. Ibid., p. 522.
30. Fridtjof Nansen, preface to Eskimo Life, trans. William Archer (London: Longman, Green, and Company, 1893), pp. viii–ix.
31. Ibid., p. 302.
32. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, My Life with the Eskimo (New York: Macmillan, 1913), p. 32.
33. Ibid., p. 154.
34. Stefansson, The Friendly Arctic: The Story of Five Years in Polar Regions (New York: Macmillan, 1921), pp. 24–25, 89.
35. Jonathan M. Karpoff, “Private versus Public Initiative in Arctic Exploration: The Effects of Incentives and Organizational Structure,” Journal of Political Economy 109, no. 1 (2001): 40.
36. John Maxtone-Graham, Safe Return Doubtful: The Heroic Age of Polar Exploration (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988), pp. 45, 17.
37. Parry, Journal of the Third Voyage, p. 29.
38. Adolphus Greely, Three Years of Arctic Service: An Account of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881–1884 and the Attainment of the Farthest North, vol. 1 (London: Richard Bentley and Sons, 1894), p. 208.
39. David Crane, Scott of Antarctica: A Life of Courage and Tragedy in the Extreme South (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), p. 182.
40. Michael Smith, An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean, Antarctic Survivor (London: Headline, 2000), p. 26.
41. Robert F. Scott, The Voyage of the “Discovery,” vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 467.
42. Bruce also thought getting to the pole had no real value. Antarctica mattered to him only because of its putative natural resources and the scientific discoveries to be made there. See William S. Bruce, Polar Exploration (New York: Henry Holt, 1911), pp. 238–39.
43. Markham had an aversion to skiing, largely because Borchgrevink, with whom he had a falling out, favored it. Scott initially hewed to this position in the Antarctic. (T. H. Baughman, Pilgrims on Ice: Robert Falcon Scott's First Antarctic Expedition [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999], pp. 96, 108.) After some experimentation with skis during the Terra Nova expedition, he reverted to his belief that nothing could “equal the honest and customary use of one's own legs” (Quoted in Crane, Scott of Antarctica, p. 160).
44. See Clements Markham, The Threshold of the Unknown Region (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low and Seale, 1873), p. 316, and Parry, Journal of a Voyage, p. 287.
45. Letter of Elisha Kent Kane to Henry Grinnell, May 7, 1852. Folder 1, Series 1: Correspondence, Elisha Kent Kane Papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
46. Jakob Wassermann, Bula Matari: Stanley, Conqueror of a Continent, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: Liveright, 1933), p. 117.
47. Quoted in Manley and Lewis, Polar Secrets, p. 161.
CHAPTER SIX: DOG EAT DOG, MAN EAT DOG, MAN EAT MAN
1. Roald Amundsen, The Northwest Passage: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship “Gjøa” during the Years 1903–1907, vol. 1 (New York: Dutton, 1908), p. 126.
2. Adolphus Greely, Three Years of Arctic Service: An Account of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881–1884 and the Attainment of the Farthest North, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1886), pp. 115–16, 159.
3. Other explorers found slaying dogs equally distasteful and upsetting. Matthew Henson, who accompanied Peary on several polar expeditions, grew so attached to these indispensable creatures because of their endurance and intelligence that when he and Peary were forced to kill one to feed the other dogs, Henson pronounced this act “such a horrible matter that I will not describe it” (Matthew Henson, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole [New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912], p. 120).
4. Fridtjof Nansen, Farthest North, vol. 1 (Westminster, MD: Constable, 1897), pp. 83, 115, 118, 123, 134, 137, 201; vol. 2, pp. 6, 120, 242, 270, 279, 289, 292, 341, 350. See also Hjalmar Johansen, With Nansen in the North: A Record of the “Fram” Expedition in 1893–96, trans. H. L. Braekstad (New York: Ward, Lock, 1899), pp. 20, 160–61, 168, 201, 202, 225, 236.
5. Robert F. Scott, Scott's Last Expedition: The Personal Journals of Captain R. F. Scott, RN, CVO, on His Journey to the South Pole, vol. 1 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1923), pp. 162, 312.
6. So did Amundsen's men on their voyage to Antarctica. See Roald Amundsen, The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the “
Fram,”1910–1912, vol. 1, trans. A. G. Chater (London: John Murray, 1913), photo facing p. 149.
7. Stephen R. Bown, The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen (Da Capo: New York, 2012), p. 128.
8. Roland Huntford, The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 204–205, 329. In his diary, Amundsen noted that he considered the dogs his “children.”
9. Sara Wheeler, Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996), p. 104.
10. Louis Bernacchi, To the South Polar Regions: Expedition of 1898–1900 (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1901), p. 165.
11. Huntford, Last Place on Earth, p. 365.
12. Some sources contend that this first person to approach him, Frank Bickerton, actually uttered these words, but it is more likely that this was only what Bickerton was wondering. See David Roberts, Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration (New York: Norton, 2013), p. 245.
13. In 1915, the New York Evening Globe ran a story quoting Mawson as saying that he had contemplated eating part of Metz's body, but then rejected this idea because it would have left a “bad taste” in his mouth if had done so. Mawson subsequently denied that he had made this remark.