Arctic Obsession

by Alexis S. Troubetzkoy

  At one time the cold became so bitter that they decided to burn some coal brought from the ship. The satisfying intensity of the fire “cast a great heat” and the men gathered happily about the table. Soon, however, poisonous fumes overcame one of them and the others found themselves developing nausea and headaches. The nearly asphyxiated man was hustled out-of-doors, had vinegar sprinkled on his face, and in the cold, bracing air he soon came around. Barents “gave every one of us a little wine to comfort our hearts.”

  By mid-December the checking of fox traps became a grim task because of the excessive cold and wind for “if we stayed too long there arose blisters upon our faces and our ears.” The plentiful fox provided not only sustenance, but their skins were fashioned into snowsuits. Christmas Day came and went as any other day with no mention of the occasion — “it was foule weather with a northwest wind.” It had been snowing steadily and the house had become literally snowed in. On the 28th one of the men thought to explore the outdoors, but to do so he had first to pry open the frozen door and then dig a passage through the wall of blocking snow. “He found it so bad weather that he stayed not long and told us that the snow lay higher than our house.”

  New Years’ Day, 1597. A ration of wine for every man, sipped sparingly for the depleting stock. “We were in fear that it would still be long before we should get out from thence.” The cold and wind were so bad that days passed without anyone venturing outside — “in four or five days we durst not put our heads out of doores,” writes de Veer. Little wonder at the uncertainty of days: with no clock or view of the outside world, how could the incarcerated crew determine a day’s beginning or end? Finally, to check the wind, a pike was thrust through the chimney opening “with a little cloth or feather upon it,” but the improvised vane froze instantly and proved useless.

  And so the days and weeks dragged into April. During that time food stores diminished, especially store of bread, which was a cause for alarm. Men weakened as illnesses of one sort or another seemed constantly to plague them with one death being recorded. The appearance of scurvy was particularly concerning — these pioneer Arctic explorers had not yet learned that fresh bear meat was an effective counteragent. The gathering of wood became a task beyond endurance, for in the passing of time the search had to be made farther afield. The valued fox population petered out and the bears reappeared. A particularly close call was had when one threatened entry into the house through the chimney — it was killed.

  The days eventually grew longer and the sun’s rays not only warmed the spirits of the closeted men, but brought about changes to the stark Arctic landscape. Where before there was only rugged ice on the nearby sea, now more and more open water became visible. Barents’s broken ship, however, continued in its firm ice-bound captivity. The inspections that had been carried out periodically during the winter had long revealed that the vessel was probably beyond repair, and now the accumulated frozen waters within the hold confirmed the worst: the ship would never sail again. All hopes of the despairing men to return home appeared to have vanished and only miraculous intervention by the Almighty could save them.

  Great as the anguish no doubt was, Dutch willpower and resourcefulness ultimately prevailed: the men determined to hazard an escape on the ship’s whaleboat and the tiny yawl. To do nothing was certain death; a try, however challenging and unlikely, offered a modicum of hope. In anticipation that the sea would open completely in the coming weeks, they set to work refurbishing and supplying the two small boats. The highest quality of seamanship would be required with every man having to be totally alert and pulling his weight. But then, an unexpected turn: as preparations were nearing completion, the work party was attacked by bears. Not without difficulty, one animal was killed and the other scurried away. A fire was kindled and the hungry men indulged in fresh roasted meat with three of them unknowingly consuming the liver, the toxic bit of the carcass which under no circumstances was ever to be consumed — within hours they fell gravely ill. Worrisome days passed with the three being ministered to as well as circumstances permitted. Thankfully, they recovered, “for which we gave God thanks,” writes de Veer, “for if as then we had lost these three men, it was a hundred to one we should never have gotten away, because we should have had too few men to draw and lift at our need.”

  While the men worked on the boats, Barents was ashore, prone on his back suffering from advanced scurvy and a helpless invalid. On June 14 the sea opened sufficiently and with the vessels fully loaded, he and another sufferer were carried by stretcher to the shoreline and gently placed on board, one in each boat. They then sailed away, “committing ourselves to the will and mercie of God, with a west north-west wind and an endifferent open water, we set saile and put to sea.” Left behind was the lovingly constructed house that had sheltered them during that dark, savage winter. A letter written by Barents was nailed on the chimney relating the tale of the expedition’s adventures and survival and signed by every member of the crew. The document told “how we came out of Holland to saile to the kingdom of China, and what had happened unto us being there on land, with all our crosses, that if any man chanced to come thither, they might know what happened unto us and how we had been forced in our extremity to make that house and had dwelt 10 monthes therein.” The two tiny crafts put out to sea and headed north. Their plan was to round Mys Zhelaniya, proceed south, hugging Novaya Zemlya’s west shore and make contact with Russians or Samoyeds on the mainland coast.

  On the third day out they found themselves in a narrow channel with thick ice buffeting them about. With action of the floes growing increasingly rough and threatening to the insubstantial hulls, Heemskirk gave orders for the vessels to be hauled out of the water onto a large stable floe. Supplies were unloaded, the sick men laid out on piles of clothing, and the boats were duly dragged to safety. From time to time faults in the ice opened and a number of containers disappeared into the sea, including casks of bread, trunks of clothing, and the boxed astrolabe.[15] One sharp-eyed sailor, however, managed to grab hold of the ship’s moneybox just in the nick of time as it was about to be swallowed up — Dutch blood spoke.

  Repairs were carried out on the hulls, “much bruised and crushed with the racking of the ice.” On the third day of their self-imposed idleness as they awaited the clearing of a passage, Barents suffered his last and died. His body was gently lowered into the water. “The death of Willem Barents put us in no small discomfort, as being the chief guide and only pilot on whom we reposed ourselves next under God …” writes de Veer. Shortly after the leader’s death, the other critically ill man also died.

  On the 22nd, the waters cleared sufficiently for the boats to move on and after a few days more sail through ice, contrary winds, and then fog the two vessels managed to clear Novaya Zemlya and eventually reached Siberia where they were greeted by native fishermen. After days of rest and with strength renewed, they continued their two-hundred-mile passage, rounded the Kola Peninsula and arrived safely to a Lapland fishing village. The Russians received them with every sort of hospitality, taking them into their homes and offering them dry clothing. “We ate our bellies full which in long time we had not.” Then in early September, eleven weeks after setting out, they came across by pure serendipity their colleague from whom they separated in Spitzbergen on the outbound passage. The survivors reached Holland on November 1, eleven months after leaving.

  Reflecting on this remarkable tale of endurance and survival, one stands in awe at the Dutchmen’s force of character. Imagine setting out on a sixty-foot wooden boat into unknown and uncharted reaches of the high Arctic, provisioned and equipped with four-hundred-year old technology. Imagine standing on a barren, bear-infested island in bitter cold and snow and watching your vessel being heaved up by ice and broken. Then, with little likelihood of rescue, being cloistered for over half a year with seventeen others, freezing in a gloomy, acrid shelter inexpertly constructed of planks and driftwood (your share of the floor space is forty square
feet). And in that isolation: sickness and death, pitiable diet, dangerous bears, extreme monotony, and a profound sense of isolation and abandonment. One wonders at the mould from which these early Arctic intrepids were formed — exceptional people they were. Eighteen men had been drawn by the beguiling song of the Arctic Siren. Twelve returned home, six became enveloped in her deadly embrace.

  Notes

  1. Jeannette Mirsky, To the Arctic! (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 26.

  2. G.B. Parks, Richard Hakluyt and the English Voyages, Publication #10 (New York: American Geographical Society, 1928), 56.

  3. Richard Vaughan, The Arctic: A History (Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1994), 56.

  4. Ibid., 27.

  5. J. Hamel, England and Russia:Comprising the Voyages of Tradescant the Elder and Others (London: Frank Cass &Co. Ltd., 1965), 87.

  6. L.H. Neatby, Discovery in Russian and Siberian Waters (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1973), 10.

  7. J. Hamel, 100.

  8. J. Watts De Peyster, The Dutch at the North Pole and the Dutch in Main (New York: New York Historical Society, 1857), 10.

  9. Richard Vaughan, 60.

  10. Gerrit De Veer, The Three Voyages of William Barents to the Arctic (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1876), 25.

  11. Ibid., 63.

  12. L.H. Neatby, 22.

  13. A small town north of Amsterdam.

  14. A large wine cask capable of holding 150 gallons.

  15. An astrolabe is a primitive instrument used in determining latitudes, in bygone days essential for navigation.

  3

  First Western Thrust

  AT THE TIME THAT the Muscovy Company and the Dutch were pushing eastward into the Arctic, the English sought the elusive passage to Cathay through the Arctic regions of the western hemisphere.

  It was an Italian navigator in the service of King Henry VII of England, Giovanni Caboto — John Cabot — who was the first to follow upon Columbus’s initial voyages to “the Indies” half a decade earlier. Armed with the royal commission from His Majesty awarding him “full and free authoritie, leave, and Power, to sayle to all Partes, Countreys and Seas of the East, of the West and of the North under our banners and ensigns with five shippes …,”[1] Cabot set off in 1497 from Bristol, England’s second-largest seaport.[2] The voyage was short-lived. He made landfall in Iceland, which in itself was of no major significance since English fishermen had already been harvesting those rich waters and the island was familiar to them. Details of this particular voyage and the subsequent one are not known, and much of what has come down to us is speculation. In Iceland some sort of critical dispute took place between Cabot and the crews, which sadly resulted in an empty-handed return home.

  In May of the following year, Cabot set off again, this time with only one vessel, the fifty-ton Matthew. We know that the ship reached Dursey Head in southernmost Ireland, that they pressed on, that the ship’s crew was deeply frightened by icebergs, and that they landed somewhere in North America on June 24, 1497. But where, exactly? Possibly Cape Breton or Labrador or even in Maine, and conflicting claims are made on the matter. The most likely landing spot was Cape Bonavista in eastern Newfoundland. But what matters is that John Cabot is acknowledged as being the first European to have set foot in North America since the Vikings a half millennium earlier — of whom nothing had been known at the time. Back in England, the delighted king received the explorer enthusiastically and awarded “to him that founde the new isle, £10,” a princely sum in those days. The prize was bestowed with no regard to the protestations of the Spanish Ambassador, who complained bitterly that in entering western hemisphere waters Cabot had trespassed illegally, for this was an allocation assigned to Spain three years earlier by His Holiness.

  The significance to Arctic history of Cabot’s second voyage lies in the interest it generated for further search of a passage to Cathay. Hard on his heels, a series of explorers prodded the western hemisphere, seeking the riches of the East. In the south, there were such notables as Vespucci, who in 1499 landed in Guiana, Bilboa, and Panama; and Magellan, who landed in Brazil. In the north, Estevan Gomez explored the Maine coast in 1519; five years later, Giovanni da Verrazano became the first to sail north along the American coast exploring New York harbour, in the process. Jacques Cartier made three journeys to the New World and in 1541 planted the first European settlement in North America at Quebec City. These were Spaniards, Portuguese, and Frenchmen; the Dutch and the English all that time were focused on the Northern Sea Route.

  * * *

  In 1566, the soldier and academic, Sir Humphrey Gilbert[3] effectively argued before Elizabeth I that exploration of a northeastern route to Cathay was too dangerous — “the air is so darkened with continual mists and fogs so bar the pole that no man can well see either to guide his ship or direct his course.” He persuaded Her Majesty that the passage laid west and he urged that England should not to be outdone by its European rivals in the business of North American exploration. The queen’s interest piqued, she agreed — in principle — to sponsor an exploration. The proposal received exhaustive study and then at last the required funds were raised and ships made ready. But by then ten years had passed and Gilbert’s personal interests had shifted elsewhere — to soldiering, the acquisition of land, and raising a family of six children.

  Eighty years had passed since the pope divided the world between the Spanish and Portuguese. During that remarkable time a whirlwind of change had enveloped Europe — with global ramifications. Seeded by the Renaissance and Reformation, humanism and secularism had taken spectacular root, and the pervasive influence of the one Church was no more. Although God created the world, it was humans who had developed it. Man, it was now held, is master of his own destiny. Emphasis shifted from God and afterlife to the world of today — the world that was to be enjoyed. Things spiritual found themselves secondary to the things material.

  Commerce and trade blossomed throughout Europe, with the dockyards of London and Amsterdam being particularly busy. Demand burgeoned for silks and fine textiles, for ebony, spices, and other exotic commodities of the east. The wharfs and quays of European harbours teemed as never before with merchants and enthusiastic buyers clamouring for such items as nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, ginger, peppers, and cinnamon. The spice trade soon came to dominate the marketplaces and in England, it’s fair to say, spice became the business of the nation.

  By the mid-sixteenth century, the overland free flow of goods from the East had long been staunched by the Ottomans. With the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the Turks virtually closed the vital Silk Road — traders could pass only by paying exorbitant taxes. Da Gama’s voyage around Africa into the Indian Ocean, and Magellan’s expedition around South America into the Pacific offered fresh avenues for eastern trade. The passage around Cape Horn and across the Pacific was inordinately long and expensive, while and the route around Africa was equally arduous as well as dangerous — Portuguese and Spanish warships patrolled the waters and Barbary pirates delighted in capturing English sailors, whom they sold as slaves.

  Little wonder that Gilbert was successful in tweaking the queen’s interest in another expedition to America. A Northwest Passage for the traders would indubitably prove more efficient, less hazardous, and less expensive. In view of Gilbert’s lack of enthusiasm in leading the expedition, Martin Frobisher was commissioned to take command — an appointment that became the opening salvo of a series of Arctic explorations by England in America. In the forty-year period, 1576–1616, fourteen English explorers sailed into those distant reaches, some undertaking more than one voyage — the siren song of the Arctic had unquestionably resonated.

  Sir Martin Frobisher explored the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and penetrated Baffin Island’s Frobisher Bay. An explorer and venture capitalist, his hopes of great wealth were falsely placed in the tons of “wonders stone” believed to contain gold.

  Frobisher, on
e contemporary wrote, was “an eminent seaman and a great discoverer,” while another called him “a knave and a scoundrel.” Both were probably right. An adventurer and fortune-seeker he certainly was, whose early career progressed from trade in West Africa to privateering in the Mediterranean. Thrice he was arrested and charged with piracy, but never brought to trial. But he finished his career with distinction as a vice-admiral and had fought side by side with Sir Francis Drake in helping to defeat the Armada, for which he received a knighthood. Following that decisive battle, he continued to harass and engage the Spanish until his death in 1594 of a gunshot wound received off the coast of Spain.

  From boyhood, Frobisher had dreamed of establishing a trade route to India and China through the North; speculation and rumour had long been had that the entrance to the waterway through the Arctic was there, awaiting discovery. A Portuguese mariner by the name Martin Chacque was said to have sailed west to east through Arctic waters in 1556, emerging into the Atlantic at latitude 59°N (northern Labrador). A certain Salvaterra, “a gentleman of Victoria in Spain,” landed in Ireland in 1568 en route home from the West Indies, affirming the existence of the passage. He subsequently informed Frobisher of a Mexican friar, Fra Andrea Urdante, who claimed to have sailed from the south seas to Germany via the Northwest Passage, also from west to east. Such were the tales circulating of the elusive route that enflamed Frobisher’s determination to penetrate the Arctic waterways. He noted reassuringly that Salvaterra “offered most willingly to accompany me in this discovery, which it is likely he would not have done, if he had stood in doubt thereof.”[4]