Icebound

by Andrea Pitzer

  To the east, the shores of the mainland and southern coast of Vaigach Island veered away from each other. A broad expanse of open water stretched before them. The men of the Swan and Mercury became more certain that they’d cleared the strait. Three days later, they saw the frozen north shore of Vaigach Island rolling up and away toward Nova Zembla. But just as they thought they were free, winds from the east blew calved pieces of glaciers into the strait, as if to deliberately hinder them. They’d reached the very end of July. Though summer still made itself felt, it was hard to imagine navigable seas at any higher latitude.

  In reality, William Barents sat that day at the far end of Nova Zembla, having managed to sail hundreds of miles farther north than the rest of the fleet. But almost in that moment, his own misgivings and the crew’s trepidation were convincing him to turn back.

  Going ashore to scout the terrain, van Linschoten and his shipmates saw another group of herders driving reindeer sleds. Changing their approach, they sent out their Russian interpreter with one other man, both unarmed, “so that we would not frighten the barbarians.” The men approached, watching warily for any sign of ambush from the ship or elsewhere. After exchanging greetings, the sailors gave their new acquaintances bread and cheese, which was eaten. A half-dozen Europeans joined those already on shore, where the archers allowed the newcomers to handle their bows. But they wouldn’t turn over their arrows for inspection. The present sea, they learned, was a small one, and if the men continued eastward, they would find a vast body of water there. The Dutchmen got the intelligence they wanted regarding navigation. The Nenets they spoke to claimed that, after several more days, the ice would subside, and the strait would be clear for six weeks before its return.

  Asked if all this land was the territory of the grand duke of Moscow, the Nenets man replied that they’d never heard of the grand duke. They knew of Russians who came to hunt and trade with them, but the land wasn’t settled by any permanent inhabitants. They likewise didn’t use the name Vaigach, but had their own names for the land and the water.

  A willingness to help the Dutchmen didn’t endear the Nenets to van Linschoten. He noted that the reindeer herders wore their mittens stitched to their sleeves and their hats attached to their jackets, like crude Dutch peasants. Their sleds were shaped more like chariots than those he’d seen the Sami use on Kildin Island. He found these people small and deformed, writing that some resembled monkeys or monsters. He seemed suspicious of their beardless faces. (European gentlemen wore beards.) All in all, van Linschoten surmised, they were a “miserable, defiant” people with little of value to offer, belligerent, and hard to discipline. If some future expedition were organized merely to trade with them, he suggested that “the game would not be worth the candle.”

  Other travelers had a better impression of the Sami and Nenets, but van Linschoten was vitriolic in his assessment, reflecting the strain of the new Dutch nation that would come to engage in the slave trade in the Far East and the Americas. Taking leave of their hosts, the Dutchmen went aboard their ships and sounded a trumpet in salute, sending their new acquaintances fleeing in fear. In time, it was understood that no threat was intended, at which point everyone waved their goodbyes.

  July turned to August as they sailed along the coast, marking a safe harbor with a buoy and naming an island after a patron of the expedition. The sailors made their way out of Vaigach Strait and into open water, which they named the New North Sea. (In time, it would be known as the Kara Sea.) They felt sure that they didn’t have far to go, and that the waters of this new sea would stretch all the way to the shores of China and Japan. The crew had no way of knowing that their ships still lay thousands of miles from the East Asian coastline.

  Once more, they tacked in the face of icebergs that crowded together and loomed like mountains into the vault of the sky. But the water near shore now stood so clear that the men could see crayfish scuttling along the floor of the sea. They were grateful that no storm was brewing, but when the storms did come, it was simpler to ride with the current than try to navigate the terrifying bombardment of ice.

  The following day they spotted a huddle of walruses, which van Linschoten noted might “better be called elephants of the sea rather than morses or sea-horses.” Like Barents’s men, the sailors who set out with van Linschoten knew that the tusks of the creature were as valuable as ivory to the Russians—and their response to seeing the creatures was almost the same. Some of the commander’s men began shooting, and, having wounded one of the animals, thought they’d chase it in the small boat. They went out after the injured walrus and speared it through the body. But no matter how hard they struck at it with their bladed instruments, its hide bent their hatchets. The creature counterattacked against the small yacht with its tusks and threatened to tip it over. After an hour and a half of grueling exchanges, they gave up and left the animal with blood running out of its nostrils across the surface of the sea.

  The sailors came upon an island with a small bay, where they anchored between stones so weathered by ice and snow that the terrain brought to mind the Latin phrase urit frigus, “the cold burns.” They explored the coast and discovered a kind of rock crystal that resembled diamonds. The minerals seemed already cut and polished, and the crew began collecting pieces of it, though some turned out to be too fragile to cull. It seemed a wonder that such things could even be found so far north. Whatever their value might turn out to be, they’d found a small, dependable safe harbor on the far side of Vaigach Island. They named it Staaten Eylandt—meaning “States Island”—in honor of the States General, the Dutch parliament.

  They made their way from States Island back to the mainland and explored the coast, where van Linschoten stole one of the Nenets carved idols. The men kept girding themselves to head out into the sea to seek some greater open passage, as soon as the ice cleared. And on August 9, the two ships finally made a stab eastward, sailing the shores of what seemed like open ocean, above a floor too deep to be measured with their plumb line.

  The vessels traced the coastline from rocky shores to a river delta, where crew members thought they saw a ship full-rigged with sails, only to realize it was an iceberg. Another time, they sent a man up the mast who sighted humans and wild animals walking the land, but on closer examination, no living creatures were there. They sailed on in unnerving isolation. The sailors began to realize that fog and mist over water, as with sun and sand at desert latitudes, could inspire mirages.

  By August 11, they’d journeyed eastward on the coast for more than a week and believed they’d sailed past the river where explorer Olivier Brunel had met his end. They thought they’d discovered two more rivers farther along, which they named Mercury and Swan, after their ships. According to their speculative maps, a long cape lay at the far northeastern corner of the continent. Around the corner of that cape, they mistakenly believed, the shoreline descended toward China.

  Seeing the coastline arch to the north, they thought they’d arrived at the fabled cape. If so, there would be nothing of the route left to discover. They no longer doubted that they had found a navigable route to the Far East. The window for them to sail east and still return to Vaigach in time to meet up with Barents and his boat was closing. Delighted with their progress, they set their sails for a westward journey and turned for home.

  The crew unwound the route they had sailed, scouting more coastline as they slowly made their way back toward Vaigach Island. Time after time, but always at a distance, they spotted whales half out of the sea, jetting plumes of water into the sky. The men took the sightings as yet more proof that they’d found open ocean.

  Coming into mid-August, nighttime meant a return to real twilight, even a pale view of the moon and stars. When the winds rose at night, they couldn’t anchor safely away from icebergs or land and be sure the ship would stay whole. Nor could they unfurl their sails and steer in night and fog. So sailors hoisted the anchor and let the ship slip without sails once more into the curren
t, keeping watch and groping their way along.

  In daylight, they fared better, but the wind blew hard. Navigating shallow waters as they followed the shoreline posed risks, too. Steering between two small islands, they tacked into waters that grew shallower and shallower, constantly measuring the depth of the seafloor, crossing through just submerged rings of rock with only dexterity and the brutal wind to pull them through. When the wind blew toward land, there was always the chance of smashing to pieces on a lee shore. They moved past a tidal wave crashing in whitecaps for nearly a mile, after which the men came upon sandbars sitting in their path. They couldn’t go forward in safety without water deep enough to float the ships, yet the prospect of what they might find in trying to retrace their precarious steps was terrifying.

  The vessels reversed direction and began to thread their way back through the maze of sand and rock near Vaigach. As they did, two buildings came into view atop one of the tiny, uncharted islands along the shore. Drawing closer made it apparent that they weren’t looking at cabins at all but were instead seeing the topsail and topgallant of a ship. To their shock and joy, they recognized that it was the ship from Amsterdam. In the far north, thousands of miles from home, they’d stumbled across William Barents.

  Despite their excitement over the reunion of the small fleet, the sailors weren’t yet out of danger. Measuring the breakers coming in, they realized their ship had at one point been sitting in less than twenty feet of water. The wind was high, but if they had sailed the same stretch of shore at night, in fog, or during a storm, it could have meant an end to the ship.

  They worked their way to the other side of the island, and the commander sent men out in his small boat to pick up Barents and row him back. Sitting down together, Barents told Nay his story of pressing northward above 77 degrees of latitude, more than five hundred miles from where they sat at anchor, only to be halted by ice. Van Linschoten later noted, somewhat acerbically, that Barents hadn’t found the far northern passage over Nova Zembla to China, and so had come south of Vaigach to scout locations and follow the better route—the route that the commander of the fleet had already discovered in the meantime.

  The night of August 15, the reunited ships tacked their way offshore from the islands, and in the morning, looked for a harbor to wait out the bad weather. Exploring island shores two days later, they found bones from haddock, whiting, and cod, as well as the wreck of a Russian ship, and a whole tree some sixty feet from roots to crown and three feet across. They kept an eye out for forests or perhaps a stand of trees but saw nothing, not even plants. The sailors did, however, take advantage of the presence of swans, wild geese, ducks, and other sea fowl, capturing fledglings and shooting older birds. They had two live falcons taken from the coast of Vaigach Island, which they hoped to carry back with them as a gift to supporters. In the meantime, they named the island Maurice Island, after their leader and benefactor who had backed the expedition, and christened the coastline of the mainland below it New Holland.

  On the twentieth, a Saturday, they took an easy west-northwesterly course until evening, when the wind began to pick up. Thinking they saw land to the southeast, they soon realized it was only fog. That night the wind rose again, now with real force, and sent the ships flying in the driving rain. They set sail to follow the wind west, but were running blind over the wet and overcast seascape, moving too quickly to run out a line to the seafloor and no way to know if they were in danger.

  Without warning, the Swan struck land. As the hull scraped along the shore, Admiral Nay called out to warn the rest of the fleet. But the wind dragged the Mercury in too fast. Before it could turn, it ran aground hard enough to knock it off balance. Bringing up the rear, Barents saw the fate of the other ships, and was able to change course, avoiding the coast. The Swan came off the shore without difficulty and remained seaworthy. But the Mercury didn’t come out on the next wave, or the one after it. The ship tilted miserably, wallowing on land.

  If a vessel ran aground hard enough to breach the hull, the crew would have to work the pumps to keep from sinking. Pumps had been an integral part of seacraft for nearly two thousand years by then, with screw-pumps, buckets, or tubes that drew water out of the hold and up to the level of the main deck. But from buckets to treadmills and hollow tree trunks, bilge pumps could only carry so much water. And if a ship had a massive hole, and weather conditions remained precarious, a ship could be lost.

  Luckily, the Mercury’s hull also remained sound. But it would take more than twenty tries to heave the vessel, groaning in the rain and wind, off the shore and set it floating once more. Only the smoothness of the shoreline had saved them. If the Mercury had crashed onto a cliff or ledge, it might have been impossible to break free.

  They sailed back past Kildin Island, and along the Norwegian coast once more. With the wind against them, they waited out storms at Wardhuys, where a Danish customs officer demanded their passports and payment. After showing him a letter in Latin indicating that they were an expedition chartered by gentlemen, and giving him a handsome tip, which he said wasn’t necessary but didn’t return, they became friends. He seemed particularly pleased when they recounted that their expedition had clearly failed, and implied they had no intention of returning to explore a northeast passage again.

  Summer slipped away with daylight as the fleet headed farther south. By the time they were back in the North Sea, they were approaching the fall equinox. They’d been out for three months and ten days, and Barents’s ship had sailed farther north of the continent than any European expedition in history. Admiral Nay and van Linschoten had crossed Vaigach Strait and sailed deep into the sea east of it. They now knew that Nova Zembla was almost certainly one or more islands—islands that could be circumnavigated—and not some impassable polar continent. They held close the promise of a direct route between Vaigach Strait and the northern corner of the mainland, with warmer latitudes and coastal sailing all that remained before they might arrive safely in China.

  At two in the afternoon on September 16, 1594, they caught sight of Texel Island and Huysduynen past Vlieland, and sailed by them at high tide, coming back into Dutch waters. The Swan peeled away toward Zeeland, leaving the Mercury and the ship from Amsterdam to enter the Zuiderzee. The Mercury headed to Enkhuizen, while William Barents sailed on, south and west, coiling back into the nested fist of Amsterdam harbor. Combining the split routes taken by Barents and Admiral Nay, the fleet had sailed more than three thousand miles north and east, going deep into unknown waters in both directions. They’d found two possible routes to China, and every man aboard had come home again.

  CHAPTER THREE Death in the Arctic

  Carrying the corpse of a walrus, the skin of a polar bear, and two live falcons, the fleet sailed back into harbor on the day of the Amsterdam city fair. Barents and company met with a jubilant reception from the burgers of Amsterdam. Jan van Linschoten, the merchants’ representative, continued on to the Hague, where he reported to Prince Maurice the discovery of a navigable, if treacherous, northeast route to China.

  Prince Maurice and the States General—the advisory body of delegates from each province—authorized a second expedition, one intended to establish trading partners. All the sponsors of the first voyage—Amsterdam, Enkhuizen, and Zeeland—felt confident enough to risk their money supplying ships for another attempt on the Far East. This time, they’d stake generous amounts of their merchandise as well. Seven ships were chartered to sail out: two from each city, and another from Rotterdam. While a larger fleet ran a greater risk of attracting pirates, if it could stay together, a convoy would also be better able to defend itself and carry a wide range of goods to tempt eastern partners into trade.

  Barents’s first northern foray had brought impressive results. By cresting northern Nova Zembla, he transformed knowledge of the polar regions and undercut the belief in a vast polar continent. Geographer Petrus Plancius, who championed Barents and had tremendous influence, still felt the northern
route over Nova Zembla to be the most promising.

  But if a warm polar sea existed, Barents hadn’t yet found the path to it. Political influence came into play as the fleet’s backers debated how to proceed. As “supercargo” aboard the Enkhuizen ship—the person delegated to represent the merchants’ interests—van Linschoten had the ear of all parties involved. He pressed for the route under Nova Zembla through the strait at Vaigach as the true path to riches and glory for the new republic.

  In the end, the fleet was commanded to sail through the strait and try to reach a king or other Chinese official with whom they could negotiate trade relations. Six ships would carry goods to trade. The seventh, a pinnace—a small boat normally used to ferry people to land or from one ship to another—would confirm safe passage of the convoy into the open waters of the Far East and then return directly to the Netherlands to deliver word of their success.

  As before, geographer Plancius helped to draw up plans for the voyage, laying out the territory believed to lie between Moscow and the eastern shores of China. After the known lands controlled by the grand duke of Moscow came the Tartary Coast, a vague geographic idea encompassing modern Siberia. Past that, terrain curved to the north before dropping steeply southward. There, they hoped, they might find the lands that they’d heard about—and perhaps others that were entirely unknown to them.

  The Swan and the Mercury had made progress on their voyage but had mapped only a small part of the coastline on the other side of Vaigach. There were those who still insisted the region couldn’t be sailed. This was a strange argument, given that the route south of Nova Zembla was known to be littered with Russian crosses from Pomor expeditions and inhabited several months a year by indigenous reindeer herders. But the failure of prior English and Dutch efforts, as well as the harrowing ice that had threatened Barents and van Linschoten alike, led to controversy over whether any northern route could be found. If the Dutch were to transform their country into a world power, they needed to capture key routes while trade with the east was still being established.