Icebound

by Andrea Pitzer

  His mates inside cried out in warning. The sailor spun toward the bear and swung the barrel of the gun up to shoot point blank. The weapon fired, its bullet passing through the creature and out the other side. The bear fled the scene but collapsed on the ground some distance from the cabin. The men inside ran with the rest of the guns and their half-pikes to finish off the animal. If the gun had misfired, as weapons of that type were prone to do, the bear would’ve seized their friend—and might have gotten into the cabin, too. Cutting the animal open to gut it, they found “remnants of seals, eaten whole” in its stomach.

  The next day, the healthiest men went to work on the small rowboat outside the house, while the rest stayed inside making sails. But as the outside crew concentrated on modifying the boat, another bear approached. In a routine that had become familiar, they scurried inside once more, shooting at that bear, too. After it had gone, the sailors went on top of the house and began pulling apart the planking on the roof for use on their boat.

  On the last day of May, the men returned to work, only to see a third bear headed toward them. Gerrit de Veer noted that the frequency of the visits made it seem as if the bears “had smelt that we would be gone, and that they desired first to tast a peece of some of us.” Back into the Safe House they went, out came the guns, and three shots—two from doorways and one from the roof—took down the animal.

  They hadn’t enjoyed eating the meat from the first bear they’d killed on the voyage, almost a year before. But dwindling rations and the passage of time combined to make them look more keenly at this bear and reconsider. After gutting the animal, they dressed and cooked its liver, which had a much better flavor than the meat they’d eaten before.

  They were pleased with their meal, but the bear had its revenge when the men started to feel ill. Everyone fell sick, and the cause was clear. Barents and his men had poisoned themselves. Polar bear liver contains enough vitamin A to be lethal to humans. Though the crew had no more idea of the effects of too much vitamin A than they did the lack of vitamin C that caused their scurvy, both wreaked havoc on the castaways’ bodies just the same. Symptoms include drowsiness, headaches, liver damage, altered consciousness, and vomiting. The next morning, van Heemskerck picked up the pot of liver still sitting on the fire and threw its contents out in the snow. Three men soon lay near death.

  No work was done on the boats that day, but the four men who were least sick from the poisoning made their way to the ship, to see what else they might gather for use on the voyage home. They came back with a barrel of salted fish, and each sailor got two.

  Illness continued to plague them, but the sailors carried on with their plans. They investigated the best route from the boats to the open sea, deciding that despite the hilly landscape of the ice near the ship, the shorter distance still offered the most efficient path. By June 4—four days after they’d eaten the polar bear liver—most of the crew had recovered, but the skin of the three men who had fallen most violently ill peeled off in layers from head to toe.

  Afflictions particular to their geography were a trial to them. Though scurvy ravaged many sailors, only in the polar regions were the means to defeat it so absent. Without frigid temperatures, they never would’ve had to resort to the coal fumes that nearly killed them the first time they burned it. And the polar bears that hunted them, as well as the animal’s lethal liver, could be found only in far northern climates.

  Yet their remote frigid location was in some ways a gift. Diseases like yellow fever, known to the Maya as “blood vomit,” would curse many expeditions in North America, and affect villages and cities alike for centuries. But communicable diseases were hard-pressed to survive in the high Arctic. Diseases that felled sailors in other destinations around the world—from plague to malaria and smallpox—were nowhere to be seen in the far north.

  More often, sailors would carry disease with them into new worlds. From smallpox to influenza and the plague, sailing ships were the vectors by which many illnesses made their way into other lands. In 1855 a ship carrying yellow fever docked at Hampton Roads, Virginia, killing thousands of residents. In the fourteenth century, rats from Crimea bearing the Black Death made their way onto ships that spread devastation across Europe. Even during Barents’s era, smallpox traveled to the Americas easily under the brutal conditions of the transatlantic slave trade. But as far north as Barents and his men wintered, there was no one to give contagious diseases to but each other.

  Though Barents, van Heemskerck, and the crew were spared tropical diseases, their northern challenges were agonizing enough. Fortunately, the three sickest men recovered from liver poisoning, leaving their shipmates doubly lucky. If three more sailors died before they could leave Nova Zembla, there might not be enough crewmen left to take on the tasks of preparing to sail or completing the approaching chore they most dreaded: hauling the boats to open water.

  After six days of work, they finally got the rowboat into shape for the voyage. Then it became clear that they’d have to return to the scute that they’d been too weak to drag to the cabin before. Early in the morning, eleven men went down to the beach and began to move it. Whether the snow had become packed down and easier to walk on or the work on the rowboat had strengthened them, this time the scute was more cooperative. They dragged it toward the ship, where three men stayed to work on it.

  It was a herring boat, and narrow at the stern. They lopped the back off and rebuilt it to be square, which would cut its speed in the water but make it steadier at sea. Just as they had with the rowboat, they began to build up the gunwales, to offer more protection from the waves. Neither craft was big enough to provide a cargo hold to let sailors hide from the elements. They braced themselves to sail for weeks, perhaps months, with no respite from the weather.

  While three crew members worked on the scute, everyone else gathered food and equipment at the cabin. Loading up two sleds, they planned to bring the haul from the house back to the ship for storage, to more quickly provision the small boats once they were rebuilt and ready to sail. To their sorrow, the ship was in no danger of breaking free from the ice—it still lay half the distance between the cabin and open water. But it would work as a staging point to get the rations and gear partway along the path for departure—what was sure to be one of their hardest days yet. A waypoint would be a blessing and could also be secured against foxes and bears. As they worked, their hearts grew light, thinking that it might be possible after all “to get out of the wild, desart, irksome, fearefull, and cold country.”

  But almost a week of good weather ended with hail and snow, and June 5 trapped them indoors once more. They organized and gathered their masts and sails, their rudder for the stern, and the spar they’d use at the front of the ship for the bowsprit. They also packed rounded wooden flippers known as leeboards or whiskers that attached to the sides of the boats. The leeboards could be lowered or raised to keep a vessel from slipping sideways toward rocks or ice—a real danger, as close as they would have to stay to shore in their small boats.

  The next day, better weather let the carpenters attend once more to the scute, while the rest of the crew hauled the sleds that had already been loaded. They carried with them food and some of the most valuable merchandise, which, with luck, they would return to investors back in the Netherlands. But by midday, the sky turned ugly again—bringing not only hail and snow, but rain as well. They’d already removed the planks from the roof to use on the boats. Now all that protected them from the elements overhead was a sail, which quickly began leaking under the weight of water in every form, liquid to solid. They were drenched. Their felt shoes, too, which had done so well for them on snow and ice, grew sodden from the slush that had taken over the path to the cabin. They set aside their improvised footwear and pulled out their old shoes, which had frozen so hard in winter.

  They packed up more of the merchants’ cargo on June 7, crafting tarpaulin covers for the salable goods, in the hopes of keeping them from the various forms
of harm that might befall them in an open boat. The following day was clear enough for some of the men to take what they’d loaded over to the ship while the carpenters worked for a third day in a row on the scute.

  Afterward, they gathered to try to bring the rowboat from the cabin to the ship and set it alongside the scute, which was now nearly finished. They ran ropes attached to the vessel over their shoulders and gripped them with both hands, letting their bodies do as much of the work as possible. A combination of hope and goodwill made the work enjoyable, and the men were pleased with their success.

  On June 9, those who’d been drafted as carpenters finished the scute by laying the inside sheathing of the boat. The sailors not working on the scute took the opportunity to wash their shirts and linen by the shore one last time, with no idea if or when they would get a chance to do so again. The next day, they dragged four sleds of their belongings to the ship. The remaining wine went into small casks, to make it easier to divide between the two boats. They realized, too, that smaller casks would be simpler to hoist in and out of the boats onto the ice to leave them more room in the boat if they should get frozen in. They felt sure they would be frozen in, at least on the first leg of the trip.

  On June 11, nasty weather prevailed once more, with a hard wind out of the north-northwest. As it roared around them, they sat inside the cabin and fretted that the ship would be blown away. They’d lose everything they needed to survive. But hours of agony spent shut in the cabin ended, and nothing was lost.

  The following day, they hiked to the ship and pulled out their hatchets, halberds, and shovels. The next order of business was to cut a way through the jagged, frozen slopes that lay between the small boats and open water. They chopped out a rough corridor, throwing chunks of ice that could be lifted, pushing those that couldn’t, and digging out the rest. As if to say goodbye, a bear appeared in the middle of their labor, rising out of the sea and stalking over the ice toward them. Only the ship’s surgeon had a musket.

  Gerrit de Veer sprinted toward the ship to get more guns, but succeeded only in drawing the attention of the bear, which turned to chase him. Polar bears can run faster than humans under most conditions, and after more than nine months on Nova Zembla, the men weren’t in peak form. As the bear began to overtake de Veer, his shipmates came running behind and managed to distract the creature. When it turned to face them, the surgeon fired into its body, and the bear ran away, injured. Yet the hills and valleys of the harbor ice were so uneven that the bear couldn’t easily go far. The men chased the animal down, and with their fear turning to fury, they smashed its teeth in its mouth where it lay and finished it off.

  They had fair weather on June 13, with the carpenters finally finishing work on both the scute and rowboat. The wind was favorable, and the captain went down to look at the water, which seemed open enough to leave. After months of obstacles—including the twenty-three sightings of bears whose company had more than once nearly ended Barents’s life, and the twenty-six foxes that had so far saved them—all that remained was to get the boats from the edge of the ice down into the water.

  Van Heemskerck made his way back to the cabin and met with William Barents, who was by now too sick to help with physical tasks. The captain explained that conditions were good enough to set out. He ordered the crew “to take the boate and the scute downe to the water side, and in the name of God to begin our voiage to sail from Noua Zembla.”

  Barents had spent his time sick composing a letter, in case they all died sailing home. He’d written it out to leave in the cabin. Barents rolled the letter into a scroll and tucked it in a powder horn, which was capped and hung inside the chimney. Though their lodging might never be found, if someone should come across it by chance or by design, there would be a record of the fifteen Dutchmen who’d survived three seasons on Nova Zembla and tried to return home.

  Van Heemskerck wrote a second letter describing their privations and their plan to set sail without their ship, leaving their fate in the hands of God:

  Hauing till this day stayd for the time and opportunity, in hope to get our ship loose, and now have little or no hope thereof, for that it lyeth fast shut up and inclosed in the ice, and at the end of March and the beginning of April, the ice did so mightily gather together in great hills, that we pondered how to get our scute and boat into the water or where to find a conuenient place for it. And for that it seemed almost impossible to get the ship out of the ice, therefore I, with William Barents and the chief-boatswain and the other officers and company of sailors thereunto belonging, considering with our selues which would be the best course for vs to saue our own lives and some wares belonging to the marchants, we could find no better means then to mend our boate and scute, and to prouide our selues as well as we could of all things necessairie, that being ready we might not loose or ouerslip any fit time and opportunity that God should send vs ; for that it was required for us to take the fittest time, otherwise we should surely haue perished with hunger and cold, which as yet is to be feared will go hard inough with vs, for that there are three or four of vs from whom in our work we have no help, and the best and strongest of us are so weake with the great cold and diseases that we haue so long time endured, that we haue but half a mans strength ; and it is to be feared that it will rather be worse then better, in regard of the long voiage that we haue in hand, and our bread wil not last vs longer then to the end of the mounth of August, and it may easily fal out, that the voiage being contrary and crosse vnto us, that before that time we shall not be able to get to any land, where we may procure any victuals or other prouisions for our selues, even if from this moment we did our best ; therefore we thought it our best course not to stay any longer here, for by nature we are bound to seeke our owne good and securities. And so we determined hereupon, and in general by us all subscribed, done, and concluded, vpon the first of June 1597. And while vpon the same day we were ready and had a west wind with an easy breeze and an indifferent open sea, we did in Gods name prepare our selues and entred into our voiage, the ship lying as fast as euer it did inclosed in the ice, notwithstanding that while we were making ready to be gon, we had great wind out of the west, north, and north-west, and yet find no alteration nor bettering in the weather, and therefore we have at length abandoned it.

  Dragging the rowboat to open water along the path they’d cut in the ice, they left one man aboard to tend it. Those who were still healthy enough to work went back for the other boat. Filling eleven sleds, they traveled back and forth for food and wine again and again. In trunks and coffers, they loaded the most valuable of the merchant cargo: “six packs with the finest wollen cloth, a chest with linen, two packets with ueluet, two smal chests with mony, two coffers with the mens clothes such as shirts, and other things, thirteen barrels of bread, a barrel of sweet-milk cheese, a fletch of bacon, two runlets of oyle, six small runlets of wine, two runlets of vinegar, with other packs and clothes belonging to the sailors and many other things.”

  Once their treasures and hopes for staying alive were stowed, they took a sled back to the cabin and lay William Barents on it, hauling him down to the water. With Barents aboard, they returned for Claes Andries, who’d likewise been an invalid for some time, and lifted him into the other boat.

  Van Heemskerck brought out the two copies of the letter he’d drafted. At the bottom it read “Dated upon the 13.” He had each of the men sign it in turn.

  Iacob Heemskerck.

  Willem Barentsz.

  Pieter Pietersz. Vos.

  Gerrit de Veer.

  Meester Hans Vos.

  Lenaert Hendricksz.

  Laurens Willemsz.

  Iacob Iansz. Schiedam.

  Pieter Cornelisz.

  Iacob Iansz. Sterrenburch.

  Ian Reyniersz.

  Four among the crew, including Claes Andries, didn’t sign their names either because they were illiterate, or because they were too ill to do so. Van Heemskerck put a copy in each of the boats, in case they
were separated by the elements or either vessel should perish at sea.

  At half past four in the morning on June 14, 1597, they made their way to the edge of the ice. “And so,” wrote Gerrit de Veer in his journal, “committing ourselues 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.”

  The renovated boats passed their first, most basic test, and stayed afloat. As the wind drew them away from Ice Harbor, their former ship became indistinct in the distance. Left behind, it would thaw and refreeze, unraveling in the slow deterioration endemic to the Arctic, the cargo hold filling with more and more water, until the inside and the outside of the ship were fully of the same medium. The objects they left behind—the cannons, the cargo that had been left belowdeck, the planks of the quarterdeck, the three tall masts and the rigging with its halyards and sails—would sink to the bottom of the harbor or drift out to sea with the currents, disintegrating in such slow motion that an observer might have to watch a week, a year, or a century to observe changes. The ship would remain untouched by humans for four hundred years.

  Their cabin would sit up on its low hill with a view of the ship’s demise, and would itself go undiscovered for three of those centuries, filled with stacks of cheap prints, pewter candlesticks, a frozen clock that stood knee-high on a Dutchman, and William Barents’s discarded book about the landscapes and history of China.

  With the aid of a westerly wind, Barents and company sailed northeast from Ice Harbor. They made it out of the harbor, but their biggest fear quickly came to pass. The boats got pinned by ice, and they couldn’t work themselves free. Four crewmen went ashore and climbed to higher ground to get a clearer view. Along the cliffs, they lucked into four birds they killed with stones, the first fresh food they’d eaten in weeks.