Trial by Ice

by Richard Parry

  That about covered it. If the men aboard the Polaris followed that exhortation, they would be all right. But it would take a strong sailor to live up to those wordsonce the dark and cold of the Arctic worked on them.

  In his diary notation for August 10, George Tyson wrote:

  Captain Davenport and Rev. Dr. Newman, who came up in the Congress, have had their hands full trying to straighten things out between Captain Hall and the disaffected. Some of the party seem bound to go contrary anyway, and if Hall wants a thing done, that is just what they won't do.

  Out in the bay a squall line swept sleet and rain across the sea like a giant's whisk broom. Wind advancing before the rain tore wisps of spindrift from the tops of the short waves and roiled the sullen water. Patches of pewter sky, overwhelmed by the lowering clouds, merged with the leaden sea. Davenport watched the Polaris slip into the curtain of rain and fog.

  Not a ship heading for trouble, the navy captain must have realized, but a troubled ship going in harm's way.

  FIRST ICE

  There are two parties already, if not three, aboard. All the foreigners hang together, and expressions are freely made that Hall shall not get any credit out of this expedition. Already some have made up their minds how far they will go, and when they will get home againqueer sort of explorers these!

  —GEORGE TYSON, DIARY, AUGUST 10, 1871

  August 18, 1871, the Polaris reached Upernavik. The vessel dropped anchor in a shroud of mist and fog. For those new to the far North, the gray skies and barren, windblown coast of Greenland offered a sour taste of what lay ahead. Strewn with bits and pieces of driftwood and salvaged scraps, the village resembled a dump rather than the last notable link with civilization. After Upernavik only the harbored settlement of Tasiussaq lay between them and the unknown. Whereas the sunlit rocks and shadowed tidal pools of St. John's underscored Newfoundland's rugged beauty, the coast of Greenland presented a far gloomier picture. Barren, desolate, and dank, the colorless harbor existed uneasily between the threatening sea and the brooding peaks that scowled down upon it. These nunataks, or mountain peaks, pierce the omnipresent mantle of ice that dominates the region. Scoured of snow by the winds, the jagged projections of hard Precambrian rock rise above the ice like somber crystals, making them the inverse of the picturesque, snow-covered peaks of the Alps or Rocky Mountains.

  As the largest island of the world, Greenland suffers from two dubious distinctions. To the eye, it is neither green nor land. First, two-thirds of its land mass lies within the Arctic Circle, so most of Greenland is white. Erik the Red lied to his fellow Icelanders on his return from Greenland in a.D. 985 to encourage them to settle there. Later travelers would marvel at the irony of the place's name.

  Besides not being green, there is precious little land either. A massive ice cap, second in size only to Antarctica, covers more than 85 percent of the land. Like a colossal melting block of ice, varying in places from one to two miles thick, the ice cap flows ever outward from the center toward the sea. Snowfall of up to eighty centimeters blankets the cap, compressing the underlying ice into dense layers. Heat is generated during this process, and the ice begins to slide outward. Friction from the moving sheets generates more heat. Melt from this heat lubricates the interface, but the sheer weight and bulk of the sliding ice scour the underlying rock and grind it into fine silt, called glacial flour. This powdery dust turns the melting water into white, milky streams. One of Greenland's fastest-moving glaciers, the Jakobshavn Glacier, slides along at one hundred feet per day. All this ice heads for the ocean.

  Eking a tenuous existence between these wandering walls are scraps of exposed high ground. Spared by the glaciers, the land is scourged by the wind. No trees of note grow there, only stunted and dwarfed birch, scrub alder, and willow. Mainly the barren rock is carpeted with cotton grass, sedge, and lichens. The drier parts are termed tundra, while the wetter hollows are called taiga.

  About this bleak landscape, Arctic foxes, hares, musk ox, and lemmings struggle to survive.

  Well after dark, Mr. Chester's well-traveled whaleboat thumped against the side of the Polaris. The first mate, sent to search for the second Inuit sled driver, had returned. A lantern held aloft by the deck watch revealed an astonishing sight. Beaming upward in the reflected light were five round faces and a dozen sled dogs. Awkwardly, the first mate explained to Captain Hall that Hans Christian, while willing to join the expedition, refused to part with his family and all his worldly possessions. Hans saw no difficulty in this. With an Inuit's straightforward logic, he decided to take everything with him. Settling his wife and three small children in the boat, Hans then crammed the craft to its gunnels with his furs, guns, lamps, grass baskets, harpoons, sled, kayak, and his entire dog team. In addition to this was more unwelcome cargo: within the Inuit's hair and among their furs crawled hundreds of lice.

  After the new additions were hauled aboard, a touching reunion took place. Hans shook hands all around with Hall and the officers. When he came to William Morton, he paused. Both Morton and Hans had accompanied Elisha Kent Kane's expedition seventeen years before.

  Those seventeen years at sea had been hard ones for William Morton. It was Morton and Hans who had mushed overland while the rest of the expedition wintered in their icebound ship, the Advance. Near Cape Constitution open water halted their foray. Morton returned and reported his findings to Kane. The delusion of the Open Polar Sea was popular at that time, and Morton's findings seemed to confirm that such an open waterway existed. However, the expedition led by Hall's nemesis, Isaac Hayes, seven years later found only ice. Morton was labeled a liar and his beloved Kane faulted for taking the word of an enlisted man. Morton's loss of credibility weighed heavily on him, aging him severely.

  Morton's seamed face had so changed that Hans failed to recognize his old friend. Then Morton showed his hands to the Inuit. An accidental explosion of black powder during the Kane exploration burned and scarred the seaman's hands. Hans took the hands and ran his fingers over the raised scars. Instantly Hans identified the injury and with it his past companion. The two men embraced warmly and shook hands while tears moistened the old explorer's eyes.

  Two days passed while Hall struggled to buy more sled dogs. Without adequate animals to haul the sleds, overland advance would be impossible. No other animal could live and work in the harsh conditions as well as the tough, thick-coated dogs bred by the Inuit. Years later Robert Scott would use ponies instead of dogs to haul his sledges in his quest for the South Pole. That would cost the lives of the entire Scott expedition.

  The commander used the time to strengthen his position. After the Sunday services given by Mr. Bryan, Hall resolved to bell the cat. He rose and addressed the gathering, intending to reaffirm his command over all aspects of the expedition, especially Bessel's group. Instead of unifying his men, as was his intention, the speech did little good. The split had occurred. His words fell upon different ears with differing impact. What German and American heard was very divergent.

  To Joseph Mauch, the young German assigned to be Hall's stenographer, the lecture dissolved into a diatribe directed against the ranking Teuton, Emil Bessel. “Capt. Hall made some remarks insulting Dr. Bessel most severely,” Mauch wrote in his journal.

  To the American Noah Hayes, his captain's speech reflected his steadfast resolve and noble principles. Hayes remembered Captain Hall asserting “his determination to maintain order and obedience to all lawful commands.” Prophetically Hayes recalled Hall's vowing “if necessary to die in the performance of his duty as commander rather than yield a letter.”

  Hall had cast his gauntlet down and backed his oath with his life.

  Another day's steam found the ship anchored at Tasiussaq, a collection of huts more than anything else. Hall purchased more dogs, bringing the total up to sixty. He had hoped to convince a man named Jansen to join the group, but Jansen refused.

  All around them signs of autumn showed. Yellow laced the curling willow and a
lder leaves, and the white caribou moss rose in stark contrast against the red-and-orange-tinged lichen. The air carried a sharper bite. Each evening the land breeze wafted the pungent tang of high bush cranberries among the tarred rigging lines. Hall grew more anxious with each sign. His window through the sea ice was closing. Any day now the mountains of floating ice would slide down from the north to crash and collide while they sealed Smith Sound until the next summer.

  Two days of solid fog blocked their departure. Cold, white, and impenetrable, the fog descended on the harbor without notice. Hall chafed at the bit, finally deciding to trust the ship to the local knowledge of a pilot. Hastily he amended his last report to Navy Secretary Robeson. Gov. Lowertz Elberg had promised to see the report safely aboard the next ship to the United States. On August 22 he had written optimistically, “The prospects of the expedition are fine; the weather beautiful, clear, and exceptionally warm.” A landsman, he failed to realize the warm air was a mixed blessing and might bring fog. Now he penned a more somber note: “The Polaris bids adieu to civilization. God be with us.”

  Through the fog and into the open sea of Baffin Bay, Polaris headed north for the neck of the bottle called Smith Sound. With Von Otto's report that the ice pack had receded still fresh in his mind, Hall made way through the open water, following the most direct path to his goal. Like a silent hunter lying in wait to spring the trap, Smith Sound remained open, luring the ship ever northward. Fading astern, the faint oil lamps of Tasiussaq shimmered over the rolling waves until they became no more than a memory. With those lights faded all contact with their modern world. Behind lay hospitals, electric lights, telegraph, civilized comforts, and safety. Ahead waited the cold and darkness and danger.

  Inside Smith Sound the first icebergs appeared.

  Saint Brendan, the seafaring Irish monk, first mentioned encountering “floating crystal castles” during his far-flung voyages in a cowhide coracle. Saint Brendan often exaggerated and was given to flights of fancy as he rocked along in his fragile craft. Unfortunately for mariners to this day, what he saw was real, and nothing he wrote about icebergs conveyed their majesty or the utter terror they invoke in a sailor's heart as they slide silently through the water with the help of current and wind. The nip in the air that precedes an iceberg can chill a mariner to his marrow. Before radar and the Global Positioning System (GPS), only a keen eye and a quick hand on the helm prevented a collision with these floating monsters. In thick fog the faint echo of the foghorn might be the only thing to give adequate warning.

  But Greenland is infamous for producing very large tabular icebergs. Flat and expansive, these ice islands, often miles across, drift along barely showing above the surface. No sounds echo from these. A vessel driven aground on one has no chance. If the ship is not instantly holed and sunk, its rocking rips the hull apart on this floating island.

  And where the Polaris sailed was iceberg country, indeed. Unlike the eastern coast of Greenland, where icebergs are few and move north with the current, western Greenland wins the prize for calving icebergs. Shearing off the moving face of the glaciers, massive blocks of ice escape the fjords to sail south along the western face of Greenland with the Labrador Current. Appropriately enough, given their potential for destruction, all up and down the coast thundering booms and cracks herald their birth, resonating for miles from the fjords.

  Rolling over so that the bulk of ice lies below the waterline, these watery battering rams head for the shipping lanes. More than 7,500 icebergs train down Davis Strait. Fewer than 1 in 20 sails past Newfoundland, but the vagaries of wind and surface temperature can dramatically prolong their lives. In both 1907 and 1926, icebergs traveled as far south as Bermuda.

  From the deck of the Polaris, the crew watched pale battalions loom on the horizon. More and more ice appeared as the water developed a dark and sinister cast. Jagged icebergs mingled with spinning plates of fractured floe ice. Steaming along in the dark, the Polaris narrowly missed a low tabular iceberg. The lookouts were doubled and instructed to keep a sharp eye for areas of dead water. As the lowering clouds and fog hid the moon, only the absence of whitecaps exposed the giant saucers of ice skimming along at sea level.

  Dawn brought a surprise. Directly ahead lay an ice floe littered with rolling, grunting, reddish-brown lumps. The foul stench of rotted fish and dung blew ahead of the floe, announcing the arrival of a pod of walrus. Warily the animals regarded the ship as they drifted closer. Inuit hunted the animals for their meat, tusks, and skins to make their oomiaks. Besides the few humans who paddled their fragile boats, only killer whales and polar bear threaten these large mammals, but the vigilant males who guarded the group failed to recognize these men as a danger. Still cautious, the walrus watched the dark hulk of the Polaris sail closer.

  These were Arctic specimens, so Dr. Bessel induced George Tyson to shoot one for scientific study. But the walrus has a thick, spongy skull like the elephant that encases a tiny brain. Now Tyson learned what the Inuit already knew. Walrus are difficult to kill unless shot through the eye. If not killed instantly, they slide off and sink. The Inuit used harpoons with braided skin lines. Even then, more than one hunter died beneath the slashing tusks of a wounded walrus or drowned when the animal shattered his oomiak. Both Tyson's shots missed a vital spot, and the animals vanished into the safety of the black water, leaving behind only an empty, brown-streaked floe.

  Threading through the ever-increasing floes of ice, the Polaris beat northward, aiming for the eye of the needle. Passing through Smith Sound, the vessel entered the ice-cluttered narrows that separates Greenland from Ellesmere Island. Tapering in places to a mere sixteen miles across, the three-hundred-mile gauntlet widens north of Smith Sound into Kane Basin, a massive bite taken out of the western side of Greenland by the Humboldt Glacier. Beyond Kane Basin the passage constricts again into Kennedy Channel. Beyond that passage lies the Lincoln Sea, sweeping north of Ellesmere Island and the northernmost tip of Greenland. No land exists north of here. Here is truly the end of the earth.

  Ancient mariners might leave the unknown edges of their charts white and fearfully mark “Here be dragons.” But this is land's end. And dragons do live here in the form of frightening gales, building-size bergs that bulldoze down the straits, and numbing cold. A man lost overboard is dead within fifteen minutes from hypothermia. Within minutes the 38°F seawater so cools the small muscles of the hands that a man overboard cannot grasp a lifeline. Anyone lucky enough to reach shore or climb aboard floating ice freezes just as quickly without a fire or shelter.

  The elusive goal of the North Pole that Charles Francis Hall sought actually sits above a depression at the top of the globe. Like a hard-boiled egg with one end smashed in, the North Polar region is one vast frozen sea overlying an irregular dent in the earth. Subterranean ridges roughly divide this scooped-out depression into three basins: the Nansen Basin, the Makarov Basin, and the Canada Basin. The highest ridge, the Lomonosov Ridge, runs from the top of Greenland across to eastern Siberia.

  For those used to the security of terra firma, this region offers little solace. The ice is restless. Twisted by the rotation of the earth and pushed by the winds and currents, the polar ice field drifts endlessly. Above Ellesmere Island the ice spins ponderously clockwise like a massive frozen pinwheel called the Beaufort Gyral Stream. Closer to the Pole itself, the ice moves along the Greenwich meridian from east to west at three to four miles a day. A party pressing against this drift can struggle forward all day only to find it has progressed backward.

  This constant movement fractures the ice and crumples it upon itself. Miles of pressure ridges traverse the ice plain like miniature Rocky Mountains, creating barriers impossible to cross. Sharp-edged sastrugi like twenty-foot piles of broken glass litter the journey, cutting dogs' feet, lacerating boots, and shattering sled runners. Deep crevasses and open lees of water mingle among the blocks of ice.

  Of course, most of this was unknown to Captain Hall and his companions at
the time. His journey north was much like what a trip to Mars would be today. Every mile he moved past where civilized man had gone was a mile into the unknown. Even his instruments were primitive by modern standards. In the 1870s the finest tools with which to measure one's position were the sextant, the magnetic compass, and the hand-wound chronometer.

  As far north as the Polaris sailed, the pull of the magnetic pole on the compass needle rendered it almost useless, deflecting the needle more than 47° to the west of true north. Measuring longitude accurately required an accurate timepiece. While you could measure your latitude fairly correctly on the surface of the earth with a sextant by taking a noon sun shot, measuring the sun when it was directly overhead, to calculate your longitude required the accurate time. Every four seconds off the correct time equaled an error of one nautical mile.

  Once again the British government, in 1728, rising to a challenge, offered a reward to whoever built the most accurate chronometer, one that met its strict requirements. After all, how was the British Lion to rule the seas if it couldn't tell where it was? As usual, the prize money amounted to twenty thousand pounds. An amateur mechanic and carpenter named John Harrison surprised the Royal Society by building such a timepiece. The Board of Longitude equivocated, so Harrison improved his designs, making them more accurate and, more important, small enough to be carried aboard ship. In 1762 Harrison's number 4 marine chronometer erased all doubts. During a test cruise from England to Jamaica, Harrison's clock showed an error of only five seconds. The problem of longitude was solved. Even so, the government paid Harrison only five thousand pounds at first, holding back on the remainder until 1773.

  But for these hardy Arctic adventurers, special problems existed. Cold temperatures played havoc with the lubricating oil and finely tuned springs of the chronometers, affecting their accuracy. Using the sextant was even harder. The cold, bare metal of the sextant instantly froze any exposed fingers, necessitating cumbersome gloves. The slightest wisp of breath will fog the instrument. The Arctic sun by late summer runs low on the horizon and vanishes entirely in October. Without a horizon of open water, a plate of liquid mercury must be used to reflect the sighting. The navigator must lie on his stomach on the ice, sight into the shimmering dish, and try to match the sun or star with its reflected circle in the dish. Using a mercury horizon in the twilight to sight dim stars is almost impossible. This compounds errors in the sighting. Any result is then divided by two to get a reading. And any accidental error doubles.