The Impossible Rescue

by Martin W. Sandler

  What they had seen as they tried to keep moving in the horrendous conditions were several structures that the indigenous people built when forced to set up camp. “The favorite way among the Eskimos of camping in this part of the country,” Jarvis explained, “is to build snow houses. . . . The wind packs the snow so hard that with a long knife it can be cut into blocks like building stone, and in a short time a small strong house can be constructed with these, the chinks being stopped up with loose snow, and a large block used as a door to close the opening, making the place nearly airtight. Soon the warmth of the bodies of three or four people, together with the heat from a native seal-oil lamp or kerosene-oil stove, will raise the temperature of the place so that it is fairly comfortable, and one can even remove some of his clothing. On account of the difficulties of construction, a snow house can not be so large as a tent, and the oil for the stove adds greatly to the weight to be carried; but, when traveling back from the coast, where there is no wood, snow houses are the necessity of circumstances. As such they are made the best of, and whatever discomforts they entail are passed off as unavoidable and not thought of.”

  By the afternoon of March 25, Lopp had to pause to allow the deer to forage for food. Jarvis and Call managed to put a good deal of distance between themselves and the herd. Suddenly, off in the distance, Jarvis spotted objects rising high out of the ice and snow. Even from afar, they looked to him like masts, rigging, and a smokestack. But could he trust what he was seeing? Earlier in his trek across Cape Blossom, he had noted that, because of the Arctic light and the unique nature of the vast terrain, “almost every twig or stick that stuck up through the snow stood out against the extreme whiteness of the surrounding country and seemed exaggerated into the size of a telegraph pole at least. . . . Every little ridge or unevenness in the snow seems at first a hill or mountain in your path, and it is not until you get very close to the rise that you are finally convinced of your error.”

  But this time Jarvis’s eyes were not deceiving him. The objects in the distance really were a mast, rigging, and a smokestack. One hundred and three days after landing at least 1,500 miles away, Jarvis and Dr. Call had spotted one of the icebound whaling vessels, the Belvedere. “We drew up alongside about 4 p.m.,” Jarvis would later write, “and going aboard announced ourselves and our mission, but it was some time before the first astonishment and incredulousness could wear off and a welcome be extended to us.”

  To Jarvis, the ghostly, icebound Belvedere was a welcome sight.

  Thrilled as he was to have reached the first of the stricken ships, Jarvis was alarmed at what he discovered aboard the Belvedere. “Captain Millard,” he would report, “was a very sick man and looked as if he would hardly survive the winter. There were 30 men on board the vessel at that time, 15 of her crew having been sent to Point Barrow. . . . Provisions were very short. . . . They were wholly dependent upon hunting for meat . . . but the hunting season was drawing to a close. . . . In November last a Siberian Eskimo, one of the crew of the Orca, had wandered off to go to his home in Siberia and was never heard of again. A man named Kelly, water tender of the Orca, who had been retained on board the Belvedere because he was not able to travel to Point Barrow, was a pitiable object from [illness]. He applied to Surgeon Call for treatment, but was beyond help, and a few days after we left, his body was found in the stern hole, where it was thought he had jumped to end his misery.”

  As dire as the situation was aboard the Belvedere, Jarvis and Call knew there was little they could do until the herd arrived and they assessed the situation at Point Barrow. The next day they left the vessel and headed for Barrow itself. It was now March 28, and they were embarking on the very last leg of their long ordeal. But, as if to accentuate all they had gone through, they were halted by yet another raging blizzard and had to set up camp. But this time, Jarvis was not frustrated by the delay. Instead, he spent the evening in his tent reflecting upon the entire adventure.

  “We were so near our journey’s end now,” he would write, “that we could afford to look back with a measure of satisfaction. On starting out it was hardly thought or contemplated that we could reach Point Barrow before April, and . . . there were many times, when, considering the difficulties and dangers, I had misgivings as to our being able to arrive within the limited time. Following the windings of the coast . . . we had traveled somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 miles or more. We had lived on the country, as we were directed, and had drawn from it all our means of travel, except a part of our camp gear and the small store we brought from the ship. The movements of the reindeer herd had far exceeded our expectations. . . . Loss of life or serious accident, which were always imminent, had been averted by extreme care, and we were now within 15 miles of our destination.”

  It seemed ages ago that Jarvis and Call had left Tununak for Point Barrow, never knowing if they would reach their destination. Now, on March 28, 1898, only one day’s journey from the point and the whalers, they were forced by yet another blizzard to set up camp one final time and wait out the storm.

  Startled inhabitants look on as Jarvis and Call pass by their village on their way to Charlie Brower’s whaling station. As he would later write, Brower was stunned “when Lieutenant Jarvis and Dr. Call of the cutter Bear came mushing up the coast. My first thought was that they had been wrecked and were coming for aid. As a matter of fact, it was the other way around. They were there to help us.”

  They awoke in the morning to crisp and clear weather. With great anticipation, finding it difficult to believe that they were only hours from completing their journey, they hurried on. And suddenly, there before them was the settlement at Point Barrow.

  “Passing rapidly by the village,” Jarvis would recall, “we drew up at the house of the Cape Smythe Whaling and Trading Company, of which Mr. C. D. Brower was manager. . . . When we greeted Mr. Brower and some of the officers of the wrecked vessels, whom we knew, they were stunned, and it was some time before they could realize that we were flesh and blood. Some looked off to the south to see if there was not a ship in sight, and others wanted to know if we had come up in a balloon. Though they had realized their dangerous situation last fall and had sent out Mr. Tilton . . . for aid . . . they had not thought it possible for anyone to reach them in the winter, and had not we and our positions been so well known, I think that they would have doubted that we really did come in from the outside world.”

  One of Lieutenant Jarvis’s greatest tasks once he reached Point Barrow was to keep the men aboard the still-stranded ships supplied with food and other provisions. Here, one of the supply parties makes its way toward the vessels.

  They had made it! And, it seemed, they had made it on time. A day after their arrival, Lopp and the herd arrived as well. “When the herd arrived in good condition and a good and sufficient supply of food was assured, it was a great relief,” Jarvis would write. “In coming from Cape Prince of Wales the deer had traveled over 700 miles in fifty-five days, counting all the delays from storms and preparations, and Artisarlook’s herd had come 100 miles farther, from Point Rodney. We were all grateful to Mr. Lopp and the ‘boys’ for what they had done, and I can not speak too highly of the skill, courage, and persistent, untiring work they showed from the beginning to the end of that long journey.” It was an extraordinary accomplishment for them all. But what Jarvis and Call would quickly discover was that defying all odds and getting to the whalemen was one thing; keeping them alive until the Bear could get to Point Barrow and bring them home was quite another.

  Almost as soon as Jarvis and Call made their dramatic appearance at Barrow, they were met by a group of the stranded whalers who had urged them to inspect the bunkhouse and witness the terrible conditions under which they and their fellow sailors had been living. Then they pleaded with the officers to do whatever they could to improve these conditions.

  The two officers wasted no time in making their inspection and were shocked by what they encountered. It was an even more serious
situation than Jarvis had feared. “[The whalemen] were much debilitated and run down,” he wrote, “and if something was not done quickly the weaker ones would soon die for general debility, and serious sickness attack all. . . . I determined that changes must be made at once, the men moved from their present quarters, their clothes and bodies cleaned, and proper rules of discipline, health, and exercise enforced.”

  There was no question in Jarvis’s mind that his first priority had to be that of getting the men out of the squalid bunkhouse and into cleaner, healthier quarters. He was determined also to create additional space so that the whalers would not be crammed in so close together.

  He began by convincing Dr. Richmond Marsh, a minister and physician who had taken over the Presbyterian mission at Barrow at about the same time the whalers had become stranded, to make the mission’s large schoolroom available for some of the whalers to live in. Then he persuaded Ned McIlhenny to share the refuge building with an additional number of whalemen. As Jarvis later explained, “These quarters were all light, dry, and warm, and could easily be inspected.” Finally, Jarvis had Brower’s men search for whatever scrap lumber they could find and then had them use the lumber to convert one of Brower’s warehouses into additional living space. When all this was completed, Jarvis distributed the whalemen throughout the new quarters and had the filthy bunkhouse torn down, saving the wood to be used as fuel for heating and cooking.

  Finding enough wood to improve the whalers’ living quarters was as great a challenge as feeding the men. Here, wood salvaged from an ancient shipwreck is being hauled to where it can be put to use.

  By convincing those who ran the Presbyterian mission at Point Barrow to take in a number of the whalemen, Jarvis accomplished much in the way of improving both the comfort and the health of those he had been sent to rescue.

  For Jarvis, providing healthier and more comfortable quarters for those he had come to rescue was just the first step. So much more needed to be done if the whalers were to survive until the Bear came. Thanks to Brower, who had sent a group of villagers out on hunting parties during the two months after the whalers had been shipwrecked, enough ducks, geese, and wild deer had been killed to provide the whalemen with life-sustaining, albeit scanty, rations. But as Brower had anticipated, once the winter set in, hunting had become increasingly difficult.

  “Provisions were short, very short,” Jarvis had observed on his arrival, “and only by the strictest economy . . . had they been enabled to get along so far.” Now, thanks to the deer the expedition had delivered, he was able to order an increase in the whalemen’s rations of fresh meat to 2½ pounds per week. And he took another morale-boosting step as well. “I found that the greatest craving of the men was for some seasoning in their food,” he wrote. “After my arrival I collected from the outlying vessels some tins of sage, savory, and thyme, and these seemed to make a great difference in the food. Pepper was most craved, but . . . there was little or none . . . anywhere.”

  The increase that Jarvis made in the whalers’ meat ration was important for a reason other than morale. When the opportunities to hunt for fresh meat had diminished dramatically in the winter, the instances of scurvy had increased at an alarming rate. Fortunately, Dr. Call was experienced in dealing with the disease. Within a relatively short period of time, the infusion of fresh deer meat into the whalemen’s diet brought an end to the serious threat to so many of their lives. As James Allen would later state, “No one can tell what might have happened had Dr. Call not come just at the right time.”

  Allen’s appreciation of the doctor would come to be shared by all those at Point Barrow. From the moment he arrived, Call would spend most of every day tending not only to the needs of the whalemen quartered there but also to those of some two hundred indigenous families who lived in the area. And his activities would not be confined to Barrow. “At 12:45 p.m. I left . . . on a sick call to the vessels in the ice 100 miles to the eastward,” one of the entries in his journal would read. “There were three sleds, two of which were loaded with deer meat, and the third, to which I was assigned, carried food for the dogs. . . . The weather had been mild and the snow was soft and slushy, and for many miles we were compelled to make our way over [large mounds] of ice and to wade through depressions filled with water. We finally reached the first vessel on the third day, [where I treated men suffering from nasal infection, dysentery, and influenza].”

  The tireless Samuel Call would make contributions beyond his medical training. As a photographer, he created a unique visual record of the long trek to Point Barrow as well as of the time he spent there. Call would also prove to be a keen observer of the native population’s ways of life. Later, he would write about his observations, providing fascinating insights into a unique people whose customs and traditions were so different from his own.

  Dr. Call pauses on one of his many trips to the men on the stranded ships. Call’s medical skills and devotion to duty would be responsible for saving the lives of a great many of the whalemen.

  This report, submitted by Dr. Call, lists the medical supplies he carried with him at all times both during the trek to Point Barrow and while treating the whalemen there.

  Charlie Brower (center) at Point Barrow after the Overland Relief Expedition arrived. “But for [Brower’s] care and management,” Ellsworth Bertholf would write, “it is certain that many of the men would have perished before the expedition came to their relief.”

  With the issues of housing and illness having been quickly addressed, Jarvis then turned his attention to another of the whalemen’s needs. A majority of the men were not adequately clothed for the winter Arctic weather. “Since most of the men still lacked adequate clothing,” Charlie Brower would write, “Jarvis now suggested that the Eskimos [who lived in the village at Point Barrow] might be persuaded to [donate the needed garments], each native throwing in whatever clothing he could spare. I didn’t know how the Eskimos would take to the idea of helping white men who had stooped so low as to rob their graveyard. But I did my best — and was fairly overwhelmed by their generous response. . . . I was careful to take down the names of all donors, however, and [eventually I] saw that each native was well rewarded. They never forgot that.”

  From the moment he had arrived at Point Barrow, Jarvis had been appalled at the whalemen’s filthy condition. Making it clear to all the whalers that “cleanliness was an absolute necessity,” he issued to every man one pound of soap each month and saw to it that enough snow was melted on the stove each day to provide at least a minimum amount of water for the men to clean themselves with. With the help of Dr. Call, he then enforced a strict policy of cleanliness and sanitation. “It was difficult at first,” Jarvis would recall, “to get some of the men to make any effort to clean themselves; but later, after the majority saw they had the means to do it, and could, they united to compel the others and were quick to report any great neglect. It was not long before the general appearance of all was greatly improved.”

  Thanks to Jarvis’s determination and efforts, the whalers had been removed from their squalid quarters and had been provided with far better living conditions. They had received more adequate clothing. And they had been convinced of the importance of keeping themselves clean. But from Jarvis’s first inspection, he knew that with the captains’ abdication of responsibility for their men, lack of discipline threatened everything else he could do to keep the whalemen alive.

  Less than twenty-four hours after completing his first inspection, Jarvis made it emphatically known that, as the government-appointed authority while the whalers were at Point Barrow, he was assuming total command. As such, he stated, he would set strict rules of behavior and would dictate punishment if they were not followed. He also let everyone know that he and he alone would settle all disputes that arose among the men. “Discipline and obedience came first with Jarvis,” James Allen would write, “and we all knew that.”

  A number of the men began to argue that since their term of
employment aboard their ships had expired during their long months imprisoned in the ice, their officers no longer had any authority over them and no longer had to be obeyed. Many of them stated that they now wanted to leave their vessels and join those who were quartered at Point Barrow. After listening to the men’s arguments, Jarvis pointed out that those aboard the vessels were serving longer than they had contracted for entirely because of an act of nature and that, by law, they were still under the command of their captains and other officers.

  “Aside from . . . safety . . . there were other strong reasons why the men should remain as they were on their vessels,” Jarvis would explain. “All the food had been distributed with this in view, and it was impossible now to make any change in it. I could not care for any more at Point Barrow without cutting down an already too short allowance. Again, in the matter of exercising discipline and control, it was better that the men be divided into small groups, separated at good distances, as they now were, for so many idle men in one crowd would breed all manner of disturbances and troubles.”

  Preventing the men from leaving their ships was a continuous issue for Jarvis. “Louis Rich, carpenter of the Fearless,” Jarvis wrote, “arrived at [Point Barrow], reporting he had left his vessel on account of a dispute with the [captain], and asked that he be taken into the quarters with the shipwrecked men. Upon investigation, his cause for leaving was found to be so trivial that I returned him to the vessel the next day and admonished him to remain there. I suspected and subsequently learned that this man was put forward to try me . . . and if he had been allowed to leave the vessel all the other dissatisfied ones would soon have followed. As he had to walk 50 miles coming to me and 50 miles [more] returning to the vessel, there were none others anxious to try it after that lesson.”