Addressing all the issues he had encountered ashore at Point Barrow was an awesome task. “After getting the camp in satisfactory order,” he stated, “I turned my attention to the outlying vessels. . . . I started [out] with Captain Leavitt, of the Newport, to visit his vessel and the others to the east of Point Barrow,” Jarvis wrote. “We went by the Rosario, and I authorized Captain Coffin to issue fresh meat to his men to the extent of 1½ pounds per day. . . . The steamers Newport and Fearless were fully 50 miles from [shore], and it was a long day’s journey to reach them without camping, yet it was [being] done day after day by the [ships’ crews]. . . . After remaining on the Newport two days I went on to the Jeanie [sic] with Captain Mason, of that vessel, who had been visiting the Newport. It was a long journey of 40 to 45 miles over the ice of Smiths Bay, and it was well into the night before we arrived at the vessel.”
Within weeks of Jarvis’s arrival, Point Barrow had come alive with activity, all of it geared to the welfare of the whalers. Here, men prepare to haul meat to the outlying vessels.
The constant traveling back and forth to the ships still trapped offshore challenged the dogs’ stamina. Feeding the animals was an important daily ritual.
As Jarvis reflected on his own difficult trips to the vessels and the constant parade of sleds from shore to ships and back again, he became aware once again of the unique animals upon whom he and the others had relied from the beginning of the rescue mission — the sled dogs. “This . . . hauling was very severe on the dogs, as the honeycombed ice lacerated their feet in a short time, and even the boots that were made for their feet saved them very little [pain. The dogs] worked wonderfully, though, and many would arrive back in such a state they could hardly stand up. I know no more faithful, enduring, hard-working animal than an Eskimo dog. There is no snow too deep, no ice too rough, no hill too steep for them to face, and as long as there is life left in them they will pull and struggle to drag along. Ill fed and abused, they may seem snarling and snappish, but their faithfulness dwarfs all other considerations. For my own team, which traveled with different parts of the expedition more than two thousand five hundred miles during the winter, I have only an affectionate gratitude for the way they carried us through. The work of the dogs and [men] from the ships and station and villages about Point Barrow during the long winter was heroic, and . . . grand beyond description.”
By the time his first full month at Point Barrow was over, David Jarvis was confident that he had dealt successfully with every crisis he confronted. But there was still one thing in particular that was troubling him. Despite all he had done, he had not managed to find out a single thing about the Wanderer, the one ship in the whaling fleet that was still unaccounted for. Had she sunk, taking her officers and crew down with her? Had she become locked in the ice somewhere well out of sight? Neither Jarvis nor anyone else at Point Barrow had a clue.
And then something that no one could possibly have foreseen took place. Just as Jarvis was about to organize a search for the missing ship, a large, sail-bearing sled appeared practically at his doorstep. Among those aboard it was a man who identified himself as being a boat steerer from the whaleship Mary D. Hume, which was wintering off Herschel Island. He and his companions, he stated, under orders from their captain, had left their vessel on February 25 to inform the captains of the other ships in the whaling fleet about the condition of their fellow whaleship the Wanderer. As Jarvis would later write, “They had a very severe [two-month] trip along an almost deserted coast and at times were compelled to go inland from the coast to hunt for food for themselves and [their] dogs, and when they arrived . . . were in very bad straits.”
But they were not in such bad condition that they could not relate the news that they had been sent to deliver. The Wanderer, they reported, was safely wintering off Herschel Island. Moreover, its officers and crew were being adequately provided for, thanks to the ample provisions aboard the Mary D. Hume.
After a long and arduous journey, the men who carried the news of the Wanderer’s whereabouts arrived at Point Barrow.
For Jarvis, “the arrival of this sled removed the last doubtful point in the situation [at Point Barrow].” What remained, he would write, was “simply a question of making the best uses of what we had, and to hold everybody together in order and discipline until [the Bear’s] arrival.” That, of course, was not as simple as Jarvis stated. And he knew it. Holding the men together meant not only maintaining order and discipline but also keeping the men’s morale up by finding things for them to do.
In order to accomplish this, Jarvis made daily exercise mandatory for every one of the whalers ashore. He had a duck-shooting camp erected several miles from where the men were quartered. To his surprise, the activity became so popular that during one ten-day period, the whalemen-turned-hunters killed 1,100 ducks, which also added to the whalers’ food supply. Jarvis’s main purpose in establishing the far-off camp, however, was to force the men to walk to and from its site. And for those men who, after battling whales, found duck hunting a bore or had an aversion to shooting ducks, he instituted a mandatory activity that required them to walk the distance to the camp and hike back carrying at least ten of the ducks that had been shot.
Gradually, almost all of the men, who had been so idle before Jarvis arrived, came to truly enjoy the exercises he initiated, the shooting or the long walks. But the most popular activity, by far, was baseball. James Allen would later write, “He gave the orders that all those who could play baseball give him their names. Those who did not play baseball [he ordered] must witness the games or take walks.
“Two baseball teams were chosen. McIlhenny was a captain of one side; I was captain of the other,” recalled Allen. “Chief Engineer Denny was chosen umpire. He was a former professional baseball player and really knew the game. He accepted under protest; it was either be umpire or carry 10 eider ducks . . . from the ducking station 10 miles away.”
For those who played in the games as well as those who watched them, it was a unique experience. As Lieutenant Bertholf would later comment, “A Ball-game with the ground covered with snow and the thermometer away below zero was certainly a novelty.”
What was not a novelty, however, was the weeks of waiting for the ice offshore to melt. Even when June arrived, there was not a significant amount of open water to be seen. When the calendar turned to July, the whaleships were still icebound, and amazingly they were still in danger.
“There was nothing left but to wait patiently for the break-up,” Jarvis would later write. “Before it came, however, on July 2, we had a violent southeast gale . . . shoving [the ice] farther in, and sending [it] . . . against the beach. One of these crushes struck the stern of the . . . Rosario . . . and raised her up on the ice above the level of the water. Passing under her, [the ice] took away her rudder and sternpost, tore her keel away, and stove a hole in her bow. All this happened in a few minutes, but as the vessel was close up to the beach the crew got ashore safely.”
The Rosario lies crushed after the July 2nd storm.
Thankfully, there had been no loss of life. But the Rosario, which had managed to survive being locked in the ice for more than ten months, had been destroyed. And Lieutenant David Jarvis now had another crew of whalemen to care for at Point Barrow.
The Bear steams toward Point Barrow. Even so hardened an Arctic veteran as Captain Francis Tuttle could not believe the amount of ice that remained in the region that late into the summer.
In all the years that Point Barrow had been inhabited, no one had ever witnessed anything quite like the July storm that had destroyed the Rosario. The Rosario was not the only ship to be affected by the storm. At the height of the gale, the enormous ice pack in which the Belvedere had long been trapped was torn away from the rest of the ice with the ship still embedded in it. It seemed certain that both the ice pack and the ship would be carried to an uncertain future far out to sea. But then the winds shifted suddenly, and to the amazement of its crew, the
Belvedere was carried back to almost the exact position it had been in before the storm began — locked in the ice.
Like the Belvedere, the Jeannie remained stuck fast to the ice field around her. But then the entire mass of ice was shoved violently against the beach, where it came to rest atop other ice that, in places, was as high as forty feet. Throughout the storm, the Newport and the Fearless remained exactly where they were but were battered so heavily by wind and ice that those aboard could hardly believe that they had not been crushed like the Rosario.
Captain Francis Tuttle had no way of knowing about the July 2nd storm that had caused so much havoc at Point Barrow. Two weeks earlier, on June 14, he had steamed the Bear out of its winter quarters far to the south at Dutch Harbor, hoping that by now the ice all the way up the coast must have either melted or been blown sufficiently away. He was on his way to Point Barrow to complete his role in the rescue mission that had been launched so many months ago. Tuttle also had no way of knowing if Jarvis, Call, and Bertholf had been able to successfully carry out their unprecedented journey.
On June 19, as he was making his way toward St. Lawrence Bay, he encountered ice so heavy that it took him almost four days to get through it. When he finally reached the bay, he spotted another vessel anchored there. It was the whaleship William Bayless, and its captain had news to impart. He told Tuttle that he had encountered Tom Lopp, who reported that he was making his way home to Cape Prince of Wales after having taken a herd of reindeer to Point Barrow. These were all the details that the captain could give him, but to Tuttle, they were exciting enough. Obviously, Jarvis had been able to persuade Lopp to join the expedition. And according to the Bayless’s captain, Lopp and his reindeer had made it to Point Barrow.
On June 24, the Bear reached Cape Prince of Wales, where Tuttle immediately sought out Tom Lopp. Never had he listened to another man’s story so intently or anxiously as he did to the reindeer expert’s account. The good news, Lopp related, was that Jarvis and Dr. Call had made it all the way to Point Barrow. So, too, he added, had Artisarlook and his reindeer. Bertholf had also performed heroically in carrying out a long, difficult journey to keep the expedition supplied. But, Lopp continued, there was other news as well. Lopp then gave Tuttle a full account of the dire situation at Point Barrow when Jarvis and Call arrived. He concluded by stating that when, on April 14, Jarvis had discharged him so that he might return to his family, the two Cutter Service officers were just beginning the formidable task of trying to improve conditions among the whalers so that they might survive until Tuttle and the Bear could get to them.
Having heard Lopp’s dramatic account, Tuttle was more aware than ever of the need to get to Point Barrow as quickly as possible. But during his report, Lopp had told him that among the most serious needs the stranded whalemen had was warm clothing. So, after bidding farewell to Lopp, Tuttle immediately doubled back to St. Michael, where he laid in a generous supply of clothes.
Leaving St. Michael and heading north again, Tuttle reached Point Hope on July 15. And there he received yet another surprise. Waiting to greet him was none other than Lieutenant Bertholf. Reacting to the astonished look on Tuttle’s face, Bertholf told him that Jarvis had sent him to Point Hope on a special mission. He was to make arrangements for the whaling and trading station there to take in some of the stranded whalers in case the Bear did not arrive at Point Barrow by the middle of August. With this done, he was ready to go to Barrow, in time, he hoped, to let Jarvis know that the emergency arrangements at Point Hope would not be necessary. As Bertholf boarded the Bear, both he and Tuttle could not help but reflect upon the fact that it had been exactly seven months since the captain had put him, Jarvis, and Dr. Call ashore at Cape Vancouver.
Now it was full steam ahead for Point Barrow — or so Tuttle and Bertholf hoped. But on July 18, as he was nearing Port Lay, Tuttle once again ran into heavy ice and was forced to drop anchor. As he was gazing ahead, hoping to sight a clear channel through the ice that would allow him to get under way again, Tuttle spotted a local boat called a umiak picking its way through the ice floes toward the Bear. Aboard the umiak were the sunken Orca’s captain, Albert Sherman; six of the whalemen; two native Alaskans; and Charlie Brower’s assistant Fred Hopson.
Once aboard the Bear, they had much to tell. Jarvis, they stated, had begun to have serious doubts as to when the Bear would be able to reach Point Barrow. Even with the deer, he was concerned that all the various types of supplies he needed to sustain all those at Point Barrow and all those aboard the ships would run out. That is why, they explained, Jarvis had ordered Bertholf to Point Hope. And that was why Jarvis had asked them to try to make a 220-mile trip down what he hoped would be a narrow channel of open water between the ice and the shore all the way to Port Lay. There, Jarvis had hoped, they would find Tuttle and the Bear. It had, the men reported, been a harrowing trip, but they had made it, and miraculously they had found the Bear.
Then they handed Tuttle the letter from Jarvis they had been sent to deliver. In it, Jarvis stated that if the Bear did not reach Point Barrow by August 1, all those there would be in dire need. The letter then went on to explain that if the Bear had not arrived by that date, Jarvis would begin sending the whalemen down the coast seeking whatever refuge they could find.
Months after the snow at Charlie Brower’s whaling station had melted, the stranded whalers were still waiting for the Bear to arrive.
In all his many years in the Rescue Cutter Service, Captain Francis Tuttle had never felt such a sense of urgency. He simply had to reach Point Barrow by August 1. As he looked all around him, he saw nothing but ice, but he was determined to steam his way through. On July 22, he lifted his anchor and tried to fight his way free. The Bear hardly moved. The next day he tried again, but with little more success. On July 25, his spirits were lifted when he spotted open passages between the ever-shifting floes. But just as he was beginning to make headway, fog settled in so thickly that he could see almost nothing ahead of him, and he was forced to drop anchor again. Finally the fog lifted, and he was able to get fully under way. By late evening of the twenty-seventh, despite continually having to dodge dangerous floating ice, Tuttle had passed both Cape Belcher and Point Franklin. Then, navigating by the light of the summer Arctic midnight sun, Tuttle suddenly heard the crewman on watch cry out. He had spotted a ship that seemed locked in the ice some ten miles distant. As he gazed to where his lookout was pointing, Tuttle saw that it was the Belvedere. Having no idea what conditions on that stranded ship were like, he sent some of his men ashore with a generous supply of food. As soon as the provisions were piled high at a spot on the beach where the Belvedere’s crew were sure to see them, Tuttle hurried on.
“How well I remember July 28, 1898!” James Allen would write. “Smoke [from a ship] was reported to the south. Everyone was guessing what ship [it was]. Finally the masts were sighted and then the yards. It turned out to be that grand old revenue cutter U.S.S. Bear, to me one of the most beautiful ships that was ever built.”
Some of the photographs taken while those at Point Barrow awaited rescue were truly outstanding. Here, the remarkable amount of ice still present in August is revealed, while in the distance, the Fearless and the recently arrived Bear try to fight their way out of entrapment.
It was indeed the Bear. At 5 a.m., Tuttle sighted the whaling station. What amazed him was that there was still some heavy ice, some of it as much as thirty feet thick, protruding from the shore. Not daring to get closer than a mile from the beach, he ordered his ship to a halt. Just fifteen minutes later, he spotted a procession of men hurrying toward him. It was Jarvis, followed by a long line of whalemen fairly dancing across the ice. Their rescue ship had arrived, and they were about to go home.
Well before the whaling fleet had become entrapped and the unprecedented rescue mission had been launched, the Bear had compiled a proud history. The ship’s heroic role in fulfilling President William McKinley’s improbable orders would add immeasura
bly to her glory.
The final chapter of the rescue of the whalers would not be accomplished without its anxious and potentially disastrous moments. Captain Tuttle had had a devil of a time getting to Point Barrow. He came excruciatingly close to not being able to get out.
Even as both the rescued and the rescuers were making their final preparations for leaving, heavy ice began building up and surrounding the Bear. “On August 1,” Lieutenant Bertholf would later write, “the Bear was jammed tight up against the ground-ice by the pack, and we were in the same position as the vessels the previous fall. . . . The only thing we could do now was to look out for the crush and wait patiently for an easterly wind to carry the pack-ice [away].”
Two days later, near disaster struck. “On August 3,” Bertholf would write, “the wind chopped around to the southwest, disturbed the pack, and brought on a pressure, so that our port side was pushed in a few inches. The snapping, cracking, and grinding of the timbers is a frightful sound, and for a few minutes it looked as if the stanch old Bear, that had seen so many cruises to the Arctic, was at last to leave her bones there, but fortunately the pressure ceased before any real damage was done. The danger was not over, however, for with the wind [still] blowing . . . [a repeat of what had just happened] was likely to occur at any time, and it was almost sure that the next time the Bear was doomed. Provisions were hastily gotten up and all preparations made to abandon her should it become necessary. For the next few days no one went asleep without expecting to be called at any time, and every morning we gave a sigh of relief to find the good old ship still safe.”
The Impossible Rescue Page 11