In the Kingdom of Ice

by Hampton Sides

  Danenhower thought Collins the very definition of a dilettante—an overly loquacious sort, as the navigator put it, “who knows a little bit about everything in general and not a great deal about anything in particular.” But De Long, while somewhat skeptical, seemed pleased with the addition of Collins. “He has a large fund of general information,” the captain wrote Bennett, “and will make a name for himself in the Arctic, I am sure.”

  ONE OF THE questions that had weighed heavily on De Long as the date of the Jeannette’s departure approached was when, and how, James Gordon Bennett would arrive in San Francisco to bid the men of the Jeannette bon voyage. Bennett had agreed to come over, with the caveat that he would have to remain incognito until he reached California. The publisher insisted that the newspapers—even his own—would have no knowledge of his arrival on the East Coast of the United States.

  He would take a White Star Line steamer from Liverpool to New York. Then, under cover of night, he would transfer from the liner to a waiting yacht, where he would “steal ashore like a phantom,” as one account put it, and board a chartered train car in New Jersey whose windows were completely shaded. According to the plan, Bennett would take the train as far as Omaha, then switch to another special car on the Union Pacific line that would speed him to California just in time for the departure.

  De Long did not understand Bennett’s obsession with such elaborate stealth. It was all so strange. “No matter how carefully you kept yourself in the background,” he protested to Bennett, everybody would still know “you were sending the ship and paying for the expedition.” There was no hiding the fact that Bennett was, as De Long put it, “the head and promoter of the expedition to the end.”

  What De Long failed to see was that Bennett’s need for aloofness and mystery lay at the very heart of his personality. He yearned for the shadows, like the owls that decorated his villa, his yachts, his newspaper offices. He was incapable of doing anything directly or earnestly. Bennett really was a phantom—and an impossible patron for a straightforward man like De Long to figure out. Bennett would get there when he got there. All De Long could do was make a few discreet inquiries with the White Star Line and the Union Pacific Railroad, and wait.

  Bennett’s cloak-and-dagger shenanigans were responsible for an odd development that began to prey on De Long’s peace of mind. In 1878, Professor Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, a prominent Finnish-Swedish explorer, had begun a multiyear journey to complete the Northeast Passage—that is, sailing along the entire length of Eurasia’s northern coast, from Finland to the Bering Strait. Nordenskiöld and his vessel, the Vega, had not been heard from for the better part of a year, and Bennett, with his visions of repeating a “Stanley finds Livingstone” triumph for his newspaper, got in his head that De Long should search for Nordenskiöld along the northeast coast of Siberia before dashing off for the pole. Even if Nordenskiöld wasn’t lost, Bennett sensed that the meeting of the two explorers could be an electric moment that would make headlines and sell papers around the world. Yet searching for the Scandinavian constituted an entirely separate errand, a detour that would likely occupy the Jeannette for weeks, if not months, and prevent her from making full use of the brief summer window of Arctic ice melt.

  Although De Long found this new request exasperating, he was not privy to its source. Bennett conveyed his wishes for a Nordenskiöld search not directly to De Long but through Navy secretary Thompson. “I am sure you will agree with me,” Bennett wrote Thompson, “that motives of humanity suggest as the very first object the rescue and aid of Professor Nordenskiöld.” In reply, the secretary vowed that “rescuing Professor Nordenskiöld will be kept constantly prominent,” and then he issued a formal command to De Long.

  “On reaching Bering Strait,” De Long’s new orders read, “you will make diligent inquiry at such points where you deem it likely that information can be obtained concerning the fate of Professor Nordenskiöld. If you have good and sufficient reasons for believing that he is safe, you will proceed on your voyage toward the North Pole. If otherwise, you will pursue such course as, in your judgment, is necessary for his aid and relief.”

  De Long was furious. He did not understand why the Navy would jeopardize the mission’s success by seeking to rescue another nation’s expedition that was, he felt, neither lost nor in any significant danger. There was “unnecessary alarm” about the Scandinavian explorer, he thought, and most Arctic experts around the world agreed. Nordenskiöld’s plan all along was to hug Siberia’s icy coastline, never far out of sight of land—and anyway, he was not expected to be heard from for another four or five months. “I am as satisfied of Nordenskiöld’s safety,” De Long said, “as I am that tomorrow’s sun will shine.” He never guessed the real reason—Bennett’s desire for another sensational newspaper scoop—that hovered behind the orders. What concerned De Long was that the hunt for Nordenskiöld could drain away the whole summer. “We may find them too late in the season for us to work north,” he fretted. As a consequence, the Jeannette would effectively lose an entire year.

  De Long’s response to this wrinkle was the same one he instinctively summoned whenever he faced a new obstacle: He dug in, with his peculiar mingling of stubbornness and optimism. “I believe my resolution increases,” he wrote Emma, “in direct proportion to the difficulties thrown in my way.” Nordenskiöld was fine—of that he was sure. De Long would make cursory stops at a few villages along the Siberian coast and quickly dispel all doubts. With any luck, the detour would set him back only a week or two. He would fulfill his Navy orders, then be on his way north.

  TEN DAYS BEFORE his departure date, De Long held a commissioning ceremony at Mare Island that bound the expedition under Navy discipline and officially pronounced the Jeannette a U.S. Navy ship. De Long gathered all the officers and crew on deck to read the Articles of War and the Jeannette’s official sailing orders. The captain wore his dress uniform with gold lace and epaulets. His pince-nez glasses caught glints of light reflecting off the bay, and a polished sword dangled at his side. Chipp, Danenhower, Melville, and Ambler stood beside him, their hats cocked at rakish angles. Emma was there, too, holding a blue silk flag she had sewn for the expedition—a flag to be hoisted over newly discovered lands and the North Pole.

  Twenty-three crewmen, wearing Navy blues, took their positions on the deck, along with ice pilot Dunbar and the two civilian scientists, Newcomb and Collins. De Long read aloud portions of a cabled letter from Bennett, who promised that if the Jeannette were to become lost or stranded, he would rescue them. “I will spare neither money nor influence to follow up and send assistance,” the publisher vowed. Should the men of the Jeannette perish, those who were married could at least take comfort that “the widows will be protected by me.”

  Emma ran the blue silk flag up the mast, and it snapped in the breeze along with the American flag. The vessel would now sail over to San Francisco, for final provisioning. But it was official. The ship was duly commissioned, her name buttressed by a new designation: She was now the USS Jeannette.

  De Long swelled with pride in his vessel and his men. “My heart is set on this thing,” he wrote to Bennett. “We shall keep at it as long as the Jeannette floats and we are able to stand up … We have a good crew, good food, and a good ship, and I think we have the right kind of stuff to dare all that man can do.”

  15 · THE NEW INVADER

  Late one night during the first week of July 1879, De Long was lingering with Emma in the sitting room of their suite in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. Books, charts, ledgers, and ship blueprints lay about the place, and De Long’s head swam with vexing details as the day of his departure loomed.

  The Palace, which had opened four years earlier at a cost of $5 million, was reputed to be the largest and most opulent hotel in the world—“built to whip all creation,” in the words of Andrew Carnegie. The Palace’s ceilings were fourteen feet tall, and each of its 755 suites boasted private baths, an early form of air-conditio
ning, and electric call buttons that allowed guests to make their wishes known, via intercom, to the hotel’s armies of servants. The Palace was also equipped with the novelty of hydraulic elevators, paneled in redwood; they were known as “rising rooms.”

  George and Emma tried to savor their time together in this luxurious hotel. (Sylvie was temporarily living with Emma’s sister in Iowa.) But the stress of their imminent parting weighed on both of them. For days, George had been distracted, unable to focus on the thousand pieces of minutiae associated with the voyage. Emma had been at his side through most of it, reading his correspondence, strategizing with him, serving as his sounding board—all the while “taking good care not to let my feelings get the better of me.” During the trip around South America, Emma had come to know every inch of the Jeannette, and she was so immersed in the planning that George had come to regard her as a vital member of his expedition.

  Part of Emma wished she could join him in the Arctic, but she knew that was impossible. Her husband’s dream of reaching the pole was his and his alone. His obsession with the Arctic was clear and constant, like a steady flame. Everything he had done for the past five years, all his efforts and travels and preparations, came down to this week. “For years, his mind had been turning to this point,” she wrote. “He never imagined that he was to win a high reputation by some happy turn of fortune. He belonged to the men who have cared for great things, not to bring themselves honor, but because doing great things could alone satisfy their natures.”

  Later that night, De Long looked up from whatever he was reading and gazed at Emma. She was wearing a black velvet gown and a clair de lune necklace. He stared at her with a wistful expression that Emma found puzzling.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “what a pretty widow you would make.”

  Emma’s heart skipped a beat. It was uncharacteristically morose of him. It was not like George to entertain dark thoughts or wallow in sentiment. Her impulse was to rush to him, to give in to the emotions they both felt. But then she thought better of it. As she later wrote, “I was afraid the sluices would give way and we might both break down.” She worried that if either of them faltered, “untold misery would have stalked beside us … and ruined our last days together.”

  Yet George pressed her. “If such a thing should happen,” he said, “don’t smother yourself with heavy mourning things.” Should he die in the Arctic, he wanted her to dress simply and elegantly—and to look as beautiful as she did tonight.

  Composing herself, Emma replied, “I shan’t be a widow.”

  George left it at that. There was nothing to be done. Even if he had dark presentiments, the voyage could not be halted now. As he later wrote to her, “I am engaged in a great undertaking from which neither of us would have me retreat.”

  Later, George beckoned her and drew her upon his knee. “My arms went around his neck and my head rested on his shoulder,” Emma recalled. They tried to prolong the moment, caressing each other, as carriages sped by the windows of the Palace and the noise of the city rose up from the hilly streets. “For an hour or more we talked quietly, holding ourselves rigidly in control.”

  OVER THE PREVIOUS few weeks, something remarkable had happened: George Washington De Long had become a national hero. Newspapers across America and the world had sung his praises. He could feel the hopes of the nation at his back, and that had helped to buoy him in his darker moments. What he hadn’t reckoned on was pure celebrity. His sudden notoriety vaguely embarrassed him. It was not in his training or nature to hold the limelight—and he shrank from it.

  De Long was a man, said the San Francisco Examiner, who dared to “force the Northern Sphinx to disclose its secrets.” A reporter from Bennett’s Herald lauded De Long for taking “his life in his hands and offering it up on the shrine of Arctic discovery.” The New-York Commercial Advertiser declared, “Should success crown the efforts of the gallant commander, it will be one of the most brilliant geographical adventures ever won by man. The solution of the Northern Mystery would be the event of the century.” A newspaper in upstate New York went further, stating that with the Jeannette expedition, “man is on the verge of a discovery before which the discovery of America by Columbus would pale.”

  As these overheated declarations began to suggest, the Jeannette carried the aspirations of a young republic burning to become a world power; the hubris at the heart of the endeavor was a quality of the times. “What the Jeannette will find, with the bold De Long commanding her, remains to be seen,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle. “He follows a new route, and will essay ingenious means hitherto untried. Will the new invader succeed in wresting from the Arctic her long-kept secret?”

  A special correspondent for Bennett’s Herald was in San Francisco to cover every detail of the departure, but there was still no sign of Bennett himself. The benefactor’s absence was immensely disappointing to De Long, and he took it as a bad omen. In typical fashion, Bennett delayed answering De Long until the last possible moment, giving only vague indications that of course he would like to see his project commence.

  Then, from somewhere in Europe, came the following cable: “Regret exceedingly I cannot be there to bid him Godspeed, but hope to be on hand to congratulate him upon successful return,” it said. “Tell him I have greatest confidence in his energy and pluck, and I thank him sincerely for his fidelity to me. I wish this to be an American success.” Should De Long fail, however, Bennett reiterated, he would spare no expense to find and rescue him.

  It was vintage Bennett: brusque, aloof, pompous, and yet nearly limitless in its promises of financial generosity. Here was a cool man sitting on a warm pot of money. Bennett had probably never had any intention of coming to San Francisco—he hated crowds, hated emotion, hated, above all, to do anything that was “expected” of him. He had said his good-byes in Le Havre, and that was good enough. He would show his faith to De Long by writing checks.

  In fact, he had written a big check that very week. The secretary of the Navy, Richard Wigginton Thompson, had earlier suggested to De Long that a fast ship full of good coal would be sent as far as Alaska so that the Jeannette would not have to carry such a large load. Navy officials also had suggested that a man-of-war might escort the Jeannette as far as the Bering Strait. But then a war had broken out between Chile and Bolivia, which made it “necessary to increase our force in the South Pacific.”

  Late in the game, the secretary of the Navy sent De Long a final message wishing him luck on the voyage and commending his fair ship “to the protective care of Almighty God.” He also informed De Long that there was no longer a vessel available for hauling coal or escorting the Jeannette. This incensed De Long and left him scrambling to find an alternative. “The Government had shaken us adrift,” he wrote, “and left us to paddle along by ourselves … we are beam-ended.” In a moment of extreme pique, he wrote that the fate of the voyage was “hanging by a thread.”

  With scarcely a grumble, Bennett cabled to say he would foot the bill for a private vessel, the Frances Hyde. The chartered ninety-two-ton schooner, with its additional stores of coal, would cost Bennett tens of thousands of dollars, but that was not a problem. From Paris, he cabled De Long: “Any draft of yours will be honored.”

  De Long wrote back in gratitude: “Thank God I have a man at my back to see me through when countries fail.” Still, Bennett’s decision not to attend the bon voyage ceremonies cut to the quick. “I was electrified,” De Long wrote Bennett. “When you finally telegraphed you would not come, it was like a blow aimed right at the success of the expedition.”

  IN THE LAST days before the Jeannette’s embarkation, De Long was the toast of San Francisco. Everywhere he went, he was met by cheering crowds, salutes, and doffed hats. At the Palace, he was deluged with letters. Friends and well-wishers sent him good-luck trinkets and talismans to take on board—including a flute that was said to have magical powers. “If you play it anywhere near shore,” an accompanying note said, “I
am sure the wolves will all come down to howl.” A tract society provided a box of Bibles for the crew. The governor of California, William Irwin, arranged a luncheon. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution praising the “brave and accomplished commander” and his “picked band of resolute men.” A popular local medium who claimed to “see with eyes not material” conducted a well-attended séance during which she claimed to have learned that De Long would “get farther than any man living has been” and that he would survive the adventure to “die quietly” in his bed.

  De Long received innumerable letters from Arctic theorists and cranks. One predicted solemnly that at the 87th parallel, De Long and his men would “enter a region … where a tropical heat would meet them issuing from the hollow centre of the earth.” Another writer was convinced that De Long’s expedition would prove “the feasibility of trans-oceanic communication for commercial purposes between the Pacific and England” via the Bering Strait—all De Long had to do was chart the way and the route could be easily marked with a system of lighthouses and buoys.

  Meanwhile, newspapermen from around the country clamored to secure “exclusive” interviews with De Long. The captain refused all comers, often with a gruff reply: “I have no information to give upon the subject.” De Long had long ago learned the value of reticence—and besides, he had no time to fritter away on interviews. “He is frozen already,” lamented one reporter, “and can’t be thawed out.”

  One afternoon, the California Academy of Sciences held a reception in honor of De Long and his officers. Noted scientists from all over the West Coast attended. They were curious to know what De Long sought to learn in the Arctic and what he hoped to accomplish there. Responding to their queries, De Long rose diffidently and spoke a few brief words. “It is one of the most difficult things,” he began,