The Ice Master

by Jennifer Niven

  McKinlay’s eyes were useless now. They were painful, and fast swelling shut. For the first time since the ship sank, he panicked. This was worse than losing the ship because this time someone was depending solely on him. The image of Mamen was vivid in his brain. McKinlay saw him lying in the tent, swollen, unable to walk or eat or move, growing weaker and weaker.

  It filled him with fear. He felt utterly helpless and ill and disgusted with himself for being so careless with his goggles. It was a stupid mistake. But he made himself go on.

  He knew it would be impossible at this point to find his way back to Rodger’s Harbour, so he headed north, as best as he could tell, hoping to reach Icy Spit so that he could send Munro and the others to bring food to Mamen. He lost all sense of time and direction. He did not stop to rest or sleep. He was exhausted, but he pushed on. He walked and when he couldn’t walk, he crawled. The ground was rough and treacherous, covered with knifelike rocks of different sizes and shapes. He tore his clothing and gloves on the sharp rocks and pebbles beneath his hands and knees. They ripped holes in the soles of his boots and scraped his feet until they were raw and bleeding. He was wet through from the snow and the water and the ice, and his skin was freezing. One eye was swollen completely shut, and he could barely see through the other. He was forced to travel by touch, giving his “good” eye a rest.

  Through it all, he heard the words inscribed to him by his local Clydebank minister in the Bible given to him before he set sail from Glasgow the previous year. They had meant little to him then as he was embarking upon his great northern adventure. I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.. . . Now the words gave him strength and pushed him onward. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

  And so, by some miracle, at 4:30 in the morning on May 25, two days after McKinlay had left Mamen and Templeman, he reached Icy Spit. The seventy-mile journey had taken him thirty-eight hours, without stopping to sleep or rest. He woke Munro before collapsing, telling him, as best he could, what had happened.

  Afterward, wet and miserable, he passed out and slept until the next day. When he awoke, his only thought was of Mamen.

  DIARY OF BJARNE MAMEN

  RODGER’S HARBOUR

  THURSDAY, MAY 21.

  The barometer is falling; it now stands at 29.4. In the tent all day, cannot eat now, feel infinitely weak.

  THEY LEFT EMMA HARBOR immediately, Bartlett only taking time to thank Baron Kleist for his kind hospitality before boarding the Herman for the 240-mile trip across the Bering Sea. Pedersen was a godsend. Not only was he delaying his trading voyage to make the unexpected journey to Alaska, but his crew—including second mate John F. Allen, the original first mate on the Karluk before being dismissed by Bartlett—was working entirely on shares and would have their paychecks delayed by the detour.

  On May 24, they reached the edge of the ice pack off Nome but could get no closer than twelve miles offshore. There was no harbor in Nome, just open beach, which made it dangerous for ships to travel in and out. When the ice field was as heavy as this, it simply meant a ship was immobilized until the pack broke up—if the pack broke up, for it often stayed firmly intact, stubborn, and impassive.

  They waited for three days, gazing longingly at the shore, which seemed, especially after all the time passed and distance traveled, so maddeningly close. Yet it was impossible to reach. Bartlett thought he would lose his mind, with nothing to do but read magazines and stare at the shoreline while somewhere his men were struggling to hold on.

  On May 27, Pedersen had had enough and changed course for Saint Michael, southeast and down the coast. They steamed across Norton Sound and arrived at Saint Michael on the twenty-eighth. Here, too, the harbor was frozen solid, but they took down one of the smaller boats and rowed to the edge of the ice, making the rest of their way on foot. Earlier, Bartlett had shed the polar furs he had been wearing for all those months and changed into some American civilian clothing given to him by Pedersen.

  At 8:00 that evening, Bartlett once again set foot on American soil, for the first time in nearly a year. It was the greatest feeling of relief. Pedersen went with him to the town’s wireless station, but the windows were dark and the office was closed for the night, so they went in search of a hotel. Along the way, they met Hugh J. Lee, a well-known United States marshal to whom Bartlett had been introduced in Nome the previous summer.

  Lee was surprised to see Bartlett now, and the captain quickly related his story. Lee took over then, ushering Bartlett over to the town’s winter hotel. The two men stayed up all night, talking about the Karluk and her captain’s journey to get help for her survivors.

  The first thing the next morning, Bartlett was at the wireless office, a military station of the Signal Corps of the United States Army. With a careful hand, Bartlett wrote out his message to the Canadian government, but the sergeant in charge refused to send it. Bartlett had little money left at this point, but due to regulations the sergeant would not send the telegram without full payment.

  Bartlett had walked nearly seven hundred miles over the past two months and he was worn out, ill, fed up, and exhausted. He had come so far—farther than this man could ever imagine—and he had gone through hell to get here. Suddenly, he felt that slow-boiling temper of his beginning to rise, and all the familiar rumblings that indicated an eruption.

  And then, just in time, Hugh J. Lee walked in, explained things to the sergeant, and that was that. The wire was sent to the naval service in Ottawa, Canada, relaying the story of the Karluk and Bartlett’s recent journey and the men now waiting on Wrangel Island.

  Then Bartlett turned all his attention to finding a ship to rescue the men. The rest of the month was spent in a flurry, trying to locate available ships to make the voyage up north once navigation opened in midsummer. Until then, no one would be able to get through the Arctic ice pack.

  The government heads in Ottawa had believed the Karluk and all her company to be lost, and now they sent word to Bartlett expressing their great relief at the news of survivors. In communication with them, Bartlett showed optimism that both Sandy’s party and Dr. Mackay’s party would be found. He expected the missing men to have joined everyone on Wrangel Island by now. Whether Bartlett truly believed this or whether it was wishful thinking is hard to tell.

  In any case, Ottawa was thrilled. How should they proceed, they asked the captain, and requested his advice on ice conditions and arrangements for rescue. He wrote back with ideas, suggesting they contact the Russian government, since their ice breakers were strong and powerful. He also suggested a United States revenue cutter named the Bear, which was currently cruising in the Bering Sea. Thirty years earlier, the Bear had been one of the ships that rescued the survivors of the lost Adolphus Greely expedition. Now, perhaps, she could rescue the survivors of the Karluk.

  DIARY OF BJARNE MAMEN

  RODGER’S HARBOUR

  FRIDAY, MAY 22.

  In the tent the whole day, I have now had nothing to eat for four days . . ..

  As soon as this weather abates, we will make an attempt to reach Skeleton Island, I for my part cannot stand staying in here.

  MUNRO LEFT FOR RODGER’S HARBOUR on the afternoon of May 26, taking Maurer with him. McKinlay was still miserable with snow blindness and would be out of commission for some time. Munro had wanted to leave immediately after McKinlay returned, but the weather made it impossible.

  The purpose of the trip was twofold. First, and most important, they were going to look after Mamen. And second, they would scout out the conditions at Rodger’s Harbour, with the idea that, if conditions looked favorable, they might move the entire company down there.

  They arrived at Skeleton Island at 10:00 A.M. on May 27 and spent the day digging out the igloo, the pemmican, and the rest of the gear that was buried beneath a hill of snow. They had a difficult time of it, with nothing but a piece of tin for a shovel, but eventually they
uncovered what they needed. There were birds in the cliffs and they longed for a shotgun, but again they were ill prepared and had to move on empty-handed, dreaming of the feast they could have had.

  As they approached Rodger’s Harbour, Munro was impressed with what he saw there. Driftwood seemed to lie about in abundance, and abandoned birds’ nests were scattered everywhere. In the distance, they could hear the geese and the ducks, which seemed to have made their feeding ground nearby, and Munro wished to God the entire company was already down there. The conditions were so much more promising than they were at Icy Spit.

  Finally they reached the camp at Rodger’s Harbour. Dropping their gear, they called out for Mamen and Templeman and took in the surroundings. The tent would have to be moved to new ground, that was clear, and it was already in an awful state, battered and beaten by the wind. Munro made a note to himself to take care of it in the morning. And then Templeman rushed out of the tent, appearing frightened at the sound of their voices. He seemed lost and anxious and broke down, hysterical. He wept like a child, so relieved to see them.

  It had been two days, he told them—and it was hard to understand him—two days alone in this place. Two days frightened and two days praying that someone would come.

  Mamen had worried himself a great deal over McKinlay’s absence. When the magnetician didn’t return, Mamen was clearly frightened, but he didn’t make a fuss and he didn’t complain about feeling sick. Instead, he made plans. They would build a hut for winter. He would gather fossils for his Spitzbergen collection back home. He would ski to the Siberian coast as soon as his knee was healed. He talked about seeing his mother and his girl.

  Because Mamen could not stomach the pemmican, Templeman fed him condensed milk mixed with whiskey, even though Mamen found it “by imot”—revolting.

  At midnight on May 26 he slept, and at 4:00 A.M. he called Templeman and asked him to light a fire for the tea. Templeman did so and then turned in again. Half an hour later, he called Mamen, but the topographer was sleeping heavily and could not be roused.

  He had waited as long as he could, held on to life until the last. Where there is life, there is hope. Mamen maintained that hope even in the final moments of his life. But at 5:00 in the morning on May 26, death came swiftly.

  It was hard to believe that Mamen was gone. He had been so young and full of bravery and fight. His diary gives a haunting glimpse of a young man who foresaw his fate, but who, until the end, clung to life. He had great belief in honor and the triumph of strength over weakness. He was twenty-three years old and had many plans—to be married when he returned home, to lead grand expeditions of his own one day, to be a good person, to do good work.

  Now he was gone. But perhaps, as Mamen had hoped, he would have the chance to do even better work in the world beyond.

  June 1914

  A letter from1 Mrs. Murray arrived yesterday with a clipping from a Liverpool paper—a copy of a letter from Mr. Stefansson.. . . He says again that the men are in no danger he thinks.. . . I think about them a great deal—all the things they said to me, and I wonder, wonder what has become of them.

  —MRS. RUDOLPH MARTIN ANDERSON

  In the aftermath of the assassination of King George I of Greece in 1913, violence had spread throughout Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania until, on June 30, 1913, the Second Balkan War had broken out. In the United States, Woodrow Wilson would enter the second year of his presidency in 1914 as conflict in Europe escalated ominously, and there were rumors of impending world war.

  In the midst of it all, international press attention was riveted on the fate of the twenty-five missing people who had sailed from Victoria, British Columbia, on June 17, 1913, and vanished into the Arctic. They had been given up for dead by their former leader, by the Canadian government, and by everyone else. But now the world was transfixed by the story of the Karluk disaster and the surviving castaways on Wrangel Island.

  The boys at the wireless station in Saint Michael, Alaska, gave Bartlett their back files to read so that he could catch up on current events. He had been away from the world for nearly a year and, as he always did when away for a long period of time, he found much had changed and progressed. It was good to get back to civilization, to become once more a citizen of this familiar world. It was an adjustment, but one he was used to making.

  Under the care of Dr. Fernbaugh, the government surgeon, he was recovering nicely from the mysterious swelling in his legs and feet, as well as from his tonsillitis. Soon he would be completely revived and then he would be able to do the work before him. He was anxious to get on his way to Wrangel Island, even though it was still too early in the season for traveling. July would be the best month to make a trip to Wrangel, since the ice should be at its weakest by then, but Bartlett was spending all his time now trying to find a ship to take him north.

  He had suggested three possible rescue ships to the Canadian government—the Russian ships Taimyr and Vaigatch, and the United States revenue cutter Bear. The Russian ships were noted icebreakers with good records of service. The Taimyr had forged through the icy Arctic waters in 1913, and its master, Captain Vilkitski, discovered Nicholas II Land, now known as Severnaya Zemlya, an archipelago located between the Laptev and Kara Seas. Both ships were similar to the steel vessels Bartlett had used in the Newfoundland seal-fisheries, and both were fitted with powerful engines.

  The Bear had actually been built in the 1870s for those same Newfoundland seal fisheries. She was three-masted, her keel molded in greenheart, reputedly the world’s hardest wood, from the West Indies. When Adolphus Greely and his men became lost in the Arctic, the United States government sent the Bear to rescue them in 1883.

  Bartlett felt that if any ship could maneuver its way through the impenetrable ice surrounding Wrangel Island, it was the Bear. Bartlett had never met the Bear’s current master, Captain Cochran, but from what he knew of his reputation, Cochran wasn’t afraid to put his ship into the ice.

  Bartlett knew the Bear was presently headed to Nome from San Francisco. She would be the first ship from the “outside,” as they called it, to come to Nome that year. But the ice in Nome’s harbor, as Bartlett and Captain Pedersen had discovered upon trying to land there in the Herman, was especially thick and forbidding, so the Bear was forced to land at Saint Michael instead.

  Bartlett went aboard and met with Captain Cochran. Together with the Bear’s officers, they discussed the castaways on Wrangel Island and what was to be done. Cochran and his men were eager to make the trip, but now they had to await the official government go-ahead from Washington, D.C.

  Bartlett was hearing disturbing rumors about the thick, inaccessible ice that surrounded the coast. People were saying ice conditions were the worst in history. The news was deeply troubling and the waiting excruciating. He sent out word to captains of any ships leaving for northern waters, asking them to try for Wrangel Island if they were in the area. If he was not able to reach his men yet, perhaps someone else could. It didn’t matter who brought them home, just as long as McKinlay and Mamen and Hadley and the Eskimos and all of the others were found.

  While Bartlett and Cochran awaited word, they sailed on the Bear for the Siberian coast. As she was on her way across, Cochran received the official orders over the wireless. He was to leave for Wrangel Island, as soon as conditions permitted, and rescue the lost men of the Karluk expedition. Captain Bartlett was to go with him. They still had to wait for the season to open and, most likely, would not be able to leave until July. But Bartlett believed he had found his rescue ship and that it was just a matter of time before he was on his way to free his men.

  MCKINLAY WAS FEELING stronger every day. His feet were still sore from the rough journey, but as long as he moved around he felt better. He thought that exercise had much to do with his relative good health. The crewmen were ill, but they didn’t get up at all; they just lay there in their beds and refused to move about.

  He was still living in the big iglo
o with the crewmen Williamson, Breddy, Chafe, and Clam, and playing nurse. Clam was the latest victim, his legs badly swollen. It was a miserable job tending to the invalids, especially with a demanding patient like Williamson, who always needed something and always complained, testing McKinlay’s great reserves of patience.

  The weather was growing warmer now, which meant the igloos began to melt, becoming so wet and unlivable that the men finally swept the snow from the nearby spit and pitched tents there. They spread dry sticks on the ground to lie on, and it was a big improvement over the damp and cold of the snow houses.

  They were down to their final case of pemmican, which would last about twelve more days. After that, as Hadley said, they would be “up against it2 & have to Depend on our own Efforts as Hunters to live.. . .” Unfortunately, Hadley and Kuraluk were having no luck on their daily hunts, and the men were subsisting on the nauseating pemmican, which, by now, they could barely swallow. Their precious tea, too, had become repulsive, boiling black from the worn tins it was cooked in.

  Kuraluk suggested that they move to Skeleton Island, where they would have better prospects—more wood and more game. He and his family, along with Hadley and McKinlay, left on June 4 on a scouting trip. They traveled between the sandspit and the island, Kuraluk breaking the trail. Hadley drove the sled while Auntie and her little girls walked along the spit. McKinlay tagged behind, unable to keep up even with Mugpi. He was still weak and walking was still difficult for him, but he was determined to keep on.

  After traveling ten or eleven miles, they stopped for the night at Bruch Spit. They pitched a tent and ate a meal of blubber soup and pemmican, then fed the dogs with deer hair soaked in blubber soup.