American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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[Illustration: DELONG'S MEN DRAGGING THEIR BOATS OVER THE ICE]

Time and again this nerve-racking experience was encountered. More than
once serious leaks were started in the ship, which had to be met by
working the pumps and building false bulwarks in the hold; but by the
exercise of every art known to sailors, she was kept afloat and tenable
until June 11, 1881, when a fierce and unexpected nip broke her fairly in
two, and she speedily sunk. There followed weeks and months of incessant
and desperate struggling with sledge and boat against the forces of polar
nature. The ship had sunk about 150 miles from what are known as the New
Siberian Islands, for which DeLong then laid his course. The ice was
rugged, covered with soft snow, which masked treacherous pitfalls, and
full of chasms which had to be bridged. Five sleds and three boats were
dragged by almost superhuman exertions, the sick feebly aiding the sturdy
in the work. Imagine the disappointment, and despair of the leader, when,
after a full week of this cruel labor, with provisions ever growing more
scanty, an observation showed him they were actually twenty-eight miles
further away from their destination than when they started! While they
were toiling south, the ice-floe over which they were plodding was
drifting more rapidly north. _Nil desperandum_ must ever be the watchword
of Arctic expeditions, and DeLong, saying nothing to the others of his
discovery, changed slightly the course of his march and labored on. July
19 they reached an island hitherto unknown, which was thereupon named
Bennett Island. A curious feature of the toilsome march across the ice,
was that, though the temperature seldom rose to the freezing point, the
men complained bitterly of the heat and suffered severely from sun-burn.

[Illustration: DELONG'S MEN DRAGGING THEIR BOATS OVER THE ICE]

At Bennett Island they took to the boats, for now open water was
everywhere visible. DeLong was making for the Lena River in Siberia, where
there were known to be several settlements, but few of his party were
destined to reach it. In a furious storm, on the 12th of September, the
three boats were separated. One, commanded by Lieutenant Chipp, with eight
men, must have foundered, for it was never again heard of. A second,
commanded by George W. Melville, afterward chief engineer of the United
States Navy, found one of the mouths of the Lena River, and ascending it
reached a small Siberian village. Happy would it have been had DeLong and
his men discovered the same pathway to safety, but the Lena is like our
own Mississippi, a river with a broad delta and a multiplicity of mouths.
Into an estuary, the banks of which were untrodden by man, and which
itself was too shallow for navigation for any great distance, remorseless
fate led DeLong. Forced soon to take to their sleds again, his companions
toiled painfully along the river bank, with no known destination, but
bearing ever to the south--the only way in which hope could possibly lie.
Deserted huts and other signs of former human habitation were plenty, but
nothing living crossed their path. At last, the food being at the point of
exhaustion, and the men too weary and weak for rapid travel, DeLong chose
two of the sturdiest, Nindemann and Noros, and sent them ahead in the hope
that they might find and return with succor. The rest stumbled on behind,
well pleased if they could advance three miles daily. Food gave out, then
strength. Resignation took the place of determination. DeLong's journal
for the last week of life is inexpressibly pitiful:

"Sunday, October 23--133d Day: Everybody pretty weak. Slept or rested all
day, and then managed to get in enough wood before dark. Read part of
divine service. Suffering in our feet. No foot-gear.

"Monday, October 24--134th Day: A hard night.

"Tuesday, October 25--135th Day.

"Wednesday, October 26--136th day.

"Thursday, October 27--137th Day: Iverson broken down.

"Friday, October 28--138th Day: Iverson died during early morning.

"Saturday, October 29th--139th Day: Dressier died during the night.

"Sunday, October 30--140th Day: Boyd and Cortz died during the night. Mr.
Collins dying."

This is the last entry. The hand that penned it, as the manuscript shows,
was as firm and steady as though the writer were sitting in his library at
home. Words are spelled out in full, punctuation carefully observed. How
long after these words were set down DeLong too died, none may ever know;
but when Melville, whom Nindemann and Noros had found after sore
privations, reached the spot of the death camp, he came upon a sorrowful
scene. "I came upon the bodies of three men partly buried in the snow," he
writes, "one hand reaching out, with the left arm of the man reaching way
above the surface of the snow--his whole left arm. I immediately
recognized them as Captain DeLong, Dr. Ambler, and Ah Sam, the cook.... I
found the journal about three or four feet in the rear of DeLong--that is,
it looked as though he had been lying down, and with his left hand tossed
the book over his shoulder to the rear, or to the eastward of him."

How these few words bring the whole scene up before us! Last, perhaps, of
all to die, lying by the smoldering fire, the ashes of which were in the
middle of the group of bodies when found, DeLong puts down the final words
which tell of the obliteration of his party, tosses the book wearily over
his shoulder, and turns on his side to die. And then the snow, falling
gently, pitifully covers the rigid forms and holds them in its pure
embrace until loyal friends seek them out, and tell to the world that
again brave lives have been sacrificed to the ogre of the Arctic.

While DeLong and his gallant comrades of the United States Navy were dying
slowly in the bleak desert of the Lena delta, another party of brave
Americans were pushing their way into the Arctic circle on the Atlantic
side of the North American continent. The story of that starvation camp in
desolate Siberia was to be swiftly repeated on the shores of Smith Sound,
and told this time with more pathetic detail, for of Greely's expedition,
numbering twenty-five, seven were rescued after three years of Arctic
suffering and starving, helpless, and within one day of death. They had
seen their comrades die, destroyed by starvation and cold, and passing
away in delirium, babbling of green fields and plenteous tables. From the
doorway of the almost collapsed tent, in which the seven survivors were
found, they could see the row of shallow graves in which their less
fortunate comrades lay interred--all save two, whom they had been too weak
to bury. No story of the Arctic which has come to us from the lips of
survivors, has half the pathos, or a tithe of the pitiful interest,
possessed by this story of Greely.

Studying to-day the history of the Greely expedition, it seems almost as
if a malign fate had determined to bring disaster upon him. His task was
not so arduous as a determined search for the Pole, or the Northwest
Passage. He was ordered by the United States Government to establish an
observation station on Lady Franklin Bay, and remain there two years,
conducting, meanwhile, scientific observations, and pressing exploratory
work with all possible zeal. The enterprise was part of a great
international plan, by which each of the great nations was to establish
and maintain such an observation station within the Arctic circle, while
observations were to be carried on in all at once. The United States
agreed to maintain two such stations, and the one at Point Barrow, north
of Alaska, was established, maintained, and its tenants brought home at
the end of the allotted time without disaster.

Greely was a lieutenant in the United States Army, and his expedition was
under the immediate direction of the Secretary of War--at that time Robert
Lincoln, son of the great war President. Some criticism was expressed at
the time and, indeed, still lingers in the books of writers on the
subject, concerning the fitness of an army officer to direct an Arctic
voyage. But the purpose of the expedition was largely to collect
scientific facts bear-on weather, currents of air and sea, the duration
and extent of magnetic and electrical disturbances--in brief, data quite
parallel to those which the United States signal service collects at home.
So the Greely expedition was made an adjunct to the signal service, which
in its turn is one of the bureaus of the War Department. Two army
lieutenants, Lockwood and Klingsbury, and twenty men from the rank and
file of the army and signal corps, were selected to form the party. An
astronomer was needed, and Edward Israel, a young graduate of the
University of Michigan, volunteered. George W. Rice volunteered as
photographer. Both were enlisted in the army and given the rank of
sergeant.

It is doubtful if any polar expedition was ever more circumstantially
planned--none has resulted more disastrously, save Sir John Franklin's
last voyage. The instructions of the War Department were as explicit as
human foresight and a genius for detail could make them. Greely was to
proceed to some point on Lady Franklin Bay, which enters the mainland of
North America at about 81 deg. 44' north latitude, build his station, and
prepare for a two-years' stay. Provisions for three years were supplied
him. At the end of one year it was promised, a relief ship should be sent
him, which failing for any cause to reach the station, would cache
supplies and dispatches at specified points. A year later a second relief
ship would be sent to bring the party home, and if for any reason this
ship should fail to make the station, then Greely was to break camp and
sledge to the southward, following the east coast of the mainland, until
he met the vessel, or reached the point at which fresh supplies were to be
cached. No plan could have been better devised--none ever failed more
utterly.

Arctic travel is an enigma, and it is an enigma never to be solved twice
in the same way. Whalers, with the experience of a lifetime in the frozen
waters, agree that the lessons of one voyage seldom prove infallible
guides for the conduct of the next. Lieutenant Schwatka, a veteran Arctic
explorer, said in an official document that the teachings of experience
were often worse than useless in polar work. And so, though the Washington
authorities planned for the safety of Greely according to the best
guidance that the past could give them, their plans failed completely. The
first relief ship did, indeed, land some stores--never, as the issue
showed, to be reached by Greely--but the second expedition, composed of
two ships, the "Proteus" and the "Yantic," accomplished nothing. The
station was not reached, practically no supplies were landed, the
"Proteus" was nipped by the ice and sunk, and the remnant of the
expedition came supinely home, reporting utter failure. It is impossible
to acquit the commanders of the two ships engaged in this abortive relief
expedition of a lack of determination, a paucity of courage, complete
incompetence. They simply left Greely to his fate while time still
remained for his rescue, or at least for the convenient deposit of the
vast store of provisions they brought home, leaving the abandoned
explorers to starve.

The history of the Greely expedition and its achievements may well be
sketched hastily, before the story of the catastrophe which overwhelmed it
is told. As it was the most tragic of expeditions save one, Sir John
Franklin's, so, too, it was the most fruitful in results, of any American
expedition to the time of the writing of this book. Proceeding by the
whaler "Proteus" in August, 1881, to the waters of the Arctic zone, Greely
reached his destination with but little trouble, and built a commodious
and comfortable station on the shores of Discovery Bay, which he called
Fort Conger after a United States Senator from Michigan. A month remained
before the Arctic night would set in, but the labor of building the house
left little time for explorations, which were deferred until the following
summer. Life at the station was not disagreeable. The house, stoutly
built, withstood the bitter cold. Within there were books and games, and
through the long winter night the officers beguiled the time with lectures
and reading. Music was there, too, in impressive quantity, if not quality.
"An organette with about fifty yards of music," writes Lieutenant Greely,
"afforded much amusement, being particularly fascinating to our Esquimau,
who never wearied grinding out one tune after another." The rigid routine
of Arctic winter life was followed day by day, and the returning sun,
after five months' absence, found the party in perfect health and buoyant
spirits. The work of exploration on all sides began, the explorers being
somewhat handicapped by the death of many of the sledge dogs from disease.
Lieutenant Greely, Dr. Pavy, and Lieutenant Lockwood each led a party, but
to the last named belong the honors, for he, with Sergeant Brainard and an
Esquimau, made his way northward over ice that looked like a choppy sea
suddenly frozen into the rigidity of granite, until he reached latitude
83 deg. 24' north--the most northerly point then attained by any man--and
still the record marking Arctic journey for an American explorer.

Winter came again under depressing circumstances. The first relief ship
promised had not arrived, and the disappointment of the men deepened into
apprehension lest the second, also, should fail them. Yet they went
through the second winter in good health and unshaken morale, though one
can not read such portions of Greely's diary as he has published, without
seeing that the irritability and jealousy that seem to be the inevitable
accompaniments of long imprisonment in an Arctic station, began to make
their appearance. With the advent of spring the commander began to make
his preparations for a retreat to the southward. If he had not then felt
entire confidence in the promise of the War Department to relieve him
without fail that summer, he would have begun his retreat early, and
beyond doubt have brought all his men to safety before another winter set
in or his provisions fell low. But as it was, he put off the start to the
last moment, keeping up meanwhile the scientific work of the expedition,
and sending out one party to cache supplies along the route of retreat.
August 9, 1883, the march began--just two years after they had entered the
frozen deep--Greely hoping to meet the relief ship oh the way. He did not
know that three weeks before she had been nipped in the ice-pack, and
sunk, and that her consort, the "Yantic," had gone impotently home,
without even leaving food for the abandoned explorers. Over ice-fields and
across icy and turbulent water, the party made its way for five hundred
miles--four hundred miles of boating and one hundred of
sledging--fifty-one days of heroic exertion that might well take the
courage out of the stoutest heart. Sledging in the Arctic over "hummock"
ice is, perhaps, the most wearing form of toil known to man, and with such
heavy loads as Greely carried, every mile had to be gone over twice, and
sometimes three times, as the men would be compelled to leave part of the
load behind and go back after it. Yet the party was cheerful, singing and
joking at their work, as one of the sergeants records. Finally they
reached the vicinity of Cape Sabine, all in good health, with instruments
and records saved, and with arms and ammunition enough to procure ample
food in a land well stocked with game. But they did not worry very much
about food, though their supply was by this time growing low. Was not Cape
Sabine the spot at which the relief expeditions were to cache food, and
could it be possible that the great United States Government would fail
twice in an enterprise which any Yankee whaler would gladly take a
contract to fulfill? And so the men looked upon the wilderness, and noted
the coming on of the Arctic night again without fear, if with some
disappointment. Less than forty days' rations remained. Eight months must
elapse before any relief expedition could reach their camp, and far away
in the United States the people were crying out in hot indignation that
the authorities were basely leaving Greely and his devoted companions to
their fate.

Pluckily the men set about preparing for the long winter. Three huts of
stone and snow were planned, and while they were building, the hunters of
the party scoured the neighboring ice-floes and pools for game--foxes,
ptarmigan, and seals. There were no mistaken ideas concerning their deadly
peril. Every man knew that if game failed, or if the provisions they hoped
had been cached by the relief expeditions somewhere in the vicinity, could
not be found, they might never leave that spot alive. Day by day the size
of the rations was reduced. October 2 enough for thirty-five days
remained, and at the request of the men, Greely so changed the ration as
to provide for forty-five days. October 5 Lieutenant Lockwood noted in his
diary:

"We have now three chances for our lives: First, finding American cache
sufficient at Sabine or at Isabella; second, of crossing the straits when
our present ration is gone; third, of shooting sufficient seal and walrus
near by here to last during the winter."

How delusive the first chance proved we shall see later. The second was
impractical, for the current carried the ice through the strait so fast,
that any party trying to cross the floe, would have been carried south to
where the strait widened out into Baffin's Bay before they could possibly
pass the twenty-five miles which separated Cape Sabine from Littleton
Island. Moreover, there was no considerable cache at the latter point, as
Greely thought. As for the hunting, it proved a desperate chance, though
it did save the lives of such of the party as were rescued. All feathered
game took flight for the milder regions of the south when the night set
in. The walrus which the hunters shot--two, Greely said, would have
supplied food for all winter--and the seal sunk in almost every instance
before the game could be secured.

The first, and most hopeful chance, was the discovery of cached provisions
at Cape Sabine. To put this to the test, Rice, the photographer, who,
though a civilian, proved to be one of the most determined and efficient
men in the party, had already started for Sabine with Jens, the Esquimau.
October 9 they returned, bringing the record of the sinking of the
"Proteus," and the intelligence that there were about 1300 rations at, or
near Cape Sabine. The record left at Cape Sabine by Garlington, the
commander of the "Proteus" expedition, and which Rice brought back to the
camp, read in part: "Depot landed ... 500 rations of bread, tea, and a lot
of canned goods. Cache of 250 rations left by the English expedition of
1882 visited by me and found in good condition. Cache on Littleton Island.
Boat at Isabella. U.S.S. 'Yantic' on way to Littleton Island with orders
not to enter the ice. I will endeavor to communicate with these vessels at
once.... Everything in the power of man will be done to rescue the
(Greely's) brave men."

This discovery changed Greely's plans again. It was hopeless to attempt
hauling the ten or twelve thousand pounds of material believed to be at
Cape Sabine, to the site of the winter camp, now almost done, so Greely
determined to desert that station and make for Cape Sabine, taking with
him all the provisions and material he could drag. In a few days his party
was again on the march across the frozen sea.

How inscrutable and imperative are the ways of fate! Looking backward now
on the pitiful story of the Greely party, we see that the second relief
expedition, intended to succor and to rescue these gallant men, was in
fact the cause of their overwhelming disaster--and this not wholly because
of errors committed in its direction, though they were many. When Greely
abandoned the station at Fort Conger, he could have pressed straight to
the southward without halt, and perhaps escaped with all his party--he
could, indeed, have started earlier in the summer, and made escape for all
certain. But he relied on the relief expedition, and held his ground until
the last possible moment. Even after reaching Cape Sabine he might have
taken to the boats and made his way southward to safety, for he says
himself that open water was in sight; but the cheering news brought by
Rice of a supply of provisions, and the promise left by Garlington, that
all that men could do would be done for his rescue, led him to halt his
journey at Cape Sabine, and go into winter quarters in the firm conviction
that already another vessel was on the way to aid him. He did not know
that Garlington had left but few provisions out of his great store, that
the "Yantic" had fled without landing an ounce of food, and that the
authorities at Washington had concluded that nothing more could be done
that season--although whalers frequently entered the waters where Greely
lay trapped, at a later date than that which saw the "Yantic's"
precipitate retreat. Had he known these things, he says himself, "I should
certainly have turned my back to Cape Sabine and starvation, to face a
possible death on the perilous voyage along shore to the southward."

But not knowing them, he built a hut, and prepared to face the winter. It
is worth noting, as evidence that Arctic hardships themselves, when not
accompanied by a lack of food, are not unbearable, that at this time,
after two years in the region of perpetual ice, the whole twenty-five men
were well, and even cheerful. Depression and death came only when the food
gave out.

The permanent camp, which for many of the party was to be a tomb, was
fixed a few miles from Cape Sabine, by the side of a pool of fresh
water--frozen, of course. Here a hut was built with stone walls three feet
high, rafters made of oars with the blades cut off, and a canvas roof,
except in the center, where an upturned whaleboat made a sort of a dome.
Only under the whaleboat could a man get on his knees and hold himself
erect; elsewhere the heads of the tall men touched the roof when they sat
up in their sleeping bags on the dirt floor. With twenty-five men in
sleeping bags, which they seldom left, two in each bag, packed around the
sides of the hut, a stove fed with stearine burning in the center for the
cooking of the insufficient food to which they were reduced, and all air
from without excluded, the hut became a place as much of torture as of
refuge.

The problem of food and the grim certainty of starvation were forced upon
them with the very first examination of the caches of which Garlington had
left such encouraging reports. At Cape Isabella only 144 pounds of meat
was found, in Garlington's cache only 100 rations instead of 500 as he had
promised. Moldy bread and dog biscuits fairly green with mold, though
condemned by Greely, were seized by the famished men, and devoured
ravenously without a thought of their unwholesomeness. When November 1
came, the daily ration for each man was fixed at six ounces of bread, four
ounces of meat, and four ounces of vegetables--about a quarter of what
would be moderate sustenance for a healthy man. By keeping the daily issue
of food down to this pitiful amount Greely calculated that he would have
enough to sustain life until the first of March, when with ten days'
double rations still remaining, he would make an effort to cross the
strait to Littleton Island, where he thought--mistakenly--that Lieutenant
Garlington awaited him with ample stores. Of course all game shot added to
the size of the rations, and that the necessary work of hunting might be
prosecuted, the hunters were from the first given extra rations to
maintain, their strength. Fuel, too, offered a serious problem. Alcohol,
stearine, and broken wood from a whaleboat and barrels, were all employed.
In order to get the greatest heat from the wood it was broken up into
pieces not much larger than matches.

And yet packed into that noisome hovel, ill-fed and ill-clothed, with the
Arctic wind roaring outside, the temperature within barely above freezing,
and a wretched death staring each man in the face, these men were not
without cheerfulness. Lying almost continually in their sleeping bags,
they listened to one of their number reading aloud; such books as
"Pickwick Papers," "A History of Our Own Times," and "Two on a Tower."
Greely gave daily a lecture on geography of an hour or more; each man
related, as best he could, the striking facts about his own State and city
and, indeed, every device that ingenuity could suggest, was employed to
divert their minds and wile away the lagging hours. Birthdays were
celebrated by a little extra food--though toward the end a half a gill of
rum for the celebrant, constituted the whole recognition of the day. The
story of Christmas Day is inexpressibly touching as told in the simple
language of Greely's diary:

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