AUTUMN AT CAPE SHERIDAN
It was hoped that the next ebb-tide would give us an opportunity to
advance farther, and immediately after breakfast I hurried ashore to
examine the ice beyond Cape Sheridan and visit the cairn built by the
_Alert_ thirty years before. The weather was too thick to permit any
satisfactory reconnoissance. I took the _Alert’s_ record from the cairn,
a copy of which Marvin later replaced together with an additional brief
memorandum. All the slopes of the land were white with snow above which
the cairn, and the lonely grave of Petersen, Danish interpreter of the
English expedition, stood out in sombre silhouette. The _Roosevelt_ was
moored close by a ledge of rocks where, in 1902, I had deposited a small
cache for my return.
With the last of the flood-tide the ice pressed in upon us still harder,
jamming the _Roosevelt_ solidly but not seriously against the ice-foot;
and anticipating still further pressures, I had the edge of the ice-foot
throughout the _Roosevelt’s_ length chopped away on an incline to the
water level, so that the ship might rise more easily to pressure. A fine
snow fell throughout the day. At midnight of the 5th, the sun’s disk was
apparently about two-thirds below the horizon. The fine snow continued
during the sixth and the ice remained unchanged. After supper water
pools off-shore were visible from the summit of the hill. There was
evidently sufficient slack in the ice for a fresh southerly wind to form
a good shore lead. On the sixth, I sent two parties of three hunters
each, with supplies for ten days, out for musk-oxen, one party going
southeast, the other southwest. Other Eskimos were sent out for hare. On
the seventh it cleared sufficiently to give us our first view of Cape
Hecla and the United States Range. September 8th was a brilliant day;
three Eskimos came in from Black Cliffs Bay with twenty-three hare
aggregating two hundred and eleven pounds. This made the number of hare
killed along here nearly one hundred. The Eskimos were started at
overhauling sledges and making harnesses. The 9th was a wonderfully mild
day of brilliant sunshine for this time and place. Sent a party to
Porter Bay, just south of Cape Hecla, the objective point I have in view
for the _Roosevelt_—a beautiful little bay which I examined in 1902,
with southern exposure and protected from the running ice. A position
here would place us right at the beginning of our work, would be
convenient to the musk-ox haunts of Clements Markham Inlet, and would be
little or no farther than Sheridan from the musk-ox preserves of the
Lake Hazen region. The dogs were all put ashore and found the beds of
dry gravel along the shore a much more comfortable sleeping-place than
the damp deck.
On the 10th, the temperature rose to 20° and damp snow fell during the
night and day. Early in the morning of the 11th, a fresh southerly wind
commenced, accompanied by a heavy drift and a lane of water formed a few
hundred feet outside of the _Roosevelt_ extending close past the point
of Sheridan and on to Belknap. But the ice which held us against the
ice-foot remained firmly fixed and we were unable to get into the water.
In the evening it had closed again.
Started a party of three Eskimos off for Markham Inlet after musk-oxen.
After dinner three Eskimos came in with the meat of four musk-oxen
killed in Rowan Bay, and in the evening the Porter Bay party returned
with the meat and skins of seven reindeer killed in a valley on Fielden
Peninsula. These, the first specimens of this magnificent snow-white
animal, were from a herd of eleven surprised in a valley close to Cape
Joseph Henry, and among the seven was the wide-antlered buck leader.
These beautiful animals, in their winter dress almost as white as the
snow which they traverse, were later found scattered over the entire
region from Cape Hecla to Lake Hazen, and westward along the north Grant
Land coast, over fifty specimens in all being secured. The party
reported Porter Bay still filled with the unbroken ice of the previous
winter, and therefore impracticable for our winter quarters. The night
of the 11th was a perfect Arctic autumn night. To the south over the
land the sky pearl-white; west and northwest, about the couchant mass of
Cape Joseph Henry, orange-yellow; north, over the Polar Sea, gray-white;
east and southeast the snow-clad Greenland coast lay under the purple
shadows of the coming “Great Night.” On the 12th a fresh southerly wind
set the snow drifting savagely on all the uplands, flung out a long
snow-banner from the summit of Rawson, and formed a broad lane of water
reaching from behind Rawson past us and on toward Cape Henry. During the
12th and the 13th every effort was made with pickaxes and dynamite to
effect a passage to this water, but without success. On the 14th, I sent
a party of four Eskimo hunters off to Lake Hazen. Since our arrival, the
Eskimos, when not otherwise engaged, were getting the supplies from the
main and after holds up on deck, in readiness for landing as soon as it
was settled where our winter quarters would be.
About 10 P. M. of the 16th, as I was on the bridge taking a look about
before turning in, a large floe moving on the flood-tide pivoted around
the point of Sheridan and crashed into the smaller ice about the ship,
driving it bodily before it. At the first shock the _Roosevelt_ reeled
and shook a bit, then heeled slightly toward the crowding ice and turned
it under her starboard bilge. Standing on the starboard end of the
bridge and looking down upon the ice the sensation was much like that of
being on a large sledge moving over the ice, so rapidly did the rounding
side of the _Roosevelt_ turn the ice under her. Once or twice she hung
for an instant and quivered with the strain, then heeled and turned the
ice under again. This continued until a corner of the floe itself, some
portions of which were higher than the rail, came full against the
_Roosevelt’s_ starboard side amidships, with no intervening cushion of
smaller ice and held the ship mercilessly between its own blue side and
the unyielding face of the ice-foot. Its slow resistless motion was
frightful yet fascinating; thousands of tons of smaller ice which the
big floe drove before it, the _Roosevelt_ had easily and gracefully
turned under her sloping bilges, but the edge of the big floe rose to
the plank sheer and a few yards back from its edge, was an old pressure
ridge which rose higher than the bridge deck. This was the crucial
moment. For a minute or so, which seemed an age, the pressure was
terrific. The _Roosevelt’s_ ribs and interior bracing cracked like the
discharge of musketry; the deck amidships bulged up several inches,
while the main rigging hung slack and the masts and rigging shook as in
a violent gale. Then with a mighty tremor and a sound which reminded me
of an athlete intaking his breath for a supreme effort, the ship shook
herself free and jumped upward till her propeller showed above water.
The big floe snapped against the edge of the ice-foot forward and aft
and under us, crumpling up its edge and driving it inshore some yards,
then came to rest, and the commotion was transferred to the outer edge
of the floe which crumbled away with a dull roar, as other floes smashed
against it, and tore off great pieces in their onward rush, leaving the
_Roosevelt_ stranded but safe.
When the tide turned on the ebb the ship settled down again considerably
but never floated freely again until the following summer. Anticipating
further pressure with following tides, and to provide against the
contingency of the ship being rendered untenable, the work of putting
some coal and all supplies and equipment ashore was commenced at once
and prosecuted without interruption by the officers, crew, and Eskimo
men, women, and children, for some thirty-six hours. Planks were put
from the rail to the ice-foot on the port bow, quarter and amidships,
and the boxes of provisions slid down these, when men took them and put
them back from the edge of the ice-foot, where the women loaded them
upon sledges and pushed them beyond any danger of loss by disruption of
the ice-foot itself. This work was greatly expedited from the fact that
practically all the supplies had been taken out of the holds during the
previous days and were lying on deck. While the work was in progress one
of the Eskimos of my southwest scouting party came in on foot reporting
twenty-one musk-oxen killed in Porter Bay. The next night there was a
brief and not serious pressure, then the ice about the ship quieted down
again, though it ran strongly with the tides some fifty yards outside of
us.
Of course this occurrence put all ideas of any farther advance out of
question, and the usual routine fall work of an Arctic expedition and
preparation for wintering were inaugurated. Hunting parties of the
Eskimos were kept constantly in the field, covering the country north to
Clements Markham Inlet and south to Wrangel Bay and Lake Hazen. The
results of these parties were satisfactory, considerable numbers of
musk-oxen and reindeer being secured. Almost every day one or two
hunters went out from the ship and in this way some hundred or more hare
were secured in the immediate vicinity. But musk-oxen were to be our
mainstay, and while my confidence that we should find numbers of these
animals within a comparatively short distance of the ship was justified
by events I still recognised that our main source of supply must be the
drainage basin of Lake Hazen, the northern portion of which, covering
the southern slopes of the United States Range, had not been drawn upon
by me while at Fort Conger between 1899 and 1902.
This region was now tapped with great success by parties travelling
directly overland from the ship to Lake Hazen.
The boxes of provisions which had been landed were fashioned by the crew
into three box-houses, a large one some thirty feet long by fifteen feet
wide which, roofed with the spanker and fitted with a stove and fuel,
was to serve as an immediate refuge in case of mishap to the ship, and
two smaller ones. The larger tents were also set up ashore, the boats
turned bottom up and the barrels arranged in such a way as to serve as
wind shelters for the dogs. Later on houses and tents were heavily
banked with snow. All the heavy ice next to the ship on the starboard
side was cut down on a gentle slope ending at the water level against
the ship’s side, and a bank of small fragments of ice filled against the
ship her entire length to serve as a cushion. On top of this a wall of
snow blocks was built as high as the rail and from the mainmast to the
mizzenmast as high as the top of the deck house. The deck was covered
deep with snow and the forward and after deck-houses covered and banked
in with the same. No attempt was made to house in the deck with sails,
but snow vestibules or entrances were constructed at all of the outer
doors.
The Eskimo men when not in the field were occupied in making sledges and
harnesses, each man his own sledge, and with the waning of the light, I
had a fleet of some twenty-five sledges in commission. Attempts were
made to hoist the rudder on deck so that it could be repaired, but
without success.
Marvin erected a tide gauge on the ice-foot protected by a snow igloo,
and took tidal observations during a period in excess of a lunar month.
A disagreeable feature of this time was the frequent occurrence of
violent southerly winds varying from vicious squalls of a few hours’
duration to furious gales lasting two or three days. These winds
invariably denuded the land in our vicinity of snow and were always
accompanied by more or less extended open water. As late as October
16th, a ship located south of Rawson could have come around that cape
and made our present location with even greater ease than did the
_Roosevelt_ on the 5th of September. On one occasion such a ship could
have gone on without obstruction to Cape Joseph Henry, passing about one
hundred yards outside of our position. Naturally under these conditions
the mean temperature was unexpectedly high.
October 1st, our large game score reached seventy-three musk-oxen and
twenty-seven reindeer, just an even hundred. On this date small stoves
were set up for the first time in the after house. October 2d, the
boilers were blown off for the winter. October 3d, I started to make a
reconnoissance of our spring route to Hecla, as my observations in 1902
had satisfied me that there was a better route than that followed by the
English across Fielden Peninsula. I also wished to examine Clements
Markham Inlet for musk-oxen. Two marches from the ship took me to the
mouth of Clements Markham Inlet, one day of thick weather was devoted to
a trip part way into the inlet and back; and the next two brought me
back to the ship, my anxiety for her having prevented my remaining out
as long as I wished. It was a new and not particularly agreeable feeling
to me to be hampered by the cares of a ship, and thus kept from active
fieldwork, but I accepted the conditions and shifted the burden of the
remainder of the fall and winter work to the younger shoulders in the
party. On the 9th, our large winter lamps were put in commission for the
first time. On the 13th, I snowshoed to the summit of Black Cape and saw
the sun for the last time, peering for a moment through the misty
ice-filled opening of Robeson Channel to the south. From Cape Sheridan,
past Rawson, and on down past Cape Union there was plenty of open water
and across the mouth of the channel to Repulse Harbour there was nothing
but light trash ice. For a few moments the sun’s rays lit the entire
southern summit line of the United States Range, crested Mount Cheops
with rose, and just touched the peaks of Cape Joseph Henry. It was so
low, however, that the shadow both of Greenland and of Grant Land
reached northward across the pack ice to the blue-black northern horizon
except where it streamed through between the precipitous walls of the
Channel itself forming a broad band of yellow light between the shadows
on either side, “the Gateway to the Polar Sea.”
October 16th was marked by the most violent gale we had had since
leaving home. This gale left the land almost as bare as in summer, and
the water formed by it was more extensive than at any time for a month.
After all these gales, Cape Joseph Henry stands out in black and savage
profile. Of all capes fronting the Polar Sea along the coasts of
Greenland and Grant Land, this is the most ideal.
Soon after this, with almost the suddenness of lightning from a clear
sky, I faced the possibility of the complete crippling of the expedition
by the extermination of my large pack of dogs. About eighty of these
indispensable animals died before the cause was traced to poisoning from
the whale meat which I had taken for dog-food. This meat to the amount
of several tons was thrown away, and I found myself confronted at the
beginning of the long Arctic night with the proposition of subsisting my
dogs and most of my Eskimos upon the country.
Without my previous familiarity with the region, this would have been an
absolute impossibility; even as it was, it possessed elements of
uncertainty, but with the satisfactory start already made in obtaining
musk-oxen, and knowing that these animals could be killed by those who
knew how, even in the depths of the great Arctic night, I believed there
was somewhat more than a fighting chance for success.
[Illustration:
THE “ROOSEVELT” IMMEDIATELY AFTER ARRIVAL AT CAPE SHERIDAN
]
[Illustration:
THE “ALERT’S” CAIRN AT FLOEBERG BEACH
]
[Illustration:
PETERSEN’S GRAVE, OVERLOOKING FLOEBERG BEACH
]
On the 25th, portions of four hunting parties from the Lake Hazen region
came in, bringing reports of a bag of one hundred and forty-four head of
musk-oxen and deer. Following the return of these parties the dogs died
rapidly, the number one night reaching ten. It was evident that prompt
action must be taken, and in three days one hundred and two dogs, twenty
adult Eskimo men and women and six children were sent into the field in
addition to those already out. From this time until the 7th of February,
the dogs and the greater portion of the Eskimos remained in the Lake
Hazen region, a portion of the men coming to the ship during the full
moon of each month with sledge loads of meat, and returning with tea,
sugar, oil and biscuit. With their departure the ship was almost
deserted, daylight was nearly gone and the winter may be said to have
commenced, though for convenience it was assumed to begin on the 1st of
November when the winter routine of two meals a day went into effect,
partly as a measure of economy, and partly to leave the short and very
rapidly decreasing hours of twilight in the middle of the day
uninterrupted for work.
The ice outside of us was constantly in motion, more or less active with
the currents of the tides, and about the middle of October the young ice
incessantly forming between the large floes became of such thickness,
that its crushing up rendered the movement of the ice very audible.
First as a loud murmur, later with increasing cold as a hoarse roar,
sometimes continuous, sometimes intermittent, like heavy surf upon the
shore, which kept the air vibrating, and coming as it did through the
darkness and frequently snow-filled air, contained a peculiarly savage
and foreboding note. On the 31st, after dinner, I climbed to the summit
of our lookout hill and sat for some time upon a projecting rock. A fine
snow was falling amidst a semi-luminous fog, through which just the
outlines of the _Roosevelt_ loomed. I quote from my journal as follows:
The _Roosevelt_ lies below me, on one side the frozen shore of the
Arctic “Ultima Thule,” on the other the great white disk of the central
Polar Sea with its mysteries and its terrors, its story of heroic
effort, and its still unconquered secret. No other ship has been so far
north in this region and but one other ship has reached so high a
latitude anywhere in the entire circuit of the Polar Sea, and that one
did not attain her vantage ground by stress of continued battle, as has
the _Roosevelt_, but drifted to her position—helpless and inert in the
grasp of the ice.
Yet the _Roosevelt_ lies there, sturdy but graceful, her slender masts
piercing the fog and falling snow; a nimbus-circled glow of light at
every port, and a broad bar of yellow luminance from the galley lamp
shining forward over her and out through the mist, just as if she were a
steamer anchored in the North River in a foggy night.
As I look at her a whole series of pictures rises before me. The bright
days at Bucksport, Maine, when I and one other watched her grow into
sturdy shape under the fostering care of her builder, Captain Dix; the
launching, when Mrs. Peary, smashing an ice-encased bottle of wine
against the steel-clad stern, christened her “_Roosevelt_”; New York
Harbour, with the tribute to her mission, from all the surrounding
craft; that black night in the straits of Belle Isle; the fog-shrouded
swell of the North Atlantic and Davis Strait; the familiar black cliffs
of Cape York rising directly over her bow; the perfect summer day at
Bache Peninsula; the battleroyal with the huge floes as we crossed and
recrossed Kennedy and Robeson Channels; the towering cliffs of Cape
Constitution, Franklin Island and Polaris Promontory as she breasted the
fierce north wind blowing down the Channel, with her engines stubbornly
throbbing “Northward, Northward, Northward”; and finally the view that
gray September morning when we rounded Rawson and opened up the
ice-bound northern shore of Grant Land, with the wide-stretching
ice-fields of the central Polar Sea fading away under the northern
horizon.