mean time.
“All well up to now. We are pursuing our course at an altitude of
about two hundred and fifty meters. Direction at first northerly, ten
degrees east; later northerly, forty-five degrees east. Four carrier
pigeons were dispatched at 5.40 P.M. They flew westward. We are
now above the ice, which is very cut up in all directions. Weather
splendid. In excellent spirits.
“ANDRÉE, STRINDBERG, FRANKEL.”
“Above the clouds, 7.45 Greenwich mean time.”
It will be noted at once that the body of this communication was
written the night after the departure from Danes Island, and the
postscript probably at seven forty-five o’clock the next morning, so
that it must have been put overboard nearly thirty-nine hours before
the single returning pigeon was released. No light of hope in such a
communication.
The North was by this time resonant with rumors and fables. Almost
every traveler who came down from the boreal regions brought some
fancy or report, sometimes supporting the product of his or another’s
imagination with scraps of what purported to be evidence. A prospector
came down from the upper Alaskan gold claims with a bit of tarred and
oiled cloth which had been given him by the chief of some remote Indian
tribe. Was it not a part of the covering of the Andrée balloon? For a
time there was a thrill of credulity. Then the thing turned out to be
hide, instead of varnished silk, and so the tale came to an evil end.
In the spring of 1900 a report reached Berlin that Andrée and his party
had been killed by Eskimos in upper Canada, when they descended from
the clouds and started to shoot caribou. But why go into details? Month
after month came other reports of all kinds, most of them of similar
import. They came from all points, beginning at Kamtchatka and running
around the world to the Alaskan side of Bering Strait, and they were
all more or less fiction.
Finally, in the spring of 1902, came the masterpiece. A long dispatch
from Winnipeg announced that C. C. Chipman, head commissioner of
the Hudson’s Bay Company, had received from Fort Churchill, the
northernmost outpost of the company, several letters from the local
factor, Ashtond Alston, in which the sad fate of Doctor Andrée and his
comrades was contained. The news had been received at Fort Churchill
from wandering Eskimos. It was to the effect that a tribe of outlaw
mushers, up beyond the Barren Islands, had seen a great ship descend
from the sky and had followed it many miles till it settled on the ice.
Three men had got out and displayed arms. The savage hunters, totally
unacquainted with white men, and far less with balloons, believed the
intentions of the trio to be hostile and attacked them, eventually
killing all with their bows and arrows, though the white men were armed
with repeating rifles and put up a good fight. There were many other
confirmatory details in the report. The mushers were found with modern
Swedish rifles and with cooking and other utensils salvaged from the
wrecked balloon.
These reports led the late William Ziegler to write to the commissioner
of the Hudson’s Bay Company for confirmation, with the result that the
story was at once exploded in these words:
“There is no probability of there being any truth in the report
regarding the supposed finding of Andrée’s balloon. The chief
officer of the company on the west coast of Hudson’s Bay who himself
interviewed the natives on the matter, has reported as his firm
conviction that the natives who are said to have seen the balloon
imposed upon the clerk at Churchill, to whom the story was given.
The sketches of the balloon which the company has been careful to
distribute throughout northern Canada naturally gave occasion for much
talk among these isolated people, and it is not greatly to be wondered
at that some such tale might be given out by natives peculiarly cunning
and prone to practice upon the credulity of those not familiar with
them, or easily imposed upon.”
But the imagination of the world was nothing daunted by such cold
douches of fact, and more reports of Andrée’s death, of his survival
in the igloos of detached tribes, of the finding of his camps, of his
balloon, of parts of his equipment, of the skeletons of his party,
and of many fancies came down from the northern sectors of the
world, season after season. There was a great revival of these yarns
in 1905, once more due to some imaginative Eskimo tale spinners, and
in 1909, twelve years after Andrée’s flight, there was an even more
belated group of rumors, all centering about the fact that one Father
Turquotille, a Roman Catholic missionary residing at Reindeer Lake,
and often making long treks farther into the arctic, had found a party
of nomadic natives in possession of a revolver and some rope, which
fact they explained to him by telling the story of the Andrée balloon,
which was supposed to have landed somewhere in their territory. The
good priest reported what he had been told to Bishop Pascal, of Prince
Albert, and that worthy ecclesiastic transmitted the report to Ottawa,
whence it was spread broadcast. But Father Turquotille, after having
made a special journey to confirm the rumors, was obliged to discredit
them. And so another end to gossip.
Thus it happens that there is to-day, more than thirty years after
that heroic launching out from Danes Island, after the pole has long
been attained, and all the regions of the Far North traversed back and
forth by countless expeditions and hunting parties, no sure knowledge
of Andrée’s fate. All that is absolute is that he never returned, and
all that can be asserted as beyond reasonable doubt is that he and his
companions perished somewhere in the North. The probabilities are more
interesting, though they cannot be termed more than inductions from the
scattered bits of fact.
The chief matters of evidence are the buoys, which were picked up from
time to time between the spring of 1899 and the late summer of 1912,
when the Norwegian steamer _Beta_, outward bound on September 1st,
from Foreland Sound, Spitzbergen, put into Tromsoe on the fourteenth,
with Andrée’s buoy No. 10, which had been picked up on the eighth in
the open ocean. This buoy, like all the others, except the one already
described, was empty and had its top unsecured. It rests with the
others in the royal museum at Stockholm. When Andrée flew from Danes
Island he took twelve of these buoys, eleven small ones, which he
expected to drop as each succeeding degree of latitude was crossed, and
one larger float, which was to be dropped in triumph at the North Pole.
This biggest buoy was picked up in the closing months of 1899, and
identified by experts at Stockholm, who had witnessed the preparation
for the flight. In all, seven of these floats have been retrieved from
the northern seas.
We know that Andrée dropped one buoy on the morning of July 12, 1897,
less than sixteen hours from his base, and that he liberated a pigeon
on the following night, after an elapsed time of about fifty-five
hours. At that time he had attained 82.20 degrees northern latitude
and 15.5 degrees eastern longitude. Since Danes Island lies above the
seventy-ninth parallel, and in about 12 degrees of eastern longitude,
the balloon had drifted about three degrees north and three east in
fifty-five hours, a distance of roughly three hundred and fifty miles,
as the crow flies. His net rate of progress toward the pole was thus
no better than seven to eight miles an hour, and he was being carried
northeast instead of northwest, as he had calculated. Evidently he was
disillusioned as to the correctness of his theories before he was far
from his starting point.
The recovered buoys offer mute testimony to what must have happened
thereafter. When the big North Pole buoy was brought back to Sweden,
the great explorer Nansen shook his head in dismay and said the
emptiness of the receptacle was a sign portentous of disaster. Andrée
would never have cast his largest and best buoy adrift, except in an
emergency, or until he had reached the pole, in which case it would
surely have contained a message. Nansen felt that the buoy had been
thrown overboard as ballast, when the ship seemed about to settle into
the sea. But even then, it would seem, Andrée would have scribbled some
message and put it into the float, had there been time.
The fact that this main buoy and five others were picked up, with their
tops unfastened and barren of the least scrap of writing, seems to
argue that some sudden disaster overtook the balloon and its horrified
passengers. Either it sprang a leak and dropped so rapidly toward the
sea or an ice floe, that everything was thrown out in an attempt to
arrest its fall, or there was an explosion, and the whole great air
vessel, with all its human and mechanical freight, was dropped into the
icy seas. In that case the unused buoys would have floated off and been
found scattered about the northern ocean, while the explorer and his
men must have met the fate he had so briefly described--“drowned.”
The fact that no buoy has ever been recovered bearing any message later
than that carried by the solitary homing pigeon would seem also to
indicate that death overcame the party soon after the night of July
13th, with the goal of the pole still far beyond the fogs and ice packs
of the North.
In some such desolation and bleak disaster one of the most splendid and
mad adventures of any time came to its dark and mysterious conclusion,
leaving the world an enigma and a legend.
XVII
SPECTRAL SHIPS
We have not yet lost that sense of terror before the vast power and
wrath of the waters that wrought strange gods and monsters from the
fancy of our ancestors. It is this fright and helplessness in us
that gives disappearances at sea their special quality. In spite of
all progress, all inventiveness, all the power of man’s engines,
every putting forth to sea is still an adventure. The same fate that
overcomes the little catboat caught in a squall may overtake the
greatest liner--the Titanic to note a trite example.
As a matter of fact, never a year passes without the loss of some ship
somewhere in the wild expanse of the world’s waters. Boats go down,
leaving usually at least some indirect evidence of their fate. Now
and again, as in the case of the Archduke Johann Salvator’s _Santa
Margarita_ and Roger Tichborne’s schooner _Bella_, not a survivor lives
to tell the tale nor is any bit of wreckage found to give indication.
Here we have the genuine marine mystery. The marvel lies in the number
of such completely vanished ships. A most casual survey of the records
turns up this generous list, from the American naval records alone:
The brig _Reprisal_, 1777; the _General Gates_, 1777; the _Saratoga_,
1781; the _Insurgent_, 1800; the _Pickering_, 1800; the _Hamilton_,
1813; the _Wasp III_, 1814; the _Epervier_, 1815; the _Lynx_, 1821; the
_Wildcat_, 1829; the _Hornet_, 1829; the _Sylph II_ and the _Seagull_,
both in 1839; the _Grampus_, in 1843; the _Jefferson_, 1850; the
_Albany_, with two hundred and ten men, in 1854; and _Levant II_, with
exactly the same number aboard, in 1860. In 1910 the tug _Nina_ steamed
out of Norfolk and was never again heard from, and in 1921 the seagoing
tug _Conestoga_ put out from Mare Island, Cal., bound for Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, with four officers and fifty-two men aboard, and was never
again reported. These are not mere marine disasters[13] but complete
mysteries. No one knows precisely what happened to any of these ships
and their people.
[13] For a handy list of these see The World Almanac, 1927 Edition,
pages 691-95.
No account of sea riddles would be complete without mention of the
American brigantine _Marie Celeste_, of New York, Captain Briggs, which
was found floating abandoned and in perfect order in the vicinity of
Gibraltar on the morning of December 5th, 1872. She had sailed from New
York late in October with a cargo of alcohol, bound for Genoa. On the
morning mentioned the British bark _Dei Gratia_, Captain Boyce, found
the _Marie Celeste_ in Lat. 38.20 N., Long. 17.15 W. with sails set
but acting queerly, yawing and falling up into the wind. Captain Boyce
ran up the urgent hoist but got no answer from the brigantine. The day
being almost windless and the sea beautifully calm, Captain Boyce put
off in a boat with his mate, Mr. Adams, and two sailors, reached the
_Marie Celeste_ and managed to board her. There was not a soul to be
seen, not the least sign of violence or struggle, no indication of any
preparations for abandonment, not a boat gone from the davits.
Captain Boyce and his mate, naturally amazed, made a careful inspection
of the ship and wrote full reports of what they had found. In the cabin
a breakfast had been laid for four persons and only partly eaten. One
of these four was a child, whose half empty bowl of porridge stood on
the table. A hard boiled egg, peeled and cut in two but not bitten
into, lay near one of the other places. There were biscuits and other
food on the table.
Investigation showed that the cargo had not shifted and was completely
intact. None of the food, water or other supplies had been carried
off, the captain’s funds, of considerable amount, were safe and his
gold watch hung in his bunk, as did the watches of two of the seamen.
There was no evidence whatever of any struggle, and a report published
by irresponsible papers, to the effect that a bloody sword had been
found was officially denied. Neither was there any leak or any defect,
except that there were two square cuts at the bow on the outside. They
had been made with an axe or similar tool and might have been there for
some time.
The _Dei Gratia_ towed her prize into Gibraltar and notified the
American consul, who again examined the brigantine with all care and
reported to Washington. It was found that the _Marie Celeste_ had set
sail with a crew of ten men, the mate, the captain, his wife and their
eight-year-old daughter. She was a vessel of six hundred tons.
Inquiries made by the American consuls in all the region near the
finding place of the abandoned vessel resulted in nothing and a
general quest throughout the world brought no better results. The
British ship _Highlander_ reported that she had passed the _Marie
Celeste_ and spoken her just south of the Azores, on December 4th, the
day before she was picked up, and that the brigantine had answered “All
well.” This is obviously a mistake, for the most easterly of the Azores
lies about five hundred miles from the place where the ship was found
or about twice as far as she was likely to have sailed in twenty-four
hours.
There are conflicting statements as to the actual state of affairs on
the _Marie Celeste_ when found. One report says the ship’s clock was
still ticking. On the other hand the log, which was found, had not
been brought up beyond ten days prior to the discovery. One statement
says that the ship’s papers and some instruments were gone, another
that everything was intact. All indications are, however, that the
crew had not been long away. A bottle of cough medicine stood upright
and uncorked on the table next to the child’s plate. Any bit of rough
weather or continued yawing and twisting before the wind with a loose
rudder would have upset it. Again, on a sewing machine, which stood
near the table in the cabin, lay a thimble, that must have rolled off
to the floor if there had been any specially active dipping or lurching
of the brigantine.
Many theories have been propounded to explain the disappearance of the
crew, not the least fantastic of which is the giant cuttlefish yarn.
Those who spin this tale affect to believe that there are squidlike
monsters in the deeper waters of midocean, large enough and bold
enough to reach aboard a six hundred ton ship and snatch off fourteen
persons one after the other. Personally, I like much better the idea
that Sinbad’s roc had come back to life and carried the crew off to the
Valley of Diamonds on his back.
As in other mysteries, men have turned up from time to time who
asserted that they knew the fate of the crew of the _Marie Celeste_,
that they were the one and only survivor, that murder and foul crime
had been committed on the brigantine and more in the same strain.
In 1913, the _Strand Magazine_ (London) printed a tale which has about
it some elements of credibility. The article was written by A. Howard
Linford, head master of Peterborough Lodge, one of the considerable
British preparatory schools. Mr. Linford specifically disowned
responsibility for what he narrated, saying that he had no first hand
knowledge. His story was, he said, based on some papers left him in
three boxes by an old servant, Abel Fosdyk.
This Fosdyk appears in the Linford narrative as one of the ten members
of the crew--the steward in fact. He recounts that the carpenter had
built a little platform in the bows, where the child of the captain
might play in safety. The thing was referred to as baby’s quarterdeck,
and upon this structure the child played daily in the sun, while its
mother sat beside it, reading or sewing. The good woman had been ill
the first part of the trip and was now greatly worried because of the
nervous health of her husband, who had suffered a breakdown.
One morning, according to the supposed Fosdyk papers, the captain
determined to swim about the ship in his clothes, possibly as the
result of a challenge from the mate. Mrs. Briggs tried to dissuade her
husband but he was obdurate and she prompted the mate to swim with
him. They plunged in and the whole crew, with the commander’s wife and
child, crowded on the little platform to watch the swimmers. Suddenly
there was a collapse and the platform, with all on it fell into the
sea. Just then the breeze freshened and the brigantine, with sail set,
rapidly ran away from the swimmers and the hopeless strugglers in the
water. Fosdyk alone managed to cling to the platform and was washed to
the African shore, where he was restored to health by some friendly
blacks. He reached Algiers and in 1874 Marseilles. Later on he got to
London and was employed by Mr. Linford’s father.
Here is a tale that is on its face within the realm of possibility. We
may believe it if we like, without risking the suspicious glances of
our better balanced brothers, but----
Would an experienced mariner, even in a nervous state, have gone
swimming hundreds of miles from land, leaving his vessel with sail
set and expecting, even in a calm, to keep pace with her? Would the
helmsman have left his post under such circumstances to stand on the
baby’s quarterdeck and gape? Would the captain and mate have got up
without finishing their breakfast to engage in such folly? Finally, why
did this Abel Fosdyk not immediately report the story on his return to
Algiers or at least at Marseilles, when there was a great hue and cry
still in the air and sure information would have been rewarded? Or why
did he not tell the story in the succeeding years, when the newspapers
again and again revived the mystery and sought to solve it? Why did he
leave papers to be published by another after his death?
My answer is that the mystery of the _Marie Celeste_ is no nearer
solution since the so-called Fosdyk papers were published. Moreover, I
cannot find that worthy’s name on the list of the mystery ship’s crew.
A more credible explanation has recently been put forth by a writer
in the New York _Times_, who says that the whole case rested upon a
conspiracy. The captain and crew of the _Marie Celeste_ had agreed
with the personnel of another ship, that the brigantine be deserted in
the region where she was found, her men to put off in a longboat which
had previously been supplied by the conspirators in order that none of
the _Marie Celeste’s_ boats should be missing. The other vessel was to
come along presently, pick up the derelict and collect the prize money,
while the owners were to profit by the insurance. The deserting crew
was to get its share of the proceeds and then disappear.
There are objections to this explanation also. Would a set of sailors
and a captain, the latter with his wife and little girl, venture
upon the sea in an open boat some hundreds of miles from land? Would
the captain have taken his wife and child on the voyage with him if
such a trick had been planned? And why was no member of the crew
ever discovered in the course of the feverish search or through the
persistent curiosity that followed? On the other hand, such tricks
have been worked by mariners, and men who set out to commit crimes
often attempt and accomplish the perilous and seemingly impossible. The
doubts are by no means dispelled by this theory but here is at least a
rational version of the affair.
* * * * *
The World War added two mysteries of the sea to the long roster that
stand out with a special and tormenting character. The war had hardly
opened when the British navy set out to destroy a small number of
German cruisers that lay at various stations in the Atlantic and
Pacific. There was von Spee’s squadron which sent Admiral Cradock and
his ships to the bottom at the battle of Coronel and was subsequently
destroyed by a force of British off the Falkland Islands. There was the
_Emden_, that made the Pacific and Indian oceans a torment for Allied
shipping for month after month, until she was overtaken, beaten and
beached. Finally, there was the _Karlsruhe_.
This modern light cruiser, completed only the year before the war
began, did exactly what she was designed for--commerce raiding.
With her light armament of twelve 4.1 inch guns and her great speed
(25.5 knots official, 27.6 according to the British reckoning) she
was a scout vessel and destroyer of merchantmen. Since there was no
considerable German fleet at sea to scout for, she became, within a few
hot weeks, the terror of Allied shipping in the Atlantic. One vessel
after another fell to her hunting pouch, while crews taken off the
captured or sunken merchantmen began to arrive at American, West Indian
and South American ports.
These refugees told, one and all, the same story. There would be a
smudge of smoke on the horizon and within minutes the long slender
German cruiser would come churning up out of the distance with the
speed of an express train, firing a shot across the bows and signalling
for the surrender of the trader. The prize crew came aboard, always
acting with the most punctilious politeness and treating crew and
passengers with apologetic kindness. If the vessel was old and slow,
her coal was taken, the useful parts of her cargo transferred, her
crew and passengers removed to safety and the craft sent to the bottom
with bombs or by opening the sea cocks. If, on the other hand, the
captured ship was modern and swift, she was manned from the cruiser,
loaded with coal and other needed supplies, crowded with the captives
and made to form an escort. At one time the cruiser is said to have had
six such vessels in her train, at another four. When there got to be
too many passengers and other captives, the least worthy of the vessels
was detached and ordered to steam to a given port, being allowed just
enough coal to get there.
As early as October 4, 1914, two months after the opening of
hostilities, it was announced that the _Karlsruhe_ had captured
thirteen British merchantmen in the Atlantic, including four hundred
prisoners. She did much better than that before she was through and
the chances are she had then already put about twenty ships out of
business, for this was a conservative announcement from the British
Admiralty, which let it be known soon afterwards that all of seventy
British war vessels were hunting the _Karlsruhe_ and her sister raider,
the _Emden_.