(1820-1857)
[Illustration: Elisha Kent Kane.]
Elisha Kent Kane, son of Judge John K. Kane, was born in
Philadelphia, February 3, 1820. In his youth he displayed those
qualifications of ceaseless activity, daring adventure, and strong
personal courage which characterized his mature manhood. Inclined to
all efforts involving physical hardships and contact with nature,
his early education was devoted to civil engineering and such
natural sciences as chemistry, geography, geology, and mineralogy.
Unfortunately, in his sixteenth year, chronic and functional heart
disease developed, which intermittently affected him through life
and deterred him from the profession of an engineer. Applying
himself to medicine, he graduated therein in 1842 at the University
of Pennsylvania, in the meantime having served as a resident
physician of the Pennsylvania Hospital. His inaugural medical
thesis, based on personal experiments and observations, gave him a
reputation which augured professional prominence. In 1843 he was
appointed physician to the United States embassy to China, under
Caleb Cushing, who was charged with the negotiation of a treaty with
that country. At the way ports and during the tedious intervals of
the treaty negotiations, Kane lost no opportunity of travel and
adventure. With Baron Löe he visited the Philippine Islands and the
volcano of Tael. Not content with the usual point of view, and
despite the protestations of the native guides, he was lowered two
hundred feet in the crater, whence he scrambled downward to the
smoking sulphur lake and dipped his specimen bottles into its
steaming waters. In his ascent the loose, heated ashes charred his
boots and gave way under his feet, the sulphur vapors nearly
asphyxiated him, he fell repeatedly, and was barely able to tie the
bamboo rope around him. Drawn up in an exhausted condition, and
carried to a neighboring hermitage, he barely escaped violence at
the hands of the offended natives, who considered his rash feat a
sacrilege.
Resigning his appointment with the legation, Kane established
himself as a physician at Whampoa, on the Canton River, where
illness shortly broke up his professional practice. Fortunately for
his future fame he was unsuccessful in his application to the
Spanish Government for permission to practise medicine at Manilla,
and Kane returned to the United States by the way of Singapore,
India, Egypt, and Europe, his journey marked by adventure and
danger. In these, as in all other sea voyages, he suffered
excessively from sea-sickness, which required all of his indomitable
will to endure with equanimity.
In 1846 he was commissioned assistant surgeon in the United States
Navy; his first sea duty took him to the west coast of Africa, where
coast fever invalided him within ten months. His desire for active
service was so great that before his health was re-established he
obtained orders from the Secretary of the Navy to proceed to
head-quarters of the army, then in the City of Mexico, for duty in
connection with the collection of data relative to field hospitals
and surgical statistics. Here his activity and daring resulted in
his being wounded in a guerilla skirmish.
Assigned temporarily to a surveying vessel, circumstances soon
determined Kane's career and gave full scope to his enthusiastic
energies, and insured his future fame. The appeals of Lady Franklin,
the recommendations of President Taylor, and the generosity of Henry
Grinnell, had culminated in the organization of a search expedition
for Franklin in the Arctic regions. It was provided that the vessels
should be manned by volunteers from the Navy, and among those
offering their services for this mission of humanity none was more
importunate than Kane. Persistent efforts brought him orders for
this fateful voyage while bathing in the tepid waters of the Gulf of
Mexico, and ten days later he sailed from New York for the icy
wastes of the North as surgeon of De Haven's flag-ship, the Advance.
This search, known in Arctic history as the First Grinnell
Expedition, was made under a joint resolution of the Congress of the
United States, dated May 2, 1850, "to accept and attach to the Navy
two vessels offered by Henry Grinnell, Esq., to be sent to the
Arctic seas in search of Sir John Franklin and his companions." Two
very small sailing brigs constituted the fleet, the flag-ship
Advance, commanded by De Haven, an officer of Antarctic experience
under Wilkes, and the Rescue, under Master Griffin; the entire party
numbered thirty-three officers and men.
Their objective point was Lancaster Sound and its westward
extension, Barrow Strait, whence either or both Wellington Channel
and Cape Walker were to be visited. The squadron passed safely
through Davis Strait, and skirting the dreaded land-ice of Melville
Bay, reached Cape York after three weeks of constant and dangerous
struggle with the heavy ice, which nearly destroyed the Rescue,
borne almost on her beam-ends by the enormous pressure from a moving
ice-pack. De Haven fell in with the English squadrons on the same
errand, August 19, 1850, and, entering Lancaster Sound with his
British consorts, devoted his energies to the search in hand.
Griffin, of the Rescue, shared with Captain Ommaney, R. N., the
honors of the discovery, at Beechy island, of the wintering-place of
Franklin's squadron in 1845-46. Later three graves of members of
Franklin's party were found, and numerous evidences of the good
condition and activity of the expedition during that winter. About
three weeks later, on September 10, 1850, De Haven concluded that
the position attained was not sufficiently advantageous to justify
his wintering, and so decided to return to the United States.
Unfortunately, strong gales and very cold weather prevented
immediate action, and in a few days both brigs were frozen immovably
in an enormous ice-pack, where they were destined to drift
helplessly to and fro at the mercy of the winds and currents for
many months.
Beset in Wellington Channel, to the north of Beechy Island, the
American squadron first found itself drifting slowly, but with
alarming steadiness, to the north, into waters and along coasts that
had, as far as they then knew, never been visited. The drift carried
the Advance to latitude 75° 25' north, longitude 91° 31' west, and
on September 22d they discovered new land, to which De Haven gave
the merited name of Grinnell. It proved to be an integral part of
North Devon, of which it was the northwestern extension. Every few
days there was a partial breaking up of the pack and consequent
danger of destruction. On one occasion, says Kane: "We are lifted
bodily eighteen inches out of water. The hummocks are reared up
around the ship, so as to rise a couple of feet above our bulwarks,
five feet above our deck. They are very often ten and twelve feet
high, and threaten to overwhelm us. Add to this, darkness, snow,
cold, and the absolute destitution of surrounding shores." The
temperature fell below zero and the ships seemed destined to winter
in Wellington Channel, but fortunately a strong northwest gale, in
conjunction with heavy tides, disintegrated the main pack and set
ships, ice and all, southward into Barrow Strait. Here they fell
under the action of a southeasterly current and, drifting all
winter, passed slowly through Lancaster Sound into Baffin Bay, where
the opening polar summer found them yet fast in the ice, from which
the two brigs were freed off Cape Walsingham, June 5, 1851, after
drifting in eight and a half months a distance of ten hundred and
fifty miles. It is impossible to adequately describe their physical
discomforts and dangers, the mental depression of the sunless
midwinter of eight weeks, and the even harder experiences of the
Arctic spring-tide, when excessive cold and increasing lassitude
made steady inroads on their impaired constitutions. Kane tells us
they were continually harassed by uncertainties as to their ultimate
fate. Yesterday the unbroken floe, stretching as far as the eye
could reach, seemed so firm and stable as to insure months of quiet,
uninterrupted life. Today, the groaning, uneasy pack, yielding to an
unseen power, split and cracked in all directions, throwing up huge
masses of solid ice, that threatened to destroy instantly the ship,
and occasionally opened in wide cracks through which rushed the open
sea. Indeed, the conditions were so critical and the ice-movements
so rapid, that the entire party, within the brief space of
twenty-four hours, had four times made ready to abandon their
vessels.
In March the cold became intense, and for a week it averaged
fifty-three degrees below the freezing-point. Scurvy assailed all
but five of the crew, and De Haven was so ill that all his duties
devolved on Griffin, who heroically bore up under disease and the
mental and moral responsibilities that the situation forced on him.
In all his efforts Griffin had no more effective coadjutor than the
fleet-surgeon, Kane. Whether acting as a medical officer, treating
skilfully the diseased crew; as a hunter, supplementing their scanty
stock of anti-scorbutic food with the fresh meat of the seal; or as
a man, devising means of amusement and stimulating them to mental
and physical exertions, Kane incessantly displayed such qualities of
cheerfulness, activity, and ingenuity as tended to dispel the pall
of despair that sometimes enveloped the whole expedition.
When release from the ice permitted the voyage to be renewed, De
Haven decided to refit in the Greenland ports and again return to
Lancaster Sound; fortunately, as the squadron was not fitted for a
second year's work, the ice in Melville Bay was such as to prevent
immediate passage, and so they turned southward, reaching the United
States on September 30, 1851.
Such desperate experiences as those involved in the midwinter drift
of the Advance, would have deterred most men for a time from a
second voyage, but with Kane the stimulus to future work apparently
increased with every league that he sailed southward. The ship was
hardly in port before he initiated a plan for another expedition in
the spring of 1852. This failing he wrote Lady Franklin in May,
offering to go with Captain Penny, or any good sailing-master, to
give his services without pay, and pledging himself to go to work
and raise funds.
Finding it impossible to go with any British expedition, he turned
his entire efforts to organizing another from America. His chivalric
enthusiasm enlisted the sympathies and active support of Henry
Grinnell and George Peabody, the first loaning the ship and the
latter contributing $10,000 for general expenses. The United States
again aided, not only putting Kane on sea-pay, but also attached ten
men of the Navy, under government pay. Instruments, provisions,
etc., were likewise supplied by the Secretary of the Navy, and aid
in other directions was afforded by the Smithsonian Institution, the
Naval Observatory, and other scientific associations. At this
juncture the discoveries of Captain Inglefield, R. N., in Smith
Sound, afforded to Kane a new route for his activities. The scheme,
as far as the search for Franklin was concerned, was well-meaning,
but none the less fallacious and illogical. Kane was personally
cognizant of the fact that Franklin had gone into Lancaster Sound,
and had wintered in 1845-46 at Beechy Island, plainly following the
direct and positive orders of the Admiralty, that he should push
southward from Cape Walker to the neighborhood of Behring Strait.
Moreover, the last mail ever received from the Franklin expedition
contained a letter from Captain Fitz-James, in which he stated that
Franklin had shown him the orders, expressed his disbelief in an
open sea to the north, and had given "a pleasant account of his
expectations of being able to get through the ice on the north coast
of America."
A search for Franklin by the way of Smith Sound, seventeen degrees
of longitude and four degrees of latitude to the north and east of
his last known position, was to assume not only that Franklin had
disobeyed the strict letter of his instructions, but had also
abandoned his voyage after having accomplished one-third of the
distance from Greenland to Behring Strait.
As the initiator and inspirer of the expedition, Kane was the
natural head of it, but there were difficulties in the way.
The assignment of a surgeon to the command of a naval expedition was
unprecedented; but somehow Kane succeeded in overcoming even the
time-honored observances of the Navy, and was placed in command by a
formal order of the Secretary of the Navy in November, 1852.
Kane repeatedly set forth his belief in an open Polar sea, and
announced his expectation of reaching it. The expedition was not
alone a proposed search for Franklin, but especially contemplated
the continuation to the northward of the discoveries made in 1851 by
Captain Inglefield, on the west coast of Greenland. Kane declared
his intention of reaching "its most northern attainable point, and
thence pressing on toward the Pole as far as boats or sleds could
carry us, examine the coast lines for vestiges of the lost party,"
and "seeking the _open sea_ ... launch our little boats, and embark
upon its waters."
On May 30, 1853, the expedition left New York in the sailing brig
Advance, there being seventeen members all told. The vessel was
stanch, well-fitted, and suitable, the scientific instruments
satisfactory, but the provisions were illy chosen for Arctic
service, and the equipment in many respects inadequate or deficient.
The Greenland ports supplied skin-clothing, dogs, and Eskimo
dog-drivers; the latter being destined to play an important part in
establishing harmonious relations with the Etah natives. On reaching
Melville Bay, Kane decided to take the middle passage, direct
through the dreaded pack--a most venturesome route for a
sailing-vessel. Favored by an off-shore gale, the Advance escaped
with the loss of a whaleboat, and emerged into the open sea near
Cape York, known as the North Water. Stopped by the ice, Kane wisely
decided to cache his metallic life-boat, filled with boat-stores, on
Littleton Island, so as to secure his retreat, since, as he says:
"My mind was made up from the first that we are to force our way to
the north as far as the elements will let us." The ice opening with
the tide, Kane rounded Cape Hatherton and was now in Kane Sea; but
the Advance was immediately driven into a cove for shelter. At the
first opportunity sail was again made and a short distance gained to
the east-northeast, when a violent gale nearly wrecked her. Repeated
efforts to work the vessel to the eastward, along a lee coast,
destroyed fittings and boat, and were so fruitful in danger that on
August 26th seven out of his eight officers addressed Kane in
writing, to the effect "that a further progress to the North was
impossible, and [they] were in favor of returning southward to
winter." Unfortunately, Kane was not "able conscientiously to take
the same view," as such retreat would have left him in a less
favorable situation to pursue his explorations. Two weeks longer the
brig was warped to the east during high water, whenever she was not
jammed by huge floes against the rugged coast; but at low water the
brig grounded and was daily in danger of total destruction. Finally,
on September 9th, she was put in winter-quarters in 78° 37' N., 71°
14' W., in Rensselaer Harbor, which, says Kane, "we were fated never
to leave together--a long resting-place to her, for the same ice is
round her still." Winter now advanced with startling rapidity and
excessive severity; freezing temperatures now permanently obtained,
the water-fowl were gone, and the scanty vegetation blighted. All
were busy, some constructing a building for magnetic and
meteorological observations, others making journeys along the
eastern coast. Kane visited the high land adjoining Mary Minturn
River, some fifty miles away, whence he could see Washington Land in
the vicinity of Cape Constitution. Hayes and Wilson journeyed on the
inland ice, while McGary with six others made three caches on the
coast, the farthest being under the face of the largest of all
Arctic glaciers, now known by the name of Humboldt. The winter
proved to be unusually cold, the temperature, from December to March
inclusive, averaging fifty-four degrees below the freezing-point of
water. Most fortunately the men remained in health, but Kane grieved
over the loss of his dogs, only a dozen surviving out of the
original eighty.
In this contingency Kane decided to put his men in the field, and
after two weeks of excessive cold, the temperature averaging
seventy-seven degrees below freezing, a party was sent out while the
mercury was yet frozen. Their orders were to reach Washington Land,
about one hundred miles distant across the sea-ice. It soon became
evident to Brooks, the commander of the party, that the journey was
impossible of execution, and after eight marches, in which less than
forty miles were traversed, he turned back on March 29, 1854. The
cold that day was intense, about ninety degrees below freezing, and
the next morning four men were frozen so badly that they could not
walk. Only four men were left for work. The distance to the brig was
thirty miles, while the intervening ice was so rough that they could
not drag their disabled comrades. Hickey volunteered to remain,
while Sontag, Ohlsen, and Petersen should go to the brig for help.
The three men finally reached the Advance, but they were so
physically exhausted and in such mental condition that they could
not even indicate in what direction they had left their comrades.
Kane appreciated the gravity of the situation and the necessity of
prompt measures. A relief party was at once started, which Kane led
himself, despite his impaired health, physical weakness, and general
unfitness for such a desperate journey; as always, he spared not
himself when danger threatened. Ohlsen, being the clearest-headed of
the sledgemen, was put in a sleeping-bag and dragged on a sledge as
a guide.
Eighteen hours' travel were without tangible result; Kane fainted
twice on the snow; his stoutest men were seized with trembling fits,
and as yet no signs of the missing party. Fortunately Kane had taken
the Eskimo, Hans Hendrik, whose keen eye discovered the track that
led to the tent of the frozen men. They were alive, but crippled
beyond the possibility of marching. The weather remained fine or all
would have perished, and as it was, Hayes, the surgeon, in his
report of their condition on reaching the brig, said: "I was
startled by their ghastly appearance. When I hailed them they met me
only with a vacant, wild stare. They were to a man delirious." Of
the eight men only one returned sound; two shortly died, two others
suffered amputations, and three escaped with temporary disabilities.
Three weeks later, on April 26th, Kane set out on what, to use his
own words, "was to be the crowning expedition of the campaign, to
attain the Ultima Thule of the Greenland shore." Impressed with the
impracticability of a direct journey across the main ice-pack, he
decided to follow the shore-line, five men dragging a sledge, while
Kane and Godfrey travelled by dog-team. He had been led by his
resolute spirit to overestimate the physical strength of his men and
himself, and the party broke down before it had even approached the
Humboldt Glacier. Their enthusiastic leader was stricken with
fainting spells and rigidity of limbs, but Kane would not admit his
illness to be more than temporary, and bidding the men strap him on
the sledge, proceeded onward. His diminished physical powers now
became evident through the freezing of his rigid and swollen limbs.
Delirious and fainting at the end of the march, he was carried in an
almost insensible condition to his tent, when his men wisely took
the matter in their own hands and started back for the brig. Nine
days later, through forced marches and heroic efforts of his
sledge-mates, themselves partially disabled, Kane was carried on
board the Advance fluctuating between life and death. Hardly
conscious, his mind clouded, and his swollen features barely
recognizable, his general condition was such that the surgeon
regarded his ultimate recovery as nearly hopeless.
While Kane's recuperative powers were simply marvellous, yet he did
not recover sufficiently to make another journey that spring. In
this extremity he turned to his surgeon, Israel I. Hayes, who
volunteered to explore the unknown shores of Grinnell Land, which
lay in sight to the west of Smith Sound. With the seaman Godfrey as
a companion and a dog-team as the means of transportation, Hayes
struggled through the almost impassable floes and bergs of the main
strait and finally attained Cape Hayes, on the western coast, in
about 79° 45' N. latitude. The return journey to the Advance was
possible only by abandoning everything that in the slightest degree
impeded the progress of the exhausted men and famishing dogs.
This success caused Kane to make one more effort to reach the
hitherto inaccessible Washington Land, and for this purpose he
placed all his means at the disposal of one of his seamen, William
Morton. A supporting party accompanied Morton to Humboldt Glacier,
whence he proceeded with Eskimo Hans Hendrik and a dog-team on the
advance journey. Their track lay over the sea-ice, about five miles
from, and parallel with, the face of the glacier. Five days took
them to the new land to the north, and three days later, June 24,
1854, Morton reached alone an impassable headland, Cape
Constitution. From the highest attainable elevation Morton found his
view completely cut off to the northeast, but between the west and
north he could see the southeastern half of Kennedy's Channel as far
north as Mount Ross, 80° 58' N. He says "Not a speck of ice was to
be seen as far as I could observe; the sea was open, the swell came
from the northward ... and the surf broke in on the rocks below in
regular breakers." Morton described accurately the general
landscape, but he was an incompetent astronomical observer, and his
estimates of distances were excessive. The farthest point was
charted nearly a hundred miles north of its true position, while
Cape Constitution was placed 31 miles too far north by Morton and 52
geographic miles by Kane, who "corrected" Morton's observations by a
series of erroneous bearings. Morton's general account of his
explorations has been confirmed by Hans Hendrik in his Memoir
written some years since in Eskimo.
In the meantime the Etah Eskimo, natives of Prudhoe land, had
discovered the brig, and through the interpreter, Hans Hendrik,
promptly established friendly relations with Kane. It may be said
that the expedition owed its final safety to these natives; their
supplies of fresh meat checked scurvy, and later their dog teams
rendered retreat possible. Slight misunderstandings, not always the
fault of the natives, naturally occurred, but the Eskimo were
honest, humane, and willing, and never committed a hostile act.
The summer of 1854 justified the expressed fears of Kane's officers,
for it passed with the ice yet unbroken in Rensselaer Harbor. It was
evident in July that the brig would never be freed from the ice, and
in this critical situation, Kane, taking five men in a whaleboat,
attempted to reach Beechy Island, several hundred miles to the
southwest, whence he expected to obtain succor from the English
searching squadron. The unfavorable condition of the ice in Smith
Sound caused the failure of this attempt, and, yet worse, encouraged
the idea of dividing the party; an idea that culminated in the
well-known "Arctic Boat Journey," as Dr. Hayes termed it. Despite
Kane's futile experiences in July, the majority of the party
maintained that a boat journey to Upernavik was both practicable and
advisable. Confronted by this attitude of the expeditionary force,
Kane assembled them, set forth the dangers of such an attempt, and
vehemently urged them to abandon the project, which the lateness of
the season and the unfavorable ice conditions rendered most
improbable of success. Finally he granted the privilege of
unfettered action to such as believed the journey practicable,
stipulating only that those leaving the vessel should renounce, in
writing, all claims upon the expedition and should elect a leader.
Nine elected to go, eight to remain. Kane displayed a magnanimous
spirit, equipping them most liberally, and assuring them, in
writing, that the brig should be ever open should disaster overtake
them. The boat journey was a failure, and Kane bade them welcome
when, early in December, he learned that the party, some two hundred
miles distant and in imminent danger of perishing by starvation, was
desirous of returning to the Advance. Kane promptly sent supplies to
the suffering men, and, on December 12th, the entire crew was once
again upon the brig.
The winter of 1854-5 passed wretchedly; the physical condition of
the party steadily deteriorated; failing fuel necessitated the
burning of the upper woodwork of the brig; their food was reduced to
ordinary marine stores, and game failed equally to the hunters of
the Advance and the persistent efforts of the Etah natives on the
ice-clad land and in the frozen sea. In addition scurvy attacked the
crew; Hayes lost a portion of his frozen foot, and hardly a man of
the crew remained fit for duty. The necessity of abandoning the brig
and retreating by boat to Upernavik, Danish Greenland, was now
forced upon Kane's mind. The co-operation of the natives greatly
facilitated, if it did not alone render possible, the transportation
of their provisions, boats, and stores to Cape Alexander. Kane says
the Eskimo "brought daily supplies of birds, assisted in carrying
boat stores, and invariably exhibited the kindest feelings and
strictest honesty."
Bidding farewell to the natives at Cape Alexander on June 15, 1855,
Cape York was passed, the land ice of Melville Bay followed, and the
northern coast of Danish Greenland reached in forty-seven days. In
the meantime a relief squadron under command of Lieutenant
Hartstene, United States Navy, had visited Smith Sound, where the
natives informed him of Kane's journey southward. Taken on board the
returning flag-ship at Disco, Kane and his men reached New York,
October 11, 1855.
Kane had hardly reached home when it became evident that his
undermined constitution could not longer withstand the inroads of a
disease which for twenty years had afflicted him. Change of climate
was tried without avail, and he died at Havana, Cuba, February 16,
1857, at the early age of thirty-seven.
Between his first and second voyages Kane had become deeply
interested in Margaretta Fox, one of the well-known spiritualists,
who later published their correspondence under the title of "The
Love Life of Dr. Kane." Their relations, it is believed, resulted in
a secret marriage shortly before Kane's death.
The rare literary skill shown in the account of Kane's expedition
has charmed millions of readers with its graphic account of the
labors, hardships, and privations of Kane and his men. It should
not, however, be considered that this expedition merits attention
alone from its tales of suffering and bravery, for none other of
that generation contributed so materially to a correct knowledge of
the Arctic regions. In ethnology it gave the first full account of
the Etah Eskimo, the northernmost inhabitants of the world; in
natural history its data as to the flora and fauna of the isolated
and ice-surrounded extremity of western Greenland were original,
and have been to this day but scantily supplemented; in physical
sciences, the magnetic, tidal, and climatic observations remained
for twenty years the most important series pertaining to the Arctic
regions. Kane's voyage not only extended geographically Inglefield's
discoveries a hundred miles to the northward, but it also opened up
a practical and safe route for Arctic exploration, which has been
more fruitful of successful results than any other.
Kane was a man of generous impulses, enthusiastic ideals, and kindly
heart. His chivalric nature, indomitable will, and great courage
often impelled him to hazardous enterprises; but he stands out in
this modern age as an unselfish character, willing to brave
hardships and risk his own life on a vague possibility of rescuing
Franklin and his companions.
[Signature: A. W. Greely.]