THE VOYAGES OF KANE AND HAYES
Up to the middle of the nineteenth century America had not played
a very important part in the history of Arctic exploration. In
1853, however, an expedition set out under the command of Dr Elisha
Kent Kane—the young doctor who accompanied Lieutenant De Haven in
the _Advance_ and _Rescue_—which won immortality for itself by
penetrating Smith Sound to a point never reached by any previous
explorer. Although Kane had special instructions from the Secretary
of the United States Navy to “conduct an expedition to the Arctic
seas in search of Sir John Franklin,” it is really hardly possible to
regard his enterprise as a serious part of the Franklin search, for
it concerned itself with a region in which there was no possibility
of finding any traces of the missing explorers.
The ship chosen for the expedition was our old friend the _Advance_,
and the expenses were shared by Mr Grinnell, Mr Peabody, and a number
of American scientific institutions. The crew consisted of seventeen
officers and men, among them being Brooks and Morton, both of whom
had served under De Haven, and Isaac Israel Hayes, a young surgeon,
who was destined to conduct an expedition on his own account later
on. The equipment of the ship seems to have been carried out with
but little regard to the laws of hygiene, as recognised by Arctic
explorers. “We took with us,” says Kane, “some 2000 lbs. of pemmican,
a parcel of Borden’s meat biscuit, some packages of exsiccated
potato, some pickled cabbage, and a liberal quantity of American
dried fruits and vegetables. Besides these we had the salt beef
and pork of the navy ration, hard biscuit and flour.... I hoped to
obtain some fresh provisions in addition before reaching the upper
coast of Greenland.” Such a dietary as this made it almost inevitable
that scurvy would break out, and, as will be seen later on, the crew
suffered terribly from the ravages of this fearful disease.
It was on May 30, 1853, that the _Advance_ set sail from New York,
never to return. Her passage north through Baffin Bay was by no means
free from difficulties, but by August 6 she was in sight of Cape
Alexander and Cape Isabella, the tremendous cliffs which guard the
entrance to Smith Sound. On the following morning, as he was nearing
Littleton Island, which lies well within the mouth of the sound, Kane
was disappointed to see the ominous ice-blink ahead of him, which,
taken in conjunction with the fact that the wind was freshening from
the northward, augured ill for the future. However, he decided to
press on as best he could, only pausing to place a boat and a store
of provisions _en cache_ on the island, a step on which he had good
cause to congratulate himself later on.
On the next day he first closed with the ice, and began his attempt
to bore his way through. A fog, however, compelled him to beat a
retreat into a land-locked cove, which he named “Refuge Harbour,”
where he had to remain for several days. On the 13th, taking
advantage of a change in the weather, he attempted to push on once
more, but he was constantly hampered by gales; these, by the 20th,
had increased to a hurricane, which very nearly made an end of the
whole party.
By the 22nd the storm had abated, and Kane was able to proceed on his
way. His rate of progress, however, was exceedingly slow, for he was
obliged to send men on to the pack with a tracking rope to drag the
ship along as best they could. On the following day he found that he
had reached lat. 78° 41′ N., a point 13′ higher than that reached by
Inglefield, and farther north than any explorer, with the exception
of Parry, had ever penetrated. He now began to realise that there was
very little prospect of his being able to proceed further that year,
and he had to confess that he did not like the idea of being obliged
to spend a winter in so northerly a latitude, as he was so surrounded
with ice that his chances of escape next year were uncertain. He
accordingly called a meeting of his officers and crew, and took
their opinion upon the situation. Why he took this course is not
particularly clear, for the opinions expressed at that meeting did
not influence him in the least. Only one member of the expedition was
in favour of remaining where they were, while all the rest desired to
return south without any delay whatever; yet Kane promptly decided in
favour of the former course, and set about finding winter quarters
for the _Advance_. These he eventually discovered in Rensselaer
Harbour, lat. 78° 37′ N., long. 71° W.
The cold that winter was intense, and the ship’s thermometers ranged
from 60° to 75° below zero. Nor did spring bring much improvement in
the conditions, and Kane found himself obliged to carry out the work
of preparation for his sledge journeys in very trying circumstances.
The matter, however, was not of a nature that would brook delay, so
ten men under Mr Brooks, the first officer, were sent off to place
a store of provisions _en cache_ at a point about ten days’ journey
from the brig.
The whole of the party came within an ace of perishing on the ice,
and had it not been for the efforts of Olsen, the sailing master,
Sontag, the astronomer, and Petersen, the interpreter, who staggered
back to the ship in search of relief, they must have been frozen to
death. As it was, two men died of cold and exposure.
Towards the end of April Kane set out on that sledge journey along
the east shore of Smith Sound which has raised him to the front
rank of Arctic explorers. His expedition was conducted in the face
of two great difficulties—sickness and lack of provisions. As early
as May 30 the scurvy which had attacked the crew during the winter
reappeared, and many members of the party fell victims to it, Kane
himself suffering so severely that his limbs became quite rigid, and
he had to be lashed to the sledge. The shortage of provisions was not
due to any lack of care in the preparations for the expedition, but
to the depredations of the bears, which had found the contents of the
_caches_ so much to their liking that they had completely demolished
them.
“The pemmican,” says Kane, “was covered with blocks of stone,
which it had required the labour of three men to adjust; but the
extraordinary strength of the bear had enabled him to force aside the
heaviest rocks, and his pawing had broken the iron casks which held
our pemmican literally into chips. Our alcohol cask, which had cost
me a separate and special journey in the late fall to deposit, was so
completely destroyed that we could not find a stave of it.”
In spite of these difficulties, however, Kane succeeded in reaching
the Great Glacier of Humboldt, that tremendous sea of ice, one of the
largest of its kind, which stretches from 79° 12′ to 80° 12′. By the
end of the first week in May the condition of the party had become so
bad that it was useless for them to attempt to proceed any further.
Kane was delirious, his companions were almost past walking, and it
was only through the most heroic perseverance that they succeeded in
reaching the ship at all.
For a few days after their return the doctor had his hands full,
but under his skilful treatment the patients recovered rapidly, and
the work of exploration was immediately resumed. The first to leave
the ship was Dr Hayes, who was sent off with a sledge and a team
of dogs to explore the country north and east of Inglefield’s Cape
Sabine. The dogs gave him some little trouble, as their harness was
constantly breaking, and the only material at hand for repairing
it consisted of his own sealskin breeches, large portions of which
he was obliged to sacrifice for the good of the cause. However, he
prosecuted his explorations as far as Dobbin Bay before turning back
to the ship.
Though he had gained a great deal of valuable knowledge concerning
the coast-line on either side of Smith Sound, Kane was still
uncertain whether he was in a channel leading into a polar sea or in
a _cul-de-sac_. From his observations of the tides and the drift of
the ice he was inclined to take the former view, and, in the hope
of setting all doubts upon the subject at rest, he decided to send
out another party, with dogs, which was to be subsisted as far as
the Great Glacier by provisions carried by a foot party in advance.
Unfortunately scurvy is not a disease which is thrown off easily,
and, when the time for making up these parties arrived, only five men
were found to be in reasonably good health. He did the best that he
possibly could in the circumstances. He told off Morton, M’Gary, and
three men to take provisions to the Great Glacier, where they were
to be joined by Hans Christian, the hunter of the party, with dogs.
Morton and Hans were then to cross the strait and advance along the
distant coast as far as they could.
The two explorers attacked their part of the task with immense
ardour, and eventually succeeded in penetrating as far as Cape
Constitution. They returned to the ship with marvellous tales of open
seas and waves dashing against the cliffs, which rejoiced Kane’s
heart exceedingly, for they not only supported his theories, but
they also gave colour to the popular fallacy that an ice-free ocean
existed in the direction of the Pole. Unfortunately, however, it
subsequently transpired that Morton and Hans were quite mistaken.
There is, of course, no reason to suppose that their stories were
mere flights of imagination, composed for the express benefit
of their commander. Other explorers have made similar illusory
discoveries, and have chronicled them in perfectly good faith. No
doubt Morton and Hans honestly believed that they saw an open polar
sea off Cape Constitution; the fact remains, however, that they saw
nothing of the kind.
By the beginning of June 1854, Kane had begun to realise that he
was in a very uncomfortable situation. All his men were diseased,
and several of them were completely disabled; fuel and food were
becoming very short; and, to crown all, there seemed no prospect of
extricating his ship that year. He soon came to the conclusion that
the only thing for him to do was to attempt to reach Beechey Island,
and there to ask for assistance from Sir Edward Belcher. Accordingly,
he patched up his whale-boat to the best of his ability, and, taking
with him the only five members of his crew who were in reasonably
good health, he started off on his hazardous voyage. He was not,
however, destined to get very far, for he found the mouth of Smith
Sound so cumbered with ice that he had no choice but to give orders
for a retreat on the ship, which he reached on August 6.
A careful inspection of his stores now forced him to the conclusion
that he must cut down the allowance of fuel. Here is the passage in
his journal in which he records the step. “Reduced our allowance of
wood to six pounds a meal. This, among eighteen mouths, is one-third
of a pound of fuel each. It allows us coffee twice a day and soup
once. Our fare, besides this, is cold pork boiled in quantity and
eaten as required. This sort of thing works badly, but I must reserve
coal for other emergencies. I see darkness ahead. I inspected the
ice again to-day. Bad! bad!—I must look another winter in the face.
I do not shrink from the thought; but, while we have a chance ahead,
it is my first duty to have all things in readiness to meet it. It
is horrible—yes, that is the word—to look forward to another year of
disease and darkness to be met without fresh food and without fuel.
I should meet it with more tempered sadness if I had no comrades to
think for and protect.”
There was now only one expedient to be tried, and that was a land
journey in search of succour from the Eskimos. Accordingly Hayes,
Petersen and seven men set out from the ship on August 28, leaving
the rest of their companions to shift for themselves as best they
could. Had it not been for an alliance which they made with a tribe
of Eskimos, whose settlement lay some seventy-five miles from the
ship, they would probably have perished miserably of cold and
starvation. By the terms of this alliance the natives undertook
to refrain from stealing from the ship, and to supply the sailors
with fresh meat and dogs, while Kane in return promised them the
assistance of his men on their hunting expeditions, and undertook
to provide them with needles, knives, and other trifles dear to
the heart of the native. The sledge journey from the ship to the
settlement and back was, however, so long and arduous that Kane only
undertook it when it was absolutely necessary.
On December 7 a number of Eskimos put in an appearance bringing with
them two members of the exploring party. From them Kane learnt that
they had failed hopelessly in their mission, and that their comrades
were housed at a settlement 200 miles away. He accordingly sent back
the Eskimo escort with such supplies as he could spare to bring back
the remainder of his friends. So rapidly did the natives travel that
five days later they were back again with Hayes and his party, all
of whom were in a state of collapse. Indeed, had it not been for the
great kindness with which they had been treated by the Etah Eskimos
they must inevitably have perished.
A more unutterably miserable winter was probably never passed by any
band of Arctic explorers. As the anti-scorbutics, the food and the
fuel failed, the condition of the men grew worse and worse, and Kane
made up his mind that as soon as spring came round he would spare
no efforts to make his way to civilised regions. The only person on
board who seems to have been reasonably happy was the hunter, Hans
Christian. While all his comrades were wondering how in the world
they were to support life, he had fallen head over ears in love with
a fair Eskimo damsel of Etah, to whom he intended to get married as
soon as he could make his way to the nearest settlement.
With the details of the return journey we need not concern ourselves.
It began in May, and after almost superhuman exertions, the party
succeeded in reaching Upernivik on August 3. Thence they were taken
back to the United States in the squadron which, under the command of
Lieutenant Harstene, had been sent out to their rescue.
In the following year Hayes, Kane’s surgeon, set out in the schooner
_United States_ on an expedition, the object of which was to verify
Morton’s story of the open polar sea, in which the worthy doctor had
the firmest belief. The winter was marked by a tragedy, for Sontag,
the astronomer and probably the most valuable member of the party,
was frozen to death on a sledging expedition. Had he been spared he
might have saved Hayes from perpetrating the extraordinary series of
blunders which were the most startling feature of his spring journey
up the coast of Grinnell Land. Not only did he make a number of
unreliable observations, with the result that his chart had to be
entirely altered by subsequent explorers, but he also imagined that
he saw a magnificent polar sea, which proved ultimately to be nothing
but the southern half of Kennedy Channel. This part of the channel
freezes late and opens early, owing to the exceptionally high tides,
and is rarely entirely closed.