THE VOYAGE OF THE “TEGETTHOFF”
Many routes to the North Pole had now been tried and found wanting.
Expeditions had started out by Behring Strait, through Smith
Sound, up the eastern coast of Greenland and from Spitzbergen,
but they had one and all been frustrated by those great Arctic
currents, which, rushing down from the Polar basin, carried with
them such quantities of ice that real progress towards the Pole was
practically impossible. There still remained one route, however,
which had scarcely been tried at all, namely that which lay round
the north-east shores of Nova Zembla. Many noted geographers held
that the Gulf Stream did not disappear at the North Cape, and that by
following its warmer waters it might be possible to avoid the Arctic
currents and the difficulties which followed in their train. It was
with a view to testing this theory that the Austrian expedition
of 1872-74 set out in the _Tegetthoff_, under the joint command
of Lieutenant Carl Weyprecht, to whom was entrusted all matters
connected with navigation, and Lieutenant Julius Payer, who was to be
responsible for the conduct of the sledging operations.
In June 1871 Weyprecht and Payer sailed in the _Isbjörn_ on a
preliminary excursion to spy out the land, or rather, perhaps,
the sea, and, the result of their observations being entirely
satisfactory, it was definitely decided that they should adventure
in that direction in the following year. The _Tegetthoff_, a steamer
of 220 tons burden, was accordingly put in a state of thorough
repair and fitted out for two years and a half. Her crew numbered
twenty-two, so that, with her commanders, she carried twenty-four
souls, as well as eight dogs.
The expedition sailed from Tromsö on July 14, and eleven days later
ice was sighted. At first it afforded them no serious difficulties,
for the _Tegetthoff_ was enabled by her steam power to charge the
floes and so to force her way through those round which she could
not sail. On August 20, however, she was brought to a dead stop by
a barrier of ice in lat. 76° 22´ N., long. 63° 3´ E. “Ominous were
the events of that day,” says Payer, “for immediately after we had
made the _Tegetthoff_ fast to that floe, the ice closed in upon us
from all sides, and we became close prisoners in its grasp. No water
was to be seen around us, and never again were we destined to see
our vessel in water.... We were, in fact, no longer discoverers, but
passengers against our will on the ice. From day to day we hoped for
the hour of our deliverance! At first we expected it hourly, then
daily, then from week to week; then at the seasons of the year and
changes of the weather, then in the chances of new years! But that
hour never came.”
The _Tegetthoff_, firmly fixed on her floe, now became the sport
of the winds, for in that sea it is the wind that controls the
ice-movements. By October 12 she had travelled so far northward
that Nova Zembla had completely disappeared from view. On the next
day a great excitement took place, for the floe burst right under
the ship. “Rushing on deck,” says Payer, “we discovered that we were
surrounded and squeezed by the ice; the after-part of the ship was
already nipped and pressed, and the rudder, which was the first to
encounter its assault, shook and groaned; but as its great weight did
not admit of its being shipped, we were content to lash it firmly.
We next sprang on the ice, the tossing, tremulous motion of which
literally filled the air with noises, as of shrieks and howls, and we
quickly got on board all the materials which were lying on the floe,
and bound the fissures of the ice hastily together by ice-anchors
and cables.... But, just as in the risings of a people, the wave
of revolt spreads on every side, so now the ice uprose against us.
Mountains threateningly reared themselves from out the level fields
of ice, and the low groans which issued from its depths grew into
a deep rumbling sound, and at last rose into a furious howl as of
myriads of voices. Noise and confusion reigned supreme, and step by
step destruction drew nigh in the crashing together of the fields
of ice. Our floe was now crushed, and its blocks, piled up into
mountains, drove hither and thither. Here they towered fathoms high
above the ship, and forced the projecting timbers of massive oak,
as if in mockery of their purpose, against the hull of the vessel;
there masses of ice fell down as into an abyss under the ship, to be
engulfed in the rushing waters, so that the quantity of ice beneath
the ship was continually increased, and at last it began to raise
her quite above the level of the sea. About 11.30 in the forenoon,
according to our usual custom, a portion of the Bible was read on
deck, and this day, quite accidentally, the portion read was the
history of Joshua; but if in his day the sun stood still, it was more
than the ice showed any inclination to do.... In all haste we began
to make ready to abandon the ship, in case it should be crushed, a
fate which seemed inevitable, if she were not sufficiently raised
through the pressure of the ice. At 12.30 the pressure reached a
frightful height, every part of the vessel strained and groaned;
the crew, who had been sent down to dine, rushed on deck. The
_Tegetthoff_ had heeled over on her side, and huge pillars of ice
threatened to precipitate themselves upon her. But the pressure
abated, and the ship righted herself; and about one o’clock, when
the danger was in some degree over, the crew went below to dine. But
again a strain was felt through the vessel, everything which hung
freely began to oscillate violently, and all hastened on deck, some
with the unfinished dinner in their hands, others stuffing it into
their pockets.”
Instantly the last preparations were made for leaving the
ship—“whither no one pretended to know: for not a fragment of the ice
around us had remained whole; nowhere could the eye discover a still
perfect and uninjured floe, to serve as a place of refuge, as a vast
floe had before been to the crew of the _Hansa_. Nay, not a block,
not a table of ice was at rest, all shapes and sizes of it were in
active motion, some turning and twisting, none on the level. A sledge
would at once have been swallowed up.”
The party on the _Tegetthoff_ remained for the whole of the winter
on the brink of death. When summer came round it brought with it
hopes of release, but day after day passed by and still the floe on
which the ship was fixed showed no signs of freeing her from its
grasp. In July 1873 an attempt was made to measure the thickness
of the ice by means of a borer; after twenty-seven feet had been
penetrated the attempt had to be abandoned. In August the chances
of release began to lessen considerably, and the bitter thought was
beginning to assail the officers and crew that they would be obliged
to return home without making a single discovery when, on the 30th
of the month, a sudden and unexpected sight infused new life into
them. “About midday,” says Payer, “as we were leaning on the bulwarks
of the ship and scanning the gliding mists, through which the rays
of the sun broke ever and anon, a wall of mist, lifting itself up
suddenly, revealed to us afar off in the north-west the outlines of
bold rocks, which in a few minutes seemed to grow into a radiant
Alpine land! At first we all stood transfixed and hardly believing
what we saw. Then carried away by the reality of our good fortune,
we burst into shouts of joy, ‘Land, land, land, at last!’ There
was now not a sick man on board the _Tegetthoff_. The news of the
discovery spread in an instant. Everyone rushed on deck to convince
himself, with his own eyes, that the expedition was not, after all,
a failure—there before us lay the prize that could not be snatched
from us. Yet not by our own action, but through the happy caprice
of our floe and as in a dream had we won it; but when we thought of
the floe, drifting without intermission, we felt with redoubled pain
that we were at the mercy of its movements. As yet we had secured
no winter harbour from which the exploration of the strange land
could be successfully undertaken. For the present, too, it was not
within the verge of possibility to reach and visit it. If we had
left the floe, we should have been cut off and lost. It was only
under the influence of the first excitement that we made a rush over
our ice-field, although we knew that numberless fissures made it
impossible to reach the land. But, difficulties notwithstanding, when
we ran to the edge of our floe, we beheld from a ridge of ice the
mountains and glaciers of the mysterious land.”
With all due pomp and circumstance they named their new discovery
Franz Josef Land, drinking the health of their Emperor as they did
so. Their jubilation, however, was destined to be short-lived, for
almost immediately a northerly wind arose which drove their floe many
miles to the south, and Franz Josef Land, though still very dear to
memory, was completely lost to sight. When next they found themselves
in its neighbourhood, moreover, an event which occurred towards
the end of September, their sensations were less pleasurable, for
storms were churning up the ice in a most terrifying manner, and they
were in imminent danger of being wrecked upon a shore which, though
they viewed it with eyes of pride, looked, as they had to admit,
distinctly inhospitable. By the 1st of November, however, the ice
had quietened down, and Payer came to the conclusion that he might
safely attempt to effect a landing. The way was difficult, lying as
it did over masses of broken ice which included a rampart fifty feet
high, but the men made light of such obstacles, and it was a proud
moment for them when they were able to set foot on land which had
probably never been trodden by a human being before.
[Illustration: A BEAR HUNT]
They found that the new country consisted of two main masses. That
on which they had landed they called Wilczek Land, and the other
they named Zichy Land, while the sound which separated them they
christened Austria Sound. It was a bleak and desolate land enough,
clothed for the most part in perpetual snow, and absolutely devoid of
any signs of habitation. The vegetation was so scanty that musk-oxen
or reindeer could not have supported life there, and the place
seemed to be given over entirely to Polar bears, foxes, and a few
migratory birds. Everything, however, depends on the point of view,
and it certainly seemed Paradise to the crew of the _Tegetthoff_.
Fortunately for them the ice soon became firmer, and they were able
to explore the new land with less fear of their line of retreat
being cut off. During the early spring Payer mapped out several
of the islands of which he found Franz Josef Land to consist, and
succeeded in penetrating as far north as Cape Fligely, the highest
point attained in the old world up till then. He also added several
new lands to the chart, which have been subsequently shown to be
non-existent, among them being King Oscar and Petermann Lands.
It was, of course, perfectly obvious that the ship must be abandoned,
and during the winter preparations were made for taking that step
as soon as spring came round. The objective was Nova Zembla, where
a depot of provisions had been established for them to meet
eventualities. They had no need to make use of that depot, however,
for while passing Cape Britwin, they fell in with a Russian schooner,
the _Nikolai_, which took them on board and brought them safely back
to Europe in September 1874.