THE STORY OF THE “JEANNETTE”
There is a double interest attached to the voyage of the _Jeannette_,
for not only is the story itself one of the most terrible tragedies
in the whole history of Arctic exploration, but, as will be seen
later, it was the fate of the unlucky ship which prompted Nansen to
formulate his plan for reaching the Pole by forcing his ship into the
ice, and allowing her to drift north with the current.
The _Jeannette_ expedition owed its inception to Mr J. G. Bennett
of the _New York Herald_, who had frequently shown his interest in
Arctic research by equipping and sending out vessels at his own
expense. He purchased the _Pandora_ from Sir Allen Young, renamed
her the _Jeannette_, and placed her under the command of Commander
De Long, who had been a member of the relief expedition sent out to
the succour of the _Polaris_. Admirably fitted out in every detail
both for navigation and for scientific research, the _Jeannette_
set sail from San Francisco on July 8, 1879. After a brief call at
St Michael’s, where she took on board sledges, furs, dogs, and two
Alaskan dog-drivers, she set sail once more and made for Behring
Strait.
The plan of the expedition was to spend the winter at Wrangel
Land, and then to push on northward, if possible to the Pole.
Unfortunately for De Long’s arrangements, however, the Wrangel Land
of the geographers of the day had no real existence, and he was
destined never to reach it. For over a century it had been held, on
the strength of Chukche reports, that a vast continent existed to the
north of Asia, which extended right across the Pole to Greenland. No
less an authority than the great Petermann himself believed in it,
and the reports of the American whaler, Thomas Long, who discovered
Wrangel Land in 1867, and of other whalers who followed him, tended
to confirm this theory, for the newly discovered land seemed to be of
considerable extent. Accordingly, De Long had every reason to suppose
that here he would find comfortable quarters for the winter.
He was very soon to be disillusioned, however, for before he was
within a hundred miles of the land, the _Jeannette_ was caught in the
ice, and from that time onward her story bore a painful resemblance
to that of the _Tegetthoff_, without any of its compensations.
Drifted constantly westward by the ever-moving pack, now nipped
till her seams almost sprang apart, now threatened with a terrible
destruction by the frozen waves of ice which rolled down upon her,
she was before long reduced to a most pitiable plight. Here is the
description penned by her chief engineer, G. W. Melville, of an event
which was of almost daily occurrence:—
“It was observed that, during the continuance of the wind, the
whole body of ice moved evenly before it; but, when it subsided,
the mass that had been put in motion crowded and tumbled upon
the far-off floes at rest, piling tumultuously upward in a manner
terrific to behold. It was in one of these oppressive intervals
succeeding a gale, when the roar and crash of the distant masses
could be distinctly heard, that the floe in which the _Jeannette_ was
embedded began splitting in all directions. The placid and almost
level surface of ice suddenly heaved and swelled into great hills,
buzzing and wheezing dolefully. Giant blocks pitched and rolled as
though controlled by invisible hands; and the vast compressing bodies
shrieked a shrill and horrible song that curdled the blood. On came
the frozen waves, nearer and nearer. Seams ran and rattled across
them with a thundering boom, while silent and awestruck, we watched
their terrible progress. Sunk in an amphitheatre about five-eighths
of a mile in diameter lay the ship, the bank of moving ice puffed
in places to a height of 50 feet, gradually enclosing her on all
sides. Preparations were made for her abandonment; but—what then?
If the mighty circle continued to decrease, escape was hopeless,
death inevitable. To think of clambering up the slippery sides of
the rolling mass would be equal folly with an attempt to scale the
falling waters of Niagara.”
Summer came on the heels of winter, but it brought no prospect of
release to the wretched crew of the _Jeannette_. They had already
drifted past the northern coast of Wrangel Land, and had found it to
be nothing but an island of moderate dimensions, and there were no
signs of that mythical continent upon which De Long had been pinning
his hopes. The new year found them still held in the relentless grip
of the pack. Here is the comment upon his situation which De Long
penned in his diary:—
“People beset in the pack before always drifted somewhere to some
land; but we are drifting about like a modern _Flying Dutchman_,
never getting anywhere, but always restless and on the move. Coals
are burning up, food is being consumed, the pumps are still going,
and thirty-three people are wearing out their lives and souls like
men doomed to imprisonment for life. If this next summer comes and
goes like the last without any result, what reasonable mind can be
patient in contemplation of the future?”
On May 16 a slight diversion was caused by the discovery of two
islands, which they named Jeannette Island and Henriette Island. De
Long started off on a sledging expedition to them, and, like many
other Arctic explorers, had great trouble with his dogs, which, in
accordance with the traditions of their race, refused to face the
open water, and had to be dragged, sledges and all, through every
lead that intersected their path. “There is no greater violence done
the eternal cause of truth,” says the commander, “than in those
pictures where the Eskimos are represented as calmly sitting in
shoe-shaped sledges with the lashes of their long whips trailing
gracefully behind, while the dogs dash in full cry and perfect unison
across smooth expanses of snow. If depicted ‘true to nature,’ the
scene changes its aspect considerably; it is quite as full of action,
but not of progress. A pandemonium of horrors—dogs yelling, barking,
snapping, and fighting; the leaders in the rear and the wheelers in
the middle, all tied in a knot, and as hopelessly tangled up as a
basketful of eels.”
On Sunday June 12 the pressure became so tremendous that the ship
cracked in every part. She at once began to fill, and the men set
to work to remove on to the ice everything necessary for a sledge
journey to a place of safety. Towards four o’clock on the following
morning the man on watch suddenly burst into the tent. “Turn out if
you want to see the last of the _Jeannette_,” he cried. “There she
goes! There she goes!” “Most of us,” writes Melville, “had barely
time to arise and look out, when, amid the rattling and banging of
her timbers and iron work, the ship righted and stood almost upright;
the floes that had come in and crushed her slowly backed off; and
as she sank with slightly accelerated velocity, the yardarms were
stripped and broken upward parallel to the masts; and so, like a
great gaunt skeleton, its hands clasped above its head, she plunged
out of sight.”
[Illustration: ESKIMOS SLEDGING
FROM A DRAWING BY CAPT. LYON]
On that day they started off with their nine sledges and five boats
on their journey of 150 miles to the New Siberian Islands. They
carried sixty days’ provisions with them, and had not the men been in
an enfeebled condition, and had not circumstances been against them,
they could easily have accomplished the distance. As it was, they
were too weak to drag all their sledges and boats in a single load,
so that every mile of the journey had to be covered seven times,
while an unfortunate northerly drift carried them miles out of their
course. At last, however, the New Siberian Islands were reached, and,
after a short rest, the crew started off in their boats, with only
seven days’ provisions, for the Lena Delta. The first cutter was
commanded by De Long, the second cutter by Lieutenant Chipps, and
the whaleboat by Melville. A storm separated the three boats soon
after they had started, and of Chipps and his men nothing more was
ever heard. De Long landed on September 16, 1881, near the mouth of
the Lena, and he and his companions started off on a long march of
ninety-five miles for the nearest settlement. They had provisions for
seven days, and their chances of reaching their destination seemed
good. Circumstances, however, were once more against them, for they
found their way crossed by unfordable tributaries, and, as they had
been obliged to abandon their boat, there was nothing for them to do
but to wait until ice should bridge over the streams.
On October 6 the first death occurred, and on the following day the
miserable party ate their last provisions. To press forward was
impossible for most of them, so weak and ill had they become, while
to stay where they were meant certain death. De Long and Ambler,
the doctor of the party, however, determined to send on two men to
find assistance, while they themselves heroically remained behind to
take care of their dying comrades. The rest of their story cannot be
better told than by quoting extracts from the commander’s diary:—
“Missed Lee. Went down a hole in the bank and camped. Sent back for
Lee. He had turned back, lain down, and was ready to die. All united
in saying Lord’s Prayer and Creed after supper. Horrible night.”
“October 17, Monday—one hundred and twenty-seventh day. Alexey
dying. Doctor baptised him. Read prayers for sick. Mr Collins’
birthday—forty years old. About sunset Alexey died. Exhaustion from
starvation.”
“October 22, Saturday—one hundred and thirty-second day. Too weak to
carry bodies of Lee and Kaack out on the ice. The doctor, Collins,
and I carried them round the corner, out of sight. Then my eye closed
up.”
“October 30, Sunday—one hundred and fortieth day. Boyd and Görtz died
during the night. Mr Collins dying.”
And here the brave commander’s diary tragically ends. Some months
later Melville, who had made his way to the coast in a less
inhospitable region, and had organised a search-party as soon as he
heard of De Long’s plight, came upon the camp.
“Suddenly,” he says, “I caught sight of three objects, and one of
these was the hand and arm of a body raised out of the snow.... I
identified De Long at a glance by his coat. He lay on his right side,
with his right hand under his cheek, his head pointing north, and
his face turned towards the west. His feet were drawn slightly up,
as though he were sleeping; his left arm was raised with the elbow
bent, and his hand, thus horizontally lifted, was bare. About four
feet back of him, or towards the east, I found his small notebook, or
ice-journal, where he had tossed it with his left hand, which looked
as though it had never recovered from the act, but had frozen as I
found it, upraised.”
During his ill-fated cruise, De Long not only made a number of
valuable physical observations in an unknown region, but he also
proved the Siberian Ocean to be a shallow basin dotted with islands,
and exploded the theory of a great continent to the north of Asia.