Nerves go to pieces in the Arctic. Captain Back, who commanded the
"Terror" on her first northern voyage (1836), has told how there
comes, as the icy night drags on, "a weariness of heart, a blank
feeling, which gets the better of the whole man"; and Colonel
Brainard, of the Greely expedition, wrote: "Take any set of men,
however carefully selected, and let them be thrown as intimately
together as are the members of an exploring expedition--hearing the
same voices, seeing the same faces, day after day--and they will
soon become weary of one another's society and impatient of one
another's faults."
The Greely expedition--composed of twenty-five men, of whom
only seven were found alive by the rescue party--in many ways
parallels, and pointedly illustrates, the Hudson expedition.
There was dissension in Greely's command almost from the start.
Surgeon Pavy's angry protests compelled the sending back in
the "Proteus"--paralleling the sending back of Coleburne
in the pink--of one member of the company; and Lieutenant
Kislingbury--paralleling Juet's insubordination--objected so
strongly to Greely's regulations that he gave in his resignation
and tried, unsuccessfully, to overtake the "Proteus" and go home
in her. Being returned to Fort Conger, he was not restored to his
rank, and remained--as Juet remained after being superseded--a
malcontent.
One of the commentators on the expedition thus has summarized the
conditions of that dreadful winter of 1883-84: "It was now
October, and the situation of the explorers was becoming desperate,
but the bickerings seem to have increased with their peril. As the
weary days of starvation and death wore on, nearly every member of
the party developed a grievance. Israel was reprimanded by Greely
for falsely accusing Brainard of unfairness in the distribution of
articles. Bender annoyed the whole camp by his complaints regarding
his bed-clothes; Pavy and Henry accused Fredericks, the cook, of
not giving them their fair share of food; and Pavy and Kislingbury
had a quarrel that barely stopped short of blows. Then Jewell was
accused of selecting the heaviest dishes of those issued.... Bender
and Schneider had a fist fight in their sleeping bag; and on one
occasion Bender was so violent that a general mutiny was imminent,
and Greely says in his written record:
'If I could have got Long's gun I would have killed him.' Bender
brutally treated Ellison, who was very weak; and Schneider abused
Whistler as he was dying--the second occurrence of the kind.... The
thefts of food by Henry, and his execution, formed a culmination to
the dissensions, though it did not entirely stop them. Never was
there a more terrible example of the demoralizing effects of the
conditions of Arctic life and privations upon men who in other
circumstances were able to dwell at peace with their fellows."
[Illustration: BARENTZ'S SHIP IN THE ICE.
FROM DE VEER. DRIE SEYLAGIEN, AMSTERDAM, 1605]
Out of those conditions came like results aboard Hudson's ship:
discontent developing into insubordination; hatred of the
commander; hatred of each other; petty squabblings leading on to
tragedies--as minor ills were magnified into catastrophes and
little injuries into deadly wrongs. Strictly in keeping with the
mean traditions of the Arctic is the fact that the point of
departure of the final mutiny was a wrangle that arose over the
ownership of "a gray cloth gowne."
Prickett records: "About the middle of this moneth of November dyed
John Williams our Gunner. God pardon the Masters uncharitable
dealing with this man. Now for that I am come to speake of him, out
of whose ashes (as it were) that unhappie deed grew which brought a
scandall upon all that are returned home, and upon the action
itself, the multitude (like the dog) running after the stone, but
not at the caster; therefore, not to wronge the living nor slander
the dead, I will (by the leave of God) deliver the truth as neere
as I can."
Prickett's deliverance of the truth leaves much to be desired.
Without giving any information in regard to Hudson's "uncharitable
dealing" with the gunner, he takes a fresh departure in these
words: "You shall understand that our Master kept (in his house at
London) a young man named Henrie Greene, borne in Kent, of
worshipfull parents, but by his leud life and conversation hee had
lost the good will of all his frinds, and had spent all that hee
had. This man our Master would have to sea with him because hee
could write well.... This Henrie Greene was not set down in the
owners booke, nor any wages for him.... At Island the Surgeon and
hee fell out in Dutch, and hee beat him ashoare in English, which
set all the Companie in a rage soe that wee had much adoe to get
the Surgeon aboord. [This curiously parallels the fight between
Surgeon Pavy and Lieutenant Kislingbury] ... Robert Juet, (the
Masters Mate) would needs burne his finger in the embers, and tolde
the Carpenter a long tale (when hee was drunke) that our Master had
brought in Greene to cracke his credit that should displease him:
which wordes came to the Masters eares, who when hee understood it,
would have gone back to Island, when hee was fortie leagues from
thence, to have sent home his Mate Robert Juet in a fisherman. But,
being otherwise perswaded, all was well.... Now when our Gunner was
dead, and (as the order is in such cases) if the Company stand in
neede of any thing that belonged to the man deceased, then it is
brought to the mayne mast, and there sold to them that will give
moste for the same. This Gunner had a gray cloth gowne, which
Greene prayed the Master to friend him so much as to let him have
it, paying for it as another would give. The Master saith hee
should, and thereupon hee answered some, that sought to have it,
that Greene should have it, and none else, and soe it rested.
"Now out of season and time the Master calleth the Carpenter to
goe in hand with an house on shoare, which at the beginning our
Master would not heare, when it might have been done. The Carpenter
told him, that the snow and froste were such, as hee neither could
nor would goe in hand with such worke. Which when our Master heard,
hee ferreted him out of his cabbin to strike him, calling him by
many foule names, and threatening to hang him. The Carpenter told
him that hee knew what belonged to his place better than himselfe,
and that he was no house carpenter. So this passed, and the house
was (after) made with much labour, but to no end. The next day
after the Master and the Carpenter fell out, the Carpenter took his
peece and Henrie Greene with him, for it was an order that none
should goe out alone, but one with a peece and another with a pike.
This did move the Master soe much the more against Henrie Greene,
that Robert Billot his Mate [who had been promoted to Juet's place]
must have the gowne, and had it delivered unto him; which when
Henrie Greene saw he challenged the Masters promise [to him]. But
the Master did so raile on Greene, with so many words of disgrace,
telling him that all his friends would not trust him with twenty
shillings, and therefore why should hee. As for wages hee had none,
nor none should have if hee did not please him well. Yet the Master
had promised him to make his wages as good as any mans in the ship;
and to have him one of the Princes guard when we came home. But you
shall see how the devil out of this soe wrought with Greene that he
did the Master what mischiefe hee could in seeking to discredit
him, and to thrust him and many other honest men out of the ship in
the end. To speake of all our trouble in this time of Winter (which
was so colde, as it lamed the most of our Companie and my selfe
doe yet feele it) would bee too tedious."
That is all that Prickett tells about their wintering; but what he
leaves untold, as "too tedious," easily may be filled in. Beginning
with that brabble over the "gray cloth gowne," there must have gone
on in Hudson's party the same bickerings and wranglings that went
on in Greely's party, and the same development of small animosities
into burning hatreds. And it all, with Hudson's people, must have
been rougher and fiercer and deadlier than it was with Greely's
people: because Hudson's crew was of a time when sea-men, for
cause, were called sea-wolves; while Greely's crew was the better
(yet exhibited scant evidence of it) by an additional two centuries
and a half of civilization, and was made up (though with little to
show for it) of picked men.