Greenland, where they expected to quit the ice-field. It was now two
hundred days since their besetment, and they had drifted more than six
hundred miles, with all in health save the doctor. Snow had now given
place to rain, the pack was rapidly dissolving, and at the first opening
of the ice toward land they left their old floe and faced in their three
boats the perils of an ice-filled sea. Afflicted by snow-blindness, worn
out by strenuous, unceasing labor, storm-beset at times, encompassed by
closely packed broken ice--through which the boats could not be rowed
or pushed and over which man could not travel--they at last reached
Illuidlek Island. The voyage at starting was supposed to involve four
days of navigation, but it took twenty-four days to make it.
Now food became scarce for the first time, neither seals nor bears being
killed, so that they were always hungry. Hegemann writes: "Talk turns on
nothing but eating. Konrad was quite sad this morning; in his sleep he
had consumed ham and poached eggs, one after another, but on waking felt
so dreadfully hollow within."
Threatened by a closing pack they hauled up, with great difficulty,
their boats on a large floe. They found a low shelving edge of the ice
and emptied the large boat of its contents. Rocking the boat backward
and forward, head on, when it had gained a free motion, the whole crew
hauled together on the painter when the boatswain cried loudly: "Pull
all!" When the bow caught the edge of the ice the boat could in time be
worked gradually up on the floe, but it was a heart-breaking,
exhausting, prolonged labor.
Storm-bound for four days, they resorted to various devices to pass the
time and divert their minds from hunger. The loquacious carpenter spun
old-time sea yarns, Vegesack tales of astounding character. In one story
he related his experiences as captain of a gun-boat when, having no
sailing directions for the North Sea, he steered by the help of a chart
of the Mediterranean from Bremen to Hull. When he arrived off Hull he
verified his position exactly by a sounding, which proved conclusively
that he was at Ramsgate, south of the Thames. Thus did folly beguile
misery.
Cut off from land by closely packed ice, they finally made the journey
practically on foot, carrying their food and baggage on their backs. The
boats were dragged one at a time through soft snow and across icy
chasms. This task left them in a state of utter exhaustion, even the
captain fainting from continued overwork.
From Illuidlek their voyage was easy to the Moravian missionary colony
at Friedrichshaab, West Greenland, where comfort and safety were again
theirs. Thus ended this wondrous voyage, which quiet heroism, complete
comradeship, and full devotion to duty make one of the most striking in
the annals of arctic service.
PARR'S LONELY MARCH FROM THE GREAT FROZEN SEA
Those grim fields which lie silent as night and uninhabited, and
where no sound of human voice breaks the repose, where no dead are
buried and where none can rise.
--KLOPSTOCK.
Centuries of efforts to attain the north pole, under the auspices of the
government of Great Britain, had their final culmination in the arctic
expedition of 1875-6. The squadron was commanded by Captain Sir George
Nares, R.N., of _Challenger_ fame, whose flag-ship, the _Alert_,
wintered at Floeberg Beach, exposed to the full force of the mighty pack
of the frozen Arctic Ocean. Of the many sledge journeys made with the
_Alert_ as the base of operations, the most important was naturally
expected to accomplish the main object of the expedition. It was
commanded by Commander Albert H. Markham, R.N., who with three
man-sledges, two boats, and seventeen men all told marched directly
northward over the hummocky surface of the Great Frozen Sea in an effort
to reach the north pole. By most strenuous labors and heroic persistency
Markham reached on the surface of the ice-covered sea latitude 83 deg. 20'
N., a point nearer the north pole than had ever before been attained by
man.
This tale sets forth the lamentable experiences of Markham's homeward
march, and particularly the vitally important and heroic journey of
Lieutenant A. A. C. Parr, R.N., which saved the lives of his slowly
perishing comrades.
* * * * *
The northward sledge journey over the floes of the frozen sea, though
conducted by brave and experienced officers with selected men, was made
under unusual physical disadvantages which made impossible any further
success than was actually accomplished. The party was encumbered with
heavy boats, which were carried as a precautionary measure through fear
lest the main polar pack might be disrupted during their journey. The
sledges were fearfully overloaded, for while their burdens of two
hundred pounds per man might be hauled short distances over good ice,
the later conditions of four hundred pounds (three sledges with two
crews) per man, in deep snow and through rough ice, was simply
impossible. The extreme roughness of the ice of the Arctic Ocean was
beyond expectation or earlier experience. Finally it developed on the
march that the health and strength of the men were impaired by attacks
of incipient and unsuspected scurvy. So it happened that when only
thirteen days out from the ship a scurvy-stricken man had to be hauled
on the already overloaded sledge. With true British grit Markham went
ahead, but four days later, in order to spare the strength of his men,
who were daily falling out of the traces, he decided to take the chances
of pack-disruption and so abandoned one of his boats.
[Illustration: Great Frozen Sea and Robeson Channel.]
It is not needful to give the details of the outward journey, which
involved the abject misery of scarified faces, frost-hardened fingers,
capsizing sledges, deep snows, and extreme cold to which most arctic
sledgemen are subjected. To these were added road-making, owing to the
mazes of high hummocks with deep intervening valleys. The increase of
loads, so that progress could be made only by standing-pulls, was bad
enough, but this disability was enhanced by the steady decrease of the
number of sledgemen, by the necessity of hauling disabled men, and by
the nursing care of patients steadily growing worse and unable to do
anything for themselves.
Under such conditions Markham added to the glory of the British Navy by
displaying the flag of his country on May 12, 1876, in 83 deg. 20' N., thus
establishing a world's record. As five of his seventeen men were then
unable even to walk, his venturesome courage in this journey could not
be surpassed. Certainly Commander Markham pushed to the extreme limit
compliance with his assertive sledge motto: "I dare do all that becomes
a man. Who dares do more is none."
Amidst the glory and happiness of this notable day, there could not fail
to arise in the minds of all, especially of Markham and his efficient
aid, Lieutenant Parr, unbidden forebodings as to the homeward march. Was
it not possible that their distressing conditions were a prelude to
disaster? Would they all reach the ship? At all events they would do all
that was in their power.
The seriousness of the situation was soon evident. In five days' travel,
though inspired to greater efforts by the fact that they were homeward
bound, they averaged only one and a half miles daily, at which rate it
would take fifty days of uninterrupted sledging to reach the _Alert_.
The sledge work was simply appalling, almost heart-breaking. It took the
whole force to advance the largest of the three sledges, and the
necessary return for the smaller sledges tripled the distance of the
original march. In addition the windings of the road to avoid bad ice
so increased the length of the route that they were travelling five
miles for each mile made good toward the ship.
Meantime the health and the strength of the men steadily decreased, and,
most alarming symptoms of all, the appetites of the sledgemen began to
fail. Markham's field journal briefly tells the harrowing tale: "With
great difficulty can the patients be persuaded to eat anything. Mouths
are too tender for well-soaked biscuit, and stomachs rebel against
pemmican and fat bacon.... Unquenchable thirst, alleviated at meals only
for lack of fuel to melt ice.... Invalids very weak and much subject to
fainting fits. So utterly helpless and prostrate are they that they have
to be assisted in every detail by two and sometimes four of their
companions.... Tea-leaves are devoured with avidity by the majority....
The men find great difficulty in moving their legs, and are in great
pain.... All are so stiff that the slightest exertion causes great
suffering.... Out of thirty-four legs in the party we can only muster
eleven good ones.... Every hour is important, as we know not when we may
all be attacked and rendered useless."
When in this condition they were storm-stayed for thirty-six hours by a
violent blizzard, when one could not see a sledge's length ahead. This
brought matters to a crisis, and to hasten the march Markham was obliged
to abandon his last boat and all stores that could be spared,
ammunition, one hundred and seventy pounds of pemmican, and much camp
gear. It was indeed time, for only four of the men were entirely well.
A pleasurable incident made happy for a moment these distressed sailors,
sick, worn out, surrounded by an illimitable expanse of ice. Markham
records: "The appearance of a little snow-bunting, which fluttered
around us for a short time, uttering to us its rather sweet chirp. This
was an event of no small interest to our party, as it was the first bird
seen by the majority for a period of nine months. Even the sick men on
the sledge requested they might have their heads uncovered and lifted so
as to obtain a glimpse of the little warbler."
Conditions steadily changed from bad to worse, and on June 2 the sledge
party was simply a band of cripples. Five helpless invalids were in
their sleeping-bags on the sledge, four others were barely able to crawl
along, leaving only six men and two officers to drag their sick comrades
and the heavily loaded sledge.
On June 5 they camped on land, about seven miles south of Cape Joseph
Henry, and were cheered and encouraged by having a meal of fresh hare,
which had been thoughtfully cached for them by a travelling party.
Unfortunately they came to the shore a day too late, for on visiting the
depot Markham learned from a note "to our disappointment that Captain
Nares, May, and Fielden had only left for the ship the previous day.
This was very unfortunate."
Although temporarily braced up by fresh meat and by delicacies from the
depot, the party reached its effective end the following day, June 6.
Five invalids were on the sledge, four others had to lie down on the
snow and rest every thirty or forty yards, and a tenth man was quite
near the end, while the party had wandered a distance from the road.
Markham fully realized the critical situation of the party and writes:
"So rapid had been the encroachments of the disease that it was only too
palpable that immediate succor was necessary for our salvation. At the
rate of progress we were making, it would take us fully three weeks to
reach the ship, although only forty miles distant; and who would there
be left in three weeks' time? The few who were still strong enough to
drag the sledges would barely last as many days!"
In his field journal he records on June 6: "After a long consultation
with Parr it has been resolved that he shall proceed to-morrow morning,
if fine, and walk to the ship. Our only chance of saving life is by
receiving succor as soon as possible. Although the distance from us to
the ship is nearly forty miles, over floes covered with deep snow and
girt with heavy hummocks, he has nobly volunteered to attempt it, and
has confidence in his being able to accomplish it. He is the only one of
the party strong enough to undertake such a march."
Parr knew the strain that such a dangerous and difficult journey
involved, so he arranged his equipment and laid his plans accordingly.
As lightly outfitted as was safe, he started at ten o'clock in the
evening, wisely avoiding the disadvantages of day travel. The night
gave him the needed lower temperatures with firmer snow-crust, and
avoided the snow-blinding sun-glare, as the course was to the south
which brought the midnight sun on the traveller's back and so spared his
eyes, while more clearly disclosing the irregularities of the ice.
Most fortunately there was no wind, the weather was fine, the air so
clear that to the westward stood sharply outlined the coast of Grant
Land along which the heroic officer had often travelled during the past
year. This enabled him to keep a straight course, and saved him from the
dangers of straying to which one is liable in thick or stormy weather
when travel must be slowly made by careful compass bearings. He took
with him food for a single day only, with a small spirit lamp so that in
extreme need he could start a fire, melt ice for drinking-water, or warm
a scanty meal. With his belt well pulled up, his foot-gear carefully and
not too tightly adjusted, ice-chisel in hand and snow-goggles over his
eyes, he said "Good-by," and started amid the answering "God-speeds" of
his comrades, which long re-echoed in his ears as so many appeals for
aid and stimulants to action.
Two routes were open to him to the _Alert_. Possibly the safer way in
the advanced stage of oncoming summer, but certainly a much longer
route, lay along the ice-foot of the coast, which from the next headland
made a long detour to the westward around Marco Polo Bay. The shorter
air-line route was across the sea ice, now fast decaying under the
summer sun, with the certainty of many air-holes and possible pitfalls
where tides and pressure, sun and currents had broken and wasted the
winter floe. Confident in his keenness of vision and in his familiarity
with sea ice, he took the shorter air-line route, though its rough
rubble-ice and shattered hummock-masses were sure to make greater
demands on his physical strength and to require vigilance to avoid
accidents.
On and on, mile after mile, hour upon hour, he marched slowly but
steadily onward, stumbling often and halting only when road conditions
demanded. Now and then the loose rubble-ice separated under his feet,
leaving him uncertain footing, and again huge pressure-ridges or
converging hummocks obliged the weary man to carefully seek a safe way
through their tangled, confused masses. The greatest danger was that of
breaking through thin ice, and when he came to some attractive piece of
new smooth ice, deceptively promising fast and easy travel, it was his
rule to carefully test its strength and thickness with his ice-chisel
before venturing to cross it. It was not that his life should be lost,
but that he carried with him the gift of life or the message of death to
others.
Now and then he staggered and there came over him a sense of growing
weariness, but the thought of his helpless, dying comrades on the Great
Frozen Sea behind him, and of the eager, willing hearts in the ship
before him, steeled his nerves, inspired anew his heart, and gave fiery
energy to his flagging strength and failing body.
For an hour or two as he marched there arose faint doubts as to the
wisdom of his cross-sea route, for it was a period of strong tides which
in their onward sweep from the northern Arctic Ocean warped and twisted
the mighty ice-covering, whose total disruption was certain at the first
violent gale, it being stayed now only by the almost immovable floes of
enormous thickness crowded against the bordering lands.
Wearisome and monotonous in the extreme had the main pack become to Parr
after steady travel thereon for more than two months, especially during
the brief periods of calm weather when the curling wreaths and trailing
streamers of the almost constantly drifting snow were absent, leaving
the scene unrelieved in its almost hideous desolation. But then at least
he was free from the nervous tension that now came with the loud groans,
the feeble mutterings, the rasping grindings of floes, and the loud
explosions that mark the surface changes of the pack from heavy tidal
action. Especially the fear of a fog-covered floe came to his mind, as
vaporous forms like water-spirits rose here and there from fissures
forming in the cracking floes. Would the dreaded fog envelop the pack?
If so, what were his chances of reaching the _Alert_? And what fate
would the fog bring to the field party?
The uneasy, trembling ice-pack in thus forcing on him a realization of
its presence through motion under his feet recalled inevitably the
vision of the Great Frozen Sea, which if it had insured world-wide fame
to his faithful sledge-mates had also brought death so near to them.
It was therefore with an overwhelming sense of relief that he clambered
up the overtowering ice-foot at Depot Point and once more placed his
foot on firm ground.
Ascending the hill he scanned the horizon and was relieved to note that
a breath of southern wind was carrying the fog to the north, while the
floes toward the ship were entirely clear.[19]
Behind him lay Marco Polo Bay, while before him was the seemingly
boundless and illimitable expanse of the great polar pack. Ample food
dainties in the cache at his feet invited refreshment, while physical
exhaustion, from rough, steady travel, demanded rest and sleep. Either
need would have here stayed a man of less heroic stamp than Parr, but he
paused not to eat a bit of food, to drink a cup of tea, nor to take the
brief rest that his tired muscles so sadly needed.
A short distance beyond he scrambled down over the precipitous ice-foot
to the chaotic, pressure-ridged ice-masses of Black Cliffs Bay, and
fixed his course in a bee-line to the farthest cape, Harley Spit to the
southeast. He could not later recall the awful trials of that cross-bay
travel. With failing strength and exhausted body, to his confused mind
the furlongs seemed to lengthen out to miles and the hours were of
interminable duration. With his great and splendid vitality almost
utterly spent, he reached the cape after nine hours of utmost effort.
A short mile along the ice-foot brought in sight a standing tent which
stirred his heart with visions of expectant comrades from the ship with
God-sent aid. Hastening his lagging steps as best he could, he reached
the tent and raised the flap. Alas! it was empty, and for the moment he
was overcome with bitter and disheartening disappointment. Would aid
ever come or help be obtained?
With the mental reaction he became conscious of his fearfully exhausted
condition and knew that he could go no farther without rest and drink.
He lighted his tiny spirit lamp, filled the pot with fresh snow,
unrolled a sleeping-bag and crept into it for warmth and rest. In time,
all too short it was to the worn-out man, the kettle sang its usually
welcome song of steam. Then came the tea--strong and almost boiling it
stirred his blood, cheered his heart, and gave vigor to his wearied
body; he needed none for his unfailing courage. On rising he found that
his legs were so stiff that he could barely place one before the other,
but with a great effort of will he was soon able to reach the floe and
to go on toward Cape Sheridan, beyond which at a short distance lay the
_Alert_, and safety.
Pressing onward steadily, though with decreasing speed, from hour to
hour he hoped against hope to meet some sailor comrade from the
ship--either hunters seeking game or officers taking their daily
exercise. Time and again a black speck on the floe took the mocking
semblance of a man to his longing eyes, only to fade into an inanimate
shape. Time and again, as he stumbled or staggered, it seemed as though
he would fail, so feeble had the body become and so forceless his
will-power. Could he reach the ship? Would help come in time for the
dying men behind? Most fearful of all, was the _Alert_ still there?
Exposed to the full force of the Arctic Ocean, had she suffered
shipwreck or was she unharmed? If safe, why did no one come?
At last he was at Cape Sheridan, and oh! happiness, there against the
southern sky were outlined the bare spars and the covered deck of the
long-sought _Alert_. She was but a few miles away, yet in his enfeebled
state she seemed to recede rather than to advance as he dragged himself
along.
But everything has its end, and in six of his weariest hours Parr
reached the ship, strangely enough without being seen. Striding silently
across the deck, nodding only to the officer on watch, he nervously
knocked on the panels of Captain Nares's cabin. The door swung open
at once and for a few seconds the captain stared vaguely at his
subordinate. So solemn was Parr's look, so soiled his garb, so weary his
expression, and so travel-stained was his person that Sir George at
first failed to recognize him.
Meanwhile matters had steadily gone from bad to worse with Markham and
his men. On the day following Parr's departure, Gunner George Porter,
who had been sick seven weeks with suspected scurvy, was taken with
retching, with recurring spasms and stertorous breathing, which ended in
his death. Regard for the safety of the living did not permit of
carrying him farther, and he was buried on the floe, in a deep
snow-drift near the camp. At the head of his grave was placed a cross
improvised from the oar of a boat and a sledge batten.
The day following the death of Porter only five of the fourteen men were
able to enter the sledge harness, so that Commander Markham had to make
the needful sixth sledgeman to move the party forward. The next day two
other men failed utterly, immediately before the arrival of the relief
party from the _Alert_--promptly despatched as a result of Parr's heroic
journey. Before reaching the ship there remained only three of Markham's
original fifteen men who were not dragged on the relief sledges, unable
to walk.
Heroic as was the dauntless spirit that spurred Parr to the journey
which saved the lives of several of his field comrades, it was well
matched by his indomitable will and by his powers of physical endurance.
By the route traversed Parr marched over forty miles, which under any
conditions would have been a remarkable achievement, without extended
break or rest, over the rough surface of the Great Frozen Sea, whose
broken, disjointed ice-masses present difficulties of travel to an
almost incredible degree.
Not only was Parr's march practically unbroken, but it was made in less
than twenty-three hours, a somewhat shorter time than was taken by Dr.
Moss and Lieutenant May with a fresh dog team "on a forced march" for
the relief of the party.
Parr's conduct after his most heroic actions was thoroughly modest and
unassuming. In the field and later at home his life appears to have been
an exemplification of his sledge motto during the northern journeys, of
_Faire sans dire_ (To do and not to talk).
In recalling the past and glorious deeds of British seamen in arctic
work during the past century, looking to the future one may ask with
Drayton:
"O, when again shall Englishmen
With such acts fill a pen?"
FOOTNOTE:
[19] The clearing of the fog was providential for the invalids. Markham
records at that time: "Our usual weather overtook us, and the land was
entirely concealed by the fog. This increases our anxiety about Parr."
The solidarity and altruism of the party is shown by the anxiety not for
themselves but for others.
RELIEF OF AMERICAN WHALERS AT POINT BARROW
"Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt.
Dispraise or blame: nothing but well and fair."
--MILTON.