THE SINKING OF THE _KARLUK_
During the night of New Year’s Day we could hear, when we were below,
a rumbling noise not unlike that which one often hears singing along
the telegraph wires on a country road. The sound was inaudible from the
deck. It was clear that there was tremendous pressure somewhere, though
there were no visible indications of it in the vicinity of the ship.
We were practically stationary. Apparently the great field of ice in
which we had been zigzagging for so many months had finally brought up
on the shore of Wrangell Island and was comparatively at rest, while
the running ice outside this great field was still in active motion and
tended to force the ice constantly in the direction of the island.
On Saturday, with a fresh north wind, in spite of which ship and ice
still remained stationary, the rumbling noise could again be heard in
the interior of the ship.
On Sunday the fourth there was an increasing easterly wind which sent
us slowly westward. Evidently we could make no movement towards the
south on account of the pressure but when the wind blew us towards the
west and north we could go along without undue danger. The football
game was played as planned on this day until the second engineer
strained a muscle in his leg kicking the ball along the ice, and the
game had to stop.
The easterly gale continued for several days, sometimes with hard
snowstorms, sometimes with clearer skies. The barometer was low; the
temperature rose to sixteen degrees above zero. I had the engineers
at work making tins of one-gallon capacity to hold kerosene for
our sledges if we should have to use them. All of our oil was in
five-gallon tins which were unhandy for sledging use. They also
made tea-boilers out of gasoline tins, to be used with the Primus
stoves; these held about a gallon of tea and were very handy. I had
five with me on my subsequent sledge trip. Besides these jobs the
engineers trimmed down our pickaxes so that they would weigh not over
two-and-a-half or three pounds. They put them in the portable forge in
the engine-room, heated the iron and beat it down, and put on the steel
tips afterwards. These pickaxes were regulation miners’ picks.
On the seventh and eighth the variable weather continued with
occasional twilight of considerable intensity; the low barometer and
high thermometer still prevailed. Our observations on the seventh, the
last we were to take on shipboard, gave us our position as Lat. 72.11
N., Long. 174.36 W. The temperature dropped on the ninth; the sky,
which was clear in the morning, became overcast by afternoon and the
wind shifted from southeast to southwest. We were getting nearer the
land and the ice was raftering in places with the pressure, so that I
felt sure that something was going to happen before long. We continued
our preparations for putting emergency supplies in condition to be
handled quickly, putting tea tablets in tins made by the engineers, and
twenty-two calibre cartridges in similar tins. Mannlicher cartridges we
put up in packages of thin canvas, fifty to a package.
At five o’clock on the morning of the tenth I was awakened by a loud
report like a rifle-shot. Then there came a tremor all through the
ship. I was soon on deck. The watchman, who for that night was Brady,
had already been overboard on the ice and I met him coming up the ice
gangway to tell me what he had found. There was a small crack right at
the stem of the ship, he said. I went there with him at once and found
that the crack ran irregularly but in general northwesterly for about
two hundred yards. At first it was very slight, although it was a clean
and unmistakable break; in the course of half an hour, however, it
grew to a foot in width and as the day wore on widened still more until
it was two feet wide on an average.
By 10 A. M. there was a narrow lane of water off both bow and stern.
The ship was now entirely free on the starboard side but still
frozen fast in her ice-cradle on the port side; her head was pointed
southwest. On account of the way in which the ice had split the ship
was held in a kind of pocket; the wind, which was light and from the
north in the earlier part of the day, hauled to the northwest towards
afternoon and increased to a gale, with blinding snowdrift, and the
sheet of ice on the starboard side began to move astern, only a little
at a time. The ship felt no pressure, only slight shocks, and her
hull was still untouched, for the open ends of the pocket fended off
the moving ice, especially at the stern. It was clear to me, however,
that as soon as the moving ice should grind or break off the points of
these natural fenders there was a strong probability that the moving
ice-sheet would draw nearer to the starboard side of the ship and, not
unlike the jaws of a nut-cracker, squeeze her against the sheet in
which she was frozen on the port side, particularly as the wind was
attaining a velocity of forty-five miles an hour.
Everything indicated, therefore, that the time was near at hand when
we should have to leave the ship. We must have things ready. I gave
orders to get the snow off the deck and the skylights and the outer
walls of the cabin, to lighten her. Some of the men were sent over to
the box-house to remove the few dogs that were still tethered there and
set them free on the ice, and to get the house ready in case we had to
move in to it. They cleaned it up, put fresh boards on the floor and
laid a fire in the stove, ready for lighting.
The men worked with good spirit and seemed unperturbed. I sent them
about their daily tasks, as usual, so far as possible, and the
preparation of the box-house was in the nature of an emergency drill.
For if the points of the ice should continue unbroken the ship would
still be saved; we had seen plenty of cracks before in our drift that
had remained open some time and then closed up again, though of course
no previous break had come so near the ship. It was hard to see what
was going on around us for the sky was overcast and the darkness was
the kind which, as the time-honored phrase goes, you could cut with a
knife, while the stinging snowdrift, whirling and eddying through the
air, under the impetus of the screaming gale, added to the uncertainty
as to what was about to happen from moment to moment.
At about half past seven in the evening I chanced to be standing near
the engine-room door. The lamps were lighted. The labors of the day
were over and now, after dinner, the men were playing cards or reading
or sewing, as usual. All at once I heard a splitting, crashing sound
below. I went down into the engine-room and found the chief engineer
there. We could hear water rushing into the hold and by lantern-light
could see it pouring in at different places for a distance of ten feet
along the port side. As I had feared, the ice astern had broken or
worn off and the sheet moving along the starboard side had swung in
against the ship, heeling her over three or four feet to port; a point
of ice on the port side had pierced the planking and timbers of the
engine-room for ten feet or more, ripping off all the pump fixtures and
putting the pump out of commission. It was obvious that it would be
useless to attempt to rig a temporary pump; the break was beyond repair.
I went on deck again and gave the order, “All hands abandon ship.” We
had all the fires except that in the galley extinguished at once and
all the lamps, using hurricane lanterns to see our way around. There
was no confusion. The men worked with a will, putting the emergency
supplies overboard on the ice, some ten thousand pounds of pemmican,
furs, clothing, rifles and cartridges. The Eskimo woman, with her
children, I sent to the box-house to start the fire in the stove and
keep the place warm. The steward was kept in the galley so that the men
could have coffee and hot food.
By 10.45 P. M. there was eleven feet of water in the engine-room. At
this stage the pressure of the ice on both sides kept the ship from
going down. We were less than an hour getting the supplies off the ship
on to the ice; we could have saved everything on board but no attempt
was made to save luxuries or souvenirs or personal belongings above the
essentials, for it did not seem advisable to burden the sledges on our
prospective journey over the ice with loads of material that would have
to occupy space needed for indispensables.
When I was satisfied with the amount of supplies on the ice I started
the men sledging the stuff over to the big floe. Here, as I have said,
in addition to the box-house, we had a large snow igloo which had been
completed some time before. It had been smashed in by the wind, but
the men now repaired it and made it ready for occupancy. They did a
good job with their evening’s work and I told them so, and said that
they could turn in at the box-house and igloo and go to sleep whenever
they got their sledging done. At half-past two in the morning they were
ready and turned in; to the box-house were assigned McKinlay, Mamen,
Beuchat, Murray, Dr. Mackay, Williams, King, Chafe, Kataktovick and
Kerdrillo and his family, and to the snow igloo Munro, Williamson,
Breddy, Hadley, Templeman, Maurer, Brady, Anderson, Barker, Malloch and
myself.
After every one else had left the ship I remained on board to await the
end. For a time the chief engineer and Hadley stayed with me. There
was a big fire in the galley and we moved the Victrola in there to
while away the time. After the first sharp crash and the closing in of
the ice the pressure was not heavy and all through the morning of the
eleventh and well into the afternoon, the ship remained in about the
same position as when she was first struck. No more water was coming
in; the ice was holding her up. I would play a few records—we had a
hundred and fifty or so altogether—and then I would go outside and
walk around the deck, watching for any change in the ship’s position.
It cleared off towards noon and there was a little twilight but the
snow was still blowing. As I played the records I threw them into the
stove. At last I found Chopin’s _Funeral March_, played it over and
laid it aside. I ate when I was hungry and had plenty of coffee and
tea. My companions had gone over to the floe and turned in early in the
morning. It was quite comfortable in the galley, for I could keep the
fire going with coal from the galley locker. At times I would take a
look into the engine-room, being careful not to get too far from an
exit; the water was nearly up to the deck.
At 3.15 P. M. the ice opened and the ship began to get lower in the
water. Then the ice closed up again for a while and supported her by
the bowsprit and both quarters. About half past three she began to
settle in earnest and as the minutes went by the decks were nearly
a-wash. Putting Chopin’s _Funeral March_ on the Victrola, I started
the machine and when the water came running along the deck and poured
down the hatches, I stood up on the rail and as she took a header
with the rail level with the ice I stepped off. It was at 4 P. M. on
January 11, 1914, with the blue Canadian Government ensign at her
main-topmast-head, blowing out straight and cutting the water as it
disappeared, and the Victrola in the galley sending out the strains of
Chopin’s _Funeral March_, that the _Karluk_ sank, going down by the
head in thirty-eight fathoms of water. As she took the final plunge, I
bared my head and said, “_Adios, Karluk!_” It was light enough to see
and the rest of the party came out of the camp to watch the end. As she
went down the yards lodged on the ice and broke off; in such a narrow
lane of water did she disappear. It is always a tragic moment when
a ship sinks, the ship that has been your home for months; it is not
unlike losing some good and faithful friend. Twice before I had been
shipwrecked, on both occasions on the southern coast of Newfoundland,
so the sensation was not altogether new to me, but it was none the less
poignant. Yet I could feel no despair in our present situation, for we
had comfortable quarters on a floe which was practically indestructible
and plenty of food and fuel, so that with patience, perseverance,
courage and good fortune we should be able to win our way back to
safety in due time.
[Illustration: PAGES FROM CAPTAIN BARTLETT’S DIARY
“Sunday, Jan’y 11th. 3.15 p. m. ship began to settle till bowsprit and
quarter caught on ice. 4 p. m. ship disappeared sinking in 38 fathoms
water.”]