WE BEGIN OUR SLEDGING
On January seventeenth I decided that before long I would send a party
of four men to the land to look out for game, see whether any driftwood
was to be found on Wrangell Island, report on ice conditions and blaze
a trail over the ice. This expedition would make an end to the men’s
enforced inactivity and the natural uneasiness of some of them, which I
was unwilling to prolong if I could avoid doing so, and would, besides,
be valuable in determining our subsequent movements. I did not like
to take the whole party to the island without previously transporting
supplies that would be sure to last them for at least four months.
Furthermore, the men had been living for a long time on shipboard
and were not inured to the cold or yet in condition to withstand
the privations they would have to undergo. None of them had had any
experience in travelling over the Arctic ice during the brief and
meagre light and in the low temperatures which would be our portion for
another month, and the sledging of supplies towards the island would
afford them the necessary practice. Travelling over the sea-ice at any
time is altogether different from land travelling. On the sea-ice you
have to spend a great deal of time looking about for good places to
make the road for the sledging of supplies, for the ice is continually
cracking and shifting and piling up in fantastic ridges from the
pressure when the fissures close up, especially as near the land as we
were, and its surface is so much rougher than the crystal levels of
the lakes and ponds on which the landsman goes skating that there can
hardly be said to be any comparison.
[Illustration: THE ICE-PACK
“On the sea-ice you have to spend a great deal of time looking about
for good places to make the road for the sledging of supplies, for the
ice is continually cracking and shifting and piling up.”]
For the past week or so, I had noticed that our drift was slow, and I
felt that as the daylight lengthened we should have ample time, long
before we could drift away from the land, to sledge enough supplies
ashore to last the party until the birds returned and the ice broke
up. If we could start the men in small parties to relay supplies
to the island we could get a shore camp established where the men
could dry out their foot-gear for their journey back over the ice to
Shipwreck Camp for more supplies, especially if we should find plenty
of driftwood on Wrangell Island, as I hoped and expected; we had fuel
enough at the camp to last a year. The men could erect permanent snow
igloos along the way, for relay stations, and once the road to the
island was made, there would be little difficulty in keeping it open
and by continuing the relays any faults that might come in the
trail could be easily repaired. In these preliminary journeys, as I
have said, the men would get accustomed to ice travel and finally the
whole party, with its supplies, would be safe ashore. We were of course
handicapped by lack of sufficient dogs, and in ice travel and in fact
in any polar work, dogs are the prime requisites for success; man-power
for hauling the sledge-loads of supplies puts a double burden on the
men.
Those assigned for the first shoregoing party were First Mate Anderson,
Second Mate Barker and Sailors King and Brady. They were to go to the
island with three sledges and eighteen dogs, with Mamen and the two
Eskimo men, as a supporting party, to come back with the dogs and two
of the sledges after they had landed the mate’s party on the island.
The eighteenth was another bad day, with a strong northeast gale and
blinding snowdrift. Some of the men were at work loading the three
sledges for the mate’s party. Of the others, those that could be spared
I sent out with pickaxes to make a trail towards the land, so that the
shoregoing party might have a good start, but the weather was so bad
that they had to return to camp after they had gone two or three miles.
They reported seeing bear tracks on the ice and seal in open leads
which they came to. We had plenty of seal meat so no attempt was made
to do any shooting at this time.
Mr. Anderson, McKinlay and myself checked over the three sledge-loads
on the nineteenth and found everything in readiness for the journey
which was to begin the next morning. The next day, however, the bad
weather continued. The watchman called me at 4 A. M. and I found a
southwest gale blowing, with a thick snowstorm, so, as there was no
change in the weather, the mate’s party did not leave. In the afternoon
the storm subsided and by midnight the sky was clear and the air calm
and cold.
The next day, Wednesday the twenty-first, conditions were more
favorable and the party started. In addition to oral instructions about
ice conditions and about returning to camp in case he met with open
water, I gave the mate the following written orders:
SHIPWRECK CAMP, ARCTIC OCEAN,
January 20, 1914.
_My dear Mr. Anderson_:
You will leave to-morrow morning with Mamen, three sledges, 18 dogs,
Mr. Barker, Sailors King and Brady and the two Eskimo. The sledges are
loaded with pemmican, biscuit and oil. You will find list of articles
attached to this. When you reach Berry Point, Wrangell Island, you
will be in charge of supplies. Kindly pay special attention to the
uses of them. The rations are: 1 lb. pemmican, 1 lb. biscuits, with
tea, per day. One gallon of oil will last you ten days. Mamen will
leave one sledge and the tent, taking back with him enough supplies
to carry him to Shipwreck. Whilst on the island you will endeavor to
find game. Be sure and bring it to your camp. Also collect all the
driftwood you can find.
Very sincerely,
R. A. BARTLETT.
The list of things carried on the sledge may serve to show what the
Arctic traveller needs. Shelter, fuel and food, these are the three
essentials for ice travel as they are for the journey of life itself.
This is the way the mate’s party was equipped when it set out from
Shipwreck Camp on January 21, 1914; there were enough supplies to last
them for three months:
FIRST SLEDGE:
4 cases of man pemmican
1 tin of Hudson’s Bay pemmican
10 gallons of coal oil
2400 tea tablets
1 tent and fly
1 Primus stove
46 lbs. of biscuits
500 22-cartridges
1 22-rifle
Candles, matches, pickaxes
1 sledge cover
SECOND SLEDGE:
25 lbs. of sugar
4 cases of dog pemmican
7 tins of Hudson’s Bay pemmican
2 cases of biscuits
1 dozen milk
1 Primus stove
1 30-30 Winchester rifle
100 30-30 cartridges
Candles, matches, pickaxe, hatchets
1 sledge cover
THIRD SLEDGE:
4 cases of dog pemmican
2 cases of man pemmican
7 tins of Hudson’s Bay pemmican
1 Mannlicher rifle
250 Mannlicher cartridges
1 one-gallon tin of coal oil
2 bottles of alcohol
Pickaxe, hatchets, shovels, rope
Sleeping-robes and personal outfit
1 pair of ski
1 pair of snowshoes
1 sledge cover
To Mamen I gave a brief letter of instructions, concluding with this
paragraph: “Should you miss the trail and fail to connect with our
camp, after a reasonable time has been spent in looking it up, you will
go back to Wrangell Island and await my arriving there.”
The party got away at 9.30 A. M., accompanied for about five miles by
other members of the expedition to give them a good start. There was
a strong east wind, with drifting snow, but the weather cleared later
in the day and it grew calm in the evening. There was about four hours’
light a day now good for travelling.
Beyond its representation on our charts, we knew little about Wrangell
Island, the chief source of our information being a short section in
the American “Coast Pilot,” which read as follows: “This island was
first seen by the exploring party under the Russian Admiral Wrangell
and named after the leader, though he himself doubted its existence;
its southwestern point lies due North (_true_) 109 miles from Cape
North. It must have been known to the whalers, who, about the year
1849, commenced to visit this sea, and did so for many years in great
numbers. The _Jeannette’s_ people also saw it for many days in their
memorable drift northwestward; but the first person to land on it, of
which we have any authentic information, was Lieut. Hooper of the U.
S. S. _Corwin_ in 1881, and later in the same year it was explored by
parties from the U. S. S. _Rodgers_, these two vessels having been sent
to search for or obtain information concerning the _Jeannette_, the
remnant of whose crew were perishing in the delta of the Lena at the
very time this island was being explored.
“Wrangell Island is about 75 miles long E. N. W. and W. S. W., and
from 25 to 30 miles wide, not including the large bare sandspits which
extend a long way from the shore, as much as 12 miles in one place from
the northern side, and rather more near the southwestern corner of the
island. A range of hills extends completely round the coast, and a
lower range traverses the centre of the island from east to west, the
whole island in fact being a succession of hills, peaks and valleys.
The highest point appeared to be Berry peak, near the centre of the
island, about 2500 feet in height by barometric measurement.”
On the twenty-second I sent Chafe and Williams out to begin marking the
landward trail with empty pemmican tins. Pemmican has been the staple
article of food for polar expeditions for many years and contains, in
small compass, the essentials adequate to support life. It is put up by
various packing-houses, expressly for such needs as ours. I have lived
for a hundred and twenty days on pemmican, biscuit and tea and found
it amply sufficient. We had two kinds of pemmican; one, for ourselves,
consisting of beef, raisins, sugar and suet, all cooked together and
pressed, was packed in blue tins; the other, for the dogs, without the
raisins and sugar, in red tins.
I remember once, after a talk which I was giving on the North Pole
trip, a lady came up to me and inquired what pemmican was, which I
had mentioned several times. I explained what it was made of and what
it was used for. She thought for a moment and then said, “Well, what I
don’t understand is how you shoot them.”
Pemmican tins hold six pounds, marked so that you can tell how to take
out exactly a pound, which, with tea and a pound of biscuit, is the
standard daily ration per man. These tins are about fourteen inches
in length, five in width and three in thickness. We would open a tin
on one side and use up the contents; then we would open out the other
side and flatten them all down to make a sheet. Plastered against an
ice pinnacle to mark the trail or indicate a fault or the proximity of
open water, these red or blue sheets of tin were visible against their
white background for a mile and a half or two miles. This was one of
the many things which I learned on my expeditions with Peary. Mamen had
instructions to blaze his trail in this way so that he could find his
way back. Marking the trail from the camp landward would now give the
men training in ice travel.
We had something resembling the typical “January thaw” of the New
England winter on the twenty-third. The air seemed to have a touch of
springtime in it and there was open water about two miles to the south
of us.
The next day we improved the time in overhauling the house that we
had built out of boxes for the Eskimo, to make it more comfortable.
Later on I was in the supply tent when I heard a confused noise in the
galley. I waited a moment and then heard a tremendous racket of dishes
rattling down and equipment being upset. I hurried out of the tent and
into the galley. The canvas roof of the galley was on fire and parts
of the rafters near the funnel. It was a pitch roof and around the
funnel, where it passed through a hole in the roof, were a couple of
tin collars and some asbestos. The cook had the stove pretty hot and as
the canvas was dry and got overheated it had suddenly burst into flame.
He was waving his arms around and trying to put the fire out with water
and as he was very much in earnest about it he naturally did not always
look to see where he was going and bumped violently into whatever
happened to be in his way; hence the noise I had heard. A block of snow
soon had the fire out.
McKinlay found a box of cocoa the same day and played a joke on us.
When we were getting the emergency supplies overboard after the ship
was struck I had given instructions that no tobacco should be saved,
for I knew we could not afford to burden ourselves with a great supply
of it on our sledge journeys later on and so we might as well get used
to going without it as soon as possible. Some of the men happened to
have some with them when they left the ship, however, and we smoked
that while it lasted but it was already getting to be a scarce article.
A good many odds and ends were continually turning up under the snow,
however, and some of the men had an idea that if they looked for
tobacco they might find some. So McKinlay set out to investigate.
In due time he returned, saying nothing but looking as if he knew
something. We waited for him to hand over the tobacco or tell us where
it was and at last we became so aroused that we made him guide us to
the spot where he had been looking. He brought us to a place where a
box was covered up in the snow, dug it up and handed it over, while we
imagined the good smoke we were to have at last. It was a box of cocoa.
McKinlay had the time of his life about it and we all laughed with him,
though the joke was on us; I felt it incumbent on me, however, to show
the joker that he couldn’t trifle with our feelings with impunity, so I
chased him laughing over the ice and scrubbed his face in a snow-bank.
As a consolation prize I hunted through the supply tent for a little
tobacco which I knew was there among the dunnage; I finally found it,
divided it into small pieces and distributed it in that way to the
whole party.
The chief engineer found some more treasure—two coffee percolators
which were buried in the snow. When the cook tried to make coffee in
them, however, he found that they wouldn’t percolate.
Late in the day Chafe and Williams returned and reported no changes to
mark in the trail, so far as they went.