Now we come to notes about the Arctic regions, whales and bears, promised
in the preface to this collection of spun yarn, as a sailor-man might
call it. Long ago the writer, as a very small boy, vowed to go North and
bring back bearskins. His instructress failed to excite his interest in
short sentences, such as “THE CAT ATE THE RAT,” so she gave him a little
square green book by Ballantyne, called “Fast in the Ice,” and he at once
made rapid progress, and he promised his instructress that he would go to
Greenland some day and bring her white bearskins—now he has got them; but
it is too late!
With this brief introduction we come to the subject of a little North
Polar expedition we arranged this year (1913), six of us, to hunt for
whales, musk oxen, walrus, seals and bears, or anything else of value in
the way of heads or furs, which we could find.
I need not go into the financial aspect of the concern, but I may say my
principal object was to study the Arctic regions as compared with the
Antarctic and to make pictures of the northern ice, and animal life.
Dr W. S. Bruce, my companion of long ago in the Antarctic, came to see us
off at the Waverley Station, and gave me a volume by that very remarkable
Englishman, the whaler Scoresby, a scientist and whaler of the Arctic.
That and Dr Bruce’s own splendid book of reference on the Antarctic and
Arctic (“Polar Research”), and my friend Captain Trolle’s work on the
Danish expedition to East Greenland, formed our Arctic library. Trolle’s
description of the Danish expedition came in particularly well, as our
intention was to visit the part of North-East Greenland, north and east
of Shannon Island, which they charted in 1906-1908, and where, alas! they
left their first leader, Captain Mylius Erichsen.
“We,” I had better say here, will often stand in these notes for my
friend C. A. Hamilton of Cochno, and Dunmore, Stirlingshire, and myself;
we have done a little whaling together, and he gave me his good company
a few years ago through the rough and smooth of hunting black bear and
caribou in the barrens of Newfoundland. The rest of our party were
four Spaniards, one of whom, F. J. de Gisbert, made the bundabust for
this voyage, chartered our diminutive whaler, at Trömso, provisioned
her and arranged about captain and a Norwegian crew. De Gisbert is to
lead the proposed Spanish National Polar Expedition, and is at present
building his vessel, which ought to be second to none, as a floating
oceanographical laboratory and ice-ship. It is to be a four or five
years’ drift across the Polar basin east to west, somewhat after the
manner of the Nansen expedition, benefiting from their work, and carrying
out still further observations with a staff of Spanish naval scientists
specially trained in the various branches of natural science in the high
northern latitudes.
It is a long road to North-East Greenland by Trömso and the north of
Norway, and so many people are familiar with the Norwegian coast that the
reader may care to make one jump right north and join us on the Fonix, a
few hours out from Trömso—to join our rather curious little party in the
cabin of a very small whaler; so we will avoid wearisome detail in the
latter part of this book about fitting out our vessel, such as those with
which I have perhaps burdened the first part about our St Ebba.
So we raise the curtain in the cabin of the Fonix; De Gisbert and Archie
Hamilton are at chess, whilst the writer and our young Spanish comarados,
two brothers Herrero and their cousin, Don Herrero Velasquez, are playing
cards, drawing, and speaking in French, English, and Spanish, separately
or all at the same time.
To add to the vocabulary, Svendsen, our skipper, comes in with his collar
up, from the cold outside, and taking Gisbert’s guitar trolls out Norse
sea-songs. Three of us “touch” the guitar, and we also have bagpipes and
a mouth-organ. It promises to be quite a homely and musical party.
The engine goes beautifully quietly—but we know from the wind and the
low glass there must be a heavy sea outside the fiord, and we are heavily
laden with coal on deck!
The evening passes with snatches of Spanish songs, and bits of sailors’
chanteys, and we have one bottle of rum between us all as a libation for
a successful voyage and a “full ship.”
Then, alas, we strike the rough sea outside the fiord, and roll and pitch
as only small whalers can. But still the three cousins trill away at
songs, bravely, bravely, though they grow more pale. Then they retire
one by one to their minute cabins; turn their keys and shut themselves
in their bunks and hide discomfort. How they live without any air is a
wonder—and after two days they turn up again, smiling.
A word here about our little whaler, the Fonix, and her build. She is
just a handy size for dodging in and out amongst the ice, and she is said
to be strong. She was built in 1884 for bottle-nose whaling, and for use
in the ice—ninety-two tons register, two pole masts and a funnel, one
hundred and forty horse-power, eight and a half knots in calm water, over
all one hundred and ten feet, with broad beam, her sides are sheathed
with greenheart and oak two feet thick; her ribs are eleven inches by
twenty inches broad, with only five and a half inches to six inches
between them at bows. The forefoot has a five-foot thickness of timber
and the usual belts of iron round the stem or cut-water, to protect it
when ramming ice.
Between 3rd and 6th July we are all seedy, there is no gainsaying it,
the writer perhaps makes the best pretence not to be so, and is rather
envied; and several of the crew are down, it is not nearly so bad though
as last year on the St Ebba, where, out of a crew of fifteen seasoned
hands, the skipper, first mate, and writer, were all that could stand
a watch for three days after sailing. That was, however, in a pucca
gale. Still, on the Fonix, we managed a game of chess or two between
the appearance and disappearance of our señors, and worked a little at
Spanish and strummed mandoline and guitar—Gisbert playing the mandoline,
the writer accompanying him on the guitar, whilst all well enough joined
in the words.
I was never with such a musical party. The steward also plays the guitar,
and, with a wire arrangement attached to its neck, holds a melodeon or
mouth-organ to his mouth and makes a very clever but horrible orchestral
effect.
To-day, the 7th of July, Monday, we are into calmer water, grey sky and
cold—we passed a little ice at night and met our first ivory gull, it is
the harbinger of the North Polar regions, as the white petrel down South
tells of the ice edge. Last night we drew lots for watches, Hamilton and
I take ours together—we take the second six hours watch—Don José and his
brother Don Luis[13] take the first six hours, and their cousin, Don
Luis[14] and De Gisbert take the third; this arrangement allows us a
change of six hours each day. The idea is that the two on watch are to
risk their lives against any whale, bear or ferocious animal that may
turn up on their watch. To cheer us up on this somewhat quiet evening,
Gisbert yarned to us about his previous trips to the Arctic; and told
us about some of the ice-protected vessels that lay round us in Trömso.
One of them, the smallest, a mere twenty-tonner, with a crow’s nest at
its short foremast, he told us, came back from the ice _single-handed_ a
year ago! Another, a yacht-like auxiliary schooner, with fiddle bows, but
heavily protected, a year or two ago was up at the west ice—that is, east
of Greenland—with a party of Germans. They became overdue and a search
party in another small vessel set out, which called at Jan Mayen Island
on the way north, but found no signs of the lost party; so they pursued
their way north into the floes—hunted about till they burst their ship
up, and only one man returned. On comparing dates the first party was
found to have actually called on their return journey at Jan Mayen and
left only twelve hours before the relief party called. A letter left at
the hut on the island to this effect would have saved fifteen lives of
the rescue party.
As we are going to the “West Ice,” north-east of Greenland, such stories
give a sense of anticipated troubles to our little trip—if, however, one
only thought of the dangers of life, who would go motoring or eat a fish
or go to bed?
De Gisbert has picked up several stranded sealers, on his previous
expeditions north; a lot of these set out in poor vessels with no
equipment; for fur-hunting, for blue fox, bear and seal skins; and they
often came to grief. A party of four wintered in Spitzbergen, badly
provisioned, and when he fell in with them, one lay dead, a second was
in the last stage of scurvy, and the other two were barely able to come
on board and tell their tale. De Gisbert took the sick man and isolated
him—and a distinguished doctor on board said he had not a chance of life,
half his face was gone. He asked for beer, and the doctor said: “Give him
as much as he likes to drink. He is a dead man.” So he got that light
Norwegian _ol_, more and more of it; he drank one hundred and fifty-six
bottles in five days, and recovered!
Another troublesome sealer he took home had gone crazy on board a small
boat on its outward voyage. De Gisbert hails all sealers and gives them
tobacco and their longitude and latitude, and possibly a bottle of
whisky, all of which things they are generally quite without—as often
as not they carry neither sextant nor chronometer. He was asked to take
this man who had gone crazy back to Norway, and as Gisbert was on his
way south, to save them their season’s sealing, he humanely did so. The
man partially recovered and was let loose, and messed forward, in the
fo’c’sle. But suddenly one day, at meal-time, he went mad again and
cleared everyone out of the fo’c’sle with a knife in his hand; and they
had to lasso him through the fo’c’sle skylight! Naturally they put into
the first Norwegian village they came to up north and asked the police to
take over the lunatic; but the police besought Gisbert to take him on to
Hammerfest and they would telegraph and have him met there. He did so,
much to his own loss of time, and at Hammerfest one small boy came off
in a boat to take, single-handed, the raving lunatic, who required two
strong men and a strait jacket: he died two days after.
De Gisbert talks of his plans for this coming Spanish Polar expedition
and finds the writer a sympathetic listener, for have we not worried
ourselves over similar troubles, the raising capital and planning of an
expedition to the Far South?
We sight ice in the afternoon, and grey and cold it is—alas, that the
thrill of the first sight of ice should not repeat itself. My young
friends do not seem to be greatly impressed, not so much so as we were
years ago, when, after a three months’ voyage, the mist rose and we had
our first vision of the marvellous architecture of Antarctic ice.
Here it is not so impressive as in the South, but beyond doubt it
can show its teeth quite effectively. Curiously it is often the old,
experienced deep-sea sailor who feels the greatest sensation on going
into the ice for the first time. All his life he has religiously avoided
knocking up against anything in the way of ice or rocks, so when he is
called to go straight in amongst ice-blocks it affects him more than
it would a landsman. I know of such a captain and his first experience
up here. When he had brought his ship into the ice, the crashing and
thumping got on his nerves so that he retreated to his cabin, and bolted
himself in, and had to be fed through the skylight for three days. This
is a true bill.
[Illustration]
We have got some sail set to a westerly breeze and go so steadily that
we can vary our amusements of lasso-throwing, etc., etc., with fencing.
The señors are interested in fencing but are not very good, but they
are good shots at clay pigeons; that is another side-show we have, De
Gisbert is quite a showman at it. With a five-shooter shot-gun he throws
three clay pigeons up with the left hand and shoots them all before they
reach the water. But at fencing the writer has rather a pull, the last
three years’ practice in Edinburgh with our most perfect teacher, M. Leon
Crosnier, ought to have some effect.
[Illustration: A DEAD BEAR BEING LIFTED ON BOARD BY STEAM WINCH AND
CHAIN]
In Gisbert’s Spanish Polar expedition next year, or the year after, all
men will fence for health’s sake. But who will instruct? that is the
art—fencing without an instructor is hopeless.
A seal or two appear to-day and some little auks.
We get the lines and harpoons ready for our two bow whale-guns, and other
harpoons and lines for walrus boats. “Chips,” the carpenter, is busy
overhauling old oars, and making new oars.
So if all goes well we should soon be fast in a whale, or walrus, or up
against a bear.
But we strike the ice rather far east, over two hundred miles from
Greenland coast! Gisbert has tried before to get into Greenland to south
and west of Jan Mayen; this time we hope to get in from farther north,
about seventy-five degrees, and hope to strike Shannon Island or that
neighbourhood. We have some slight hope of meeting Eskimos, and possibly
musk oxen. Captain Trolle of the Danish navy was up here in 1906-1908,
and charted the coast of North-East Greenland. He took command when the
leader, Mylius Erichsen, lost his life in the interior. He says there
is a hut on the island, one of these lonely dwellings visited by human
beings once a century, generally under pressure of circumstance.
At afternoon café we overhaul cameras—like the rest of their outfit, the
cameras of the Dons are of the best, as neat as can be: and we pull out
all the books on recent polar work, which we and De Gisbert have between
us, and discuss the writers we know.
Small floes are now on all sides, and mist. We run through one small
stream of ice, shoving the pieces aside, leaving our green paint behind
and some splinters on the jagged ice feet, and it is rather a sensation
for my friends, their first experience of ice—then we heave to and
drift. By-and-by we spot a hooded-seal and our first watch goes to the
bows in the faint hope of getting a shot from board-ship, as we think
the movement in the small boat would spoil their aim, and the seal
understands and pops off the ice when we are eight hundred yards off; so
we retire to the cabin and the stove; for it is beastly cold and damp,
and write up journals and almost wonder if we are not rather fools to
come so far for such disagreeable circumstances. Still in the back of our
minds we remember what a difference a little sunlight makes in a polar
scene.