KANE’S MEMORABLE EXPEDITION.
Dr. Kane’s Expedition—His short but eventful Career—Departure of
the _Advance_—Dangers of the Voyage—Grinding Ice—Among the Bergs—A
Close Shave—Nippings—The Brig towed from the Ice-beach—Smith’s
Sound—Rensselaer Harbour—Winter Quarters—Return of an Exploring
Party—Fearful Sufferings—To the Rescue—Saved—Curious Effects of
Intense Cold.
Although the expedition about to be described left the United States in
1852—several years before M’Clintock’s memorable voyage—and although it
was organised especially for the Franklin search, its consideration has
been deferred till now, in order not to interfere with the narrative of
the discoveries relative to the lost expedition. Dr. Kane was not, indeed,
to share with Rae and M’Clintock the honour of determining the fate of
Franklin and his brave companions, but he was, and long must be, destined
to hold a foremost place among the great Arctic explorers of all ages,
while his work is one of the classics of Arctic literature.(41)
Dr. Kane was in the field of action he eventually chose one of the most
ardent and enthusiastic workers; indeed, the untiring energy and
perseverance with which he laboured in the face of all difficulties
entitle him to be considered a model explorer. His short life had been
full of adventure. Born on February 3rd, 1820, he became at a very early
age an assistant-surgeon in the United States navy, and visited most parts
of the world, including China, India, Ceylon, and the coasts of Africa. At
a station of the latter he was stricken down with “coast fever,” and never
entirely recovered from the effects. He was engaged in the Mexican war
with the United States, and succeeded in passing through the enemy’s lines
with an oral despatch to the American head-quarters, when several others
had failed. On the voyage from New Orleans to Mexico he was shipwrecked,
and was afterwards laid low with typhus fever in the latter country. His
first visit to the Arctic was, as already mentioned, in company with
Lieutenant De Haven. He died at Havana, shortly after his return from the
expedition we are about to record. His slight frame had been too severely
tested; the flesh was weaker than the spirit; and at the early age of
thirty-seven he passed away, leaving behind a reputation scarcely second
to that of any Arctic explorer. Ambitious always, he was nevertheless one
of the most thoughtful and humane of commanders. When his men were almost
starving, he travelled, sometimes alone, long distances on the ice and
snow for succour and relief; when nearly every member of his party was
stricken down with scurvy, he nursed, cooked, and cared for them,
oft-times when enfeebled, downhearted, and scarcely able to stand himself.
His naval education had made him appreciate the value of discipline, but
where humanity was concerned self-abnegation was his leading
characteristic. Kane could most assuredly be termed a _practical_
Christian. All honour to his memory!
[Illustration: WHALE SOUND, GREENLAND]
Dr. Kane received special orders in December, 1852, from the then
Secretary of the United States navy, “to conduct an expedition to the
Arctic seas in search of Sir John Franklin.” The noble-hearted American
merchant, Mr. Grinnell of New York, who had organised De Haven’s
expedition, placed a brig, the _Advance_, at his disposal. Mr. Peabody,
the American benefactor of the London poor, contributed handsomely to the
outfit, which was aided by several scientific institutions. The United
States Government detailed ten officers and men from the navy, which with
seven others made up the full complement of the expedition. Leaving New
York on May 30th, 1853, South Greenland was reached on July 1st. Several
Danish settlements were visited on the way north, where they received much
hospitality, and obtained skins, fur clothing, and native dogs.
As we have already seen, Baffin was the discoverer of Smith’s Sound. From
the year 1616, the date of his visit, until Kane explored it, no European
or American had sailed over its waters. The voyage of the _Advance_
thither was one of peril and difficulty. Storm succeeded storm; the little
brig was constantly beset and nearly crushed in the ice, and sometimes
heeled over to such an extent that it seemed a miracle when she righted.
Dr. Kane’s description of some of the dangers through which they passed is
very graphic.
“At seven in the morning we were close on to the piling masses. We dropped
our heaviest anchor with the desperate hope of winding the brig; but there
was no withstanding the ice-torrent that followed us. We had only time to
fasten a spar as a buoy to the chain, and let her slip. So went our best
bower.
“Down we went upon the gale again, helplessly scraping along a lee of ice
seldom less than thirty feet thick; one floe, measured by a line as we
tried to fasten to it, more than forty. I had seen such ice only once
before, and never in such rapid motion. One upturned mass rose above our
gunwale, smashing in our bulwarks, and depositing half a ton of ice in a
lump upon our decks. Our staunch little brig bore herself through all this
wild adventure as if she had a charmed life.
“But a new enemy came in sight ahead. Directly in our way, just beyond the
line of floe-ice against which we were alternately sliding and thumping,
was a group of bergs. We had no power to avoid them; the only question
was, whether we were to be dashed in pieces against them, or whether they
might not offer us some providential nook of refuge against the storm. But
as we neared them we perceived that they were at some distance from the
floe-edge, and separated from it by an interval of open water. Our hopes
rose as the gale drove us towards this passage and into it; and we were
ready to exult when, from some unexplained cause—probably an eddy of the
wind against the lofty ice-walls—we lost our headway. Almost at the same
moment we saw that the bergs were not at rest, that with a momentum of
their own they were bearing down upon the other ice, and that it must be
our fate to be crushed between the two.
“Just then a broad sconce-piece, or low water-washed berg, came driving up
from the southward. The thought flashed upon me of one of our escapes in
Melville Bay; and as the sconce moved rapidly alongside us, M’Garry
managed to plant an anchor on its slope and hold on to it by a whale line.
It was an anxious moment. Our noble tow-horse, whiter than the pale horse
that seemed to be pursuing us, hauled us bravely on, the spray dashing
over his windward flanks, and his forehead ploughing up the lesser ice as
if in scorn. The bergs encroached upon us as we advanced; our channel
narrowed to a width of perhaps forty feet; we braced the yards to clear
the impending ice-walls.... We passed clear, but it was a close shave—so
close that our port quarter-boat would have been crushed if we had not
taken it in from the davits—and found ourselves under the lee of a berg,
in a comparative open lead. Never did heart-tried men acknowledge with
more gratitude their merciful deliverance from a wretched death.” And so
the narrative continues—a long series of hairbreadth escapes from the
nippings and crushing of the ice. Kane says at this juncture:—
“During the whole of the scenes I have been trying to describe I could not
help being struck by the composed and manly demeanour of my comrades. The
turmoil of ice under a heavy sea often conveys the impression of danger
when the reality is absent; but in this fearful passage the parting of our
hawsers, the loss of our anchors, the abrupt crushing of our stoven
bulwarks, and the actual deposit of ice upon our decks, would have tried
the nerves of the most experienced ice-man. All—officers and men—worked
alike. Upon each occasion of collision with the ice which formed our lee
coast, efforts were made to carry out lines, and some narrow escapes were
incurred by the zeal of the parties leading them into positions of danger.
Mr. Bonsall avoided being crushed by leaping to a floating fragment; and
no less than four of our men at one time were carried down by the drift,
and could only be recovered by a relief party after the gale had subsided.
“As our brig, borne on by the ice, commenced her ascent of the berg, the
suspense was oppressive. The immense blocks piled against her, range upon
range, pressing themselves under her keel and throwing her over upon her
side, till, urged by the successive accumulations, she rose slowly, and as
if with convulsive efforts, along the sloping wall. Still there was no
relaxation of the impelling force. Shock after shock, jarring her to her
very centre, she continued to mount steadily on her precarious cradle. But
for the groaning of her timbers and the heavy sough of the floes we might
have heard a pin drop; and then as she settled down into her old position,
quietly taking her place among the broken rubbish, there was a deep
breathing silence, as though all were waiting for some signal before the
clamour of congratulation and comment should burst forth.” After the storm
had abated, the crew went on the ice-beach and towed the vessel a
considerable distance, being harnessed up, as Kane says, “like mules on a
canal.” Shortly afterwards a council was called to consider the
feasibility of proceeding northward or returning southward to find a
wintering place, and the latter idea was the more favourably received.
After some further discussion it was resolved to cross the bay in which
they now were to its northern headland, and thence despatch sledging
parties in quest of a suitable spot to “dock” the brig. On the way across
the vessel grounded and heeled over, throwing men out of their berths and
setting the cabin-deck on fire by upsetting the stove. She was surrounded
with ice, which piled up in immense heaps. These alarming experiences were
repeated on several occasions. Dr. Kane meantime took a whale-boat, well
sheathed with tin, ahead of the brig, and after about twenty-four hours
came to a solid ice-shelf or table, clinging round the base of the cliffs.
They hauled up the boat and then prepared for a sledge journey. The rough
and difficult nature of their icy route may be inferred from the fact that
it took them five days to make a _direct_ distance of forty miles, while
they had travelled twice that distance in reality. They then arrived at a
bay into which a large river fell. This Kane considers the largest stream
of North Greenland; its width at the mouth was three-fourths of a mile.
Its course was afterwards pursued to an interior glacier, from the base of
which it was found to issue in numerous streams. By the banks of this
river they encamped, lulled by the unusual music of running waters.
“Here,” says Kane, “protected from the frost by the infiltration of the
melted snows, and fostered by the reverberation of solar heat from the
rocks, we met a flower growth, which, though drearily Arctic in its type,
was rich in variety and colouring. Amid festuca and other tufted grasses
twinkled the purple lychnis, and the white star of the chickweed; and, not
without its pleasing associations, I recognised a solitary hesperis—the
Arctic representative of the wallflowers of home.” After a careful
examination of the bays and anchorages, Rensselaer Harbour, the spot where
he had left the _Advance_, was chosen for their winter quarters, and a
storehouse and observatory were erected ashore.
The return of an exploring party, which had suffered severely, is well
described by Kane. “We were at work cheerfully, sewing away at the skins
of some mocassins by the blaze of our lamps, when, towards midnight, we
heard the noise of steps above, and the next minute Sontag, Ohlsen, and
Petersen, came down into the cabin. Their manner startled me even more
than their unexpected appearance on board. They were swollen and haggard,
and hardly able to speak.
“Their story was a fearful one. They had left their companions in the ice,
risking their own lives to bring us the news. Brooks, Baker, Wilson, and
Pierre, were all lying frozen and disabled. Where? They could not tell.
Somewhere in among the hummocks to the north and east. It was drifting
heavily round them when they parted. Irish Tom had stayed by to feed and
care for the others, but the chances were sorely against them. It was in
vain to question them further. They had evidently travelled a great
distance, for they were sinking with fatigue and hunger, and could hardly
be rallied enough to tell us the direction in which they had come.”
[Illustration: DR. KANE.]
Kane’s promptness saved the party. A sledge was hastily loaded, Ohlsen
deposited upon it, wrapped in furs, and an immediate departure made. The
thermometer stood at 76° below freezing. For sixteen hours they struggled
on, till at length they came to a place where Ohlsen had to acknowledge he
was quite “at sea,” and could not recognise the landmarks. Kane
continues:—“Pushing ahead of the party, and clambering over some rugged
ice-piles, I came to a long level floe, which I thought might probably
have attracted the eyes of weary men in circumstances like our own. It was
a light conjecture, but it was enough to turn the scale, for there was no
other to balance it. I gave orders to abandon the sledge, and disperse in
search of footmarks. We raised our tent, placed our pemmican in cache,
except a small allowance for each man to carry on his person, and poor
Ohlsen, now just able to keep his legs, was liberated from his bag. The
thermometer had fallen by this time to minus 49° 3’ and the wind was
setting in sharp from the north-west. It was out of the question to halt;
it required brisk exercise to keep us from freezing. The men ‘extended’ in
skirmishing order, but kept nervously closing up; several were seized with
trembling fits, and Dr. Kane fainted twice from the effect of the intense
cold. At length a sledge track was discovered, which followed, brought
them in sight of a small American flag fluttering from a hummock, and
lower down a little masonic banner, hanging from a tent-pole hardly above
the drift. It was the camp of our disabled comrades; we reached it after
an unbroken march of twenty-one hours.
“The little tent was nearly covered.... As I crawled in, and coming upon
the darkness, heard before me the burst of welcome gladness that came from
the four poor fellows stretched on their backs, and then for the first
time the cheer outside, my weakness and my gratitude together almost
overcame me. They had expected me; they were sure I would come!” The tent
only being capable of holding eight, while there were fifteen souls in
all, they had to take “watch and watch” by turns. When sufficiently rested
and refreshed, the sick men were sewn up in reindeer skins and placed on
the sledge. Although they left all superfluous articles behind, the load
was eleven hundred pounds. “We made by vigorous pulls and lifts nearly a
mile an hour.... Almost without premonition, we all became aware of an
alarming failure of our energies. I was of course familiar with the
benumbed and almost lethargic sensation of extreme cold.... But I had
treated the _sleepy comfort_ of freezing as something like the
embellishment of romance. I had evidence now to the contrary.
“Bonsall and Morton, two of our stoutest men, came to me, begging
permission to sleep. ‘They were not cold, the wind did not enter them now;
a little sleep was all they wanted.’ Presently Hans was found nearly stiff
under a drift, and Thomas, bolt upright, had his eyes closed, and could
hardly articulate. At last John Blake threw himself into the snow, and
refused to rise. They did not complain of feeling cold, but it was in vain
that I wrestled, boxed, ran, argued, jeered, or reprimanded—an immediate
halt could not be avoided.” The tent was pitched with much difficulty, and
then Kane with one man pushed on to a tent and cache left the previous
day, his object being to prepare some hot food before the rest arrived. He
continues:—“I cannot tell how long it took us to make the nine miles, for
we were in a strange kind of stupor, and had little apprehension of time.
It was probably about four hours. We kept ourselves awake by imposing on
each other a continued articulation of words; they must have been
incoherent enough! I recall these hours as amongst the most wretched I
have ever gone through. We were neither of us in our right senses, and
retained a very confused recollection of what preceded our arrival at the
tent. We both of us, however, remember a bear who walked leisurely before
us, and tore up as he went a jumper that Mr. M’Garry had improvidently
thrown off the day before. He tore it into shreds and rolled it into a
ball, but never offered to interfere with our progress. I remember this,
and with it a confused sentiment that our tent and buffalo robe might
probably share the same fate.” This was a really wonderful example of the
almost _intoxicating_ and bewildering effect of intense cold, frequently
noted by arctic explorers. They were dazed, and walked as in a dream. But
they arrived safely at the tent, and by the time the others came up had a
good steaming pemmican soup ready. When they again started, Kane tried the
effect of brief _three-minute_ naps in the snow, the men taking it in
turns to wake each other, and he considered the result satisfactory. After
many a halt they reached the brig. Two of the men had to undergo
amputation of parts of the foot, and two died, in spite of unremitting
care. The searching party had been out seventy-two hours, during which
they had only rested eight.