HAYES’ EXPEDITION—SWEDISH EXPEDITIONS.
Voyage of the _United States_—High Latitude attained—In Winter
Quarters—Hardships of the Voyage—The dreary Arctic Landscape—Open
Water once more—1,300 Miles of Ice traversed—Swedish
Expeditions—Perilous Position of the _Sofia_.
It will be remembered that Dr. Hayes was associated with Dr. Kane at the
period when Morton discovered that open water which seemed to many
scientific men of the day positive proof of the existence of an “open
polar sea.” Dr. Hayes was an evident believer in the theory, and his
enthusiastic advocacy of it induced many in the United States to come
forward and lend material aid towards the solution of the problem. A
private subscription, to which that worthy New Yorker Mr. Grinnell, who
had already done so much to further Arctic exploration, contributed
largely, enabled Dr. Hayes to purchase and fit a schooner—the _United
States_—for the arduous work in which she was to be engaged. The vessel
was of no great size, merely some 130 tons burden, but was considerably
strengthened and suitably provided for her coming struggle with the ice.
The expedition, which numbered only fourteen persons all told, left Boston
on July 6th, 1860.
Hayes’ idea at starting was to proceed _viâ_ Smith Sound and Kennedy
Channel as far north as might be; then to winter on the Greenland coast,
and attempt to reach with sledges the northern water. Dangers, the
description of which would be but a recapitulation of previous accounts
recorded in these pages, were passed successfully, and eventually he laid
up the vessel in Port Foulke, where the winter was passed in comparative
ease. In the months of April and May, 1861, he made an important
exploration, at the end of which he had the pleasure of reaching a point
north of that attained by Morton. The journey was one of the very greatest
peril. Gales, fogs, and drifting snows; hummocks and broken ice; opening
seams and pools of water—such were a few of the dangers and difficulties
encountered. Some of the men succumbed utterly, and had to be sent back to
the schooner: it occupied the doctor and his companions a clear month to
cross Smith Sound. In Kennedy Channel the ice was becoming rotten and full
of water-holes, and through the soft and now melting snow they travelled
with the greatest difficulty. The dreariness and desolation of an Arctic
landscape are well described by Hayes. “As the eye wandered from peak to
peak of the mountains as they rose one above the other, and rested upon
the dark and frost-degraded cliffs, and followed along the ice-foot and
overlooked the sea, and saw in every object the silent forces of Nature
moving on—through the gloom of winter and the sparkle of summer—now, as
they had moved for countless ages, unobserved but by the eye of God
alone—I felt how puny indeed are all men’s works and efforts; and when I
sought for some token of living thing, some track of wild beast—a fox, or
bear, or reindeer, which had elsewhere always crossed me in my
journeyings—and saw nothing but two feeble men and struggling dogs, it
seemed indeed as if the Almighty had frowned upon the hills and seas.”
Still they pushed on, till the old ice came suddenly to an end, and the
unerring instinct of the dogs warned them of approaching danger. They were
observed for some time to be moving with unusual caution, and at last they
scattered right and left, and refused to proceed. Hayes walked on ahead,
and soon came to the conclusion that they must retrace their steps, for
his staff gave way on the ice. After camping, and enjoying a refreshing
sleep, he climbed a steep hill-side to the summit of a rugged cliff, about
800 feet above the sea level, from which he soon understood the cause of
their arrested progress. “The ice was everywhere in the same condition as
in the mouth of the bay across which I had endeavoured to pass. A broad
crack, starting from the middle of the bay, stretched over the sea, and
uniting with other cracks as it meandered to the eastward, it expanded as
the delta of some mighty river discharging into the ocean, and under a
water-sky, which hung upon the northern and eastern horizon, it was lost
in the open sea.
[Illustration: THE SCHOONER “UNITED STATES” AT PORT FOULKE.]
“Standing against the dark sky at the north, there was seen in dim outline
the white sloping summit of a noble headland, the most northern known land
upon the globe. I judged it to be in the latitude of 82° 30’, or 450 miles
from the North Pole. Nearer, another bold cape stood forth, and nearer
still the headland, for which I had been steering my course the day
before, rose majestically from the sea, as if pushing up into the very
skies, a lofty mountain peak, upon which the winter had dropped its diadem
of snows. There was no land visible except the coast upon which I stood.
“The sea beneath me was a mottled sheet of white and dark patches, these
latter being either soft decaying ice, or places where the ice had wholly
disappeared. These spots were heightened in intensity of shade and
multiplied in size as they receded, until the belt of the water-sky
blended them all together into one uniform colour of dark blue. The old
and solid floes (some a quarter of a mile, and others miles across) and
the massive ridges and wastes of hummocked ice which lay piled between
them and around their margins, were the only parts of the sea which
retained the whiteness and solidity of winter.”
Hayes returned from this expedition firmly convinced that he had stood
upon the shores of the Polar basin. The arguments have been before
indicated for and against this theory, but they are certainly not
conclusive. The journey had been one of a most arduous nature; and more
than 1,300 miles of ice had been traversed before he regained the
schooner. On his return to the United States shortly afterwards, at the
climax of the great American war, Hayes immediately volunteered in the
Northern army, a pretty decided proof of the energy and bravery of the
man.
Between the years 1858 and 1872 Sweden sent out five expeditions to the
Arctic, the results of which were important in many directions, although
no geographical discoveries of great mark were made. The first was
provided at the expense of Otto Torell, a gentleman of means, and who has
deservedly earned a high scientific reputation. The expenses of the others
were defrayed partly by private subscription and partly by Government aid.
The whole of them were under the direction of Professor Nordenskjöld, and
a very decided addition to our knowledge of Spitzbergen has been the
result. The Swedes reached a latitude of 81° 42’ N. during the 1868
voyage. An attempt to pass northward from the Seven Isles is thus
described by the Professor:—
“Northward lay vast ice masses, it is true as yet broken, but still so
closely packed that not even a boat could pass forward, and we were
therefore obliged to turn to the south-west and seek for another opening
in the ice; but we found on the contrary, that the limit of the ice
stretched itself more and more to the south.... On the way we had in
several places met with ice black with stones, gravel, and earth, which
would seem to indicate the existence of land still farther north.
“The ice itself had, moreover, a very different appearance from that which
we had met in these tracts at the end of August. It consisted now, not
only of larger ice-fields, but also of huge ice-blocks.... Already, in the
beginning of September, the surface of the ocean, after a somewhat heavy
fall of snow, had shown itself between the ice masses, covered with a
coating of ice, which, however, was then thin, and scarcely hindered the
vessel’s progress. Now it was so thick that it was not without difficulty
that a way could be forced through it.” On October the 4th, during the
prevalence of a gale and heavy sea, their ship, the _Sofia_, was thrown
bodily upon an iceberg, and commenced to leak so badly that when they
reached Amsterdam Island, and after eleven hours of incessant work at the
pumps, the water stood two feet above the cabin floor. The engine-room,
thanks to water-tight bulkheads, was with great difficulty kept so free
from water that the fires were not extinguished. Had this not been the
case, the ship must have become a prey to the raging elements. At
Amsterdam Island the vessel was careened, and the leak provisionally
stopped, so that they were able a little later to proceed to a more secure
harbour, King’s Bay, where they hauled close to the land, and at ebb tide
succeeded in making the ship water-tight. Two ribs were broken by the
shock which caused the leak, and an immediate return home was their only
safe course. The description, however, gives some idea of the dangers of
Arctic ice navigation.