THE NORTHERN QUEST
The desire to find both the North-East and the North-West Passages has
at various times and in all sorts of ships attracted the sailors of
Northern Europe towards the Arctic Seas, but with long lulls. Thus,
after the times of Hudson and Fotherby there ensued an interval until
the zeal for Polar discovery was kindled in the reign of George III.
Papers were read before the Royal Society, and eventually two vessels
of the Royal Navy, _Racehorse_ and _Carcass_, were despatched, the
young Horatio Nelson serving in the latter. Hitherto all these northern
expeditions had been fitted out by merchants with a desire to find
either a passage and trade route for their goods, or areas suitable
for capturing whales. But this Georgian enterprise was the first
effort which had the pursuit of science as its sole object. Starting
out in 1773, it was away only from May to September, but the resultant
information was hardly such as to enthuse the desire for discovery, and
those northern regions again fell into oblivion until there came into
notice a man named Scoresby.
William Scoresby was born in 1789 at Whitby, that historic port which
at one time harboured a fleet of whalers, and also those famous Geordie
brigs which used to fetch the coal from Newcastle to London. Cook, the
great explorer, was apprenticed to one of these Whitby colliers over
forty years before Scoresby saw the light, and from this Yorkshire
haven some of the finest English sailors set forth in the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. Now Scoresby’s career is a most
interesting one, for he was a product of a severe school of seamanship;
he was made to rough it on board from an early age, he became one of
the greatest whaling captains in history, a distinguished explorer,
and was given that unique distinction of being elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society, publishing some valuable matter dealing with the
practical side of whaling and the scientific study of the Arctic
regions.
He was only eleven when he made his first Greenland voyage, he was but
seventeen when he made the nearest approach to the North Pole that had
ever been fully authenticated, being at that time mate of his father’s
Greenland whaler. It was the information which Scoresby and others of
this industry accumulated that provided the necessary data for the
great explorers of the nineteenth century: we can never be too grateful
to those pioneer whalers who risked their lives and ships among the
ice in uncharted seas. Sailing, towing, boring, warping, they opened
up a track with the object of pursuing the whale: but each voyage
brought back more and more intelligence concerning winds and tides
and ice-barriers. Scoresby used to land at Spitzbergen and elsewhere,
climbing summits, making observations, studying the bird life and
doing many things quite outside the sphere of mere whaling. After he
became of age he continued to make these Greenland voyages annually,
but the most important of his discoveries were made in the year 1822
when he sailed in the 321-ton ship _Baffin_, with a crew of fifty. He
left Liverpool on March 27th bent on whaling, but never an opportunity
was missed of adding to scientific knowledge, and after passing the
eightieth degree a month later, he reached the main northern ice. The
first whale was caught on May 6th, but soon his ship became involved
in the floating ice and only with difficulty was she extricated.
Now these waters had been fished for many generations and were
therefore becoming unproductive, so the only satisfactory results were
to be obtained on the eastern shores of Greenland. Along here Scoresby
penetrated to parts that had never been explored, and after naming
these bays and forelands and peninsulas, he went further east in search
of his whales. It was during one of these attempts that a harpooner had
just got his weapon into the whale when the latter started off with
such speed that the line was jerked out of its lead and the boat nearly
swamped. The harpooner, a real expert, tried to catch hold of the line
and replace it in its proper position, when he got caught by a sudden
turn, dragged overboard and drowned.
Several more whales were taken, and after further exploration, being
surrounded by icebergs, Scoresby altered course, and on August 15th
had the good luck to sight and strike five whales, of which three were
taken. This completed his cargo and the _Baffin_ returned home after a
voyage that was successful both financially and scientifically. And to
that knowledge which Scoresby brought home, other venturers added in
subsequent years. But Scoresby was just one of a long line of seamen
who had been attracted by the magnetic north. The opening up of the
waters in these high latitudes, even if there was neither a north-east
nor a north-west passage for the English merchants’ goods, set going
a new industry whose profits had not even been suspected. It had been
really a lucky find whilst searching for a route to India north-about.
The news spread, and thus there had come English, Dutch, French and
Spanish ships by the early seventeenth century, with the inevitable
jealousies too. Each nationality tried to elbow the others out of
these valuable waters, and occasionally there was an actual encounter.
It would be difficult to support the claim of the seventeenth-century
English whalers as “lords of the northern seas,” and we can well
understand how much foreign nations resented this exclusive claim.
The Dutch Whaling Company even sent out seven stout, well-armed ships,
and in 1618 there came a crisis when an English whaler was captured
and sailed off to Amsterdam. However, the Dutch Government deemed it
prudent to restore this vessel, her cargo and crew: but those who had
made the capture were also rewarded. And finally, since there was
room for all, since there were just as big whales in those northern
seas as ever came out, it was decided to divide up the areas in the
neighbourhood of Spitzbergen among the various national whaling
fleets, in order that the industry might flourish peaceably. The Dutch
especially found in this activity a great source of wealth, and it is
largely due to their diligence and resource that whaling progressed.
Some of their methods and actual words (for example “flensing”) are in
use to this day. This applies especially to the operations employed in
getting the oil from the whale after capture.
English and Scottish fishermen of all kinds have, especially since the
sixteenth century, learnt much of their art from the Dutch: even their
very vessels for years were unquestionably influenced by the fishermen
the other side of the North Sea. Let us, then, not forget the debt we
owe to Holland in regard to our present subject. The difficulty was as
follows. Having arrived in Spitzbergen waters, those ships were of such
small tonnage that after harpooning two or three big whales, the vessel
was full up. Therefore the Dutch evolved the practice of extracting the
oil and bones, in fact concentrating all the valuable products into
such a space that not three but numerous whales could be used. It was
for this purpose that they installed ashore boilers and tanks, coolers
and all necessary apparatus of a factory. The whales had only to be
killed, brought ashore, and then the produce was compressed out of them.
Here the dead mammals were “flensed,” that is to say, cleared of
blubber and bone. Here, in these isolated latitudes, collected during
the summer months quite a village population from Holland. Here were
furnaces and stores and everyone hard at work, and the bay full of
whaling ships. Such, indeed, was the activity that in 1697 there were
no fewer than one hundred and eighty-eight of these vessels, having on
board the extracts of nearly two thousand whales. But as has happened
over and over again in the history of whaling, all this excessive
fishing had the result of frightening the mammals so that the latter
forsook the neighbourhood and migrated from Spitzbergen to near that
great bank of ice in the Greenland Sea. It was this which caused
Spitzbergen to lose its flourishing existence. To bring the captured
whales two thousand miles across such an ocean was impracticable: so,
as the whale would not come to the furnaces, the furnaces had to be
brought across to Greenland together with all the rest of the plant.
Thus, as we have seen in Scoresby’s voyaging, the vessels had to skirt
the frozen icefields--and even anchor to this barrier--in order to
capture the elusive mammoth of the sea.
So it was that by the end of the seventeenth century Spitzbergen, which
had been discovered by Barentsz only a hundred years previously, had
become practically denuded of whales. But in addition to the other
nations mentioned, the Russians also showed an interest in this means
of wealth. It was in the year 1743 that, in spite of this diminished
condition which had been reached, a vessel was sent out from Archangel
whaling to Spitzbergen with a crew of fourteen hands, and had got
within a couple of miles of the eastern side when suddenly their ship
became surrounded by ice. The position became critical, and then four
of them resolved to make for the shore leaping from one ice floe to
the other. On land they found a ruined hut that had once been used by
former whalers, and next day they were about to inform their shipmates
when to their horror it was seen that the ship had disappeared. A heavy
gale had dispersed ship and ice floes. Nor was she ever seen again.
Now these four men, left to their own resources, lived on that island
for the next six years and three months. They had neither clock nor
watch, nor navigational instrument, but they made a cross-staff and
were able to take an altitude of the sun when it was visible. They
succeeded in keeping such good reckoning of time that after all those
months they were not more than four days out. On that craggy island,
where there was not so much as a tiny tree, nor a blade of grass, three
of the four men lived and survived. They had a gun and shot wild deer
until their ammunition gave out. They then made themselves pikes out
of some pieces of iron which they found, and thus killed an aggressive
Polar bear whose flesh fed them, whose skin clothed them, from whose
entrails the string was made to complete a bow which had been fashioned
from a bit of wreckage that came ashore. Thus armed, they were able to
fill their pantry with reindeer meat. One of the men did not die till
the end of six years, and the three survivors then became despondent
and wondered how long it would be before they would be eaten up by the
bears.
But then a marvellous thing happened on August 15, 1749; for to their
utter amazement a ship was seen to seaward. These three men now set
to work, lighted fires on the hills, hoisted a flag-staff with a
reindeer’s skin as flag, and thus attracted the ship, which came to
anchor. Now the arrival of this vessel was miraculous, for she had
encountered head winds, been unable to make her destination, and
therefore altered course to East Spitzbergen just opposite to where
these men happened to be. Then, after placing on board her reindeer
fat, hides, fox skins, their bow, arrows, spears and lances made with
their own hands, they were brought back to Archangel after having been
long since given up for lost.
It so happened, when this vessel came in, that the wife of one of these
three survivors was standing by the water. Suddenly she recognized her
long-bewailed spouse, and unable to wait till the ship was secured to
the pier, the woman threw herself forward to embrace him, fell into the
water, and was saved only with difficulty.
Who was the very first ever to catch a whale in northern waters it
would be impossible to say. The Vikings, who colonized Greenland and
afterwards withdrew, certainly hunted these mammals. In the early
part of the eighteenth century the Esquimaux used to go whaling in
their canoes, whose frames were made of wood or whalebone, covered
over with the skin of seals except for a hole large enough to receive
the steersman. Thus decked, these little craft used to go out with
primitive harpoons pointed with teeth of walrus. To the barb was
attached a thong, at the extremity of which was a bladder which served
as a buoy. All that the hunter had to do was to get up to the whale,
hurl this simple harpoon into him and then leave the whale to tear
about in his agony till he bled to death. The bladder-buoy indicated
his position, and the creature was then towed ashore to be stripped,
and thus there were food and light for another long winter’s season.