News from the “Discovery”—Sickness—Peterson’s Death and
Burial—The Relief of the Northern Detachment—The most Northern
Grave—The March to 83° N. Lat—Its Results—The Advance of the
Season—Anxiety for the Safety of the Western Party—Its Return—Two
Hundred Miles to the West—Further Efforts Poleward Hopeless.
Meantime, our friends in the “Discovery” had passed the winter in
not a little anxiety about our fate, Their efforts to communicate
in autumn were no more successful than ours, and as spring slipped
by and no news came, the suspense increased. Could it be that the
“Alert” had penetrated beyond the range of communication, or that any
disaster had happened to her? It had been arranged that at the latest
a party would reach the “Discovery” from her before the 1st April,
and now March was nearly gone. News, however, was close at hand. The
dog-sledge, “Clements Markham,” had gallantly fought its way southward
past the steep cliffs of Robeson Channel, and when, on 24th March,
its crew rounded Cape Beachy and left the last of the cliffs behind
them, they knew their troubles were over. Next day they came to a
recent sledge-track, and the dogs at once struck out like hounds on a
fresh scent. The last promontories were soon passed, and as Discovery
Bay opened out, a cheer from the galloping sledge brought a crowd
of figures racing from the ship to meet it. In a moment all were
shaking hands in a storm of questions. Where was the “Alert”?—had she
passed “Navy Opening” or got to “President’s Land”?—and what were the
prospects polewards?
The arrival of the dog-sledge was a signal for the immediate departure
of the “Discovery’s” sledging parties. A dog-sledge was despatched
south-eastward to “Hall’s Rest” to ascertain how far the stores left
by U.S.S. “Polaris” could be utilised. Then two eight-men sledges, the
“Sir Edward Parry” and the “Stephenson,” under Lieutenant Beaumont
and Dr. Coppinger, started for the north coast of Greenland, calling
at Floeberg Beach on their way, and being there joined by Lieutenant
Rawson’s sledge, the “Discovery.” They left the “Alert” on 20th April,
and two smaller sledges helped them across Robeson Channel, and then
left them to follow the rugged coast that we could see stretching
far eastward to Cape Britannia. Another division of sledges, with
Lieutenant Archer and Sub-Lieutenant Conybeare, pushed northward
through Lady Franklin Sound, hoping to find it opening northward like
Robeson Channel, and perhaps affording a smooth and direct route to
the shores of the Polar Sea for next year’s parties.
The “Discovery” had passed a winter little, if at all, less severe
than ours, but in one respect she had been more fortunate. No less
than thirty-three musk oxen were secured in the autumn, and thus a
supply of good fresh meat was issued twice a-week during the winter.
Her routine and amusements were almost identical with our own, but we
heard with surprise of her skating rink, and of dramas performed in
a snow-built theatre on shore, where a temperature many degrees below
zero obliged the actors to appear muffled to several times the size of
ordinary stage heroes.
After a short rest, our dog-sledge returned to the “Alert,” and
reached her just a day too late to give the western and northern
parties news from the “Discovery.” She was then at once despatched to
pioneer a “high-road” to Greenland across the narrowest part of the
channel in advance of the “Discovery’s” detachment. From this time the
arrival and departure of sledge-crews was a matter of daily occurrence.
Numerous supporting sledges, now travelling invariably in the hours
called night, arrived from Greenland or Cape Joseph Henry, filled up
with stores, and left again, each fully occupied with its own work,
and only catching an occasional glimpse of what the others were doing.
It was while all were thus actively employed that sickness—the one
sickness of the Arctic regions—appeared amongst us. No one with
medical experience of the disease can read the sledge journals of
former expeditions without recognising numerous indications of scurvy.
Our parties, more than five hundred miles north of where Franklin
was lost, and in an unexpectedly colder and more lifeless climate,
had no greater safeguards than their predecessors. Accordingly, each
sledge-crew that returned to the ship showed fresh examples of the
exhaustion, swollen and sprained ankles, stiff knees, and bruised
and painful legs, only too familiar to Arctic travellers. Petersen,
already maimed by frost-bite, was its first victim. He died on 14th
May, and on the 19th the few remaining on board carried him to his
grave. A spot on the top of a small hill, half-way between the beach
and the beacon on Cairn Hill, was chosen, because a long heavy slab,
suitable for a tombstone, lay there. The ground was frozen as hard as
rock, and it took three days’ hard work with pick and gunpowder to
dig a grave three feet deep. The slab, afterwards rough-hewn by his
messmates, and an oaken tablet covered with brass, marks where he lies.
[Illustration: PETERSEN’S GRAVE.]
As the season advanced, signs of approaching summer began to appear.
On 19th May, the temperature, for the first time in nine months,
rose above freezing. Icicles formed from the projecting angles of
the floebergs—and it may here be remarked that icicles, though very
common in Arctic pictures, are rare in reality, for they only form
in the brief interval between winter and summer, and last but a week
or ten days. Signs of returning life began to multiply. A sledge
party, returning from Cape Joseph Henry on 21st May, brought in two
ptarmigan, snow white, but for one solitary brown feather on the hen.
On 4th June, one of us found a little brown caterpillar creeping on
some uncovered stones, and saw a flock of birds that looked like
knots. In some places the snow was softening into discoloured patches,
in others it was gradually leaving the ground. Light snow often fell,
but the tiny star-shaped crystals evaporated without wetting the brown
slate of the hill-tops. There was as yet no water in the ravines, but
it was plain that the thaw was at hand. A sledge party that got back
to the ship on 7th June experienced very unsettled weather, and had
to wade through a good deal of soft slushy snow sometimes knee deep.
The travelling season was fast drawing to a close, and our extended
parties had evidently little time left for their return. Just before
tea-time on 8th June, those of us who happened to be on board were
startled by hearing Lieutenant Parr’s voice in the captain’s cabin.
He had come alone, and we soon heard his tidings. The whole northern
detachment was broken down with scurvy, and could not reach the ship
without assistance, and that must be immediate. Five men were already
helpless on the sledges. He had left them near Cape Joseph Henry,
twenty-two hours before, and had marched in the whole way.
There was neither time nor occasion to hear more. Every soul capable
of pulling at once got orders to man relief sledges. A dog-sledge,
laden with immediate necessities, started in advance to cheer them
with the news that help was near.
It was advisable to follow Lieutenant Parr’s footprints, for, once off
the track, the distressed party might easily be passed. He had called
at Snow-house Point, hoping to find lamp and matches that would enable
him to get a drink in the tent pitched there to assist returning
parties, but a wolf had gnawed the tent ropes, and it lay flat on the
snow. Near Castle Floe the tracks crossed and re-crossed in a complete
maze, for there he had all but lost his way in a treacherous fog. A
short halt was necessary to rest and feed the dogs, then we pushed on
as before. At length, twenty-three hours after leaving the ship, we
caught sight of a figure seated beside a loaded sledge, and resting
his head upon his hands; then two others staggered up, helping a third
between them; and a moment after, six men slowly emerged from among
the hummocks dragging up a second sledge. The wind blowing from them
towards us prevented them hearing our first shout, but they soon saw
us, and with a faint cheer limped forward, poor fellows, to meet us.
For a time our hearts were in our throats, and no one could speak
much. Hardly one of them was recognisable. The thin, feeble voices,
the swollen and frost-peeled faces and crippled limbs, made an awful
contrast to the picked body of determined men we had seen march north
only two months before. Four lay packed amongst the tent robes on the
sledges—only four, for one had died soon after Parr left them. He was
a private in the marine artillery, and belonged to the “Victoria”
sledge. Poor Porter—George, as the men called him—had been one of the
strongest and most energetic of the party. They had dragged him on
the sledge thirty-nine days—others had been on longer—and his death
greatly depressed both crews. They buried him deep in the ice
not far from their camp, and had made one day’s march southwards when
we met them. The place was only a mile off, so, when the wants of the
survivors had been attended to, we walked back to see it. Sunlight
streaming through low clouds of drifting snow made it difficult to
see far, but we soon recognised the little mound on the side of a
floe-hill. A rough cross, made of a sledge-batten and a paddle, and
with a text written on it in pencil, stood at the head. They could do
no more for him. Perhaps the sketch reproduced in this book (Plate No.
14) may serve as a humble memento of our shipmate’s grave, the most
northern of any race or of any time.
[Illustration: PLATE XIV.—THE MOST NORTHERN GRAVE, JUNE, 1876.—p. 65.
A little mound of ice on the side of a floe-hill, and a rough cross
made of a sledge batten and a paddle, mark our shipmate’s grave—the
most northern of any race or time.]
The first symptoms of scurvy appeared amongst the men only a few days
after the auxiliary sledges had quitted the party on the northward
march; and before the expenditure of half their provisions obliged
them to turn back, they had three men on the sledges, and half the
detachment crippled with stiff knees. Instead of finding the floes
increase in width as they left the land, they met with nothing worthy
of the name of floe. Their road lay across endless hummocks of crushed
fragments, piled on each other and drifted over with snow. One half
the party worked in advance, slowly hewing a road with their pickaxes.
The remainder toiled after them, hauling up each of the three sledges
in turn. On 12th May they reached their most northern point, north
latitude 83° 20´ 26´´, a little less than four hundred miles from the
Pole.
Considering the helpless state of the majority, we could not but
think them most fortunate in being able to regain the land before
even the strongest of them lost the strength and courage that carried
their message to the ship. Looking at them as they staggered feebly
along, panting at every breath, we forcibly realised the probable
fate of those large parties from Franklin’s ships that remain to
this day unaccounted for. Since reaching the depôt at Cape Joseph
Henry, the men had had ample supplies of lime juice, and nothing
now remained but to carry them to the ship before the disruption of
the pack. Immediately after falling in with them, the dog-sledge
had been sent back again to carry the news of their whereabouts to
the relief parties led by the Captain, and in a few hours it again
reappeared, carrying a pleasant surprise for the invalids—four Brent
geese, swinging by the necks from the back of the sledge. A camp, to
break the journey to the ship, had been formed at a little bay in
Black Cliffs, where the geese had been shot, and in a few minutes two
of our invalids that could best bear the journey were packed on the
sledge, and whirled off towards it behind the willing dogs. The main
relief parties were soon in sight—two sledges, manned in great part
by officers, Captain Nares himself pulling in the drag-ropes of the
leading sledge. Thus reinforced, three marches carried the whole party
back to the ship. The first instalment reached her by dog-sledge on
12th June. Next day, when Flagstaff Point was rounded, and the yards
and masts of the ship were again in view, the “Marco Polo” sledge went
in front. Her officer and three men had throughout steadily refused to
be treated as invalids, and now, hoisting their sledge pennant and the
Union Jack they had so gallantly carried to the most northern point
ever reached by land or sea, they led the way alongside the ship.
Such results as were obtained by the northern party have been greatly
lost sight of in the painful interest connected with the cause of the
scurvy, a subject which it would be altogether improper to enter upon
here. But the effort to penetrate across the polar pack has proved
other facts besides the necessity for a change in sledge diet. The
attempt was never a hopeful one, but if it had not been made, no one
would have been satisfied that it was impossible. If the men had been
able to march as far every day after the scurvy appeared as they did
before it—in other words, if the scurvy had not broken out—they would
have reached only twenty-seven miles further north. The Pole lay 435
miles from their most advanced depôt. Their total distance marched
was 521 geographical miles, so that under impossibly favourable
circumstances—if they had been able to travel in a perfectly straight
line, pulling a single sledge, and with ice as smooth as a lake, they
would have succeeded in reaching the Pole and half-way back again, a
conclusion which would be neither satisfactory nor instructive. If
a comparatively unbroken ice-cap exists, and if its surface affords
better travelling than its broken margin, it is possible that some
future expedition may yet find it lying nearer Cape Joseph Henry,
and travel over it to 84° or 85°, but certainly not to the Pole. The
broken condition of the floes is inexplicable; perhaps a small island
or bank exists to the northward. Those who choose to think so have two
facts to hang their faith on: a hare track was found thirty miles from
the land, and the depth of the Polar Sea at the furthest camp was only
seventy fathoms.
When the northern party arrived on board the ship, they found her very
different to what they had left her. The thawing snow had been thrown
off her upper deck, and the banking up round her sides had almost
disappeared. A deep pool of not very clean water lay all round the
ship, and in order to get on board it was necessary to cross a bridge
some twenty feet long made of poles and planks. The tide rose and fell
in this pool, showing that the ice in which the ship was imbedded was
actually supported like a bridge between the shore and the floebergs;
in fact, so fixed was the ship that, when the snow banking sank a
little more, the tide might be seen rising and falling against the
torn and ragged planking of her sides. Other pools of water lay on
the floes, especially in the neighbourhood of floebergs. Cracks, too,
were opening in every direction, and though there was as yet no motion
in the pack, it seemed as if it only wanted a strong wind to set it
grinding and roaring as it did in autumn. This state of affairs,
together with the two following even more important considerations,
made us very anxious about Lieutenant Aldrich and his crew. He had a
good store of lime juice laid out in depôt for his return journey,
but, with the experience of the northern party before us, we could
hardly hope that his crew would be free from scurvy when they reached
it. And again, we knew, from the reports of his auxiliary sledge, that
he had penetrated far to the westward across an absolute desert of
deep snow, which, if once softened, would effectually bar his return,
and cut him off from assistance.
In many places round the ship the snow was softening rapidly, so much
so that spots once hard enough to walk on were now totally impassable.
Even snow-shoes, which had proved most useful on the march to the
rescue of the northern party a week before, now balled so much under
the heel, and shovelled up such a weight of slush, that they could not
be used.
On clear days the depôt at Cape Joseph Henry was visible with a good
glass from the top of Cairn Hill. As long as it could be seen we knew
that the party had not reached it, and a most anxious watch was kept
on the little flickering miraged spot. Up to the 18th June no change
occurred, and then Lieutenant May and his indefatigable dogs went
off to try and find some trace of the missing party. On the 25th the
suspense came to an end. It was Sunday morning, and shortly after
service the news came from Cairn Hill that both Aldrich’s sledge and
the dog-sledge were in sight. The two tents pitched on the floes near
Mushroom Point could be made out plainly. They were evidently encamped
for the day as usual. Their homeward march would not begin till
evening, so at 7 p.m. everyone that could left the ship to meet them.
Rounding a low point, we came on them suddenly. The “Challenger” led
the way with colours flying and sledge-sail set. Her officer and the
last man left of his crew—a stalwart, light-hearted teetotaler—hauled
in her drag-belts. One man, unable to walk, lay muffled on the sledge,
the others kept up as best they could, taking turns on the dog-sledge.
They had turned back from a point two hundred and thirty geographical
miles to the westward, and had travelled, there and back, over seven
hundred miles of coast-line, but had found no shore leading poleward.
On their outward journey, as they passed each successive cape,
another and another came into view, till, on rounding a headland in
north latitude 83°.7, they found the shore-line bending off to the
southward. At this spot, since called Cape Columbia, a slaty cliff
sloping downward to the floes formed the most northern point of the
new world. For miles on either side the shore was lifeless, but
there on the slope of the cape, amongst the stones and snow, they
found a little Arctic poppy, with its tiny yellow petals withered
into lines and folds of green. Beyond Cape Columbia it was sometimes
hard to tell where the land ended and the frozen sea began; here and
there, banks of sand and gravel were bare of snow, but when you dug
into them with a pick there was deep ice beneath. On the left lay a
monotonous, snow-clad shore rising into irregular mountain groups,
and on the right, perennial floes, worn into mounds and valleys.
They still followed the shore-line, till, on their forty-fifth day’s
journey, they found themselves further south than the winter quarters
of the ship. Then they came to the limit of their provisions. There
was only enough left to carry them back to their farthest depôt.
And so, recovering in succession each of the little piles of stores
deposited on their outward journey, they retraced their footsteps
along this shore that no other human eyes than theirs had ever looked
on. For a week before the dog-sledge met them their state was even
worse than we had feared. The snow that bore them on their outward
way had softened; every step sank a different depth in it, sometimes
to the knee, sometimes to the waist. The men broke down one by one,
strength and appetite failed them, and every motion of their swollen
and stiffened limbs was an agony. They would haul the sledge five
or six yards forward, and then stop for want of breath. With fifty
miles of bottomless snow before them, it was no wonder some of them
began to think their prospects hopeless, and wanted to be left behind
rather than burden the others with their weight. But the sight of the
dog-sledge put new life in the party. Its four strong men and six
plucky dogs soon got them over their difficulties. Now they were safe
and close to the ship, and knees grew straighter than they had been
for many a day; those who could walk at all required an order to keep
them on the dog-sledge. There was amongst them an ex-member of the
“Bulldog” sledge, who had impressed himself specially on his former
sledge-mates by one peculiar trait—he never could see a joke till
hours after it was made, and then his sudden roars of laughter would
sometimes wake the whole crew from their first sleep. The poor fellow
was now amongst the worst, but he insisted on being helped into the
drag-belts, and staggered alongside the ship in harness. Thus ended
the spring sledging.
For another month hunting parties scoured the land, and two sledges
tried to find an overland route to the “Discovery” in case our ship
should suffer in the disruption of the pack; but so far as the
“Alert” was concerned, the exploring work of the year was over. Of
the “Discovery’s” proceedings we yet knew little. We had heard that
Lady Franklin Sound had proved a mere inlet. No news had reached us
from the North Greenland detachment, but the shore that we could see
from our mast-heads and from the hills of Floeberg Beach was long and
deeply indented, and its extreme limit at Cape Britannia was far to
the east, but little to the north.
The summer disruption of the pack was now evidently close at hand,
and it was therefore necessary to come to an immediate decision
about the future. We had men in both ships who had passed many
winters in “whalers,” and they were unanimously of opinion that the
“Alert” had little if any chance of ever leaving her winter quarters.
Those with knowledge of naval Arctic work thought otherwise. The
“break-up,” when it did come, would probably give us a choice of three
alternatives—namely, to advance, to stay where we were, or to retreat.
As for advancing, in some very favourable season we might perhaps
get the ship about twelve miles further westward and five further
north, but this was the very utmost that could be hoped for; and for
all purposes of northward extension our present position was just as
good. Any advance along the shores of Greenland was utterly out of the
question, for the eastward motion of the pack threw its chief pressure
on that shore. What, then, would another year at Floeberg Beach enable
us to accomplish? Assuming, against all precedent, that our crew
would completely recover and be as strong as ever they were—assuming,
too, that the whole force of the Expedition, guided by the experience
already gained, could be launched northwards over the floes, there
could even then be no hope whatever of adding one degree to our north
latitude.
[Illustration: THE NORTH COAST OF GREENLAND, FROM CAPE BRITANNIA (AT
EXTREME LEFT OF UPPER SKETCH) TO THE MOUTH OF ROBESON CHANNEL AND CAPE
RAWSON (AT RIGHT OF LOWER SECTION). SKETCHED FROM THE MAIN-TOP OF
H.M.S. “ALERT” AT HER WINTER QUARTERS.]
Under such circumstances, retreat, if possible before the relief ship
was despatched from England, became a duty. There was one objection
to it that was often joked about, but of course never seriously
entertained—“The public will not be satisfied unless you stay one or
two more winters, or at least lose a ship.” We little knew how very
near we should be to doing both.
[Illustration: PLATE XV.—BACK FROM THE FARTHEST NORTH.—p. 65.
On June 14th, the northern detachment, with the relief sledges sent
to its assistance, returned to the ship from its ten weeks’ march
over the polar floes. The detachment had started northward seventeen
strong, but only four remained able to pull in the drag-belts, and of
these one was the officer in command. Frost-peeled and sun-burnt, with
stiffened knees, and faces and clothes stained with stearine smoke,
these four led the way alongside the ship, flying the Union Jack they
had carried a month’s hard march beyond every predecessor.]