We struck with a shivering crash that shook the _Jeannette_ from keel
to main truck, and hung there with yards banging violently. Lucky for
us now, that nineteen inch thickness of heavily reenforced side and the
stout backing of those new trusses below—that impact would have stove
in the side of any ordinary vessel!
But though we had survived that first smashing blow, we were in grave
danger. Impotent with sails and rudder to claw off that ice bank, we
lay there in a heavy seaway, rolling and grinding against the jagged
shelf on which the wind was pushing us.
That put it up to the black gang. I rushed below into the fireroom.
“Bartlett!” I yelled. “Wide open on your dampers! Accelerate that
draft!”
“Sharvell! Iversen!” I sang out sharply to my two coalheavers. “Lively
with the slice bars! Cut those banked fires to pieces! Get ’em blazing!”
For thirty anxious minutes we fought before our two Scotch boilers
with slice bars, rakes, and shovels to raise steam, while through our
solid sides as we toiled below the water line, we heard the groaning
and the crunching of the ice digging into our planking and from above
the slapping of the sails, the howling of the dogs, and the kicks and
curses of the seamen still struggling futilely to get the ship to claw
off to windward.
At last with fires roaring, the needle of our pressure gauge started
to climb toward the popping point; I reported we were ready with the
engines.
De Long doused all sail; under steam alone with our helm hard aport
and propeller turning over at half speed, we swung our bow at last to
starboard into the wind and slowly eased away from the pack, decidedly
thankful to get clear with no more damage than a terrible gouging of
our stout elm planking. And under steam alone for the rest of the night
we stood on dead slow nearly to windward between east and southeast,
keeping that ice pack a respectable distance on our port hand till dawn
came and with it, a fog!
For the next few watches, we played tag with the ice-fields, standing
off when the fog came in, standing in when the fog lifted, searching
for an open lead to the northward. At one time during this period, the
fog thinned to show to our intense astonishment, off to the southeast a
bark under full sail, a whaler undoubtedly, standing wisely enough to
the southward away from the ice, but so far off, anxious as we were not
to lose any northing while we sought an open lead, we never ran down
and spoke him.
Soon, a little regretfully, we lost him in the fog, the last vessel
we ever saw, homeward bound no doubt and a missed opportunity for us
to send a farewell message home before we entered the ice-pack around
Wrangel Land.
Finally with nothing but ice in sight except to the southeast, De Long
decided to try a likely looking lead opening to leeward, toward the
northwest. So with the captain in the crow’s-nest and the ice-pilot
perched on the topsail yard, we entered the lead, Lieutenant Chipp
on the bridge conning the ship as directed from aloft. Cautiously we
proceeded in a general northwesterly direction up that none too wide
lead of water with broken ice-fields fairly close aboard us now on both
sides, for some seven hours till late afternoon, when simultaneously
the lead suddenly narrowed and the fog thickened so much that we
stopped, banked fires, and put out an ice-anchor to a nearby floe.
Chilled, cramped, and dead-tired from his long day in the crow’s-nest,
De Long laid down from aloft and promptly crawled into his bunk, while
the fog continuing, we lay to our ice-anchor till next day.
For the first time on our cruise, the temperature that night dropped
below freezing, with the odd result that by morning between the fog and
the freezing weather, our rigging was a mass of shimmering snow and
frost, magically turning the _Jeannette_ into a fairy ship, a lovely
sight with her every stay and shroud shining and sparkling in the
early dawn, and the running rigging a swaying crystal web of jewels
glistening against the sky.
But as the fog still hung on, and we consequently could not move, I
am afraid our captain, more interested in progress northward than in
beauty, gave scant heed, and it was left to Ambler and me, being early
on deck, really to drink in the soul-satisfying loveliness of that
scene.
Some new ice, a thin film only, made around the ship during the
night, the weather being calm and the surface of our lead therefore
undisturbed and free to freeze, but it was insignificant in thickness
compared to the pack ice surrounding us, which seemed everywhere to be
at least seven feet in depth, of which thickness some two feet were
above water and the rest below, with some hummocks here and there
pushed up above the smooth pack to a height of six feet perhaps.
By afternoon, the fog cleared enough for us to haul in our ice-anchor,
spread fires and get underway along our lead, which running now in a
northeasterly direction we followed for two hours, poking and ramming
our way between drifting floes. Then to our delighted surprise, we
emerged into the open sea again, open, that is, between east and north
only, with ice filling the horizon in all other directions.
With some searoom to work in, we speeded the engines and headed north,
where we soon passed a drifting tree, torn up by the roots, an odd bit
of flotsam to encounter in those waters, but which as it must have
come from the south encouraged us since it lent some weight, however
slight, to the Japanese Current theory about which we were beginning to
entertain serious doubts. But we had little time to speculate on this,
for soon from the lookout came the cry,
“Land ho!”
Sure enough, bearing northwest, apparently forty miles off and much
distorted by mirage, was land which from our position and its bearings
we judged to be Herald Island. This island I must hasten to explain was
so named, not after the _New York Herald_ whose owner, Mr. Bennett, was
financing our expedition, but after H.M.S. _Herald_, whose captain,
Kellett, had discovered and landed on that island thirty years before,
in 1849.
Immediately from alow and aloft all hands were scanning the island,
through binoculars, through telescopes, and with the naked eye.
There was much animated discussion among us as to its distance,
but regardless of that we could do nothing to close on it, for the
ice-field lay between. So as night fell, we merely steamed in circles
at dead slow speed, just clear of the pack.
Day broke fine and crisp with a light northerly breeze off the ice.
Picking the most promising lead toward Herald Island, we pushed the
_Jeannette_ into it, and for two hours amidst drifting floes we made
our way with no great trouble, when, to our dismay, we began to meet
new ice in the lead, from one to two inches in thickness. For another
two hours, we pushed along through this, our steel-clad stem easily
breaking a path through which we drove our hull, with the thin ice
scratching and gouging our elm doubling, when we came at last smack up
against the thickest pack we had yet seen, some ten to fifteen feet of
solid ice. This, needless to say, brought us up short. Since we could
do nothing else, we ran out our ice-anchor to the floe ahead, while we
waited hopefully for some shift in the pack to make us a new opening.
With clearer weather, several times during the morning as we lay in
the ice, we made out distinctly not only Herald Island but other land
beyond, above, and also to the southwest of it, which from everything
we had been told, should be part of that Wrangel Land on which we
were banking so much to afford us a base for our sledging operations
toward the Pole. Consequently we searched the distant outlines of this
continent with far greater interest than we had bestowed on the nearer
profile of Herald Island, but to no conclusion. Danenhower, Chipp, and
De Long, all experienced seamen, strained their eyes through glasses,
scanning what could be seen of the coast of Wrangel Land, but so far
even from agreeing on its remoteness, looking across ice instead of
water so upset their habits of judging, that their estimates of its
distance varied all the way from forty to one hundred miles, while De
Long even doubted whether what he saw beyond Herald Island was land
at all but simply a mirage. Being only an engineer, I took no part in
these discussions, more concerned myself in staring at the unyielding
edges of the nearby floes and wondering, if our navigation for the next
few weeks was to consist mostly of traversing leads filled with such
floating ice cakes, how long we could hope to go before an ice floe
sucked in under our counter knocked off a propeller blade, and how long
a time would elapse before our four spare blades were all used up.
But there was no great occasion for such worry on my part. Not till
afternoon could we move at all, and then only for a couple of hours,
when once more we were brought up by solid ice ahead and with banked
fires again anchored to a floe, called it a day, and laid below for
supper.
Supper was an unusually somber meal. Such an early season encounter
with the ice-fields and at so low a latitude, was a sad blow to our
hopes of exploration. De Long, at the head of the table, served out
silently as Tong Sing placed the dishes before him; I, on his left,
carved the mutton and aided him at serving—to Chipp first, then to
the others on both sides of the table down to Danenhower, who as mess
treasurer sat at the foot of the table opposite the captain. Potatoes,
stewed dried apples, bread, butter, and tea made up the rest of our
unpretentious meal, the simplicity of which perhaps still further
emphasized our situation and put a damper on any conversation. Only the
shuffling of the Chinese steward’s feet on the deck as he padded round
the little wardroom with the plates broke the quiet.
De Long, brooding over the ship’s situation, was gradually struck by
the absence of conversation and its implications. More I think to make
conversation than in the hope of gaining any information, he picked
out the ice-pilot on my left, sawing earnestly away at his mutton, and
asked him,
“Well, Mr. Dunbar, do you think we’ll get through this lead to Herald
Island?”
Dunbar, absorbed like the rest of us in his thoughts, surprised me by
the speed, so unusual for him, with which without even looking up he
snapped out his reply,
“No, cap’n, we won’t!” Then more slowly as he turned his grizzled face
toward the head of the table, he added vehemently, “And what’s more,
while God’s giving us the chance, I’d wind her in that little water
hole astern of us and head out of this ice back to open water before
the bottom drops out of the thermometer and we’re frozen in here for a
full due!”
Astonished by the heat of this unexpected reply, De Long looked from
the old whaler, who in truth had hurled a lance into the very heart of
each man’s thoughts, to the rest of us, all suddenly straightened up
by the thrust.
“And why, Mr. Dunbar?” in spite of a pronounced flush he asked mildly.
“Where can we do better, may I ask?”
“Further east, off Prince Patrick’s Land, to the north’ard of the coast
of North America,” replied Dunbar shortly. “A whaler’ll stay in open
water further north’n this over on the Alaska side most any time; the
current sets that way toward Greenland, not this side toward Siberia.”
De Long calmly shook his head.
“No use, pilot; we’re not whaling and we’ll not go east. That would
take us away from Wrangel Land, and sledging north along the coasts
of Wrangel Land’s our only hope for working into the real north from
Behring Strait. No, we can’t do it. We’ll have to take our chances
here.”
Dunbar, his suggestion overruled, made no reply, masking his
disappointment by hunching a little lower over his plate and hacking
away once more at the chunk of mutton before him. And as suddenly as it
had flared up, all conversation ceased.
September 6 dawned, for us on the _Jeannette_ a day to which we often
looked back with mingled feelings. During the night our water lead
froze up behind us. In the morning, as far as the eye could see in
every direction now was only ice—no water, no open leads anywhere.
A fog hung over the sea, blotting out Herald Island, but a light
northerly wind gave some promise of clearing the atmosphere later on.
We gathered at breakfast in the cabin, a somber group. Under way for a
week since leaving Cape Serdze Kamen, we had made but 240 miles to the
north, to reach only lat. 71° 30′ N., a point easily to be exceeded by
any vessel all year round in the Atlantic. But here we were, completely
surrounded by ice. Was this the exceptionally open Arctic summer, so
free of ice, that in Unalaska we had been informed awaited us?
Danenhower, loquacious as always, broke the silence, observing to no
one in particular,
“This damned coffee’s even worse than usual, all water and no coffee
beans. Ah Sam’s had time enough to learn by now. Can’t anyone persuade
that Chink to put _some_ coffee in the pot? What’s he saving it for?”
“Maybe the sight of all that ice discourages him,” observed Ambler.
“Perhaps he thinks we’re in for a long hard winter and he’s got to
save. I reckon he’s right too, for that ice pack sure looks to me as if
it never has broken up and turned to water yet.”
“Right, surgeon.” Captain De Long at the head of the table, busily
engaged in ladling out a dish of hominy, looked up at Ambler and nodded
pessimistically,
“And what’s worse for us, it looks to me as if it never will, unless
someone whistles up a heavy gale to break up the pack.”
Chipp, uncomplainingly engaged in drinking down his portion of the
insipid coffee, took objection at this.
“Don’t try that, captain! In any gale that’d break up _this_ pack the
pack’d break the _Jeannette_ up in the process. No, let Nature take her
course melting that ice; it may be slower but it’s safer.”
“Come down to earth!” broke in Danenhower. “Let’s leave the pack a
minute; it’ll be there for a while yet. I was talking about coffee.
Hasn’t anybody in this mess got influence enough to get Ah Sam to pack
a little coffee in the pot for all this water to work on?”
“Well,” grinned Collins, seeing a chance to slip in a pun, “you’re the
navigator, Dan. Why don’t you try shooting that Celestial’s equator?
That ought to stir him up.”
Collins, chuckling happily, glanced round for approval.
Danenhower twisted his broad shoulders in his chair, directed a blank
stare at Collins.
“Huh? If that’s another one of your puns, Mr. Meteorologist, what’s the
point?”
Collins stopped laughing and looked pained.
“Don’t you see it, Dan?” he asked. “Why, that one’s rich! Celestial,
equator, and you’re a navigator. Now, do you get it?”
Danenhower, determined with the rest of us to squelch Collins’ puns,
looking as innocent of understanding as before, replied flatly,
“No! I’m too dumb, I guess. Where’s the point?”
“Why, Ah Sam’s a Chinaman, isn’t he?”
“If he’s not, then I’m one,” agreed Danenhower. “So far I’m with you.”
“Well, all Chinamen are sons of Heaven, aren’t they? So that makes
him a Celestial. See? And you’re a navigator so you shoot the stars;
they’re celestial too. And anybody’s stomach’s his equator, isn’t it?
You see, it all hangs together fine. Now do you get it?” inquired
Collins anxiously.
“I’m damned if I see any connection in all this rigmarole of yours
with my attempts at getting better coffee,” muttered Danenhower. “Does
anybody?” He looked round.
Solemnly first De Long, then Chipp, Ambler and I all shook our heads,
gazing blandly at Collins for further elucidation as to what the joke
might be.
Collins looked from one to another of us, then in disgust burst out,
“The farther all of you get from San Francisco, the weaker grow your
intellects!” He leaned back sulkily. “By the time we get to the Pole,
you won’t know your own names. Why, that one’s good! They’d see it in
New York right off. I’ve half a mind to try it out on that Indian,
Alexey. I’ll bet even he sees it!”
“Why don’t you try it on Ah Sam instead, then?” queried Danenhower,
rising. “If our cook sees it, there’s hope. Maybe next you can make
him see why he ought to put some coffee berries in the pot when
he makes coffee, and that’ll be something even my thick skull can
understand!” He jerked on his peacoat, lifted his bulky form from his
chair, and strode to the door. “I’m going on deck. I’m too dumb, I
guess, to see the points of Collins’ puns. But maybe if I’m not too
blind yet, I can see the ice, anyway.”
With a wink at Ambler, our navigator vanished. It seemed to be working;
perhaps we might yet cure Collins of his continuous stream of puns, for
most of them were atrocious, and anyway, having now had a chance to get
acquainted at close range with punning, I heartily agreed with whoever
it was, Samuel Johnson I think, in averring that a pun was the lowest
form of wit. With us the case was serious—here with the long Arctic
night approaching, locking us within the narrow confines of our vessel,
we were shipmates with a punster and no escape except to break him of
it!
I rose also and went out on deck, the while Collins turned his
attention to Dunbar, trying to get him, who also knew something
of navigation, to admit that he at least saw the point in the
meteorologist’s play on words, but I am afraid he picked the wrong
person, for Dunbar’s grim visage remained wholly unresponsive.
Out on deck, clad in a heavy peacoat with a sealskin cap jammed tightly
down over my bald spot, for the temperature was down to 26° F., I
looked around. A distant view was impossible because of fog. Nearby
were a few disconnected pools of water covered by thin ice, but short
of miraculously jumping the ship from one pool to another over the
intervening floes, there seemed no way for us to make progress. I
glanced down our side. For several feet above the waterline, the paint
was gone and our elm doubling was everywhere scraped bright with here
and there a deep gouge in the wood from some jagged floe.
De Long joined me at the rail, looked despondently off through the
mist, his pipe clenched between his teeth, the while he puffed
vigorously away at it.
“A grand country for any man to learn patience in, chief,” he remarked
glumly. “Since we can’t push through the pack to Wrangel Land over
there on the western horizon, I’ve been hoping and praying at least
to get the ship in to Herald Island to make winter quarters before we
were frozen in, but look what’s happened!” He gazed over the bulwark at
the nearby hummocks. “Yesterday I hoped today would make us an opening
through to the land; today I hope tomorrow’ll do it. And tomorrow—?”
He shrugged his shoulders and left me, to climb our frosted ratlines
to the crow’s-nest on the chance that from that elevation he might see
over the fog. This turned out a futile effort, since not till one p.m.
when the fog finally lifted, were we able to move.
With the weather clearing, I got up steam while De Long, armed with
binoculars, perched himself once more in the crow’s-nest, Dunbar again
straddled the fore topsail yard, Chipp took the bridge, and we got
underway for as odd a bit of navigation as all my years of going to sea
have ever witnessed.
To start with, the only possible opening was on the port bow, but with
heavy ice ahead and astern, there was insufficient room to maneuver
the ship by backing to head her for the opening. So over the side went
Bosun Cole and half the starboard watch, dragging with them one end of
a six-inch hawser. Selecting a sizeable ice hummock a few shiplengths
off on the port side which gave a proper lead to our forecastle bitts,
Cole expertly threw a clove hitch in the hawser round the hummock,
using the ice, so to speak, as a bollard; while on deck, Quartermaster
Nindemann heaved in on the ship end of that line with our steam winch,
warping the bow smartly round to port till it pointed fair for the
opening, when Chipp gave me the signal,
“Slow ahead!”
With a few turns of the propeller, we pushed our bow into the crack
between the floes. After that, with the line cast off, it was a case
of full out on the throttle. With connecting rods, cranks, and pistons
flying madly round, we certainly churned up a wild wake in that narrow
lead wedging those cakes apart while the _Jeannette_ squeezed herself
in between the ice floes.
And so it went for the next three hours, the captain and the ice-pilot
directing from aloft, while in the engine room we nearly tore the
engines off their bedplates and the smoking thrust block off its
foundation with all our sudden changes from “Full ahead” to “Full
astern” and everything in between, while the _Jeannette_ rammed,
squeezed, backed, and butted her way through the ice, sometimes relying
only on the engines, sometimes only on Jack Cole and his mates plodding
along on the floes ahead of the ship dragging that six-inch hawser and
occasionally taking a turn with it on some hummock to help warp the
ship into position for ramming. Our solid bow and thick sides took a
terrific beating that watch as we hammered our way through pack ice
deeper than our keel, but everything held, and when we finally ceased
a little after four, it was not from any fear of the consequences to
the _Jeannette_, but only because the fog came down again, blotting out
everything.
Once more we ran out our ice-anchor, and with that secured, recalled
aboard the warping party. I came up out of the engine room, having
taken enough out of our engines in a few hours to drive us halfway to
China. Chipp, Danenhower, and the captain all were gathered on the
bridge over my head.
“Well, Dan, how much’ve we made good toward Herald Island?” I enquired
eagerly of Danenhower.
The navigator’s thickset brows contracted dejectedly as he peered down
at me over the after rail.
“Maybe a mile, chief,” he answered.
Maybe a mile? And to get that mile, keeping up a full head of steam
all the time for ramming, I had been burning coal furiously these past
three hours. A hundred miles of progress at that rate and our coal
would be completely gone. I turned questioningly toward the captain,
asked,
“I suppose it’s bank fires now and save coal, hey, brother?”
Before answering De Long looked off through the fog. Ice ahead, ice
astern, ice on both beams, with only tiny disconnected patches of water
showing here and there among the floes. He shook his head.
“No, chief, we won’t bank this time. Let your fires die out altogether;
save every pound of coal you can. If a good chance comes to move, I’ll
give you ample time to get steam up again.”
And so we left it. As the day ended, the _Jeannette_, hemmed in by ice,
lay an inert ship, unable to move in any direction, as a matter of form
only, held to an ice-anchor; while below, after securing the engines, I
reduced the watch to one man only, young Sharvell, coalheaver, left to
tend the boilers while the fires died out in them.
The temperature, which never during that day rose above the freezing
point, started to drop toward evening and soon fell to 23°. The result
was inevitable. Young ice, making during the night over all patches of
open water, had by morning completely cemented together the old pack.
One look over the side in the midwatch satisfied me there would be no
call for the engines next day, nor unless something startling happened,
for many a day. All the steam I could put behind my engines could not
stir the _Jeannette_ one inch from her bed, and as for warping her
now with our winch, our stoutest hawsers would be about as useful as
threads in tearing her from that grip of ice.
And so September 6, 1879, ended with the helpless _Jeannette_ solidly
frozen into the Arctic ice pack.