That freezing into immobility of the _Jeannette_ in so low a latitude,
fell like an icy shower on the spirits of our wardroom mess, and from
that day sociability vanished. Already Dunbar and Newcomb were not on
speaking terms; Collins regarded me sullenly and the rest of the mess
hardly less so; and the captain, who on leaving St. Michael’s, had
after an unpleasant disagreement with Mr. Collins in the wardroom,
decided that he should be more punctilious and less informal in his
intercourse with us, now withdrew into his official shell completely.
For myself, this worried me not at all, for I well knew the effect that
responsibility has on most skippers, and particularly realized (as De
Long seemed finally also to have done) that for a captain not much
senior in years nor in rank to most of his officers, close comradeship
is incompatible with the maintenance of proper respect and authority.
However, if we had no sociability to cheer us up, we soon had plenty
of other matters to make us forget the lack. The ice pack which held
us was evidently under way, headed northward, and we had not been in
the pack a day before the pressure, nipping us on the beam, shoved the
_Jeannette_ up on a submerged tongue of ice projecting somewhere below
our port bilge, giving us a list to starboard of over 5° and causing
some inconvenience in getting about. As if this were not enough, after
a few watches to our great uneasiness our list suddenly increased to
9°, and incidentally jammed our rudder hard starboard.
Here was cause enough for real worry. A permanent list of 9° is in
itself a great nuisance in getting about on a ship even in the
tropics, but now with the temperature below freezing and the decks
slippery with ice, we were in a bad way to keep footing. And if the
list got worse and carried away our rudder or laid us on our beam ends
as it threatened to do, what then?
We promptly bestirred ourselves. Under Lieutenant Chipp’s direction,
improvised torpedoes made of kegs full of black powder were planted in
the ice under our stern, but with no results. In spite of an all day
struggle, not a torpedo could we explode. To Chipp’s intense chagrin,
every fuse we had proved defective and would not burn. And an attempt
to fire the charges with that newfangled device, electricity, also
failed, apparently because our current was so weak it all leaked away
through our non-insulated copper wires into the ice, leaving not enough
at the terminals to set off our torpedoes.
To aggravate us while we toiled to straighten up our ship, we had an
extraordinarily clear day, giving a splendid view across the ice of
Herald Island off to the westward, with far beyond it a distinct range
of peaks—Wrangel Land which, when we set out on our expedition we had
fondly expected to spend the winter exploring. Frozen in, Heaven only
knows how far away from it, we gritted our teeth and worked in the
freezing weather to explode those torpedoes but to no purpose. Night
fell and left us still in that perilous position.
Our fourth day in the ice found us still struggling to right the ship.
The torpedoes were abandoned. We resorted to more primitive methods,
those used centuries ago on sailing ships to careen for cleaning the
hulls.
Jack Cole, bosun, and a gang of seamen swarmed up the icy shrouds,
rigged a couple of heavy tackles at the mastheads, one at the fore, the
other at the main, and secured their lower ends to ice claws hooked
under the thick floes on our port side.
Then to the hoarse cry of the bosun,
“Yo, heave!” our entire crew, stretched out along the falls, lay back
and foot by foot hove them well taut, till our port shrouds came slack
and the captain signalled to belay hauling lest something carry away.
But even under this terrific strain on our masts tending to roll us to
port, our vessel, gripped firmly by the ice, righted herself not an
inch.
De Long, regarding with keen disappointment our strained cordage and
bent masts, had still one more shot in the locker. Torpedoes had
failed, careening had failed, but we had yet an ice saw. He motioned to
Alfred Sweetman, our tall English carpenter, standing at the base of
the mainmast dubiously eyeing the overstrained crosstrees above him.
“Rig that ice saw, Sweetman!”
The carpenter responded hurriedly. While Jack Cole braced back the
main yard so that its port end plumbed our quarter, Sweetman and his
mates broke out from the hold our ice saw, a huge steel blade twenty
feet long and broad in proportion, its cutting edge studded with coarse
teeth that would have done credit to any full-grown shark.
Under Nindemann’s direction, the port watch went over the side armed
with pick-axes and crowbars and started to break a hole for the saw
through the ice on our quarter, while Cole and Sweetman swung the saw
from a tackle at the yardarm, weighted its lower end with a small kedge
anchor, and then awaited the completion of the hole through the floe.
They had several hours to wait, for not till the gang on the pack had
dug down fifteen feet did a crowbar go through into the open water
below, which, gushing unexpectedly upward into the hole, soaked the
diggers with freezing spray and sent them madly scrambling up the rough
sides of their excavation.
Fifteen feet of ice! De Long’s mustaches drooped for a full due when
Nindemann reported that. Only mid-September, and already fast in ice
extending two feet below our keel! A gigantic block of ice to try to
cut, but there was nothing for it but to saw away if we were ever to
right our ship. Fortunately our saw was at least long enough.
The bosun plumbed the hole with the kedge anchor suspended from the
yardarm, hauled everything two-blocks, and then,
“Let go!” he roared.
Down came the kedge with a run, crashed into the thin remaining
ice-floor of the hole, broke through, carrying the lower end of the saw
with it, and we were ready.
Then commenced four hours of strenuous labor. Sweetman and Nindemann,
armed with crowbars, down on the pack guided the sides of the saw blade
for a fore and aft cut, while on deck the starboard watch stretched out
along the fall, alternately heaved and slacked away, on the upstroke
lifting the weight of both saw and kedge anchor, on the downstroke
depending on the weight of the kedge only to drag the blade down again,
while on both strokes the steel teeth rasped and shrieked and tortured
our ears as they tore into the solid ice.
But it was useless. In spite of Sweetman’s skilled guidance and
Nindemann’s brawny shoulders, it was next to impossible to keep that
blade going straight against such thick ice, for the bottom of the
saw being so far below them, actually guiding it was wholly out of
question, with the result that on nearly every stroke the saw jammed in
the cut. After half a day’s arduous labor the net results were a badly
bent saw, hardly a fathom of cut ice, and such a flow of sulphurous
language both on deck and on the ice pack from those handling the saw
that I doubt not it may well have melted more ice than we cut.
So at eight bells, when the gang over the side knocked off for mess, De
Long, ruefully contemplating the twisted saw temporarily hanging in the
clear at the yardarm, and the insignificant length of the cut compared
with the stretch of ice along our hull which had yet to be severed,
gave up and silently motioned Cole to unrig everything. With alacrity,
all hands as soon as this was done, scrambled below to the forecastle.
A few minutes later, in the comparative warmth of the wardroom (50°
instead of the 16° out on deck) with some difficulty on account of the
slope, I eased myself into my chair near the head of the table on the
captain’s left, silently bracing my plate with my knife to keep it from
sliding away to starboard while Tong Sing ladled out the soup, hardly
more than half filling my plate lest the steaming liquid overflow the
low side.
“Well, mates,” observed Danenhower, at the low end of the table,
contemplating his scanty portion, “such is life in the Arctic! We’re
in for this list all winter. I’m glad I don’t like soup anyway. Stew’s
more in my line.”
“Better see Ah Sam, then, Dan,” I advised, “and make sure he thickens
that stew enough to insure a safe angle of repose, or your stew’ll flow
away like the soup.”
“Don’t worry, boys; I’ll fix it,” broke in our executive officer, Mr.
Chipp. “If we can’t right our ship, I can right this mess table anyhow.
I’ll have the carpenter saw a foot off each of the legs on the high end
and that’ll about compensate for the heel and level it off for us.”
“Chipp, I’m ashamed of you,” I objected. “Your cure’s worse’n the
disease. That’ll fix the slope, true enough, but what’ll the skipper
and you and I do? Shortening these legs a foot will put this end of the
table in our laps. How’ll we eat then; cross-legged on the deck like
a lot of Japs? Maybe you can, you must be used to it, being just back
from there! But I’m afraid I’m too stiff in the joints to flemish down
my legs properly!”
Chipp, who had just come back from the Orient to join the _Jeannette_,
saw the point, considered a moment, then looked speculatively down the
table to the low end where sat the mess treasurer and the juniors in
the mess.
“You’re right, chief. That’ll never do; there’s too much rank up here
to monkey with this end of the table. Instead, I’ll have Sweetman level
off by adding a foot to those table legs on the starboard end.”
Immediately Danenhower, facing the captain from the low end of the
table, flared up.
“And what do you expect _me_ to do then, Mr. Chipp? Get myself a high
chair like a damned infant so I can reach the table while I eat? And
wear a bib too, maybe? Forget it!”
Chipp, squelched from both ends of the table, shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, I give up, mates! Anchor your soup plates anyway you can then.
But don’t be blaming me if your chow finishes in the scuppers instead
of down your gullets.” He relapsed into silence.
The meal proceeded with difficulty. Tong Sing, bending low over each
man’s shoulder in succession, sought to maintain his grip on the
sloping deck the while he tried to level off the platter of salt pork
long enough for each to help himself, but it was evident that it was
only a matter of time till one of us got the contents of that platter
in his lap. After two near accidents, avoided only by skillful juggling
of the platter by the impassive Tong Sing, the captain motioned the
steward to quit serving and put the dish down before him.
“Enough, Charley. Set that platter down right here. Lend a hand,
Melville, at passing those plates, and I’ll serve out myself. We’ll
have to let formality in serving go by the board till spring’s here
and we’re on an even keel again. Let’s have your plate now, Dan,” he
called, as the relieved steward deposited the heaping dish of pork
before the captain and padded off to the galley for the potatoes.
“Spring? When does spring arrive around these parts?” asked Danenhower
irrelevantly, passing his plate.
“God knows, I don’t!” replied Chipp. “By June, I hope though. Why, Dan?”
“By June, eh?” The navigator counted on his fingers. “Nine months yet.
And nine months more of having to navigate these careened decks is
going to be tough on the legs. I’ll have a permanent limp in my left
leg long before that, trying to keep erect.”
Dr. Ambler seated in the middle of the table looked at Danenhower,
nodded seriously, and in his quiet Virginian drawl observed,
“You’re right, Dan. And since we can’t right the ship, we’ll have to
level off the crew. What Chipp just said gave me an idea. How about my
amputating a couple of inches from everybody’s left leg, just enough to
counteract the list? That’ll keep you all on an even keel.”
“Hah, hah!” roared Chipp, looking at the doctor in mock amazement. “For
a naval surgeon, my dear Ambler, your lack of seamanship pains me!
Shorten our left legs, indeed? That’s all very well for a starboard
list when a man’s going forward, but where’ll he be when he comes about
and wants to go aft? Worse than ever, with his short flipper on the
wrong side! Not for me, doctor. I’ll reef my legs myself on whichever
side’s necessary. Your idea’s worse than mine!”
“I’m sunk,” admitted Ambler with a grin. “So that won’t work after all!
And it looked such a grand scheme with a little easy surgery on the
crew to avoid having to operate on all that ice!”
“If we stay here long enough,” observed Newcomb, “according to that new
theory which my fellow naturalist, that great English scientist Darwin,
recently advanced, Nature will accommodate us to our environment. The
survival of the fittest, you know.”
“Well, ‘Bugs,’ that means we’ll all ultimately become polar bears or
perish,” commented Ambler. “And since I don’t look with pleasure to
doing either, let’s hope you and your biology are both wrong.”
By this time, fortunately all were served, and in the ensuing attack
on the salt pork, conversation languished. But in spite of the
badinage about our situation and the half-humorous remedies proposed
to alleviate the nuisance of forever battling the sloping decks in
working, the sloping tables in eating, and even the sloping bunks when
we tried to sleep, it was evident that in the back of everyone’s mind
was a lurking fear of what next the ice had in store for us. And the
futility of our efforts in combating the ice pack were now too plain
to all of us to sustain any further hope of effecting in the slightest
degree any position our ship might assume, let alone her movements.
For some days we drifted impotently with the pack toward the northwest.
With broken ice under pressure piling up along our high side and
jamming our rudder hard against the pintles, the captain (who inwardly
had been hoping for a series of September gales to come along and break
up the pack and free us) at last reluctantly gave the order to unship
it, which task with great difficulty on account of the thick ice, Cole
and Sweetman finally succeeded in accomplishing, tricing the rudder
up to the davits across the stern. So the end of the first week found
us a rudderless ship moving at the whim of the ice pack, all chance
of exploration gone, stopped at latitude 71° North, a latitude which
had easily been reached in these same waters twenty years before by
a sailing ship. And gnawing bitterly at our captain’s soul was the
knowledge that till summer came to free us, in spite of steam or sail,
the _Jeannette_ Polar Expedition must drift idly with the pack, so far
from the Pole as to be the laughing stock of the world when it became
known, the while we consumed our supplies, burned up our coal, and wore
out our bodies to no purpose.
Where was the pack taking us? Anxiously we daily watched the trend of
the driftlead dropped to the bottom through a hole in the ice under
our stern, then checked against occasional bearings of distant Herald
Island and the few astronomical observations Danenhower got through the
fogs. The navigator announced finally that we were drifting northwest
with the pack, at a rate of about two miles per _day_. Where would that
lead us? And when? By spring, to the shores of Wrangel Land perhaps,
the captain hoped, not overly optimistic apparently even for actual
realization of that prospect.
Meanwhile, I prepared for the worst below. To save coal, fires had
on the day the ice caught us, been allowed to die out under the
boilers. Now with our underwater hull practically sheathed in ice,
the cold below was increasing, and to avoid freezing boilers and
pipelines and bursting them as a result, it was necessary to free
everything of water, leaving boilers, pumps, and engines empty, dry,
and unfortunately as a consequence, unavailable for immediate service
if required. Not to have some steam up and his auxiliaries, at least,
ready for service, would irk any engineer. But to be even more helpless
below, not even to have boilers filled and ready to light off in an
emergency, gave me serious cause for worry. However, there was no way
out. Keeping the water warm in the boilers and lines meant keeping
fires alight which would consume precious fuel and leave us with
empty bunkers when the ice at last released us and we could steam
again. Keeping water in the boilers and lines without the fires, meant
freezing and bursting our lines and perhaps our boilers, leaving us
helpless to utilize the coal we had saved. One horn of that dilemma was
as bad as the other; was ever an engineer faced with a worse choice
of evils? The only way out was to be even more reckless, to empty
everything, save coal, avoid freezing, and trust to luck that in a
pinch somehow the boilers could be filled again with water, fired up,
and steam raised once more before it was too late.
And that I did. Lee, machinist, and Bartlett, fireman, who were acting
as my assistant engineers, turned to with their wrenches. Aided by
the rest of the black gang, Boyd, Lauterbach, Iversen, and Sharvell,
serving as a bucket brigade, they were soon busy breaking pipe joints,
draining out water, drying out the boilers, and finally assembling
everything as free of moisture as it was humanly possible to get it.
And that completed the job of reducing the _Jeannette_ to a helpless
hulk. No rudder with which to steer, no steam with which to move her
engines, she was more helpless even than Noah’s _Ark_, which indeed she
soon came to resemble when the portable deck house we brought with us
from San Francisco was finally erected.