The _Jeannette_ sinking? Sharvell must be crazy. The ship had gone
through far worse squeezes before without a leak. Nevertheless,
forgetting our encounter, I raced down the ladder. There was the
fireroom entirely flooded from port to starboard, with water already
over the floorplates and rising steadily toward my empty boilers!
For a second I stared in cold dismay. No steam on the ship to run a
pump. If the water rose over our furnaces before we got our fires going
and steam up, there would never be any steam—and we were through! Once
the water got that high, nothing under Heaven could prevent the ship
from filling at her leisure and sinking from under us. I had to get
steam and get it fast!
On deck, Sharvell had already spread the alarm. Even as I watched the
rising water, sizing up my procedure, estimating my chances of getting
steam before the water got us, overhead I heard the noise of running
feet, guns being fired to recall the men on the ice, the shrill piping
of the bosun, and Jack Cole’s stentorian call,
“Man the pumps!”
Man the pumps? Why man them? There in the engine room a little abaft
me, their bases already in the water, were my frost-covered pumps.
What they imperatively needed in those frozen cylinders was steam, not
manning. Then it came to me. The _Jeannette_ was a sailing ship as well
as a steamer—she still carried hand pumps, the same crude hand pumps
with which Columbus had kept his leaky caravels afloat. And they might
save us too; keep the water down below the level of my furnace grates
till I raised steam!
And now came action. Down the ladder to join me slid my black gang—Lee,
machinist; Bartlett, fireman; all my assortment of coalheavers—Boyd;
Lauterbach, the German; Iversen, the Swede; and even that frightened
little Englishman, Sharvell. In the biting cold of the fireroom, 29°
below zero (it was 45° below outside), I hastily detailed them.
“Lee! Get aft into the engine room and line up the main steam pump to
suck on this fireroom as soon as you get steam!”
“Bartlett! Outboard there with you! Open the port sea cock and flood
the port boiler to the steaming level. Open her wide, and four bells on
that flooding!”
“Lauterbach! Get some kindling wood down here from the galley! Shake it
up now, and mind you keep that kindling dry! And while you’re on the
topside, tell the skipper I’m firing up the port boiler!”
“Iversen, you and Sharvell start breaking out the coal. Get plenty, and
keep it in the buckets, out of this water!”
“Boyd! Spread the fuel in both furnaces in the port boiler as fast as
it comes to you, and get an oil torch going, ready to light off when
the water’s up to level!”
In the faint gleam of a few oil lamps in that frigid fireroom, off the
men splashed through the ice water on the floorplates, an incongruous
group for a black gang if ever there was one, as clad all in furs from
hoods to boots they stumbled away to their stations in a temperature
more suitable to the inside of a refrigerator than to a boiler room.
On deck, I heard the clatter of equipment and the banging of mauls,
Cole’s shouts, the hoarse responses of running seamen, and the curses
of Nindemann and Sweetman struggling to break out crossbars and handles
frozen to the bulkheads and rig the hand gear for working the forward
bilge pump—a tough job in that sub-zero atmosphere on the topside with
everything iron shrunk by the cold, everything wood swelled by frost
and moisture, and nothing fitting together properly as it should.
But long before they got the hand pump on deck assembled, I ran into
troubles of my own. Bartlett, wrestling with the port sea cock (I had
chosen that side because the ship being heeled to starboard, it was
the only one still showing above water), his stocky frame and brawny
shoulders straining against the wrench, sang out to me,
“This cock’s frozen, chief! I can’t get her open!”
I jumped to his aid. Together we heaved on an extension handle to the
valve wrench. No movement. I was desperate. We had to get that cock
open to the sea or we could not fill our boiler. More beef was needed
on the wrench. I looked inboard. There in the dull light of the oil
torch in his hand, before the port boiler waiting for fuel to arrive,
was big Boyd, doing nothing.
“Boyd! Lend a hand here!”
Boyd shoved his torch into the cold furnace, splashed over to us. The
three of us, fireman, coalheaver, engineer, braced ourselves against
a floor stringer, put our backs into it, heaved with all our might
against that wrench handle. The cock gave way suddenly, twisted open. I
sighed thankfully, let go the wrench.
“Watch her now, Bartlett,” I cautioned. “Wide open to the sea till the
water shows halfway in the boiler sight glass, then shut off! Careful
now; it’ll only take a few minutes. Don’t overfill her!”
But I might have spared both my thanks and my caution. Bartlett
waited a moment for the water to rush through from the sea into the
empty boiler, then feeling no vibration in the pipe to indicate flow,
stooped, pressed his ear near (but not too near) the frost-coated sea
cock, and listened carefully. Not a murmur of running water. Bartlett
lifted his head.
“No water coming through, chief.”
No water? I felt sick. Then that long disused seachest must be plugged
with ice! Frozen solid where beyond the valve it passed through our
thick wood side to the sea, totally beyond our reach for thawing out,
effectively blocking off any flow of water. We could not fill our
boiler!
I cursed inwardly. Literally we were sunk now. Caught with no steam,
boilers empty, unable to get water into them to raise steam, what good
to us now was all the coal we had saved for our exploring by that
economy? There the saved coal lay, worse than useless in the bunkers,
serving only to ballast down the ship that she might sink the faster
under us!
Thump, thump! Thump, thump!
From on deck came a welcome sound. The carpenters had at last got the
handles rigged. The hand pump was starting! With four men on each side
swaying over the bars, vigorously putting their backs into each stroke,
that steady thumping gave me new hope. If the hand pump, inefficient
though it was, could only keep the leak from gaining too fast on us, I
still had a chance! Water to fill the boiler? Why bother about the sea?
We were standing in an ocean of salt water right there in our fireroom
and more was coming in all the time! All I needed was time enough to
get a boiler full of it off the submerged floorplates into that port
kettle, and I could light off!
“Bartlett, forget that sea cock! On top of that port boiler with you
and your wrench. Open up the manhole there, then stand by the opening
to receive water in buckets! Boyd, get Sharvell and Iversen out of the
bunkers, get some buckets, and form a line to pass water up to Bartlett
as soon as he gets that manhole open!”
Bartlett scrambled over the furnace fronts and up on top of the
boiler. Boyd passed up his torch to illuminate the work, and I tossed
up a sledge hammer to help him start the bolts on the manhead. While
Bartlett labored over the bolts and Boyd and the other coalheavers
scurried through the engine room and the fireroom collecting all
the buckets, I stood a moment before the port boiler, sizing up the
situation.
Where was all that water coming from anyway? There was no sign of
damage, no sign of leak in the machinery spaces. From forward,
probably; we had got some very bad raps on the bow during the morning’s
excitement. Perhaps an underrunning floe had rammed our stern, opened
up our forepeak. If such were the case, that hand pump running on deck
forward was in the best location to hold down the water, to keep it
from rising too rapidly here amidships. I listened an instant to the
rapid _thump_, _thump_ of the oscillating handles, then caught mixed
with the noise a husky cry from the men at the pump,
“SPELL O!”
There was a break in the rhythmic thumping, a new gang stepped in
and relieved the men at the handles, then the monotonous throbbing
was resumed. SPELL O, the cry for relief, already coming from the
first gang manning the pumps! Backbreaking work that, all right. How
long could the sixteen men we had on deck, even relieving each other
frequently, keep those handles flying up and down fast enough to give
us a chance in the fireroom? Not for long could human muscles stand
that pace, I feared. It would be nip and tuck between us and the rising
water.
From atop the boiler came the banging of metal on metal and the
muffled curses of Bartlett as sprawled out in the scanty space between
boiler and deck beams overhead, he fought with sledge and wrench to
loosen the manhole bolts. Lauterbach came cautiously down the fireroom
ladder, balancing a huge armful of kindling. I motioned him to toss
it onto the grates, then to join Boyd, Iversen, and Sharvell with the
buckets. In silence, we waited below, listening to the mingled chorus
of the banging sledge hammer, the rasping screech of rusty nuts, and
the fluent profanity of Bartlett, prone on his stomach, a fantastic
fur-clad demon with his distorted face showing up intermittently in the
flickering flame of the torch, battling the boiler beneath him. No one
could help him; there wasn’t room for two men to work in those confined
quarters. And there was no use giving him any advice either. So below
we stood, straining our eyes impatiently toward Bartlett, while inch
by inch the water rose on us and the margin between water level and
furnace grates shrank. The hand pumps on deck were losing out—they had
slowed up the rise, but they could not stop it.
My chilled legs felt cramped. Instinctively, not taking my gaze off
Bartlett, I tried to flex my knees to relieve them, shifting my weight
from one foot to the other. I found I could not lift either leg.
Looking down sharply, I saw for the first time what before in the poor
light had escaped my notice—in that intense cold, far below zero,
the water was turning to slush, ice was forming here and there over
its surface, and both my feet were solidly frozen down to the iron
floorplates on which I stood!
I gripped my legs one at a time with both hands, savagely tore them
free.
“Keep moving, boys!” I warned the men in the water alongside me. “If
you stand still a minute, you’ll be frozen down!” And standing there in
that fast freezing water, at 29° below zero, I was at least thankful
for the four pairs of wool socks, the three suits of blue flannel
underwear, and the two pairs of woolen mittens which encased me under
my fur suit and boots, for otherwise by now, between cold water and
cold air, I should have been frozen stiff as a board.
Bang!
With a final blow of his sledge, Bartlett knocked free the last dog,
lifted out the boiler manhead, shouted,
“All clear, chief!”
“Start those buckets!” I ordered, but it was unnecessary. Already Boyd
had dipped the first one full, was passing it up to Bartlett, who
dashed the contents through the open manhole into the boiler, where
splashing over the frigid iron plates inside, I haven’t the slightest
doubt but that it promptly became ice.
Round and round went the buckets, Lauterbach filling, Boyd and Iversen
passing them up full to Bartlett, and little Sharvell catching the
empties as they came tumbling down the boiler front. All the men were
soon coated from head to foot with ice from the water slopping from the
buckets—only their constant stooping, rising, and twisting which kept
cracking the ice off in sheets prevented their soon accumulating so
heavy a weight of it as no man could even stagger under.
Meanwhile, as they labored, I turned to, and took Boyd’s place in
spreading fuel on the grates, preparatory to lighting off. Hastily I
scattered the kindling over the cold furnace bars, then slid several
buckets of coal out the nearest bunker door, carefully maneuvering
them through the slush and ice across the flooded floorplates to avoid
slopping the sea water which reached nearly to the tops of the buckets,
in on the coal. Seizing then a shovel, I started to heave coal into the
furnaces, an awkward job, for getting the shovel into the tops of the
upright buckets was difficult, and naturally I dared not dump the coal
out on the floorplates first. As best I could, I managed it, spreading
the coal over the kindling, a little thin at the front of the grates,
a thicker bed at the rear. That done, I leaned back on my shovel, and
alternated between watching the waterline creeping up the boiler fronts
and my men frantically passing up buckets to fill the boiler.
It was a big boiler, eight feet in diameter, and would require
innumerable buckets. Mentally I calculated it, making a rough
estimate. Nine tons of water had to be manhandled up into that boiler
to fill it properly, a thousand bucketfuls at the very least. I timed
the heavy buckets; about six a minute were going up, but the men could
hardly maintain that pace. Still, even if they could, it would take
three hours to fill that boiler to the steaming level! Long before
then, the fireboxes at the bottom of the boiler would be flooded, we
could never light off! Somehow, we had to keep the water down in the
fireroom till I got steam, or the _Jeannette_ was doomed. And her going
meant a two hundred mile retreat over the broken pack to Siberia—in mid
January at 40° or worse below zero, an absolutely hopeless journey!
“Keep ’em flying, boys!” I called out to my coalheavers, “while I lay
up on deck for help. I’ll be back here in a minute!”
Coated with ice to the waist, I clambered up the ladder, went forward
into the deckhouse. Swinging on the pump bars there, were eight
straining seamen; against the bulkhead, resting a moment, were eight
more, including even the Chinamen Ah Sam and Tong Sing. A little
forward of them was De Long, anxiously peering down a hatch into the
forepeak, while below him in that gloomy hole, Lieutenant Chipp and
Nindemann were sloshing round in deep water with a lantern, searching
for the source of our troubles.
“Where’s the leak, captain?” I asked, bending down alongside him.
De Long straightened up, intensely worried.
“We don’t know, chief; Chipp can’t find it. All he can see is that the
water’s gushing through that supposedly solid pine packing the Navy
Yard filled our bow with, as if it were a sieve. The leak’s in the
stem, down somewhere near the keel; I think our forefoot’s twisted
off.” He looked at me with haggard eyes. “We’re still holding our own
on the forepeak with the hand pump; but the men’ll break down before
long. How soon can you give us steam and help out, chief?”
I drew him aside, a little away from that squad of resting seamen, not
wishing to discourage them.
“Never, captain!” I whispered hoarsely, “unless we get help ourselves!”
Briefly I outlined our desperate position. There was no hand pump in
the fireroom, the water was gaining on us there also. “I’ve got to have
a gang to hoist water out of that fireroom by hand someway to keep it
down till my boiler’s filled and I get steam up, or we’re done for! And
it’ll take three hours yet. My gang’s all busy. Who can you spare?”
De Long gazed at me somberly.
“Except Danenhower, who’s blind, every man and officer’s working now.
But Newcomb and Collins are only collecting records in case we abandon
ship. Will they do?”
I laughed bitterly.
“Newcomb isn’t worth a damn for real work, captain; and from what
I’ve heard from Collins, you could shoot him before he’d turn to as a
seaman! Besides, two are not enough anyway. It’ll take six good men at
least, to keep ahead of that water, and then they may not do it. But
give me Cole and half of that relief gang at the pumps there and I’ll
try.”
“That’ll reduce us here to six men a shift on the pump handles,”
muttered the captain, dubiously eyeing the crew at the pump. “But we’ve
got to get steam! All right, Melville, take them. But for God’s sake,
hurry it up!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” I turned abruptly to our Irish bosun, who was nearby
supervising the pumping. “Jack, pick four men out of the gang here, any
four, and come aft with me. Shake a leg, now!” I started for the after
door in the deckhouse.
Cole grabbed Starr, a Russian and physically the strongest seaman in
our crew, off the starboard pump handle; took Manson, a burly Swede,
off the port handle to even things up, and beckoned to Ah Sam and Tong
Sing from the relief gang.
“C’mon, me byes; lay aft wid yez!” Cole marshalled his little detail
out of the compartment and slammed the deckhouse door behind them
almost before the twelve startled men left at the pump could realize
that they now had the work of all sixteen to carry on.
Close outside the deckhouse stood the barrel which received the fresh
water condensed in our distiller. That barrel was just what I needed;
distilling for the present was the least of my worries.
“Jack,” I explained briefly, “the fireroom’s flooding on us. We got
to keep that water down till I get fires started. Sling that barrel
in a bridle, rig it on a whip to the davit over the machinery hatch,
and start hoisting water out of the fireroom, four bells and a jingle!
She’s all yours now, Jack! Get going!”
Cole, a rattling good bosun if I ever saw one, needed nothing further.
“Aye, aye, sor. Lave ut to Jack!” In a moment he had that Russian, the
Swede, and the two Chinamen round the barrel, emptying it; in another
second they were rolling it aft; and as I started down the ladder to
the fireroom, Cole had the barrel on end again and already was expertly
throwing a couple of half hitches in a manila line round it to serve as
a sling.
Almost before I got down the ladder to my fireroom again, the barrel
came tumbling down the hatch at the end of a fall and landed alongside
me with a splash, while above, Cole roared out,
“Below there! She’s all yours! Fill ’er up!”
Being nearest, I tipped the barrel sidewise in the water, pushed it
down till it submerged, then righted it. It filled with a gurgle,
settled through the slush to the floor plates.
“Full up!” I shouted. “Take it away!”
“Aye, aye!” The line to the barrel tautened, then started slowly to
rise. Down the hatch floated Cole’s voice, encouraging his squad on the
hoisting line,
“Lay back wid yez, Rooshian! Heave on it, ye Swede! An’ git those
pigtails flyin’ in the breeze, ye two Chinks, or we’ll all be knockin’
soon at the Pearly Gates, an’ fer sailor min the likes of us, wid
damned little chanct to get past St. Peter! Lively wid yez; all
togither now. Heave!”
The loaded barrel suddenly shot up the hatch.
Hurriedly Cole swung it over to the low side scuppers, dumped it, and
sent it clattering down again. Once more I filled it, started it up,
then called Lee, my machinist, from the engine room pump to stand by on
that filling job while I went back to the all-important boiler.
Why go into the agony of the next two hours? Wearily, without relief,
my men heaved water, ice, slush, whatever the flying buckets scooped
up, indiscriminately into the yawning void inside that boiler; just
as wearily, with aching shoulders, Cole and his little group labored,
unrelieved and unshielded from the bitter cold on deck, heaving that
barrel up and down; while from the deckhouse, the more and more
frequent cries of SPELL O! showed that at the undermanned pump, backs
were fast giving way under that inhuman strain.
And in spite of all, I could see that we were going to lose. Another
hour yet to fill the boiler to the steaming level, but from the rate
with which the flood waters were still rising, in another hour it
would be too late—the water would be over the grates. Hoping against
hope that perhaps I was wrong, that perhaps the water was going into
that kettle faster than I thought, I crawled myself to the top of the
boiler. Keeping as clear of Bartlett as the scant space allowed, not
to slow up the stream of buckets, I seized the torch and in between
the dumping of those cumbersome buckets peered through the ice-rimmed
manhole into that Scotch boiler. As I feared. The upper tubes down
there were still uncovered; the crown sheets of the furnaces were
still perhaps a foot above the level of the slush (I could hardly call
it water) line. As I looked, Bartlett, sprawled out beside me, sent
another bucketful splashing through the manhole, which soaked my beard
and almost immediately froze it into a solid mass. But I hardly noticed
it, staring with leaden eyes into that still half-empty boiler. With a
sinking heart, I slid away on the ice-coated cylinder from the manhole,
and crawled down the breechings to stand once again on the thickening
ice covering the flooded floorplates.
Dare I fire up without waiting further?
I was in a terrible predicament. To light fires under a partly filled
boiler like that, with tubes and furnace plates not wholly covered
with water, was not only the surest way to a courtmartial which
would probably end my naval career, it violated also every tenet in
my engineer’s code, violated every principle of safety, practically
insured a boiler explosion! But if I did not get fires going right
away, I would never have a chance to fire up, and not only that boiler
but the ship herself and all her crew besides would vanish in that
Arctic ice.
I must risk whatever came.
With flying buckets and tumbling barrel splashing and spilling water
all around me, I applied a match to another oil torch, fanned it a
moment in the chilly air till it blazed brightly, shoved it (in the
narrow space still remaining between the flood waters and the grate
bars) into the inboard furnace under the kindling, till the wood took
fire and then hurriedly transferred it to the outboard furnace until
that also lighted off. The extreme cold of the outside air favored
me, creating a tremendous draft as soon as a little warm air filled
the flues, and in no time at all it seemed, the wood was blazing up
fiercely and igniting the coal which, shining brightly down through
the grate bars onto the water flooding the lower part of the ash-pits,
cast a lurid red glare out into the dark fireroom, evidently putting
new life into the drooping sailors, for both below and on deck, a
ragged cheer greeted that crimson glow.
“Keep that water going, lads; we haven’t won yet!” I warned, flinging
open the furnace doors and heaving in more coal. “We’ve got to get
that water level up over the crown sheets before they get red hot, or
we’re all going straight to hell! Twice as fast now on those buckets!”
And whatever it was, fear or hope, that inspired those coalheavers, a
moment before ready to drop from utter exhaustion, the buckets started
to fly faster than ever.
I finished heaving coal, slammed to the fire doors, and leaned back on
my shovel. I was in for it now. Never in the history of steam, before
nor since, has a boiler been fired under such weird conditions—furnaces
half-flooded, no water showing in the sight glasses, slush and ice for
what charge there was, and the boiler manhead still off! But I was
relying on some of those very dangers to save my bacon—till I put the
manhole cover back, there could be no pressure to cause real trouble;
and till we had melted down and warmed up that ice and slush, I counted
on that chilly mixture and the water still splashing in to soak up heat
so rapidly as to keep the bare tubes and exposed crown sheets from
getting red hot and collapsing.
My other fears I need hardly go into—the dangers of bringing up steam
suddenly in a cold boiler instead of gradually warming up first for
twelve hours as was usual; of frozen gauge glasses; of frozen feed
pumps—all these I deliberately put out of my mind. Only one thing
counted now—to get some steam at any cost whatever before the water
reached the grate bars and flooded out my fires.
And we did. With only a few inches left to go, came at last from
Bartlett the long-awaited cry,
“The crown sheet’s covered now, chief!”
“On with that manhead!” I roared back.
The clanking of Bartlett’s sledge hammer, breaking away the ice round
the manhole so the cover would fit, was my only answer. The worn-out
coalheavers dropped their buckets, rested for the first time in hours,
sagging back against the boiler fronts to keep from dropping into the
icy water. No time for that. I seized a slice bar, started savagely to
slice the fire in the outboard furnace, sang out,
“Boyd, get busy with another slice bar on that inboard fire!
Lauterbach, relieve Lee on filling that barrel! Lee, get back to your
pump now! And, Sharvell, you and Iversen, get into those bunkers and
break out some more coal! Come to life now, all of you!”
Boyd, nearly dead from his half of heaving up over eight tons of water,
staggered over to my side, gripped a slice bar. Together we labored
over the fires, forcing them to the limit, nursing in more coal without
deadening the blaze, till helped by an amazing draft from the stack, we
had them roaring like the very flames of hell itself. Never have I seen
such fires!
Leaving the stoking job now wholly to Boyd, I dropped my slice bar and
stepped back to examine the gauge glasses. Water was barely showing
in the sight glass, but, thank God, it was showing! And the needle of
the pressure gauge was starting to flutter off the zero pin. Steam was
coming up! If we could only hold down the flood for a few minutes more
now, till I could get that pump warmed up and going, we were saved! But
that part was up to Jack Cole.
“Jack!” I shouted up the hatch. “A little more and you can quit. But
right now, for God’s sake, shake it up; faster with that barrel!”
“Aye, aye, sor!” Then to his strangely conglomerate crew, ready
undoubtedly to collapse in their tracks, Cole called gruffly,
“C’mon me byes! Lit’s raylly git to liftin’ now, an’ work up a sweat,
or we’ll freeze to death in this cowld! Lay back on ut, Starr! Heave
there, Manson! Wud yez have thim two Chinks outpullin’ yez? An’ step
out there now, ye Chinese seacooks, an’ don’t be clutterin’ up the
decks, or whin that Rooshian gits goin’, he’ll be treadin’ heavy on
thim pigtails! Yo heave! Up wid ut!” And with astonishing speed I saw
the loaded barrel vanish up the hatch.
I breasted my way through the water aft to where Lee in the engine room
stood by my largest steam pump. No need to worry about priming the pump
for suction; another foot higher on that flood and we would have to
go diving to reach the pump valves. I felt the steam line. The frosty
chill was gone; a little steam at least was already coming through to
the pump.
“All right, Lee; let’s get going,” I mumbled. We cracked open the steam
valve a hair, started to drain the line. And no mother nursing her baby
ever handled it more tenderly than Lee and I nursed that frozen pump,
gradually draining and warming the steam cylinder, lest the sudden
application of heat should crack into pieces that abnormally cold cast
iron, and after our heartbreaking struggle with the boiler, leave us
still helpless to eject the sea. With one eye on Jack Cole’s rapidly
moving barrel and the other on that narrowing margin between flood
water and furnace fires, I nursed the pump along by feel, taking as
long to warm it up as I dared without swamping those flames. At long
last the pump cylinder was hot; steam instead of water was blowing out
the drains. And the boiler gauge needle stood at thirty pounds. Enough;
we could go.
I straightened up, motioned Lee to start the pump. He opened the
throttle valve. With a wheeze and a groan the water piston broke free
in its cylinder, the nearly submerged pump commenced to stroke.
Leaving Lee at the pump, I ran (that is, if barely dragging one
ice-weighted foot after another can be called running) up the ladder
toward the deck. While I climbed, the empty barrel came hurtling
down the hatchway, splashed into the water in the fireroom. Before
Lauterbach could fill and upend it, down on top of the barrel in a maze
of coils came the slack end of the hoisting line. Apparently Cole’s
gang was through.
As I poked my head above the hatch into the open, there—Oh, gorgeous
sight for bleary eyes and aching muscles! was a heavy stream of water
pulsing into the scuppers! Nearby, prone on the deck where they had
dropped in their tracks when they let go the hoisting line, were
four utterly worn-out seamen, gazing nevertheless admiringly on that
beautiful stream. And leaning against the bulwark watching it, was Jack
Cole, who as he saw me, sang out,
“Praises be, chief; we’re saved! There’ll be no calls for SPELL O from
that chap!”