Fatal North (18 page)

Several days passed, and everyone kept a lookout for Chester's crew. Finally, they came walking over the plateau. All were fit, except for Chester, who had come down with scurvy and was very discouraged. They had waited until the ice cleared, he explained, and tried to sail the little canvas boat south. In the roughness of the ice, they nearly capsized, and were forced to abandon the boat to save themselves.

“All is ruined,” the first mate said darkly. “There's no earthly reason to stay here any longer. We should go home as soon as possible.”

His voice had been among the most ardent for staying another year to try for the Pole. That Chester, after the useless and exhausting boat expeditions, now wanted to go home meant that Buddington had won, Tyson realized.

Tyson recognized they had little choice now. Coal and provisions had been wantonly wasted, the vessel was leaking, and the continued thumping on the ice was endangering the ship's superstructure.
Polaris must
return home.

But he did not have to go with her. Tyson went privately to Buddington and asked to be given four tons of coal. Tyson said he would endeavor to get four men besides himself and stay
another winter. Since there were enough provisions in the Observatory to supply five men for one year, he asked only for the coal from the ship's stores, along with sledges and dogs for which
Polaris,
on her way home, would have no more use.

His vision was the land that he had seen rolling away endlessly to the north. “I do not like returning without ascertaining where the land leads,” Tyson said. “With some coal, provisions, two sledges and dogs, a few men and I should be able to find out.”

Buddington eyed him suspiciously. “I don't have coal to spare.”

Tyson stared down his commander. “You have it to waste but not to spare?”

“That will be all, Tyson.”

“The best chance ever known in Arctic exploration is lost,” Tyson penned remorsefully in his journal that night. “Why? Because the wretch in command is too cowardly and too incompetent to do anything himself and determined that no one else on board should do anything either.”

Two weeks later a gale from the north arrived, blowing ice out of Polaris Bay and partially opening a clear passage. More leaks were reported aboard ship, and several feet of water were found to have accumulated in the ship's hold. Tyson, again pointing out the diminishing fuel supply, recommended that the crew be divided into watches, with everyone taking a turn at manning the hand pumps. Chester supported the plan—to save coal that would be needed to get home, he told Buddington, who finally agreed.

Some of the men grumbled, thinking that pumping should continue to be facilitated by steam. Soon thereafter, there was a sudden increase of water in the hold. It was reliably reported that someone in the engine room had willfully opened the stop cocks and flooded her so that the power pump would have to be employed. Such was the lack of discipline and respect for authority onboard that when Buddington went down to the
engine room to check on matters, he had the hatch slammed shut in his face.

Once the flood of water in the hold was gone, the ship was kept free of water with five minutes of hand pumping every hour. Aiding the effort, some of the timbers appeared to have swollen and closed the seams that had worked loose during the winter.

With their departure to the south imminent, Tyson went ashore to check on Hall's grave and put it in order for all time. When their commander had been buried eight months earlier, the ground was frozen too hard to do much except cover the grave with stones for security.

Tyson was assisted in the task by Chester and several crewmen. The men worked silently at shoveling soil, shaping the mound, securing the wooden headstone and cutting in it the simple epitaph that had been written on the plank in pencil previously:

TO THE MEMORY OF C. F. HALL,
LATE COMMANDER OF THE NORTH POLAR EXPEDITION.
DIED NOV. 8, 1871
AGED 50 YEARS.

When they finished, they stood and looked at their leader's grave one last time. It still looked lonely and dreary, but not as forgotten and neglected as it had.

 

From the journal of George Tyson:

Aug. 1. Still in Polaris Bay. What opportunities have been lost! and the expedition is to be carried back only to report a few geographical discoveries, and a few additional scientific facts. With patience we might have worked up beyond Newman Bay, and there is no telling how much
farther. Some one will some day reach the Pole, and I envy not those who have prevented Polaris from having that chance.

Several of the men went back to Newman Bay to try to recover some valuable scientific instruments and other items that had been left behind. Bringing back all they could find, they reported the channel beyond the bay was still full of ice. In all, three boats had been lost on the ill-conceived boat explorations, leaving
Polaris
with but two launches—each built for no more than eight passengers—in the event of trouble at sea.

On August 12, Merkut Hendrik, Hans' wife, delivered a healthy baby boy that was named Charlie Polaris by acclamation of the crew, in honor of both their fallen leader and the ship on which they sailed. The birth came as a surprise to many in the crew, who had not realized the stout Eskimo woman was pregnant beneath all the loose fur clothing she regularly wore.

As centuries-old tradition dictated, Merkut had attended to the delivery herself, left alone to live or die in childbirth. Once recovered, she had severed the umbilical cord with her teeth. By custom, the clothes she had worn during the birth were never to be worn again, and were burned on the ice by her husband.

As if ordained by a master planner, within hours of the birth the ice magically opened, leaving a clear passage through the water to the south.

Reborn as a seagoing vessel,
Polaris
weighed anchor and steamed from the bay that had provided a safe anchorage for the past year and upon whose shores her commander had found his final resting place.

Turning her stern toward the Pole, she headed south, not for the safety of home, but toward impending disaster.

III

Ice Hell

11

Adrift in a Nightmare

A
s
Polaris
steamed southward through Kennedy Channel en route to Cape Frazier and the open sea of Smith Sound, she came in contact with shifting floes and chunks of ice broken off from massive bergs. Bumping, crushing, and grinding noises were heard throughout the ship—ominous sounds to even the most experienced sailors.

Tyson had the watch on the evening of August 14—her second day under way. He was keeping
Polaris
on course down the middle of the channel. He hoped that by early morning she would be out of the narrow, icy channel and into less dangerous waters on her homeward trek.

At nine o'clock, Buddington came topside to take the helm. He had obviously been drinking. With the ship's supply of liquor long gone, he had been rummaging about everywhere, including the personal belongings of the crew, looking for anything to drink. To Joe's dismay, the captain had even gotten into the camphor-based medicine that Hannah rubbed on the Eskimo's back to relieve muscular pain.

For an hour the ship reeled under Buddington's erratic orders, turning this way and that—virtually every point on the
compass. Exhausted at last, he went below, leaving the ship a hundred yards off a floe she had passed an hour earlier. In the process a propeller blade had been badly bent, one of their small boats had nearly been wrecked when Buddington sent it out to check ice conditions, and they had burned five tons of coal.

Tyson put her back on course and remained on deck until relieved by another officer. By morning they had cleared the mouth of the channel and were moving into waters less concentrated with ice. They steamed southward at five knots, angling slightly toward the west shore because the center was choked with ice.

Tyson finally went below to get some rest. When he awoke several hours later, he stepped on deck as a brilliant, red-sky dawn was breaking over the horizon. He was astounded to see the ship stuck in ice in the middle of the sound.

During the night Buddington had returned to the helm drunk, Tyson learned, and allowed the ship to fall off course again. Before she could get headed right and regain her lost momentum, the ice had closed in, locking her in its powerful grip.

A thick fog rolling down from the north soon engulfed the ship.

Buddington stood there, arms akimbo, smiling blandly at Tyson before staggering below as if to be sick.

We've reaped the fruits of drunkenness and incompetence, Tyson thought bitterly.

Bessels came on deck, passing Buddington as he lurched down a ladder. Horrified, the doctor ran from one railing to the other. “We are stuck in ice! He is drunk again! Where does the fool get liquor?” Bessels followed after Buddington.

At the helm, Tyson was told by the exasperated chief engineer Emil Schuman that he would no longer make steam for the captain unless advised to do so by Tyson.

“Mr. Schuman, let's try to get out of here,” Tyson said.

“Aye aye,” Schuman said enthusiastically.

Under power,
Polaris
pushed her way clear and made some
progress, but she had little room to maneuver in the icy waters. Finally, thick fog compelled Tyson to stop next to a floe and order the ice anchors set in place.

The next day when the fog cleared, another attempt was made but to no avail. Open water could be seen from the deck, but it was rapidly disappearing, and the ship could not reach it. Heavy floes had closed on them and were holding the ship in a vise.

A quantity of stores, clothing, and bags of coal were placed on deck so that they could be readily slipped overboard if it became necessary to abandon ship in a hurry.

Tyson knew that the ice conditions in Smith Sound varied greatly from year to year. This sort of pack ice had baffled Kane in July and August but had been traversed those same months without difficulty by other explorers. There seemed to be no general rule. Tyson thought it might have something to do with the force and direction of the winds when the ice began to break up in the north and push southward.

All around them was ice, with large bergs in sight, some grounded and others like colossal floating sentinels watching the progress of the slowly drifting floe to which the ship was held fast. Young ice had formed over the open water, and was already strong enough to bear weight. Snow and rain and fog succeeded each other, and the ice, governing all, constantly groaned.

September came and went.

For six weeks they had done little except drift with the floe. Now and then they'd fired up the engines in a futile attempt to break free. On the last day of the month, open water could be seen to the south, but
Polaris
could not get to it. Water was also visible to the north, but still they were kept in the pack.

With the temperature dropping below zero, the crew knew that unless they could soon free themselves, they would be stuck on a leaky ship with a dwindling supply of coal to run the boilers, operate the pumps, and warm the berthing compartments.

October arrived fair and clear; with it came the realization by
all that they would be spending a second winter in the Arctic. Tyson would not have minded wintering there, at approximately 78 degrees north, if they had been heading in the other direction with future northern explorations awaiting them come spring. Instead, without having done all they could in carrying out their mission of discovery, they had been waylaid not by the forces of nature but by the incompetence of a single man.

The captain had been increasingly surly and detached since they had been newly icebound. Wintering a second year on the ice had not been his plan but rather, a civilized Danish port on the coast of Greenland with ample food, liquor, women, warmth, and other comforts. He did not blame himself for the latest predicament, but while he still carried his mantle of authority, his leadership had been compromised and he knew it.

Tyson had had a confrontation with Buddington shortly before
Polaris
departed her winter anchorage. It had come to Tyson's attention that the captain and the ship's carpenter had been taking turns making “most foul use” of Hans' twelve-year-old daughter, Augustina.

“I am aware of this sordid affair,” Tyson told his captain, “and it must stop.”

“I am innocent,” Buddington said indignandy.

Tyson did not back down. “She is but a child. I will not let it continue.”

“I tell you I am innocent.” Buddington looked about furtively to make sure no one else was listening. “But for God's sake, say nothing about it. Don't let the crew know.”

In early October, a stiff northerly gale blew up, increasing their drift southward. More leaks were sprung; the power pumps now operated day and night, gobbling fuel at an alarming rate. As long as the ship remained supported in its cradle of ice, there was little chance of sinking. But should the ice crumble, causing
Polaris to
suddenly drift free, she could be smashed by the winds and currents against the nearest berg and sunk.