Moby-Duck (64 page)
Authors: Donovan Hohn
28
The reefers must be plugged into special electrified bays or their contents will spoil. Hazardous chemicals must be stored in special compartments belowdecks to minimize the danger of a conflagration or spill. The lightest containers must go on top, or the forces impinging on the bottom containers when the ship begins to pitch and roll may be greater than they can bear, and the entire stack will topple, sending the top containers tumbling overboard. The weight to starboard must balance the weight to port, or the ship may dangerously list.
The reefers must be plugged into special electrified bays or their contents will spoil. Hazardous chemicals must be stored in special compartments belowdecks to minimize the danger of a conflagration or spill. The lightest containers must go on top, or the forces impinging on the bottom containers when the ship begins to pitch and roll may be greater than they can bear, and the entire stack will topple, sending the top containers tumbling overboard. The weight to starboard must balance the weight to port, or the ship may dangerously list.
29
A surprisingly good poet, considering that her autobiographical, book-length poem, called
Incunabulum,
is self-published. A passage:
A surprisingly good poet, considering that her autobiographical, book-length poem, called
Incunabulum,
is self-published. A passage:
I've woven dreams from streams and rivers
and seas of water. See what has become
of the vision that guided my hand: a strand
of fresh Lake Wisota water from the cove
sheltering sailboats of a seven year old's
imagination. Threads from the swift Chippewa,
that swept my message in a bottle down
the Mississippi to the sea. Whole bolts
of wild, salty spray, rough-nubbed twill
from Greenland's southern coast. Grief-
stitched, musty, smelling of the unrescued,
of the drowned, and the faint, sickly-sweet
stain of fuel slicking the spot where
their ship had been.
and seas of water. See what has become
of the vision that guided my hand: a strand
of fresh Lake Wisota water from the cove
sheltering sailboats of a seven year old's
imagination. Threads from the swift Chippewa,
that swept my message in a bottle down
the Mississippi to the sea. Whole bolts
of wild, salty spray, rough-nubbed twill
from Greenland's southern coast. Grief-
stitched, musty, smelling of the unrescued,
of the drowned, and the faint, sickly-sweet
stain of fuel slicking the spot where
their ship had been.
30
While the customs agents inspected my passport, I thought of Melville, who, in 1866, once again living in the insular city of the Manhattoes, stopped trying to earn a living from his decreasingly profitable writing and took a day job as a customs agent. For two decades he clung, Hawthorne's son-in-law later put it, “like a weary but tenacious barnacle to the N.Y. Custom House.”
While the customs agents inspected my passport, I thought of Melville, who, in 1866, once again living in the insular city of the Manhattoes, stopped trying to earn a living from his decreasingly profitable writing and took a day job as a customs agent. For two decades he clung, Hawthorne's son-in-law later put it, “like a weary but tenacious barnacle to the N.Y. Custom House.”
31
One afternoon at Woods Hole I listened to a behavioral biologist explain the surprising discovery that killer whales exhibit the rudiments of culture; hunting methods, taught to the young, can vary from pod to pod. In the Woods Hole necropsy lab, I visited a sub-zero meat locker where dolphins in yellow body bags hung like dry cleaning from a motorized rack. “Know how you anesthetize alligators?” the lab technician quipped. “Stick'em in the fridge.”
One afternoon at Woods Hole I listened to a behavioral biologist explain the surprising discovery that killer whales exhibit the rudiments of culture; hunting methods, taught to the young, can vary from pod to pod. In the Woods Hole necropsy lab, I visited a sub-zero meat locker where dolphins in yellow body bags hung like dry cleaning from a motorized rack. “Know how you anesthetize alligators?” the lab technician quipped. “Stick'em in the fridge.”
32
What is the ocean?
What is the ocean?
Tyler (17, totally blind since birth)
The ocean is a vast area of salt water. The salt from the water creates a unique scent in the atmosphere. The fast moving waves create a sound that is pleasing to the ear. The swiftly moving water is pleasing to the touch when one is standing or swimming in it. The ocean and its many effects provide many benefits to one's physical and emotional well-being.
Jon (16, partially blind)
THE OCEAN
Vast treacherous waves
Ships travel to continents
Gone for months on end.
Ships travel to continents
Gone for months on end.
Minh (17, totally blind since birth)
The sea reminds me of romance, and meditation. It's a rough and dangerous world. It's like our world except in an animal way. The sea also has moods, for example being stormy, or it can be as calm as a river. Or it can flow smoothly like a stream. The sea can be known as a bubbling pot of soup with all the waves. Some seas have different temperatures. Sometimes there is more seasoning than most.
Â
Igor (16, totally blind since birth)
The sea is a vast body of water. It is filled with seaweed. The sea is filled with waves. You would body surf. As you swim in the sea, you would absorb the salt. The salt helps you float. As you walk along the shore, you step on the sand. The sand sticks to your toes. Shells wash up and your feet are tangled up in seaweed.
Â
Michelle (17, partially blind)
It is very big and full of fish. My impression of the ocean: Whoosh, Whoosh, blub, blub . . . .
33
Northern fulmars breed on Arctic cliffs, and when nesting have a memorable weapon with which to defend their single, precious egg: if any predator approaches, a nesting fulmar will vomit onto it a jet of stinky and potentially lethal stomach oil. They can also desalinate seawater, expressing the salt through the tubes on their beaks. (Thus the name “tubenoses.”) Like albatrosses, they forage at the surface, and like albatrosses they end up swallowing a lot of plastic, Fifield says, even up here in Arctic waters, far from the Garbage Patch.
Northern fulmars breed on Arctic cliffs, and when nesting have a memorable weapon with which to defend their single, precious egg: if any predator approaches, a nesting fulmar will vomit onto it a jet of stinky and potentially lethal stomach oil. They can also desalinate seawater, expressing the salt through the tubes on their beaks. (Thus the name “tubenoses.”) Like albatrosses, they forage at the surface, and like albatrosses they end up swallowing a lot of plastic, Fifield says, even up here in Arctic waters, far from the Garbage Patch.
34
By the estimate of the naturalist E. C. Pielou, in the seas east and west of Greenland, there are some ten thousand icebergs afloat at any time and their numbers are greatest here, in Baffin Bay, a body of water rimmed by calving glaciers. The biggest icebergs, Pielou reports, weigh ten million tons and can rise to heights of two hundred feet or moreâ550 feet being the record. And the part you can see, above the waterline, represents only the uppermost fraction of the thing. An iceberg that rises 200 feet above the waterline might extend 1,600 feet beneath it. Because of their deep keels, the wind has little effect on their motion. It's the currents that determine their fate, and the currents of Baffin Bay, like those of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, converge. Few icebergs escape into southern waters. The one that sank the
Titanic
was an aberration. Most stay up here, circling around, diminishing with every lap.
By the estimate of the naturalist E. C. Pielou, in the seas east and west of Greenland, there are some ten thousand icebergs afloat at any time and their numbers are greatest here, in Baffin Bay, a body of water rimmed by calving glaciers. The biggest icebergs, Pielou reports, weigh ten million tons and can rise to heights of two hundred feet or moreâ550 feet being the record. And the part you can see, above the waterline, represents only the uppermost fraction of the thing. An iceberg that rises 200 feet above the waterline might extend 1,600 feet beneath it. Because of their deep keels, the wind has little effect on their motion. It's the currents that determine their fate, and the currents of Baffin Bay, like those of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, converge. Few icebergs escape into southern waters. The one that sank the
Titanic
was an aberration. Most stay up here, circling around, diminishing with every lap.
35
In 1884, anyone who read the newspaper, even a Danish newspaper, would have heard of the USS
Jeannette
. In 1878, James Gordon Bennett, owner of the
New York Herald
, had approached the U.S. Navy with an extraordinary offer. If the navy would organize a sea voyage to the North Pole, Bennett would finance it. All previous attempts to reach the pole by sea had approached it from the east, by way of the North Atlantic, and for this reason, Bennett believed, those attempts had failed. This expedition, unlike the others, would approach the pole from the west, by way of the Bering Strait. In theory, Bennett's plan was a good one. The icy currents of the Arctic, we now know, do tend to flow in an easterly direction, and ships entering from the North Atlantic have to sail or steam against them.
In 1884, anyone who read the newspaper, even a Danish newspaper, would have heard of the USS
Jeannette
. In 1878, James Gordon Bennett, owner of the
New York Herald
, had approached the U.S. Navy with an extraordinary offer. If the navy would organize a sea voyage to the North Pole, Bennett would finance it. All previous attempts to reach the pole by sea had approached it from the east, by way of the North Atlantic, and for this reason, Bennett believed, those attempts had failed. This expedition, unlike the others, would approach the pole from the west, by way of the Bering Strait. In theory, Bennett's plan was a good one. The icy currents of the Arctic, we now know, do tend to flow in an easterly direction, and ships entering from the North Atlantic have to sail or steam against them.
The voyage wouldn't cost the federal government a dime, Bennett promised. Not surprisingly, both Congress and the navy were happy to accept the gift, and on July 8, 1879, while crowds in San Francisco waved their hats and handkerchiefs from shore, the
Jeannette
, a three-masted steam yacht that Bennett had purchased from the Royal Navy, sailed through the Golden Gate (not yet spanned by the famous red bridge) under the command of George De Long. In the last surviving portrait taken of him, De Long, thirty-five, is wearing an ascot and a pair of pince-nez spectacles, from the right corner of which drips a silver chain. With his walrus mustache and puffy cheeks, he looks a bit like a cross between Teddy Roosevelt and Marcel Proust.
Jeannette
, a three-masted steam yacht that Bennett had purchased from the Royal Navy, sailed through the Golden Gate (not yet spanned by the famous red bridge) under the command of George De Long. In the last surviving portrait taken of him, De Long, thirty-five, is wearing an ascot and a pair of pince-nez spectacles, from the right corner of which drips a silver chain. With his walrus mustache and puffy cheeks, he looks a bit like a cross between Teddy Roosevelt and Marcel Proust.
After three uneventful weeks at sea, the
Jeannette
stopped in Unalaska to stock up on fur and coal. Ten days later, at the island of St. Michael's in St. Lawrence Bay, it stopped again to take on forty sled dogs, three dogsleds, and two dogsledding Inuit, bringing the ship's hominid company to thirty-three. Along with the officers and enlisted men and the dogsledding Inuit, the company included two civilian scientists, the naturalist Raymond Newcomb and the meteorologist Jerome Collins, the latter having agreed to serve as the
New York Herald
's correspondent. From St. Lawrence Bay Collins sent, aboard the
Jeannette
's southbound supply ship, the
Herald,
a prescient dispatch. “All before us now is uncertainty,” he wrote, “because our movements will be governed by circumstances over which we can have no control.”
Jeannette
stopped in Unalaska to stock up on fur and coal. Ten days later, at the island of St. Michael's in St. Lawrence Bay, it stopped again to take on forty sled dogs, three dogsleds, and two dogsledding Inuit, bringing the ship's hominid company to thirty-three. Along with the officers and enlisted men and the dogsledding Inuit, the company included two civilian scientists, the naturalist Raymond Newcomb and the meteorologist Jerome Collins, the latter having agreed to serve as the
New York Herald
's correspondent. From St. Lawrence Bay Collins sent, aboard the
Jeannette
's southbound supply ship, the
Herald,
a prescient dispatch. “All before us now is uncertainty,” he wrote, “because our movements will be governed by circumstances over which we can have no control.”
On August 28, the
Jeannette
passed through the Bering Strait and turned west, coasting along Siberia, where, with the help of Chukchi natives, three members of the ship's company located a camp abandoned the year before by a Swedish expedition. The Swedes had left behind a stash of tinned food and what Lieutenant John Danenhower, the
Jeannette
's navigator, would later delicately call “some interesting pictures of professional Stockholm beauties.” From the natives, the foresighted Americans purchased both the Swedish food and the Swedish porn. Then the
Jeannette
turned north.
Jeannette
passed through the Bering Strait and turned west, coasting along Siberia, where, with the help of Chukchi natives, three members of the ship's company located a camp abandoned the year before by a Swedish expedition. The Swedes had left behind a stash of tinned food and what Lieutenant John Danenhower, the
Jeannette
's navigator, would later delicately call “some interesting pictures of professional Stockholm beauties.” From the natives, the foresighted Americans purchased both the Swedish food and the Swedish porn. Then the
Jeannette
turned north.
On September 6, southeast of Wrangell Island, having already ventured farther into the ice pack than the seasoned captains of whaling ships dared to, Captain De Long selected a leadâthat is, a long, navigable, canal-like crack in the iceâand piloted the
Jeannette
into it. The lead tapered. Then terminated. “The ground which we are going to traverse is an entirely new one,” De Long had said in a speech to the California Academy of Sciences a few days before the
Jeannette
's departure. “After reaching the seventy-first parallel of latitude we go out into a great blank space, which we are going to endeavor to delineate and to determine whether it is water or land or ice.” Already, De Long had his answer: from the lofty vantage of the crow's nest, he trained his telescope north. All there was to see, stretching to the far horizon, was ice. What to do? Turn back? Sail home in defeat?
Jeannette
into it. The lead tapered. Then terminated. “The ground which we are going to traverse is an entirely new one,” De Long had said in a speech to the California Academy of Sciences a few days before the
Jeannette
's departure. “After reaching the seventy-first parallel of latitude we go out into a great blank space, which we are going to endeavor to delineate and to determine whether it is water or land or ice.” Already, De Long had his answer: from the lofty vantage of the crow's nest, he trained his telescope north. All there was to see, stretching to the far horizon, was ice. What to do? Turn back? Sail home in defeat?
Perhaps De Long considered his reputation. Perhaps he considered the money James Bennett had invested in the expedition. Perhaps, like so many other Arctic explorers, he was enthralled by the object of his quest. Or perhaps, looking aft, he made a purely tactical calculation. In the wake of the
Jeannette
, the lead had closed. There was ice ahead, ice behind.
Jeannette
, the lead had closed. There was ice ahead, ice behind.
De Long had prepared for this eventuality. The
Jeannette
had three years' worth of rations in its stores, and back in California shipwrights had fortified the hull, bracing it with oak beams. Persuaded that his ship could survive the winter frozen in, De Long gave the command to charge on, under full steam and full sail. In the memoir he would survive to write, Lieutenant Danenhower describes the moment of impact: “We met with the young ice, and forced our way through it by ramming. This shook the ship very badly, but did not do her any damage; indeed the ship stood the concussions handsomely.”
Jeannette
had three years' worth of rations in its stores, and back in California shipwrights had fortified the hull, bracing it with oak beams. Persuaded that his ship could survive the winter frozen in, De Long gave the command to charge on, under full steam and full sail. In the memoir he would survive to write, Lieutenant Danenhower describes the moment of impact: “We met with the young ice, and forced our way through it by ramming. This shook the ship very badly, but did not do her any damage; indeed the ship stood the concussions handsomely.”
By late on that same afternoon, however, the floes had become impassable. The
Jeannette
was beset, and its thirty-three men and its forty dogs were now at the mercy of the currentsâcurrents that had never been traveled, let alone charted; currents the very existence of which had previously remained in dispute.
Jeannette
was beset, and its thirty-three men and its forty dogs were now at the mercy of the currentsâcurrents that had never been traveled, let alone charted; currents the very existence of which had previously remained in dispute.
“We banked fires, secured the vessel with ice-anchors, and remained,” Danenhower writes. “Our position was not an enviable one. At any moment the vessel was liable to be crushed like an egg-shell among this enormous mass of ice, the general thickness of which was from five to six feet, though some was over twenty where the floe pieces had overrun and cemented together and turned topsy-turvy. Pressures were constantly felt. We heard distant thundering of the heavy masses, which threw up high ridges of young ice that looked like immense pieces of crushed sugar.”
You might imagine that, faced with either imminent shipwreck or prolonged imprisonment in the icy labyrinth, De Long and his men would have despaired. Were I among them, I think I might well have helped myself to a few extra rations of rum, jumped overboard, and been done with it. But the
Jeannette
withstood the pressures of the ice, and its crew the pressures of light deprivation and claustrophobia and fear, passing that first winter in a paradoxical sort of perilous ease.
Jeannette
withstood the pressures of the ice, and its crew the pressures of light deprivation and claustrophobia and fear, passing that first winter in a paradoxical sort of perilous ease.
They went ice-skating on the floes. They hunted seal, walrus, and polar bear. They made meteorological and astronomical observations. The ship's doctor conducted monthly medical examinations, checking for signs of scurvy. On New Year's Day, the ship's cook served a multicourse feast the menu of which included spiced salmon, roast seal (“Arctic turkey,” they called it), green peas, succotash, canned plum pudding, mince pie, muscat dates, sherry, stout, French chocolate, French coffee, and cigars. When the feast was done, enlisted men put on a “minstrel show.”
One would like to imagine this sceneâthe virile, unwashed explorers, after months in close quarters, frozen into the ice pack, tipsy on rum and stout, entertaining each other with “magic lantern” shows and minstrel songs called “The Spanish Cavalier” and “What Should Make You Sad” and with an orientalist drama described on the playbill as follows: “The great âAh Sam'and âTong Sing' in their wonderful tragic performances.”
In January, when temperatures had dropped to minus 42 degrees Fahrenheit, the ship sprang a leak. The carpenter managed to repair it, and Engineer George Melville managed to pump the water out, but the incident, in hindsight, would prove to be portentous. By February, the
Jeannette
had drifted, circuitously, fifty miles, on a northwesterly bearing. Some days it made three nautical miles, others, nine. On the windiest days, it made twelve. Summer came, temperatures rose, and with them, so did hopes. De Long had assumed that the summer melt would set the
Jeannette
free. The anticipated emancipation never came. “The surface of the floe-pieces was now of a hard, greenish blue, and flinty, being covered in many places with thaw-water,” Danenhower would recall. “There were numerous cracks near the ship, but no leads that went in any definite direction, and there was no chance to move, for the ship was imbedded in the ice so firmly that a whole cargo of explosives would have been useless.”
Jeannette
had drifted, circuitously, fifty miles, on a northwesterly bearing. Some days it made three nautical miles, others, nine. On the windiest days, it made twelve. Summer came, temperatures rose, and with them, so did hopes. De Long had assumed that the summer melt would set the
Jeannette
free. The anticipated emancipation never came. “The surface of the floe-pieces was now of a hard, greenish blue, and flinty, being covered in many places with thaw-water,” Danenhower would recall. “There were numerous cracks near the ship, but no leads that went in any definite direction, and there was no chance to move, for the ship was imbedded in the ice so firmly that a whole cargo of explosives would have been useless.”
If the
Jeannette
survived, De Long and Danenhower reasonedâcorrectlyâthe northwesterly currents would carry them over the pole and out into the North Atlantic. But the
Jeannette
, of course, did not survive. On June 12, 1881, after twenty-one months adrift, the hull was sundered by ice. Water poured in. The ship heeled over 23 degrees to starboard. De Long gave the order to abandon ship. The following night, while most of the company was asleep in tents pitched on a floe, the
Jeannette
, suddenly released from what Danenhower called “the monster's grip,” sank into seas thirty-eight fathoms deep, the adjacent floes snapping the spars of its masts like twigs.
Jeannette
survived, De Long and Danenhower reasonedâcorrectlyâthe northwesterly currents would carry them over the pole and out into the North Atlantic. But the
Jeannette
, of course, did not survive. On June 12, 1881, after twenty-one months adrift, the hull was sundered by ice. Water poured in. The ship heeled over 23 degrees to starboard. De Long gave the order to abandon ship. The following night, while most of the company was asleep in tents pitched on a floe, the
Jeannette
, suddenly released from what Danenhower called “the monster's grip,” sank into seas thirty-eight fathoms deep, the adjacent floes snapping the spars of its masts like twigs.
Pulling sledges over the ice, the shipwrecked explorers now beat a desperate, southward retreat, toward Siberia. At the edge of the ice pack, they abandoned their sledges and took to their three boats, sailing for the mouth of the Lena River. One of the boats was lost at sea. Another, piloted by Lieutenant Danenhower, now suffering from snow blindness, eventually delivered its crew to safety. The third, captained by De Long, made it to the Siberian shallows, where it kept running aground. Carrying whatever provisions they could, De Long and his men had no choice but to wade ashore through the hypothermically cold waves. Frostbitten, already starving, they now found themselves on a wild Arctic coast bereft of inhabitants, human or otherwise. There, on the tundra, five of the seven members of De Long's party, including De Long, died in the usual way. The two survivors? Louis Noros and F. C. Nindermann. Somewhere during the course of their retreat, the former had lost a pair of oilskin pants, the latter a woolen cap.
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