The Surfacing (46 page)

Assuming she lies exactly where we left her, from our current position it is not
much more than 100 miles to the ship, due north. Between us and her, it is hard to
know what exactly keeps the pieces in place. They seem the fragments of a gigantic
puzzle forced together, made to fit. What I fear most is a sudden blast from the
north, which would scatter them, or inspire a drift that would bear us south, ever
farther from the ship we are now trying to regain, even as it previously drew us
backward, as we struggled to advance. I believe, however, that time is now on my
side. It is growing colder again by the day. This morning, there was a thin veneer
in our water-cask. It wrinkled to the touch, like the skin on cold soup. Soon there
will be young ice again in every lead. Soon the nights will begin the simple task
of gluing together again all the fragments of summer. Tomorrow morning or the morning
after, I know, when we go to wash we will have to smash the surface with our pans.
This is not a prediction but a certainty. All of a sudden, even in its humblest details,
the future appears to me more definite and reliable than the past.

This evening, he wrote, I have been reading again to the men, from DeHaven's journal,
which he was obliged to abandon on account of its weight. I treat them to at least
one instalment daily. The men receive it as news not of another time but another
place. What I mean is, they talk as though what is described occurred quite recently,
but far, far away. I can hardly quibble. To me, likewise, the events referred to
are no more real now than those of a storybook. The transformations have begun. With
reminiscence and silence, we are consigning ourselves to the past.

May 17th, 1852, Morgan read. Today we bid adieu to Petersen. To the end he kept faith
with the old dream, that we would push through to Cathay, as he liked to name it,
and round the world again all the way to Disko, to fame and fortune and a good wife.
But here he will stay, his corpse perfectly preserved for all eternity, a heathen
laid under a wooden cross, a fitting monument in my opinion to the inanity of mortal
ambition and design.

This was the turnstile, he knew. Every next step was for exile. In two little weeks,
if all went well, they might be looking again at the ship, if the ship was where
they left it. At this remove she remains a source of hope, even of unexpected feelings
of nostalgia, he wrote. Speaking of her, the men speak as of the gift of a benevolent
power. To every one of them, just now, she is a warmer, better life. This morning
I stood atop the berg I have chosen as a home for this my last letter to the world.
I had a clear view, in all its fullness, of what lies ahead. It was one white tract.
It is blind ream, to every point. From that vantage, I myself thought of her with
a sort of giddy caution. I hardly dare believe that, in such a hostile setting, something
so fragile can continue to preserve us, and perhaps one day be the means of our salvation.
Yet I cannot help but hear the promise farther north. North, there will be no more
grand or petty ambitions to harass me, only an endless roster of little miseries.
To balance all that, when finally we arrive, there may be a smile of recognition
from my son. Then the lad will probably want to climb up on the sledge, to play.
I know that ought to suffice me, just as I know it will not. I want more. I want
to hold him in my arms. I want to press him hard against me, his warm living flesh.
I want to feel it beating, my other heart.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For many details and a number of incidents I am indebted to first-hand accounts of
the search for Franklin, and of 19th-century Arctic exploration. The most important
sources are listed below.

The Surfacing
is a work of fiction but takes as a template a general historical context
and specific historical events. In 1850, ten British and American ships converged
on Beechey Island and found the famous traces of Franklin there. From there they
dispersed to different zones (mostly unmapped) of the Canadian archipelago to pursue
the search. Their route to Beechey and beyond was often similar, but the
Impetus
broadly follows the itinerary and methods of the
Advance
and
Rescue
from Disko through
the ice to Cape York, to Beechey then Griffith Islands, then up into the Wellington
Channel, as given in Kane and Carter. From there, aficionados will know, no ship
ever managed to go so far north and west of the Queen's Channel as the
Impetus
. That
said, Belcher ascended the Wellington and Queen's Channels to c. 77° N (and sledged
far beyond); and Franklin himself, in 1847, got about as far in much bigger ships;
they had their unexpected drifts, and I want mine. Besides Kane, Carter and Belcher,
the general drift north also takes as a model the drift of the
Fox
in Baffin Bay
in 1857–58.

I am greatly indebted to the numerous accounts of sledge travel in the Wellington
Channel and on Somerset Island given by Sutherland and Kennedy respectively. These
have provided me with detail specific to sledging in those conditions and that geography;
I have reworked several incidents related in those accounts. (I am also indebted
to accounts of McClintock's sledging on Melville Island and Somerset Island/the Boothia
Peninsula; and of the sledge journeys out from the
Resolute
,
Enterprise
and
Investigator
.)
The ‘retreat' with the whaleboat of Part V takes as models the retreat south to Cape
Sabine of Greely in 1883, the retreat from the
Advance
of the 2nd Grinnell expedition
in 1855, and the retreat of Payer from the
Tegetthoff
in 1874.

Cape Dundas was an agreed point of rendezvous and refuge for all the Franklin searchers.
Parker and Deuchars were whaling captains McClintock and others met in Baffin Bay,
and who advised them. As told to McClintock, the
Princess Charlotte
went down off
Cape York in 1856, much like the wreck Kitty describes. The character DeHaven has
nothing to do with the commander of the 1st Grinnell expedition (I just liked the
name). There is an Offshore/Inshore table in Collinson; a sun-house in Payer; a bird-man
mirage in Kane; a present of coffee and seeds in McClintock; a balloon with tail-papers
in McDougall; and many other little debts too numerous to mention. The phrase ‘Je
ne reviens pas, je viens' is from an interview with the Palestinian poet Mahmoud
Darwich. All temperatures are in Fahrenheit. Where known facts have not suited my
narrative, I have ignored them.

SOURCES

Personal Narrative of the Discovery of the Northwest Passage
, Armstrong;
Last of
The Arctic Voyages
, Belcher;
Searching for the Franklin Expedition (Arctic Journal)
,
Robert Randolph Carter;
Journal of HMS Enterprise 1850–55
, Collinson;
Narrative of
the Last Grinnell Expedition
, Godfrey;
Three Years of Arctic Service
, Greely;
Ghosts
of Cape Sabine
, Leonard F. Guttridge;
The US Grinnell Expedition
, Kane;
The Eventful
Voyage of the Resolute
, Kellett;
Short Narrative of the 2nd Voyage of the Prince
Albert
, Kennedy;
Voyage of The Fox
, McClintock;
Voyage of HM Discovery Ship Resolute
,
McDougall;
Frozen Ships (Arctic Diary 1850–54)
, Miertsching;
Discovery of the North-West
Passage by HMS Investigator
, Osborn;
New Lands Within The Arctic Circle
, Payer;
Journal
of a Voyage in Baffin's Bay & Barrow Straits
, Sutherland;
Abandoned
, Alden Todd;
Dr Kane's Voyage to the Polar Lands
, Villarejo.

For more details, photographs, etc., visit
cormacjames.com

THANKS

Thanks to Isobel Dixon for her faith and tenacity, and to all at Blake Friedmann.
Thanks to Robert Davidson, Moira Forsyth, and all at Sandstone Press. Special thanks
to Jerry Page for reading, advising, photos, and much more. Thanks for keen reading
and comments to Fin Keegan, Greg Flanders and Brian Hanrahan. Thanks to Kirstin Chappell
and Marie-Martine Khamassi for help on visuals. Thanks to Colum McCann, Rose Tremain
and John Boyne for their generous encouragement and support.