When I came on deck [Jernegan wrote] I saw the heavy drift ice had cracked the heavy point of ice that held our ship. I felt quite sure we was going to have trouble if this point of ice broke adrift. Shure enough, the whole of this broke adrift and swung around. I sung out, “Let go the lines to the ice anchors,” but it was too late as the ship was drove astern, the rudder fetching up against the ice, carrying away all the pindles. Then the ship’s stern was all stove in the heavy drift.
Ice worked right under the ship, raised the whole ship almost out on to the ice then her whole broad [starboard] side was stove in.
The
Roman
began to sink immediately. Jernegan ordered the three boats on the port side to be lowered onto the ice, while other crewmen jumped over the rail onto the ice to haul the boats clear as the heavy masts fell around them. Jernegan ran below to his cabin to save his two chronometers and a pistol, and with these in his hands he jumped down onto the ice. In what appeared to be the direst of circumstances, some of his crew began to panic, but Jernegan maintained order. He set his thirty-eight-man crew to dragging the three boats across the heaving floes, over pressure ridges, around gaping cracks that opened and closed, ready to crush the boats, toward open water.
Dangerously overloaded, with more than twice as many men in the boats as they were designed to carry, Jernegan and the
Roman
’s crew rowed twenty miles southwest, against wind and current, to where the nearest ships—the
Comet,
of Honolulu; the Howlands’
Concordia
; and the
Gay Head
, also of New Bedford—still floated free.
But at one a.m. the following morning, September 2, ice closed around the
Comet
, snapping her massive timbers between two large floes. She didn’t sink right away; the ship was forced upward out of the water, as her crew jumped over the side onto the ice. The ship was slowly ground to pieces and the wreckage remained visible on the ice for days. Captain Packard, of the
Henry Taber
, and the captains of other ships anchored nearby, sent their boats to take off the
Comet’
s crew
.
Captain James Knowles of the
George Howland
purchased salvage rights to the ship’s wreckage and whatever could be recovered of her stores and barrels of oil for $13—a reflection of how poor the
Comet
’s season had been, but perhaps there was a fitting or two aboard her that might have been worth a few dollars and the trouble to remove it.
The sight of the
Comet’
s toppled masts and wreckage strewn across the ice, and of the ignominious plunder of her cargo, was a grim spec ter of what now threatened every ship along the coast. With the coming and going of boats transferring the crewmen of both the
Roman
and the
Comet
to other ships, while others still rowed and sailed along the narrowing channel, looking for whales, news of what had happened traveled through the fleet within hours. It was dolefully recorded on the same day in logbooks of ships separated by many miles.
There was little change for the next five days. The wind remained light, from the south and southwest. Ships swung to their anchors in the current or moved as necessary to avoid ice—always, reluctantly, closer to the shore—while still sending boats off to look for whales.
On September 7, the second mate’s boat of the
Emily Morgan
had the good luck to harpoon a whale. Moments later, that same second mate, Antonio Oliver, accidentally shot himself through the head with a bomb gun and was instantly killed. Many of the ships’ logbooks noted this accident in identical words, leaving the impression of a boat rowing from ship to ship passing on this gruesome news.
On September 8, the wind strengthened. “Strong” and “fresh” were the words used in several logbooks, indicating gale force. It was still blowing from the southwest, and this stronger wind pushed ice grounded on the shoals farther into the waterway, forcing ships ever closer to the beach. Up and down the coast, this latest advance by the ice had an immediate effect on the fleet. The
Elizabeth Swift
was forced aground at three p.m.; her crew got her off four hours later. The bark
Awashonks
was crushed and sank. Although she was twenty miles to the south, the news of the
Awashonks
’s sinking reached the
Swift
at nearly telegraph speed.
With nothing to do but watch the advancing ice, go to the assistance of ships in trouble, and still send their men out whaling, the captains of most vessels were rowing to and fro, gamming with their colleagues, swapping news, and talking about what was to be done—but there was nothing to do except wait for a change of wind, and, finally, to decide what to do if it did not change. These captains were all champion stoics, well used to waiting out bad weather, but though they were courageous odds-players, they were not dreamers, hopers against unrealistic hope. They were men who recognized and seized the main chance when it came along, and now one was looming, one they all abhorred, but which looked increasingly necessary and urgent: abandonment of their ships. It might well be possible to continue dodging the encroaching ice for a few weeks more, but as September advanced, the weather would only grow colder, the ice thicker. If a route to the open sea couldn’t be found soon, all the ships would be crushed, forcing their abandonment.
This, they knew, could be executed with a high degree of control and safety: each ship carried a minimum of five whaleboats, more than adequate as lifeboats capacious enough to carry her complement of men—and a number of women and children—and some provisions. Getting from ship to shore, at most half a mile away, would not be difficult. Once there, however, a severer trial would begin. The experiences of Captain Barker and the men of the
Japan
, related and discussed aboard every ship earlier that summer, had made this prospect vividly real. And the crew of the
Japan
had been a handful of men; here were more than 1,200 people aboard the trapped whaleships. The fleet carried food for no more than a season’s cruise, and this season was almost over. The outcome for this large population ashore was plain: death by starvation and cold.
“Ice boun on wone side and land on the other,”
lamented Captain Valentine Lewis, of the
Thomas Dickason
, describing the whaling captain’s worst definition of lying between a rock and a hard place. Lewis also usually sailed with his wife, Ethelinda, but this summer he had, like Jared Jernegan with his wife, left her safely ashore, in Honolulu.
“God have Mercy on this Whaling Fleet and deliver us from the cold and Icy shores.”
There was one possible alternative to this grimmest scenario: it was believed that a few ships had not been caught by the ice but still cruised in open water to the south. If the whaleboats, carrying 1,200 people, could reach these ships, they might all get away before the onset of winter. But the decision to abandon the fleet—while most of it still floated intact—had to be made soon, before any ships to the south, discouraged by the ice and unaware of the plight of those to the north, turned and sailed for home.
On September 9, a group of captains met and agreed they could wait no longer. They decided to try to lighten one of the smallest vessels in the fleet, the 270-ton
Kohola,
of Honolulu, by transferring its barrels of oil, water, and other provisions to another ship, hoping thus to reduce its draft sufficiently to allow it to sail through the shallow water inside the ice at the south of the waterway. Once free, it was to try to contact any vessels still cruising in the open sea beyond. The
Kohola
sailed only a few miles before grounding in six feet of water off Wainwright Inlet. Captains Thomas Williams and William Kelley (of the
Gay Head
) then tried to lighten the even smaller 149-ton
Victoria
, of San Francisco, but she, too, soon grounded on shoals inside the ice, unable to get clear.
On the morning of September 10, the open water in the channel around the ships was found to have frozen during the night to the thickness of an inch—a stark indicator, with the failure of the
Kohola
and the
Victoria
to get clear, of what lay ahead. “Off this ship,” is what every man was thinking, and some of them voicing. Captains and crews throughout the fleet now began packing whaleboats with food, gear, and sails (to use as tents if necessary). Unsure if they would find any ships beyond the ice, they knew now that no one could help them but themselves. A number of whaleboats departed for the south right away, hoping to row or sail clear of the ice and contact what ships might still be cruising there.
From the
Elizabeth Swift
’s logbook:
MONDAY 11TH.
...
No change in the ice. The ships are all makeing preperations for sending provisions south thinking they will have to leave their ships soon. New ice made last night quite thick so that it was dificult to get a boat through it.
The
Emily Morgan
, of New Bedford, was another “lady ship.” At four a.m. on September 12, Captain Benjamin Dexter left the
Morgan
with his wife, Almira, in a whaleboat,
“to take his wife to a place of safety in the south,”
recorded his first mate, William Earle. What that safe place could be, unless aboard a ship clear of the ice, no one knew. Dexter left first mate Earle aboard the
Emily Morgan
with instructions to
“act according to circumstances . . . if the other ships are to be abandoned to abandon ours at the same time.”
Earle also recorded his doubts and the limit to what he would do:
For my part, I will not cross the Arctic Ocean in an open whale-boat laden with men and provisions in the latter part of the month of September and October. As far as Icy Cape, there is no danger, but beyond that, (if all ships’ companies have to take to boats to Behring’s Strait) the sea is dangerous at this season of the year. Out of the 1,400 men not 100 will survive. I will return from Icy Cape if ships cannot be found.
On September 11, Captain D. R. Frazer, of the
Florida,
who had earlier set out to the south in command of three whaleboats, found the whaleship
Lagoda
in clear water ten miles off Icy Cape. Until that day, the
Lagoda
and six other whaleships had also been locked in the ice and trying to sail free. On the eleventh, the ice broke up sufficiently to allow them to work their way out into open water. If they had not been frozen until then, or if Captain Frazer’s boats had not encountered them that day, the seven ships would have sailed south. Boats from the
Lagoda
were dispatched to other ships, which lay within a few miles of each other off Icy Cape. All agreed to wait until the boats from the fleet, with their 1,200 passengers, reached them.
Captain James Dowden, of the
Progress,
not far from the
Lagoda
, gave Captain Frazer this message to take back to the other captains: “Tell them all I will wait for them as long as I have an anchor left or a spar to carry a sail.”
Frazer returned to the fleet with this message the next day, September 12. On that day all the captains met aboard his ship, the
Florida
, where they signed the following statement:
Point Belcher, Arctic Ocean, Sept. 12, 1871
Know all men by these presents, that we, the undersigned, masters of whale-ships now lying at Point Belcher, after holding a meeting concerning our dreadful situation, have all come to the conclusion that our ships cannot be got out this year, and there being no harbor that we can get our vessels into, and not having provisions enough to feed our crews to exceed three months, and being in a barren country, where there is neither food nor fuel to be obtained, we feel ourselves under the painful necessity of abandoning our vessels, and trying to work our way south with our boats, and, if possible, get on board of ships that are south of the ice. We think it would not be prudent to leave a single soul to look after our vessels, as the first westerly gale will crowd the ice ashore, and either crush the ships or drive them high upon the beach. Three of the fleet have already been crushed, and two are now lying hove out, which have been crushed by the ice, and are leaking badly. We have now five wrecked crews distributed among us. We have barely room to swing at anchor between the pack of ice and the beach, and we are lying in three fathoms of water. Should we be cast upon the beach it would be at least eleven months before we could look for assistance, and in all probability nine out of ten would die of starvation or scurvy before the opening of spring.
Therefore, we have arrived at these conclusions [after] the return of our expedition under command of Capt. D. R. Frazer, of the Florida, he having with whale-boats worked to the southward as far as Blossom Shoals, and found that the ice pressed ashore the entire distance from our position to the shoals, leaving in several places only sufficient water for our boats to pass through, and this liable at any moment to be frozen over during the twenty-four hours, which would cut off our retreat, even by the boats, as Captain Frazer had to work through a considerable quantity of young ice during his expedition, which cut up his boats badly.
It was awkwardly written, in part because it was painstakingly specific, and rang with a defensive solidarity. To abandon a ship and its cargo, together worth perhaps $50,000, in some cases much more—particularly those ships still floating sound and unwrecked in the channel—was, for these upstanding men, who were always mindful of their responsibility to their ship’s owners (and many of them were themselves part owners of their ships), a terrible act that would carry a long shadow down through the remainder of their careers. For a seaman, the loss of a ship is always tainted with shame, no matter what the circumstances; and it is always subject to speculation, by those who weren’t there, of what else might have been done. To abandon a vessel that, like most of the fleet, still floated sound and in good condition, was almost unheard of. Few of these captains would have left their ships unless all of them had agreed upon the necessity to do so, and then formalized that agreement in what amounted to a shared oath swearing to the extremity of their situation. They knew that other men, at home or in other ships, would question their decision. They had to affirm, to one another and the world, that there was no alternative.