The Ice Master (4 page)

Malloch was promised at the outset that he would be provided with an experienced geological and topographical assistant. Instead, Stefansson hired Mamen just two days before the
Karluk
sailed.

Mamen's hero was fellow Norwegian Roald Amundsen, and he longed to one day lead an expedition of his own, following in his hero's footsteps. It was the reason he so desperately wanted the job as Stefansson's assistant topographer. “I hope to
²¹
get so much experience on this trip,” he wrote in his diary, “that I can qualify as leader of a small Norwegian expedition.”

Stefansson had chosen several other members of his staff quickly and at the last minute, not so much for their experience or qualifications, but because they were eager to go.

Physically, at least
²²
, Mamen was better qualified than anthropologist M. Henri Beuchat, a sophisticated French gentleman with effeminate manners, who had spent most of his career safely inside the offices of the
Revue de Paris
, a prominent French magazine, and at the Laboratory of Anthropology of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Just thirty-four, his retiring, affected manner made him appear much older, and although scholarly and brilliant, he had absolutely no experience in field work.

Stefansson's secretary, twenty-four-year-old American Burt McConnell, also lacked practical experience and was the only member of the scientific staff without a college or university degree. A good-looking young man with plenty of ambition, he had hopped around from profession to profession, alternately trying his hand at railroad surveying, cashiering, clerking, and mining, before being hired as Stefansson's personal secretary, stenographer, publicity agent, and assistant.

B
ARTLETT WAS JUST
as unhappy with the choice of the crew as he was with the choice of the ship. Selected out of desperation from along the western coast of Canada, one of the crewmen had only a pair of canvas trousers to his name before signing on, two of the sailors were traveling under aliases, two men smuggled liquor aboard even though it was forbidden, and the cook, twenty-year-old Scotsman Robert “Bob” Templeman, was a confirmed drug addict. He made no
²³
secret of it, carrying around a pocket-sized case that held his vials of drugs and hypodermic syringes. He was a nervous man to begin with, anxious, high-strung, and rail thin, and the drug abuse had added years to him. A pair of narrow, beady eyes darted above the thick mustache that hung from his gaunt face, and he chain-smoked feverishly.

There hadn't been time enough to search out the best candidates. Besides, the pay—ten British pounds per month—was meager. So the crew of the
Karluk
was, for the most part, made up of boys without any real experience or practical trade, attracted by the adventure the expedition promised and whatever money they could get.

Bartlett worried about their inexperience, their backgrounds, and their character. None, as far as he knew, had ever set foot on Arctic ice or snow. Not one of them had ever been trained in surviving the elements, and Stefansson, in a perpetual rush to accommodate the swift deadline of the Canadian government—disgracefully—had offered no such training.

One of the first things Bartlett did upon his arrival in Esquimalt was to fire the first officer for incompetence. Finding himself suddenly without a first mate, Bartlett promoted the second officer, in spite of his lack of experience and youth. He was a young Scot admired by staff and crew alike. Indeed, he was one of the only crewmen who seemed to stand apart, head and shoulders above the rest.

Alexander “Sandy” Anderson had barely earned his second mate's papers by the time he joined the
Karluk
. He was a slender young man, just twenty-two years old, with a sweet, boyish face, and a graceful manner, which won him friends easily. He had a beautiful singing voice, played the violin, and had a fondness for floppy, wide-brimmed hats. There wasn't anyone who didn't like Sandy.

His father's weekly income as a railway signalman was a meager thirty shillings a week, and young Sandy learned at an early age how to be enterprising and resourceful. The youngest of three boys, Sandy did not share his brothers' interest in formal education, and instead fixed his sights on taking an engineering apprenticeship.

In 1908, plagued by illness, he was instead led to an “open-air life” to cure his poor health. And so he took to the sea. He wasn't the only member of his family to have done so. Sandy's maternal grandfather had sailed on a whaling expedition to the Arctic and died there.

Apprenticed as a merchant seaman, Sandy later paid for his second mate's examination out of his own pocket in early 1913. He joined the SS
Lord Derby
as third mate, but when he arrived in Vancouver to join her company, he discovered she was in dry dock at the Esquimalt Naval Yard, undergoing repairs. Sandy hung about the shipyard, living on the
Lord Derby,
waiting for her to become seaworthy again. All repairs ceased, however, when the dock workers went on strike, and Sandy found himself stranded in Esquimalt without a ship or a job. He could continue to wait indefinitely for the
Lord Derby
, he could go ashore and try his luck, he could join the Dollar Line as some of his friends had done, or he could take a job as second mate on the ship
Karluk
.

Bartlett knew Sandy was young, but he had to follow maritime protocol by promoting the next in line. “I came here
²⁴
as 2nd mate at $80 a month & had only signed on for a couple of days when the skipper & mate had a row & the mate was discharged,” Sandy wrote excitedly. “The old man appointed me chief officer on the spot . . . although I have only a seconds ticket & haven't had that any time yet. At present . . . the whole responsibility of getting her ready for sea [is] on my head & as we are booked to sail on Tuesday & . . . behind in many ways I have my work cut out.”

Bartlett had dismissed another member of the crew, this time one of the firemen who was put ashore when he refused to work. They had nicknamed him “the Suffragette” because he had stopped eating and working some weeks prior, and everyone agreed he should not have been hired to begin with. He was replaced by the youngest of the sailors, Fred Maurer.

Maurer had a quiet intensity about him, which came from his eyes. They were clear blue, penetrating, and piercing. Yet there was kindness in the gaze, and wisdom for such a young man. The rest of his features seemed to be a series of afterthoughts. He was husky and blond, with a firm, rugged jawline and an almost sheepish smile, as if he were perpetually trying to hold himself back and maintain a sense of control.

Just twenty years old, Maurer was a reserved, conscientious, church-going boy from New Philadelphia, Ohio, with “a thirst for
²⁵
excitement, plenty of determination, a saving sense of humor and a few cents in cash.” As a teenager, he had worked as many odd jobs as possible to save enough money to put himself through business college in Akron at the age of sixteen. Unfortunately, he had an intense dislike for school, and two years later, in 1911, Maurer and a boyhood friend headed to California. Arriving in San Francisco, the boys began looking for work and came across an advertisement in a newspaper:
GREEN HANDS WANTED
²⁶
ON THE
BELVEDERE
.

The boys enlisted immediately, Maurer as deckhand, and it was while the expedition was wintering at Herschel Island that Maurer met Vilhjalmur Stefansson. The famed explorer made quite an impression on Maurer as he came aboard the
Belvedere
and regaled the crewmen with stories of his adventures.

When Maurer had finished his contract with the whaling ship at the end of 1912 and was once again on land, he stumbled across a newspaper article about Stefansson and his forthcoming Canadian Arctic Expedition. As soon as he returned to Ohio, Maurer lost no time in writing to Stefansson to volunteer his services.

Maurer's friends strongly advised him against going to the Arctic. His family, too, did not want him to go. Before he had left Ohio to join this new expedition, before he ventured far away from his loved ones and everything familiar, he decided to ask the fates if he was doing the right thing. “It was heads
²⁷
, I go; tails, I stay at home. I tossed the coin thrice, and twice the head turned up, and the fates decreed that I should go.”

A
SECOND BEAR
was sighted on August 2, half an hour after the first was wounded, and this time each of the scientists was armed with a rifle, firing blindly away. Mamen watched as Bartlett stood at the bow and, in just two shots, brought the bear to its knees. It was a beautiful animal—seven feet, ten inches, from head to tail. The Eskimo hunters Stefansson had hired skinned the creature, and the skins were scraped and hung out on the rigging to dry, to be used later for clothing; the meat would be kept to feed both the men and the forty-some dogs on board, the pick of the finest dog breeder in Alaska.

That night, the
Karluk
forced her way into the heavy ice pack and bucked the ice until she was ground to a stop at midnight, surrounded by a solid field of white. There was nothing else to do but fill their tanks with fresh water from the nearby pools that had formed on the surface of the ice, and wait to be freed.

F
OR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS,
the
Karluk
sat trapped, just twenty-five miles from Point Barrow, Alaska. The staff and crew were restless and impatient to be on their way. No one knew what it meant, whether they would be stuck for the rest of the season, or whether it was only a minor setback. No one was more restless than Stefansson, and on August 3, he headed by dog sled to the Point Barrow trading station, Cape Smythe, where he hoped to hire more Eskimos and purchase more supplies.

That same day, the staff began amusing themselves by exploring the surrounding ice pack, going for long walks, playing European-style football, or trying their luck on skis. Mamen, who excelled in all sports, particularly skiing, was especially entertained by Beuchat's antics. The Frenchman was anything but athletic, and, his colleagues soon discovered, was quite clumsy. Beuchat raced about on the slippery ice, tumbling feet over ears, picking himself up and running on. Mamen warned him to be careful, told him he couldn't walk on ice as he did on the floor of a ship or on the ground, but the dignified anthropologist ignored his advice and promptly landed on his tail between two ice cakes, soaking himself to the bone.

McKinlay had dreamed of the moment when he would first set foot on the polar ice pack, and he was shaking with excitement as he stepped off the ship. He ran and danced with the rest of the men, leaping from one floe to another, scrambling to the tops of the ice hills, slipping and falling and sliding everywhere. It was exhilarating and liberating to be off the ship and running, momentarily free.

By August 5, however, the men of the
Karluk
were beginning to feel trapped and restless. Frolicking on the ice pack had lost its novelty. They had explored the ice, had reveled in their first taste of Arctic winter, but now they were ready to push forward. There was plenty of scientific and preparatory work to be done, but it was not enough to keep them from feeling claustrophobic. McKinlay made an attempt to retrieve his thermometers from the hold, but was unable to dig his way through the mountain of boxes to reach the instruments. He was anxious to begin working, but now it seemed he would have to wait until the stores could be rearranged and organized.

Later, young Mamen wrote in his diary, “. . . it begins to
²⁸
be monotonous and tedious to stay here, and I long to proceed north, but when? Who knows.”

Then, miraculously, the ice drifted out on the sixth, and the
Karluk
broke free and steamed toward Cape Smythe. Their coveted freedom was short-lived, however. Suddenly, the tiller smashed and the steering gear broke; and they had to stop once again for repairs. It was maddening, this stopping and starting, and no matter how many times they fixed it, the steering gear never worked for long.

On one occasion, it had nearly led them to disaster, steering them toward a narrow passage between two enormous, treacherous reefs. The first mate, fortunately, saw the danger just in time and was able to alter her course, but otherwise the ship and all aboard would have been crushed against the rocks.

The engine, too, needed a good tightening up, because the rough seas had damaged it extensively. Bartlett was as vocal as ever about his displeasure at Stefansson's choice of vessel. “Our skipper has
²⁹
some strong things to say about the ship and her shortcomings,” McKinlay observed. “It is unfortunate that he himself was not asked to buy the ship, as he might have made a better job of it.”

Repairs made, they were on their way again two hours later, steaming within a mile of the beach of Cape Smythe before running up against more ice. Knocked about by the immense, churning floes, the ship took a beating.

O
N THE EVENING
of August 6, as the
Karluk
waited offshore of Cape Smythe, an Eskimo family came aboard. The father, Kuraluk, was rumored to be one of the greatest hunters in Alaska. He had been hired to hunt for the expedition while his wife, Kiruk, was commissioned by Stefansson as seamstress. She was a stout young woman, raw-boned and strong, and would sew the winter clothes and skin boots for the staff and crew. It was Eskimo tradition that when a married man was hired, his family came with him, so they had brought their two young children, eight-year-old Helen, and three-year-old Mugpi. Helen was a solemn child, serious and quiet, and Mugpi seemed a cheery little girl, all adorable curiosity and wide brown eyes.

Another Eskimo also came aboard that day. He was nineteen-year-old Claude Kataktovik, a widower with a baby daughter. He had left his daughter with his family when Stefansson invited him to join the expedition as a hunter, an opportunity he felt he could not refuse. After all, Stefansson had promised him a great deal of money for his services—twenty thousand dollars, according to Kataktovik, for a year's work. Stefansson also gave him twenty dollars and a rifle.