Trial by Ice (24 page)

To George Tyson, captain of the
Robeson,
went the prize: he got Emil BesseL Buddington must have smirked when he penned the second boat's list. Putting his two main detractors into the same boat had to please him. Their animosity toward each other almost equaled their dislike for him. He could picture them sniping at each other as they rowed. Finally Buddington decreed that everything must be ready to launch the waterborne expedition by the first of May.

The captain's ploy succeeded in keeping his detractors distracted. April passed with everyone occupied in outfitting the boats or trying to free the ship from the four-foot-thick ice gripping her sides. With the warming weather came a new concern. As the ice thinned and the snow melted, the ship would settle back into the water. The damaged hull would have more opportunity to leak. Partially freeing the rudder and propeller brought some relief, however. Neither appeared damaged.

At this time, Buddington, always the pessimist, penned his doubts about the ship's seaworthiness in the official log:

I think that it will be some trouble to keep the Polaris afloat when she comes down into the water again. Her sides are much open. Her main rail is broken in one place by the heavy pressure of the whole top work of the vessel listing over so much and for so long a time.

Tyson found that two planks along the six-foot mark on the starboard side of the bow were split lengthwise. Efforts to repair the damage yielded little improvement, as the bow still rocked up and down with the tide and wave action, springing the repairs open.

Yet another diversion appeared. On April 25 the two Inuit returned with their sleds loaded with fresh musk ox meat. Spring brought the annual migration of the hairy animals along the coast. The excited Natives told of seeing thick herds crossing the valley
and had shot seven animals, having cached all but the three their sleds could hold.

Hunting fever swept the crew. Work on the hull stopped as hunting parties snatched their rifles and sped inland.

Hunting these creatures brought out the worst in the crew of the
Polaris.
Months of living in fear, boredom, and depression boiled over into a wild slaughter of these hapless creatures. Under the guise of obtaining fresh meat, the crew blasted away at every animal they encountered. Their killing spree exceeded whatever game they needed for fresh meat, leading to waste. Neither Bud-dington nor Bessel made any effort to rein in the crew's excesses.

App^ rently the slaughter finally disgusted Tyson, although from the lack of sport rather than the waste. “It is not very exciting sport,” he wrote, “for there is no [more] chance of missing them than the side of a house. When they have been checked by the dogs, and got :hemselves in a circle, there is nothing to do but walk up and shoot them.” He decried an incident where Kruger and Sieman stumblec across a family of musk oxen resting near the foothills. Their first shot wounded the female, preventing her from fleeing. To their surprise, the faithful male charged Sieman. A comedic scene ensued with Kruger and Sieman running and firing while the bull chased them. At length the three animals took up their defensive stance, allowing the two men to blast away at them.

Thres hundred shots were fired. The female eventually dropped down and died of her wounds, and only then did the injured male and his offspring abandon her and retreat. Having exhausted all their carrridges, Sieman and Kruger could only watch. A party of sailors fi lished off the rest of the family the next day and retrieved the meat of the female. The supply of fresh meat now surpassed the capacity of the ship's icebox. While Bessel oversaw the skinning of the unfortunate musk ox family so they could later be stuffed, the animals' flesh found its way into a hole cut in the side of Providence Berg.

In their blood lust the officers, scientific corps, and crew forgot all tr ought of proceeding north to discover new land and plant the flag t the North Pole. Perhaps this was what Captain Budding-ton wan :ed. His deadline of the first of May came and went with
nothing happening. Chester and Jamka suffered snow blindness while hunting musk oxen that day. Sleds and men rushed about along the foothills and through the low plains behind the coastal bluffs, but always in search of animals to shoot. None of the trips made more than twenty miles or lasted longer than a week.

Ice still gripped the bay while leads of dark water opened and closed in Kennedy Channel at the whim of the currents. Despite the sealed surface of the bay, strong water forces swept below it and drove blocks of ice capable of crushing a longboat along any open channel. Hopes of launching the two whaleboats dimmed. Now was the time to explore by sled when the ice was still thick, but that window of opportunity was rapidly closing while the men hunted. Clearly inertia was bogging down the polar exploration, tying the men to the uncertain safety of their ship. All this might have been expected with the loss of Captain Hall. Only hewith Tyson, Morton, and the two Inuit menwere the land explorers. All the rest were sailors or laboratory scientists.

There was simply no one to lead. Now that Hall was dead, Tyson had no authority, since he had derived his strange position from the late commander's pleasure. Thirty years in the navy had conditioned Morton to follow commands, not give them, and the Inuit withdrew to their usual defensive posture of being passive when dealing with white men. To their credit, they had come along only for their friend Captain Hall, and he was dead. No one else aboard the
Polaris
had earned their friendship and respect.

C
ALAMITY

By the end of May, three feet of water filled the ship's hold, but Bessel preferred to turn his attentions to the impending expeditions and other things closer to his heart. The men had captured two flies near the observatory, the first seen since the winter, and the physician indulged his passion of studying the insects.

Budclington did order a halfhearted repair. The split along the starboard bow was caulked and tarred over and the iron plating replaced, lesulting in some improvement. Work could be performed only at iour-hour intervals because of the rising tide. Moreover, at the next high tide, the leak returned unabated. At that time the carpenter discovered a similar set of cracks extending eight feet aft from the port side and leaking copious amounts of seawater. For all his nighrly troubles, Coffin still managed to function as the ship's carpenter. There was nothing he could do, however, to make repairs to the o itside of the ship's hull. Because of the ice spur on which the
Polcris
sat, the ship had rolled and the port side remained underwater.

The weight of the water trapped within the hold placed an added strain on the ship's keel, so Buddington ordered the pumps used. Obstinate like its name, the donkey pump refused to start just then, so the men worked a smaller pump, nicknamed the “handy billy.” Four hours of pumping cleared the hold.

Distressingly, water continued to accumulate aft whenever the
pumping stopped. A survey of the hold failed to pinpoint any leaks in the stern. Someone suggested the rising water might be from ice melting in the coal bunkers and running aft. The crew accepted this explanation and happily returned to their new prioritymaking beer.

Buddington wholly supported this endeavor, at the expense of repairing his ship, stating that the brewing “would do them good.” Three days of concerted effort produced a barrel filled to the brim with the sour brew. The cask occupied the center of the galley with a sign stating north pole lager beer saloon, no trust, cash.

The men quaffed their beer anxiously and watched June arrive while the water in the hold rose to five inches. The sound of water dripping into the forward hold during high tide joined the chorus of groans and creaks from the teetering hull, probably prompting the crew to drink all the more. The water contributed to the rot attacking the spare sails stored in the hold, but so far the foodstuffs and coal remained safe.

Tantalizingly, signs of summer appeared about the ship while ice still blocked the men's use of their longboats. The temperature rose daily. Pools of melted water covered the ice, melting streams cascaded from the bluffs, and rough patches of earth poked shyly through their white mantle. Moss, lichen, and ground willow stirred into life, creeping across the barren shale. All about the ship, the land was stirring. Summer is short in the Arctic. Life that depends on sunlight and warmth must rise to the occasion or be left behind.

On a visit to Captain Hall's grave, George Tyson found ground willow rooted among the piled rocks and extending interlocking fingers across the mounded dirt.

Ironically Buddington noted the changes in his journal, too, and the expedition's inaction crept into his words:

The plain is full of fine streamlets of water that give moisture to the ground. Saxifrages are blooming, and are distributed all over the plain. Insects are getting numerous. Flies and mosquitoes are met with. This single warm day has called many into life.

On the sixth of June, the Arctic cast a lure that no one aboard the ship could ignore: open sea appeared along the spur of land just north of t he observatory that they called Cape Lupton. Shining water lay dancing before them. Quickly the two whaleboats were slid over the ce to the edge of the open lead at Cape Lupton the next day. The vvay north by whaleboat beckoned.

Mr. Chester jumped at the chance. Euphoria abounded as by eight p.m. the evening of the seventh, he sped off with his whaleboat crew and a sled loaded with extra provisions. All winter long, plans for reaching the North Pole had circulated around the mess and throughout the forecastle. Combined with the months of inaction and dark less, the mission grew in many minds until it became not only a Holy Grail of sorts but an easy grail to achieve.

Naive te, lack of experience, and alcohol compounded to simplify this daunting task in their minds to little more than a short row up the channel instead of a six-hundred-mile, life-threatening struggle. Rear Adm. C. H. Davis, in his official report of the
Polaris
expedition, did his best to whitewash this almost unbelievable gullibility:

Exactly what occupied these men's minds that day is hard to fathom. Since late summer of the previous year, the expedition had stumbled and faltered whenever the Arctic showed its power. Sudden storms, cold, darkness, and ice buffeted them constantly and brushed aside their attempts at progress with uncaring force. Yet here they rushed forth eagerly to subdue the far North in fragile whaleboats where their stout sailing ship could do nothing.

Chester's crew vanished into the twilight a full day ahead of Tyson. On the eighth, Tyson dispatched his men to their boat as he and Bessel gathered last-minute odds and ends. All the while the assistant navigator fretted that Chester might beat him to the prize.

While Tyson stewed over his delayed departure and his crew waited by their boat, Chester and his crew launched theirs, the
Grant,
from Cape Lupton on the morning of the eighth. Ahead of them the slate-gray water stretched around the turn of the headlands. Pulling together, the men put their backs into the oars, and the heavily laden whaleboat knifed across the open water. Spirits soared as they rowed onward. A mile passed.

Two miles into their journey, an enormous ice floe rose out of the sunlit mists directly ahead. The white island slid silently toward the opening to which the men rowed. Driven by the onshore winds, the island would block their path unless the whale-boat reached the opening first. A desperate race ensued, the men of the
Grant
straining and cursing as they rowed while the frozen wall moved inexorably closer. Chester urged his men on, and the sharp prow of the skiff shot forward. Mere yards ahead the channel remained open.

Then a gust of wind spun the floe around, and ice met ice, closing the passage with a dull crunch. The longboat crashed into the sealed opening, and its prow rode onto the hard surface with a start.

Exhausted but hardly discouraged, Chester and his crew dragged the boat onto the floe and hauled the craft across the flat surface. Supplies spilled onto the ice, filling the grooves left in the melting surface by the boat's passage. Hastily Chester sent someone to retrieve the articles. Once across the ice, they again launched the boat and paddled on. Another mile passed.