Trial by Ice (32 page)

Well past nine in the morning, the party finally dragged and skidded the boats to the water's edge. Rowing and poling through the slush, the party struck off for the elusive shore. A low fog rolled in from the north as they got farther from their ice island. Tyson struggled to keep his bearings as the sliver of land ahead vanished and reappeared in the mist.

Halfway across, the lee ahead closed completely. Now they were on neither land nor solid ice but caught in a slurry of slush and ice that threatened to swamp them. If they could not break free, they would face the white death every Eskimo afloat feared: trapped in a rime of ice too thick to navigate through yet too thin to walk upon. Only death from starvation or freezing could follow.

Desperately the men rowed for the largest floe they could see. Hacking and chopping through the slush with their oars, they finally reached it. About a hundred yards across, the ice proved thick enough to support the boats. The men pulled the craft onto the floe to keep the whaleboats from freezing solid in the closing ice. Exhausted, the men flopped down in the shelter of the boats.

Just then Tyson spotted the
Polaris.

Steaming around a point about ten miles north, the ship was under way, apparently undamaged, and making way under sail and steam. Sunlight glowed off her sails, while a dark plume of smoke streamed from her stacks. Black, open water sparkled off the bow of the ship and spread to within a mile of the stranded whaleboats. From there on only pancake ice sealed the difference. With her reinforced prow, the ship could easily smash her way to their rescue.

A signal was needed. The
Polaris
could not help but see them; still, Tyson was taking no chances. Light glaring off the ice and water might mask the party. There was no time for a fire, much less the wood to make a notable blaze. Dragging a sheet of India rubber from the bottom of one boat, Tyson draped it over a mound of ice. His men followed his example.

In mir utes an American flag, canvas bags, musk ox hides, and even a pair of red flannel long Johns sprouted from poles and oars stuck in the snow. While his men cheered, Tyson watched the
Polaris
through his telescope.

A shier ran down his spine. The
Polaris
looked like a ghost ship. The decks were clear. No one kept watch in the crow's nest, and the quarterdeck appeared empty. Silently, like the Flying Dutchman, the ship cruised closer with no sign of life aboard.

The
Polaris
steamed on, following the curve of a lump of land that Tyson assumed was Littleton Island. Inexorably the vessel bore down on them. The men jumped and yelled in celebration. They were saved. This night would see them warm and dry on their ship.

When the
Polaris
reached the tip of the island, it turned away. Tyson snapped his glass shut in amazement as the cheers of his men died.

The
Polaris
vanished behind the land and was gone.

M
AROONED

The sudden snap of the hawsers and the explosion of the ice propelled the
Polaris
into the mouth of the storm. The lurch that followed those breaking ropes sent Captain Buddington sprawling across the quarterdeck, sliding over the ice-covered planks until he careened into the raised cabin. Even as the ship danced wildly through the clouds of snow, he scrambled to his feet and shouted, “All hands to muster!”

He did not know how many of the crew remained behind on the ice. For a fleeting moment, he feared he might be alone. Quickly he calmed his fears. The engineers at least were still aboardthem and the tiresome Dr. Bessel. Throughout the entire storm, the physician had not stirred from his cabin.

White-faced men raced to his side, and a roll call was hurriedly taken. Anxiously Buddington counted the bodies while he searched each bundled face in recognition. The mad carpenter, Nathan Coffin, grinned lopsidedly at him. Resenting every minute he had to stand in the cold, Emil Bessel glared back sullenly. Beside him stood the gentle Bryan, his face placid as he prepared to meet his Maker. There, too, were the stolid features of old William Morton, the second mate, and Hubbard Chester, the first mate.

Half the crew was missing. Sieman, Hayes, Mauch, and Hobby were the only able hands left to man the ship. Four such men could not handle the sails in a strong blow, Buddington realized. He cursed his bad luck in ordering so many men onto the ice. He
cursed Tyson, too, ever the thorn in his side, for having both the whaleboa :s with him.

The door to the companionway swung open, and four coal-blackened faces gazed up at the group. Schuman, Odell, Booth, and Campbell all the engineers and firemen were still aboard.

“Schuman?” Buddington asked.

The engineer shook his head, answering the unspoken question that burned in the mind of each and every one. “Water still rising.”

“And the engines?”

Schuman wiped an oily hand across his mouth. “The fires are lit in the boilers, but there's not enough steam yet to run the engines. If the water in the bilges reaches the fire plates, it'll put out the fires.”

Buddington looked up to watch an iceberg half the length of the ship scrape along the ribs of the vessel. Chips of ice and snow showered onto the deck as the danger floated past. Even with their sails furled, the force of the storm pushed the
Polaris
along on bare poles. Wich the rudder and screw damaged and no steam, the ship drifted among the floating ice like a lamb among wolves. Without anchors, without ice hawsers, and with no lifeboats, the men were helpless.

Worst; than that, they could not even jump onto the ice should the ship s nk. The current and blasting wind had cleared their channel of everything but “brash” ice mixed with swiftly passing icebergs. The slush filling the space between would not hold a man's weight. Thick enough to impede swimming, the slush would keep even the strongest swimmer from reaching an iceberg. To the Inuit this was ihe treacherous
qinuq,
the rotten snow and slush floating on the sea, which could trap an unwary kayak.

Their only hope lay in holding back the flood until enough steam was raised to run the engines and the larger pumps.

Budd ngton pointed to the hand pumps. “Now, work for your lives, boys,” he again exhorted his diminished crew, ironically using the same phrase that had sent most of his men onto the ice. The threat of a watery grave prodded the crew to extraordinary efforts. Pails, cups, and buckets supplemented the hand pumps. An hour passed with the water gaining on the desperate men. A bucket of precious hot water siphoned from the engine boiler melted the ice
from the steam donkey. After a few coughing starts, that engine caught and began to pump water overboard.

Men ran about kicking ice that blocked the scuppers and bailing with cooking pots. Officers worked frantically alongside seamen. Anything that could burn was fed into the boilers. Schuman threw broken furniture, repair lumber, and even slabs of seal blubber retrieved from the aft deck into the firebox.

One hour and ten minutes passed in frenzied activity. Seawater reached the door to the engine room, and the ship's rocking set the water to lapping over the doorjamb. An anxious Schuman watched the pressure gauge slowly approach the needed level. With not a minute to spare, he spun the valves and the steam engine hissed into life. The greased piston arms clanked slowly back and forth, picking up steam until the pumps coughed out their trapped air. Salty water gushed over the side as the powerful pump tackled the leaks. Gradually the level in the bilges and holds receded.

The
Polaris
had won another reprieve.

Long after midnight the wind died off. The
Polaris
drifted silently along until its bow nosed into more substantial “pash” ice. This soup of heavy blocks congregated in the still water. With a grinding crunch, the vessel drove into the field and stopped.

The moon broke through the clouds and cast its gibbous light over the depleted survivors. Soaked to the skin with salt water and sweat, the sailors shivered under damp blankets. Unfortunately the seabags of all those remaining aboard had been thrown onto the ice during the storm. Mauch, Hayes, Hobby, and Sieman possessed only the dripping garments on their backs. The officers fared little better. While they had a change of dry clothes, none of their bedding, blankets, or rugs had survived the frantic jettisoning. To keep warm, the officers huddled together in Chester's cabin and awaited the dawn.

The morning of October 16 proved clear and windless. The dazed Chester guessed the ship lay halfway between Littleton Island and Cairn Point and perhaps five miles off the head of land where Dr. Kane had taken refuge. Ironicallythrough quirks of wind, weather, and tidethe Arctic was herding this doomed expedition toward the exact spot that Kane's failed party had named Lifeboat Cove.

Schuman reported that only a few days' worth of coal remained. That was the final straw for Buddington. He'd had enough of his mis arable ship, enough of the frightening ice, and enough of the sea.

Land was in sight, and the way to shore lay open. With the fresh ice encasing the ship measuring less than twelve inches in thickness, Buddington figured the hull and coal would last just long enough to run the
Polaris
ashore and ground it.

For all its valiant service, the
Polaris
would be abandoned.

Had cooler heads prevailed, something different might have resulted. With skill and reduced canvas, the ship could have been sailed to safety. After all, Hudson and Scoresby never had steam-driven vessels. But Buddington had reached the end of his rope. He wanted off his ship. To ensure that goal, he ordered the foresail cut up into tags to hold the remaining coal and loaves of bread.

In defense of Buddington's decision, Schuman found that the sprung planking at the six-foot mark had snapped completely off in the storm Surprisingly, however, the propeller sustained no further damage, and the rudder still could steer the ship.

The arrival of a fresh wind from the northeast broke the ship free, and Buddington ordered the jib, mainsail, and staysail set. Ig-nominiously the
Polaris
sailed obediently to her fate and ran aground. When she struck bottom, she swung dejectedly around to lie with her starboard rail facing the beach.

The shallow, sloping bay ran for another four hundred yards before sil: and gravel rose out of the powdery water. A shallow beach appeared and vanished at the pleasure of the tide, but solid ground was at hand. Climbing over the piled ice hummocks and wading through the shallow water would bring the men beyond the clutches of the remorseless sea and its grinding battlefields of ice. At the cost cf their ship, the remnants of the first United States polar expedition had finally reached the relative safety of the Greenland coast. It was a price that Buddington was willing to pay.

But what of their companions on the ice? The dreadful night had kept all aboard the ship fighting for their lives. Battling the rising water and breaking ice from the standing rigging left no time to look for myone stranded on the ice floe. The clear, fine morning found the sailors exhausted, but no more so than Tyson's company.

Chester and Hobby claimed they had looked for their shipmates. Chester climbed to the crow's nest and scanned the horizon with his spyglass. “I was up and down the masthead all day every ten or fifteen minutes,” he later testified at the hearing, “until we got to land. I went up there to look for our lost parties, but could not see them at all.”

When he spotted something on the ice, Chester thought it might be some of the crates and boxes jettisoned in the dark. Others decided it was black ice or stones and debris, and he never argued the point.

The dark specks he did see about four miles from the ship were most likely Tyson and the others waving their rubber blanket. That was precisely where they were marooned in the middle of Smith Sound. Exactly who decided the sighting was debris was never clarified. Certainly Buddington made no extra effort to send smoke signals or study the observation further. With the exception of Meyer, all the men lost during the night had been a burden to him. Bessel, too, was strangely silent.

Chester noted lamely in the ship's log: “The large floe that our party were on must have stopped to the south of Littleton Island, and very near the east shore of the straits.” Other excuses for not seeing their shipmates ranged from the ship's drifting out of sight of the men to the vessel's being hidden by the island.

Many aboard the
Polaris
felt that the men on the ice were better off, as they had all the longboats and most of the supplies. With the whaleboats the stranded crew could reach shore and later sail down the coast, the shipboard sailors reasoned. The crippled
Polaris
could not look for them, so they should search for the
Polaris,
the consensus went. Buddington put their sentiments into words: “As, however, they had the boats, even to the little scow, we were in hopes they would possibly be able yet to make for us.” He neglected to mention that he had issued no order for continued efforts to signal the ship's location to the lost men.