Polar Voyages

by Gray, Gordon

  He leads us on across the moor where progress is naturally slow as there are no animal tracks to follow so we each cautiously make our own way through the tussocks and round the bogs and become spread out right across the hill top. Then we drop down the side of a hill into the main river valley. Peter announces from way ahead that we have to cross the river even though doing so will mean that we will have to find a different beach, for the Zodiacs to collect us, from the sheltered beach we had used to get ashore. The river is rock-strewn and fast running but thankfully today relatively shallow, about 3 feet at the deepest points. It is perhaps 50 or 60 feet wide but the river bed is made up of round, wet and very slippery rocks. In a flash, our young leader splashes across it and then sits resting on the opposite bank, proud of his efforts. The rest of us, however, have to select our own routes across, and while guiding and holding one another, ensure that the more elderly and less agile are able to make their way over without falling in or twisting an ankle. Eventually, we all make it and we head back towards the coast. Here, as we feared, the shoreline is both steep and exposed and the waves are high and crash onto the beach.

  As we predicted, we are also now cut off by the river mouth from the other group and the Zodiacs. After a delay and radio mix-ups the Zodiacs find us. However, the waves here are too high for them to come straight onto the beach, but the crewmen try. Twice the Zodiacs are flooded as they try to get onto the beach bows first then finally they come into the beach stern first, which puts the outboard motors at great risk. This also means that we have to wade out further into the waves and time our boarding leap to try and avoid the bigger waves and surf. Two people are knocked over by the waves and need to be manhandled into the boat and end up in wet, crumpled heaps of boots, parkas, cameras and bags on the flooded floor of the Zodiac. Finally, everyone manages to get on board and we go back to the ship, albeit wetter than we had planned. However, the trip has shown us some fantastic scenery and the experience of hill walking in rubber wellies.

  In north-east Greenland we are very isolated from the rest of the world. It is easy when you are on a well-run ship, with good food and warm bunks, to feel that nothing can go wrong. After all this is a just ‘Soft Adventure’ and nothing can happen to you. However, in remote places, such as this, a simple slip or a fall on wet rocks or wet grass can easily lead to broken bones and, if it happens when you are well away from the beach and the ship, this can quickly turn into a major survival exercise. If, when you fall, you are out of sight and hearing of anyone else you may not be immediately missed. If the weather then changes, or a radio fails to work, or a rising wind and heavy surf prevent the Zodiacs getting back inshore, then these factors will conspire against you as they often do in emergencies. A constant awareness of your circumstances is needed all the time. Even if in the event of a serious accident people can get you back to the ship then a hospital and qualified medical help are not available until the ship takes you to one, which may be many hundreds of miles away. Any good leader will always have all these factors under constant review and be aware of the capabilities of the weakest members of the team. It seems that our young leader must have been away from expedition leader course on the day they covered that.

  The Fjords and Icebergs

  Our first sightings of icebergs is at the entrance to Kaiser Frans Joseph Fjord where the bergs sit, silent and gleaming, in the sun on a mirror calm, blue sea. We sail past them and up Sophia Sound into the narrow Antarctic Sound, where the setting sun is turning the whole landscape a glorious warm, reddish orange colour. The bare red mountains rear up from the fjord and as the sun sinks so a hard black shadow slowly moves across the hillside and replaces the sunlit orange, as we continue deep into the fantastic fjord systems of East Greenland.

  The following morning the ship anchors at Ymer Oy, an island deep in the fjord system. There is no wind, we are totally sheltered on all sides by the mountains. After a short walk ashore we set off in the Zodiacs to explore some of the icebergs nearby. Per Magnus takes one of the Zodiacs and invites his clients and a few others, including Doreen and I, to join him for a tour round the icebergs. Unlike our Dutch deputy leader, who proceeds to roar off round the fjord with his passengers hanging on grimly, Per Magnus hardly uses the engine. Now, when we are right alongside the icebergs and looking up at them from sea level we stop, switch off the engine and let the Zodiac drift on the flat, deep, black water. Then we just watch and listen and appreciate their size and beauty even more. The ice itself takes so many different forms. Sometimes it is a solid impenetrable white mass; sometimes it is totally transparent. Sometimes it is like a delicate filigree sculpture and riddled with holes. In some of the icebergs ridges and scratch marks show where they have torn at the seabed or land on their journey into the sea. In others we see straight lines of transparent blue ice running right through an opaque white mass. Most of them have erosion lines made by the sea water and waves washing at their bases and most also show signs that they have toppled over and capsized at some time as the water erosion lines rise up at acute angles from the present waterline. In the sun, the icebergs gleam and glisten with a dazzling whiteness against the black, shadowed sides of the fjords, yet when they are in the shadow they become grey and flat; losing all their angular shapes and lustre. All the time, as the sun shines warmly on them, there is a gentle noise of water dripping off the iceberg into the sea or gurgling as it runs down hidden channels deep inside the ice. Their colours vary with the light, from pure white through greys and vivid blues to pale greens. As we look down into the water, we see that the white colours gently give way to soft greens, then to deeper greens and blues before they vanish into the black of the cold, deep water. The icebergs come in all shapes; some are flat-topped, some are sculptured like giant statues, some have tall pinnacles and some are rounded and smooth, while others are rough and jagged. The icebergs are continually changing, their shapes change with perspective and viewing angles; their colours change with the sun, which throws deep, dark, blue shadows across the shaded sides of the iceberg that contrasts strongly with the bright sunny side. Every iceberg is different; every one of them fascinating in its shapes, its ice forms and its colours. Later, as we watch from the ship, one of the bergs that we had motored round earlier slowly rolls over and settles into a new position. Waves wash out from it as it settles.

  We sail on deeper into the Kaiser Frans Joseph Fjord system right to the head of the fjord. This fjord is thousands of feet deep and the sheer-sided mountains along its side are thousands of feet high. This is a real fjord; long, deep, dark, brooding and silent with the mountain cliffs climbing vertically from the black depths up to unseen peaks behind the high shoulders of the cliffs that form the walls of the fjord. Big icebergs sit silent and unmoving in the black shadows of the fjord. As we move slowly through these deep shadows we are sometimes illuminated, as if by a searchlight, as a shaft of sunlight cuts through a gap in the mountains. Occasionally, we see a pure white iceberg sitting in a totally black background as the sun catches it against the deep shadow of the cliffs. It sits like an imperfectly shaped pearl on a cushion of black velvet.

  Icebergs, one clear and one white, lie at peace in the sunshine.

  No one speaks as we all stand on deck and try and absorb the sheer splendour of this fjord.

  We leave the fjord late in the afternoon and head south down the Kong Oscar Fjord, a beautiful, wide fjord between Traill Oy and the mainland. Gradually, the mountains recede and the land opens out on each side as we head towards the open sea. Later in the night we are given a small show by the Northern Lights. For ten or fifteen minutes, the soft green, silky trails dip and ripple across the sky like a silk curtain, before they fade and leave us alone in a black, empty sea.

  Dawn brings us to a white mountainous coast on a clear sunny morning. The ship rolls gently along in a sparkling blue sea. Away to starboard, we can see the jagged, snow-capped mountains of Liverpool Land. The chart reveals the mixed history of this area and the nati
onalities of those who came here first; with Kap Godfried Hansen followed by Kap Smith; Canning Land followed by Carlsberg Fjord.

  Scoresbysund

  We enter the biggest fjord system in the world, Scoresbysund. It stretches over 300 miles inland and comprises many islands and smaller fjords. Its entrance, between Cape Brewster and Cape Tobin, is relatively narrow at about 15 to 20 miles wide. As we enter we can see the mountains of Cape Brewster shining away to the south. We sail into the massive fjord and head for the main settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit, or Scoresbysund. It was set up in 1925 by settlers from Ammassalik, some 500 miles to the south. The aim was to enable them to develop a community using the traditional hunting skills of their Inuit forefathers. From the sea, the village looks attractive with the coloured wooden houses of red, blue, pastel green, some white, all sitting in a haphazard way on the hillside and with roads leading down to a small, sheltered quay. However, initial appearances can be deceptive. When we get ashore we find that the only road is a wet, muddy track, littered with old and broken sledges, old packing cases and bikes, while loose barking dogs roam the streets. The crew warn us not to pet them as these are not trained sledge dogs, but scavenging strays that wander the town. A small Inuit girl of about four or five years old follows us around at a distance, staring silently at us all the time. She is wearing a fantastic blue-black sealskin coat that reaches her feet and is topped by a fur hood. Wooden racks of drying seal, ox and polar bear skins are scattered around. Alcohol is clearly a problem for some here too; although we were assured that a moratorium on spirits has helped the problem. Of the 500 or so people only about thirty are actually hunters, the remainder that are in work are in social services of some sort and very under-employed. The locals are friendly and happy to let us wander about and look at their town but once we had done the tour the only thing to do was to go back on board. Per Magnus knows someone here and goes off to find him. The man was a hunter who had just returned from a trip up the fjord and reported that there are narwhals in Scoresbysund at the moment.

  A towering berg floats out of Nordevest Fjord into Scvoresbysund.

  Slow ahead as we weave between the icebergs.

  We sail that evening and head into the fjord but only after circling a large iceberg in the bay which is constantly changing colour as the sun sets in the west while we look at it from all points of the compass. The following day, having steamed up the fjord overnight, we are greeted by a majestic sight of many huge icebergs floating in the still waters of the fjord. The fjord at this point is very wide, more like an inland sea than a fjord. These bergs are all many times larger than the ship and we thread our way through them towards Norosti Bukta and Nordvest Fjord. We go ashore and for a couple of hours we just sit on a rock and watch, entranced as iceberg after iceberg drifts out of Nordvest Fjord into the main fjord. Although they are moving slowly, when we watch them against the background of the mountains they appear to be racing out of the fjord. Nordvest Fjord leads up into a mountain range known as the Staunning Alps and from where we are we could see why it is so called. The sparkling white peaks peep out over the nearer mountains, resembling a Swiss scene. At its head, the fjord is fed by the Greenland ice cap. It is impossible for the ship to find a way up Nordvest Fjord due to the number of bergs and the speed at which they are all moving. This is a one-way street. These icebergs are tens of feet high, some must have been well over 100-feet-high, and our ship is often lost behind them as she manoeuvres in the open water of the main fjord to avoid them. Later that afternoon, as we sail off to the west, we look back. The sun has now moved round and the icebergs have become silhouetted. The sea has become a silver glistening mirror on which sits a monochrome of dozens of black icebergs.

  An iceberg with heavy scouring on its side. A sign that this part had once been at the bottom of the berg.

  We sail right up to the far end of the fjord system, or at least as far as we can. We stop near the top and a few of us go ashore for a walk up a little beautiful glen by the Rypefjord. Ellie, a spirited and chatty Dutch lady, who must have been in her eighties, led the way. I call it a glen because that is what it reminded me of, a lovely, empty, peaceful, Scottish highland glen. The slightly marshy glen floor is covered in wild flowers and tiny shrubs and berries, all of which seem to be blooming together and the rich colours of rusty reds, corals and yellows form sweeps of carpet across the rocks and the hillside. We have arrived at the height of the short summer and the glen is in full bloom. A small burn runs down the glen and its gurgling is the only sound to be heard. The hills above step up through raised moorland to the red coloured sandstone mountains basking in the sun behind the glen. We sit on a couple of warm rocks and chat to Ellie about the trip and enjoy the warmth of the sun in this beautiful spot.

  Later that night we are very lucky to see about forty narwhals in the distance, but due to the ice we cannot follow them. Some hunters, who are camping in the area, come out to the ship that evening and tell us that they had seen a school of about 100 narwhals earlier in the day in the same location.

  Our passage round the back of Milne Land is stopped by a field of broken pack ice made up of glacier bergy bits and small icebergs. The ship tries to nudge and push her way through but it proves difficult. That night, as the sun sets, the shadows of the hills to the west fall across the lower hills of Milne Land to the east and turn them black; but as the sun still shines on the snow of the higher hill tops it looks as if they had been set on fire, so brilliant is the sunset. Above the black shadow on the lower slopes, the higher areas are bright flame red then orange as they reach the summits. Here, they soften to yellows and merge with the pure white of the snow on the tops. All these colours are reflected back in the mirror-still waters of the fjord between the floating patches of ice. All too quickly, it fades as the sun sets and the black shadow quickly climbs the hill and puts out the flames, leaving a still scene with the ship surrounded by broken ice and black hills. After a few hours gently feeling our way through, we finally clear the ice and are able to continue down to the south side of the island and then east along the south side of Milne Island.

  The Denmark Strait. The Bismarck and HMS Hood

  After three days exploring the inner reaches of Scoresbysund we head out and into the Denmark Strait on a grey, rough and miserable morning. There is now an air of urgency on board as the vibration of the engine throbs through the ship, after days of gentle cruising, as now we are bound for Iceland. Also, a depression is coming up the Denmark Straight from the south and the wind is whipping up the waves into a lumpy and confused sea that makes the ship take on an uncomfortable motion. The clouds close down to the sea and all around us is now grey after days of pure whites.

  It was through these cold, desolate and grey waters that, in May 1941, the formidable new German battleship Bismarck, (50,000-tons) and her escort, the cruiser Prinz Eugen (15,000-tons) made their run for the open Atlantic from Germany. They tried to creep down through the Denmark Strait, keeping close to the edge of the pack ice along this coast in the hope that bad weather and the ice would hide them from the Royal Navy. Their aim was to get into the Atlantic and harry the Allied Atlantic convoys. Bismarck had to be stopped; and it fell to the Royal Navy’s pride, the fast battleship, HMS Hood (48,000-tons) with others to try and stop her. Hood was classed as a battle cruiser due to her high speed, but as she was the same size and had the same armaments as similar battleships of the time, but was 3 knots faster; she was effectively a ‘fast battleship’. HMS Hood had been built by John Brown’s in Clydebank in 1918 at the end of the First World War and was ‘state of the art’ in modern warship design and construction at the time. She was, at 48,000 tons, the biggest, longest and fastest warship ever built. She was armed with 8 x 15-inch guns, which exactly matched those of the new Bismarck when they met in 1941. The one weakness she had in 1941 was one that did not exist in 1918 when she was built. Her deck armour was not strong enough to protect her against the new higher trajectory shells used in t
he Second World War.

  Professor Molchanov moves carefully between the huge icebergs in Scoresbysund.

  The two ships met in battle in the Denmark Strait on 24 May, after the cruisers HMS Norfolk and HMS Suffolk had located and tracked the Bismarck down through the grey murk of the Strait. The engagement did not last long. While closing the Bismarck, Hood fired her opening salvoes. To the Germans, these looked like great, bright suns in the Arctic sky. The Bismarck responded. In an early salvo, a modern, high trajectory shell from the Bismarck came straight down onto the Hood’s deck, penetrated the relatively thin deck armour and exploded in one of the main magazines. The ship was literally blown to pieces in an instant. Out of 1,419 men, only three survived. There is still conjecture as to whether the German shell penetrated the decks and went directly into the magazine or whether it exploded on the deck near a ready-use ammunition store and it was this explosion that then blew the hole down to the magazine. In any event the result was the same.

  Black icebergs. Icebergs silhouetted against a silver sea in Scoresbysund.

  What must that battle have been like for the men on both sides in the icy waters of the Denmark Strait? With the grey mist and rain, the bitter wind off the ice to the north and the noise and vibration of the big guns firing, it must have been dreadful. There would be carnage inside the ship as shells hit and exploded in the ship. Flash fires would ripple through the passageways and compartments burning everything and everyone in their path, before anyone can turn out of the way, as the flames exploded into mess decks and gun turrets alike. The screams of dying and trapped men, burning steel shrapnel and white-hot splinters flying around, severing water pipes, steam pipes and electrical cables as well as cutting off power and access for those down below. .