Lost to Time

by Martin W. Sandler

  And Kane had a fascinating story to tell. He could relate a participant’s view of what the Arctic was like, what being icebound for an entire winter was like, and what the search for Franklin was like. Moreover, he could give his own eyewitness account of the hottest news story thus far in a search that had captured the attention of the whole world: the discovery of the three graves at Beechey Island.

  Kane had actually begun telling the story well before he set foot once again on American soil. As the Advance and Rescue sailed home, he began writing his account of the discovery of the three graves and of the other finds that were made on that desolate, frozen island. Days before he reached New York, and well before any of the British commanders who had been at Beechey Island could publish their accounts of what had taken place, the New York Tribune and the New York Times printed what Kane had written. The articles caused a sensation, creating a demand around the country for personal appearances by Kane.

  He responded by undertaking a long and extensive lecture tour, drawing enormous and enthusiastic audiences wherever he spoke. As a scientist he enthralled those interested in the physical nature of the unknown Arctic. As an adventurer he thrilled the throngs interested in his story of survival. And as one who felt that his work in the Arctic was far from done, he used the speeches to lay the groundwork for what had become the greatest goal of his life—another expedition in search of Franklin, another journey to explore uncharted Arctic waters, this time with him completely in charge. As he explained to an overflow audience at a dinner given in honor of the Grinnell expedition:

  I must seize the present occasion earnestly to state that I hope the search is not yet ended. The drift by which the Advance and Rescue were borne so far, conclusively proves that the same influence might have carried us into the same sea in which Franklin and his companions are probably immured. . . . I trust for the sake of the United States, for the sake of the noble hearted woman, who has been the animating soul of all the Expeditions, for the sake of the flag, which has so triumphantly borne the battle and breeze, for the sake of the humanity which makes us all kin, I trust that [the] search is not yet ended and that the rescue of Sir John Franklin is yet reserved to his nation and the world.

  It was a typically eloquent Kane oration, yet perhaps not an accurate reflection of how he truly felt. He knew that Franklin had been missing for more than six years and eight months, more than a year beyond the longest period for which his provisions could possibly hold out. But by now Kane had a much larger personal agenda. Like John Barrow, who had launched one English search after another, Kane had come to believe in the existence of an open polar sea, a vast open body of water beyond the Arctic ice cap that, once reached, would lead not only to the Northwest Passage, but to what to Kane had become the greatest prize of all: the discovery of the North Pole.

  By the beginning of spring 1853, Kane was ready to apply to Congress for a return trip to the Arctic. Yet even with the sensation that his speaking tours and writings had caused, it became obvious that it would take months before the legislators granted him a ship, the men, and the necessary provisions for an expedition. Once again, however, Henry Grinnell stepped forth, offering the fully refurbished Advance. Various scientific organizations, eager to associate with Kane, provided many of the necessary navigational and scientific instruments.

  On May 31, 1853, with an enormous crowd cheering him on, Kane with his company of seventeen officers and men sailed out of New York Harbor. “The object of my journey,” Kane wrote to his brother, “is the search after Sir John Franklin. Neither science nor the vain glory of attaining an unreached North shall divert me from this one conscientious aim.” However, it was almost certain that there was no longer a Franklin expedition to be found. Kane was determined to sail as far north as possible, to find an open polar sea and, Lord willing, even the North Pole.

  On July 20, the Advance sailed to Greenland, where Kane recruited two other men for his crew, a nineteen-year-old Inuk named Hans Christian Hendrik and the Danish dog sledge driver Carl Petersen, who had sailed with William Penny in 1850–51. Kane was following a route previously traveled by the British Royal Navy officer Edward Inglefield, who was also convinced that there was an open polar sea. By the second week in August, Kane had made his way through the ice floes that had already formed in Baffin Bay, had sailed through Smith Sound, and had entered the great basin that would later be named for him. He had now gone farther north along this route than any other white man. But the ice was getting thicker and more treacherous, and winter was obviously setting in. The exhausted crew begged Kane to turn back. But he would have none of it. Later, Carl Petersen would write that it was obvious that Kane wanted to spend the winter farther north than any other English explorers had done because he felt deeply that “the Stars and Stripes ought to wave where no Union Jack had ever fluttered in the polar gale.”

  Finally, with ice beating against the sides of the Advance, Kane’s officers convinced him that, for the safety of all those aboard, he had to find a safe haven for the winter. Fortunately, a sheltered bay was nearby, and, after naming it Rensselaer Harbor after his father’s country estate, Kane dropped anchor there.

  THIS ENGRAVING WAS BASED ON Kane’s grim, dark sketch titled “Life In The Brig: Second Winter.” Kane placed himself in the center of the picture.

  He had set the stage for extraordinary hardship. With the exception of a few non-Inuit inhabitants of the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, no white man had ever spent the winter this far north. Even the Inuk Hans Hendrik was unprepared for it. “Never had I seen the dark season like this . . .,” he later wrote. “I was seized with fright and fell a-weeping.” It was indeed a dark season—140 days of continuous darkness in which the crew “could not see to count their fingers.”

  By the end of February, the expedition’s oil candles and coal had almost run out. Then a mysterious ailment struck, killing all but six of the fifty dogs. This, Kane knew, meant that once they resumed their journey north toward his longed-for open polar sea, the crew would have to haul the heavy sledges themselves.

  Meantime, he was aware that for both their mental and physical health it was important to keep the men busy. This meant sending out a series of exploratory sledging expeditions, which often resulted in injury to one or more of the crew. On the positive side, on one of the forays, the ship’s boatman, William Godfrey, and its surgeon, Dr. Isaac Hayes, were able to complete the first mapping of what became known as Kane Basin.

  When spring arrived and the ice gave absolutely no sign of even beginning to break up, Kane mounted what he regarded as two vital investigations. As the Advance had made its way northward, he had sighted a massive glacier that he named for the famous German explorer and scientist Alexander von Humboldt. On April 25 he organized a party of eight men, including himself, to examine and perhaps climb the icy structure. Six of the men headed out that day. Kane and another crewmember left the ship the next day and quickly caught up with the others. As the men made their way, none of them had any idea that the newly named Humboldt was the largest glacier in the known world. What they did discover when they reached it was that it was impossible to climb. Three of them became temporarily snow blind, another suffered severe chest pains, and Kane himself both fainted in the effort and suffered a frozen foot.

  The result of the second investigation that Kane had launched—sending William Morton and Hans Hendrik off to explore the rocky promontory that stood atop the basin—was, however, far different.

  When they returned to the Advance, Morton reported that, after literally clawing his way up the promontory, he had looked out at an extraordinary sight—open water as far as he could see. Kane was beside himself. Both he and Morton were absolutely certain that what the steward had viewed was an open polar sea. In his journal an exuberant Kane wrote, “I can say that I have led an expedition whose results will be remembered for all time.”

  His expedition would indeed be remembered, but not for the discovery he beli
eved had been made. For Morton had not seen an open polar sea. It did not exist. What he had experienced was yet another polar mirage caused by the intense Arctic light, the vast expanse of snow, and undoubtedly no small amount of wishful thinking.

  “CROSSING THE ICE BELT AT COFFEE GORGE.” An engraving based on a sketch by Kane of a sledging party maneuvering across the ice in 1854.

  But in mid-July 1854, Kane was blissfully unaware that Morton, like so many before him, had been deceived by the Arctic light and atmosphere. What was, however, painfully clear to him was that the ice was still thick, and that it was already mid-summer. There would be no escape for at least another year. He was also all too aware that his crew was becoming desperate and increasingly difficult to manage. He decided to undertake a desperate measure of his own. Kane knew that the North Star, the supply ship of a five-vessel British fleet still searching for John Franklin, was anchored off the same Beechey Island where he and others had encountered the now-famous three graves. He loaded five of his men along with himself in a whaleboat aptly named Forlorn Hope and set out, praying that he would find the North Star and acquire enough supplies to enable his expedition to survive yet another winter.

  When they reached Baffin Bay, however, they found their progress completely blocked by ice. Trudging to a nearby iceberg, Kane climbed more than 120 feet to its pinnacle, where he saw nothing but ice stretching out for a radius of at least thirty miles. Disheartened, he led his men back to the Advance, knowing that he faced more long months of attempting to survive and attempting to buoy up the spirits of his crew. “It is horrible—yes that is the word—,” he confided to his journal, “to look forward to another year of disease and darkness to be met without fresh food and without fuel.”

  He could have added that they would be looking forward as well to another year cut off from all knowledge of the world beyond the narrow area of their icy imprisonment. In August 1854, what Kane didn’t know was that the British naval officer Robert McClure had actually discovered a Northwest Passage. Nor did he know that, almost a thousand miles away from where he and his men lay trapped, the Hudson’s Bay Company explorer John Rae had found conclusive evidence of the fact that at least most of the members of Franklin’s expedition were dead.

  If he had known, it would have made no difference to him. All of his attention had to be turned to survival. Only 750 pounds of coal remained aboard the Advance. He would soon have to begin breaking up the ship for fuel. As it was, he and his crew were being kept alive only by the fact that he was occasionally able to trade for food with Etah Inuits, whose summer hunting grounds were nearby.

  And then something for which Kane was totally unprepared took place. Morton informed him that several of the crew, having come to the conclusion that it was their only chance for survival, had decided to leave the ship and attempt to gain rescue by making their way to Upernavik. Kane could not believe what he was hearing. Upernavik was more than seven hundred miles south of where the Advance lay in ice, seven hundred miles of some of the most treacherous terrain in the world. And the season of ice and blizzards was upon them. It would be a disastrous journey.

  After pleading with the crew members to reconsider, Kane asked them to put their decision to a vote. To his astonishment, nine of the crew, including Hayes, voted to leave. It was, Kane believed, a supreme violation. In his journal he wrote, “They are deserters, in act and in spirit. . . . They leave their ship, abandon their sick comrades, fail to adhere to their commander, and are false to the implied trust which tells every true man to abide by the Expedition into which he has entered.”

  The defectors left the Advance on August 28. Turning again to his journal, Kane wrote, “So they go. . . . I cannot but feel that some of them will return broken down and suffering to seek a refuge aboard. They shall find it to the halving of our last chip—but—but—but—if I ever live to get home—home! And I should meet Dr. Hayes or [the others]—let them look out for their skins.”

  He was angry; he felt betrayed, and yet he knew that he had no time to wallow in his feelings. He had to get the Advance ready for another winter. He began by having the remaining ten crewmen strip the planking off the vessel’s upper deck to be used for firewood. Although he figured that this would supply him with more than a ton of fuel, he knew that it would last only through the end of January. To get through February and March, the worst of the winter months, the thick oak sheathing nailed to the Advance’s sides as a buffer against the ice would have to be removed, supplying him with at least two and a half more tons of firewood. Amazingly, he remained optimistic about the expedition’s chances for survival. He would make certain that all of the planking that was removed was above the water line, ensuring that the Advance, stripped as it would be, would remain seaworthy. “God willing,” he wrote, “I may get through this awful winter and save [the ship] besides.”

  Addressing the fuel problem was one thing; obtaining enough food to survive the winter was quite another thing. Half of his depleted crew were either too ill or too weak to be sent attempting to trade with the Eskimos for food. But, by December, Kane knew that it had to be done and that it would probably fall on his shoulders. Then, on December 7, yet another unexpected event took place. At about three o’clock in the morning, Kane was rudely awakened by one of the crew. Five sledges, he was told, pulled by six teams of dogs driven by totally unfamiliar Eskimos, were approaching the Advance. By the time Kane got himself dressed, a group of the natives had come aboard, and with them were two of the men who, fourteen weeks ago, had deserted the ship. Although both were in horrific physical condition, they managed to tell Kane that he had been correct in predicting that the defectors would not be able to reach Upernavik. As for the other deserters, they were huddled in a stone hut some 150 miles to the south, completely out of strength and close to starvation. The two men then pleaded with Kane to save their companions.

  One can only imagine the emotions that Kane experienced as he heard this report. These were men who had betrayed him. Now he was being asked to save their lives. Moreover, truth be told, their defection in one way had been a blessing. He had estimated that without having to feed them he might actually, with careful rationing, make it through the winter. Their return would render that impossible. But he knew he had no choice. Despite what they had done, to turn his back on them would be unforgivable. After presenting the Eskimos with presents, he gave them food to bring to the stricken men and instructed them to bring the former crewmen back to the ship. When the deserters returned, having lost everything with which they had been supplied, Kane knew that he now had only one option. With nine more mouths to feed they would somehow have to make it through the winter, finding what meat they could while the deserters healed. They were iced in so severely, Kane realized, that as soon as the whole crew was fit, the Advance would have to be abandoned. Ironically, the only chance for survival was to attempt to reach Upernavik, the same plan that the defectors had tried to pursue.

  They finally left on May 20, 1855. Over the next eighty-three days, in what would become one of the most extraordinary escapes in history, they dragged and sailed their small boats through blizzards, across ice floes, and around towering icebergs. It would never have been possible without Kane. Not only did he continually take the helm of one of the boats for as long as sixteen hours at a time, but he periodically backtracked, seeking food from Eskimo settlements, even returning to the Advance once during the early stages of the flight to bake life-sustaining bread.

  Despite these efforts, which added almost one thousand miles to his own journey, by the time the men of the Advance reached and crossed Melville Bay, they were completely out of food. Only the serendipitous capture of a seal saved them from starving. But, spurred on by Kane, they kept on moving and, on August 1, entered the whaling grounds of Baffin Bay. Two days later a sail was spotted. It was the Danish oil boat Fraülein Flairscher, on its way to the tiny port of Kingatok to take on a load of blubber.

  Kane and his men were
immediately taken to Disko Island off the southernmost part of Greenland, where they were generously tended to and informed that back home in America they had not been forgotten. In fact, only a week before, a U.S. Navy steam vessel along with its tender had sailed through Baffin Bay searching for the expedition. On September 13, 1855, having been informed by telegraph that the men who had left the United States more than two years ago had been found, two American ships commanded by Captain Henry J. Hartstene arrived at Disko Island and took Kane and his men aboard. The long ordeal was over.

  ELISHA KANE RETURNED HOME on October 11, 1855. During his two-year absence, his published journal of the first Grinnell expedition, filled with his poetic and haunting descriptions of icebergs and other Arctic phenomena and its accounts of the dangers he had faced at every turn, had made him a greater hero than ever before. When, the day after his arrival, the New York Times devoted its entire front page to a description of his second Arctic adventure and his extraordinary escape from death, his status rose even higher.

  Now that he was home and very much alive, the praise rose to unprecedented heights. This time there was no need for the self-promotion that Kane had engaged in following his return from the first Grinnell expedition. Everyone else, it seemed, was doing it for him. Members of his crew wrote accounts extolling his virtues. Based on various stories of the adventure Kane had told him, his brother wrote an account of his heroic actions during the rescue journey. Everywhere he went and everything he did was covered by the press. He was now more than a hero; he had become an icon.