Among those travellers, one audacious son of Siberia stands foremost, an illiterate Cossack named Semyon Dezhnev. Little known outside Russia, he sits high on the pedestal of Arctic explorers and takes no back seat to the likes of Frobisher or Hudson. It was he who in 1648 became the first European to sail around the easternmost promontory of the Eurasian continent through the Bering Strait. Oddly enough, the documentation related to the journey, including Dezhnev’s reports to the tsar, languished in the archives at Yakutsk until 1736, long after the momentous voyage — as one historian put it, “the discovery itself had to be discovered.”[7]
Details of Dezhnev’s early life are sketchy. We do know that he came from the Pomors, an enclave of Russians who had settled in the Arctic coastal regions of the White Sea in the fifteenth century. Accomplished hunters and trappers, these people were also tough and resourceful sailors. At an early age, Dezhnev was determined to migrate to frontier Siberia, where he planned to seek his fortune, perhaps by finding employment with the government. The young man’s spirit of adventure no doubt helped to propel him, as did his innate restlessness — a characteristic seemingly shared by hundreds of others — compel him to move to Siberia. The times were reminiscent of nineteenth-century America when Horace Greeley urged, “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country”.
In his early twenties, Dezhnev joined a group of migrants from the White Sea on a path that would lead him, in the words of the Canadian scholar Robert McGhee, to “one of the most remarkable and least recognized feats in the history of Arctic exploration.” Together these émigrés completed the long trek to Tobolsk in western Siberia. In 1638, Dezhnev, now a government employee, moved to Yakutsk, the administrative centre of eastern Siberia, laying 280 miles south of the Arctic Circle. Assigned to the governor’s office, he proved to be an adroit administrator and handled a diversity of assignments with aplomb. Shortly after arriving, he was given the task of pacifying two feuding tribes of the region, a peacemaker’s task that normally would have fallen to an experienced mediator. Dezhnev executed the commission within a fortnight. Next he was sent to collect “the sovereign’s tribute” from a recalcitrant tribal chief, a certain Sakhey Otnakov. Three earlier attempts to bring the chief to heel resulted in disaster; each of the collectors had been killed. Dezhnev, however, succeeded. We know not how; his report merely states “… I took 140 sables from chief Sakhey, his children and kinsmen and from other … Yakuts.”[8] On another assignment he was charged with transporting back to Yakutsk a tribute of 340 sable furs that had been collected in a remote corner of the administrative district. During the passage home, Dezhnev and his three companions were ambushed by a party of forty bandits. In the ensuing melee, the record tells, the foursome prevailed and the vanquished attackers retreated. After attending to a leg wound, Dezhnev led his small party home and delivered the “sable treasury” to the governor without further incident.
For decades, the richest source of furs in those parts had been a broad belt of territory stretching south from the shores of the Arctic Ocean, from the Lena River in an easterly direction to the Kolyma River. The “sable treasury” and the search for furs was not centred exclusively on sables — of equal interest were the hides of martens, ermines, wolves, arctic fox, and particularly the rare black fox. The sea coast, furthermore, abounded with walrus and the harvest of precious ivory tusk was an important secondary commerce. By the time Dezhnev came into his own, the region was well on its way to being hunted out, and tentative thrusts were being made into the unknown area east of the Kolyma. Dezhnev readily volunteered to help lead an exploration of those distant parts.
Thus it was that in June 1648, seven small vessels put out from the mouth of the Kolyma under the direction of Dezhnev and two others, a Cossack called Gerasim Ankudinov and a trader, Fedot Alexseyev. For a more complete understanding of the conditions under which these self-assured men sailed, it is well to appreciate the appallingly primitive construction of their boats. Professor Golder describes the kotcha, as it was called. It was a flat-bottomed decked vessel, about twelve fathoms long (seventy-two feet), put together generally without nail or scrap of iron of any kind, and probably kept together by wooden pegs and leather straps.[9] Buldakof, one of the Siberians, speaks of the ice cutting the twigs of his kotcha. From this statement and hints elsewhere, it would seem that the kotcha was tied together and probably protected on the outsides by twigs. A kotcha had a wooden mast and sails of deer skin, which were of little use in damp weather. The chief motive power, therefore, was the paddle. Anchors were made of wood and stone, and cables of leather. This description gives an idea of the fitness of a kotcha to battle with sea and ice:
It was in such a vessel, with a crew of fifteen or so, that Dezhnev navigated the hazards of the East Siberian Sea. By the time he had completed his 102 day journey an estimated 2160 miles had been traveled, a remarkable feat indeed. It must be remembered that Dezhnev was not primarily “a salt”; he was a landsman, at home in forest and taiga albeit skilled in river navigation.
We know little of the ice and weather conditions encountered by the explorer in the weeks that ensued. It is accepted, however, that those waters present much the same challenges as found in the Canadian Arctic, less the extent and size of icebergs. In Voyage of the Vega, Adolf Nordenskjöld, the 19th century Swedish explorer gives a sense of the East Siberian Sea:
The ice was heavy and close although at first so distributed that it was navigable. But with the north wind which began to blow on the night before the first [of] September … it becomes impossible to continue the course which we had taken … A further loss of time was caused by the dense fog which prevailed all day.[10]
Details of the lengthy journey are scarce, bathed in uncertainty — but one mishap seems to have followed another. Early on, four of the boats simply went missing — probably through storms — and were not heard from again. The expedition’s first contact with the Chukchi proved unhappy — the two parties fought and Alexseyev suffered a leg wound during the fray. Ankudinov’s kotcha was wrecked and the survivors were transferred to the remaining two vessels. Soon afterward Alexseyev’s boat was “carried out to sea” to a fate unknown, leaving Dezhnev by himself. Dezhnev eventually arrived at the East Cape (today called Mys Dezhneva), the tip of the Eurasian continent, where the coast veers sharply south-southwest. In his own measured words dictated seven years later, he provided the following fragmentary account:
In the year 1648, June 20, I Semyon, was sent from the Kolyma River to the new river to the Andyr to find new, non-tribute paying people. And in the year 1648, September 20, in going from the Kolyma River to sea, at a place where we stopped, the Chukchi in a fight wounded the trader Fedot Alexeyev, and that Fedot was carried out with me to sea, and I do not know where he is, and I was carried about here and there …[11]
Wind and storms bore Dezhnev’s kotcha steadily south, past the mouth of the Anadyr, one of the major waterways emptying into the Pacific. On October 1 the vessel was driven ashore by an especially fierce storm and wrecked. Little was left for the twenty-four survivors to do, but to abandon the sea and set out on foot inland. “We all took to the hills,” writes Dezhnev, “not knowing which way to go … we were cold and hungry … and I, poor Semyon, and my companions went to the Anadyr in exactly ten weeks …” Hunger was such that it was decided to split up, perhaps thereby bettering their chances of survival, with one party of twelve moving out on its own. It was never heard from again — “disappeared without our knowing what became of them.” Dezhnev’s party remained where it was on the endless taiga and spent the winter at the spot. Difficult to imagine the suffering of those unfortunates during the long dark months in an inhospitable territory with nothing but the clothes on their backs and what little they had carried away from their wrecked kotcha. What followed after that dreadful first winter is anyone’s guess, suffice to say that Dezhnev did not reappear in the outside world until 1655, nearly seven years after the start of the expedition
. His terse accounts are agonizingly brief on fundamental information. One report, however, does tell us of his two colleagues who were lost early on:
In the year 1654 in a fight I captured from the Koryaks a Yakut woman belonging to Feodot Alexseyev, and she said that Fedot and Gerasim died of scurvy, some of their companions were killed and the few who remained escaped in boats with their lives, and she did not know what became of them.
Dezhnev’s mission was all about tribute — to scout fresh sources of furs through taxation of native populations. Unlike Barents, Hudson, or others, Dezhnev did not set out to make a notable discovery, but, having passed through the Bering Strait, he quite likely took satisfaction in his significant achievement. A pity only that we know so little of this man or of the full story he might have told of his extraordinary journey. But here a word of caution: differences of opinion exist among scholars as to Dezhnev’s claim, with question being raised by some on the genuineness of the documentation related to the exploit. The various reports and attestations that tell of this singular Cossack, it has been suggested, were authored by one and the same person long after Dezhnev’s death and are therefore unauthentic; majority opinion, however, favours their authenticity. Whatever the case, the discovery or non-discovery by Dezhnev or by Bering of the channel separating Eurasia and America not only provided new avenues for trade and commerce, but showed the way for the extension of the Russian Empire into America. The strait also opened a fresh gateway to the high Arctic and the pole, over which many would travel in the years to come.
* * *
Dezhnev came from the White Sea, from among the Pomors (literally “seacoast dwellers”). These were resilient and resourceful individuals who ventured far and wide in search of fresh hunting grounds, not only for fur-bearing animals and walrus, but also for whales. The Barents Sea and the Kara were familiar waters, as were Novaya Zemlya and the Svalbard Archipelago in the North Sea.
Survival in the Arctic is an art form, and in its literature an assortment of superlatives is used to describe any given such story or the men involved. One gripping tale, however, comes to us of four Pomori hunters for whom all adjectives seem inadequate. In 1743, the four found themselves accidentally marooned on Edgeøya Island of the Svalbard Archipelago (77°40' N). For six years of deprivation and Arctic isolation they survived the unrelenting weather and constant threat of polar bears with what few items they had carried at the very start. The resolute mindset of these men confounds explanation.
In 1749, word of the feat reached the ears of Count Pyotr Shuvalov, a favourite of Empress Elizabeth. So outlandish and improbable did it all seem that he invited two of the survivors, Alexsei Inkov and his cousin Khrisani Inkov, to St. Petersburg to hear their story first-hand. Their account was so improbable that initially the men was viewed as hoaxers. But with continued examination and cross-examination, the credibility of their account gradually came to be accepted and the chief interrogator, a certain Pierre Le Roy, was asked to record it. The Frenchman was the tutor to Shuvalov’s three sons, and his seventy-six-page report forms the crux of what is known of the four men who unflinchingly stood up to the Arctic Siren.
In 1743, fourteen Pomori hunters sailed from the village of Mezen on the White Sea coast aboard a small vessel and headed west for the North Sea. They were out to hunt walrus in the waters of the Svalbard Archipelago. The first eight days of the passage were had in favourable weather, but on the ninth the wind changed direction and grew so intense that they found themselves rapidly being driven off course toward Edgeøya Island at the archipelago’s southeastern corner. The whaling grounds were on the opposite side of the island cluster, and whalers rarely passed there, not only for lack of the animals, but for the prevalence of ice packs. The ice buildup that year was exceptionally great and before long their little vessel found itself precariously ice-bound within sight of land.
An eighteenth-century kotcha, the sort of vessel the Pomori sailed from the White Sea to Svalbard in 1743 when they became shipwrecked and were stranded for six years.
The situation deteriorated in the passing days, and it became apparent that the ship might be crushed. Therefore, the decision was made to send a four-man party to the island to reconnoitre possibilities of sheltering ashore. It was known that years earlier a group of Russian sailors had wintered there in a hut that they had constructed with material especially carried from home. The two Inkovs volunteered to cross by foot over the hazardous ice in the hope of locating that cabin, and they were joined by two others: Stephan Sharapov, Alexis Inkov’s godson, and Feodor Verigin. They did not plan to be absent for a long time, and since they knew that the hunting would be excellent only the barest essentials were carried. Le Roy lists the articles: “a musket, a powder horn containing twelve charges of powder, with as many balls, an axe, a small kettle, a bag with about twenty pounds of flour, a knife, a tinder-box and tinder, a bladder filled with tobacco, and every man his wooden pipe.”[12]
On making landfall, he writes, “their first attention was employed, as may easily be imagined, in devising means of providing subsistence … The twelve charges of powder which they had brought with them, soon procured them with as many reindeer, the island, fortunately for them, abounding in these animals.” At first glance, an astonishing achievement — twelve shots and twelve dead animals. It must be noted, however, that the island’s reindeer were unused to humans and being naturally curious they made easy targets.
The prize they sought was had in short order: they found the hut less than a mile from shore. It was constructed with pre-cut logs from Russia and measured thirty-six feet by eighteen, with an inordinately high ceiling also of eighteen feet. A small vestibule complete with door separated the inner room from the main entrance for the preservation of heat. In one corner stood an intact traditional clay stove, “a kind of oven without a chimney, which serves occasionally for baking, for heating the room, or as is customary amongst the Russian peasants, in very cold weather, for a place to sleep upon.” Since it was built “some time before” the building was not in top shape but readily repairable.
The men overnighted in the cabin while a heavy gale blew outside, and on the following day they made their way back to the ship to share the happy news of their find with their comrades. Imagine their utter stupefaction when on reaching the shore they discovered that the farthest portion of the ice pack was gone and with it, their vessel — gale winds had presumably carried all away. “This melancholy event depriving the unhappy wretches of all hope of ever being able to quit the island, they returned to the hut whence they had come, full of horror and despair.” A continuous watch was kept in the ensuing days for sign of sail, but none was had; their ship had no doubt foundered and their fate was sealed. (Since the vessel never returned to home port, their assumption was undoubtedly correct.)
However bleak their prospect, the men resolved to make a go of it. They first set about patching up the hut, principally by trimming some of the logs and caulking openings between them using moss that grew abundantly throughout the island. “Repairs of this kind,” Le Roy editorialized, “cost the unhappy men the less trouble, as they were Russians, for all Russian peasants are known to be good carpenters: they build their own houses, and are very expert in handing the axe.” With repairs completed and twelve deer carcasses lying outside, some sense of achievement was had, despite two unsolved problems of profound magnitude. First, all their ammunition had been expended. How then to provide food in the long-term, and equally, how were they to fend off polar bears? Spitzbergen in those days was home to huge concentrations of the animals, and Edgeøyen was a favourite breeding ground. Not for a moment could they ease their vigilance against attack by this stealthy, oft-time imperceptible carnivore that was prepared to attack most anything that moved be it a seal, walrus, or human.
And then, how were they to keep themselves from freezing? Edgeøya is a barren island, void of trees or shrubbery — what therefore to burn? Indeed, how were they to cook? The tind
erbox they had carried would soon be empty — how to start fires? In the absence of weapons and fuel, starvation was inevitable; prospects of survival appeared negligible.
On further exploration of the island they discovered abundant quantities of driftwood littering parts of the coast. Periodic floods of the great rivers emptying into the White Sea bear large amounts of uprooted trees, which ocean currents carry west and after months of drift and salt-water wash quantities are beached on Svalbard. A treasure trove this was; the concern over fuel was allayed, and the foursome set about hauling huge amounts of the stuff to their cabin.
Weeks passed and the supply of reindeer meat had become nearly depleted. Although seen in places, bears thus far had been few and far between, but the change of season migratory paths would bring them to the island in numbers. Lacking ammunition for further hunting or to ward off the marauders, the situation must have appeared hopeless. But then, all changed; fortune favoured the brave. One day, as the men gathered driftwood along the shore, they came across a couple of weather-beaten planks, “the melancholy relicks of some vessel cast away in these remote parts.” One of these had a long iron hook attached and the other, five or six nails “and other bits of iron.” This innocuous debris became a lifeline.
Using reindeer antlers as tongs, the hook was heated red-hot and placed on a makeshift anvil of smooth stone. One blow of the axe made two pieces of it. The thicker section had a hole, and with the primitive forge it was sufficiently enlarged to allow a nail be driven through it. The hole was then made even bigger by working the nail to and fro. After the piece had cooled, a firm piece of driftwood was driven through the hole, and thus a hammer came to be. The curved part of the hook was reworked with the hammer and cut in two, with the halves then being fashioned into straight points. The edges of these pieces were sharpened by stone and attached to straight driftwood poles “about the thickness of a man’s arm.” This was done by using strips of well-soaked deerskin, which, in the process of drying, contracted so tightly that a ridged bond was achieved. In addition to a hammer, our Pomori now possessed two spears.
Arctic Obsession Page 14
