Arctic Obsession

by Alexis S. Troubetzkoy

  All the while, the ice-locked vessel drifted aimlessly about the ocean, with the currents carrying it round and about, but generally in a northwest direction some five hundred miles from Wrangel Island. Much excitement was had in the first days of June when two small islands loomed into sight, one with towering cliffs. A landing party was sent ashore by dogsled to the larger of the two and with a jigger of whisky it was christened Henrietta Island (the other, Jeannette Island). A flag was raised and “in the name of Great Jehovah and the President of the United States,” claimed as American territory. Meanwhile the ship’s pumps continued unceasingly to empty the bilges. Of the forty dogs — “our hoodlum gang” — seventeen had died or disappeared and the remainder had become personal pets of crew members.

  Summer passed into autumn, autumn into winter with no change in their immobile situation. The deadly monotony of routine tasks was broken on occasion by the excitement of a hunt or a football game or an afternoon of kite-flying. A successful hunt brought welcomed luxury to the table: fillet of polar bear, side of seal, or perhaps roast goose. In periods of darkness, cabin fever became more apparent. Collins, who from the start showed himself not to be a team player, at one point rebelled outright against De Long’s authority and was arrested and confined to quarters. Christmas came around again, but this time it was more jolly than the previous year. With all canned meat consumed, mince pies were made of pemmican laced with brandy. Rum was doled out and a talent show organized, complete with costumes and musical instruments. In their continued drift north, great joy was had on February 5, when after ninety-three days of night, the first glimpse of sun was had. In the weeks that followed, particularly fierce gales and winds battered the ship while screeching ice packs and the loud cracking of ice made sleep difficult. Early spring flights of noisy geese passed overhead and many were brought down. Sickness had once more taken hold, this time brought on by lead poisoning. Cans of tomatoes were found to have been improperly soldered and fragments of lead caused contamination. Lieutenant Chipp was struck particularly badly.

  The strong rays of early summer wrought daily transformations to the world of ice and conditions changed hourly — “the changes going on all around, except in our isolated spot, were kaleidoscopic.” That spot was in the middle of a floe measuring about a mile long and a half-mile wide. Far out, sporadic stretches of open water opened to view, but otherwise it was a panorama of tumbling “floebergs” thunderously crashing into one another and at times building into high craglike structures. Stronger currents now drove their little island at a faster clip.

  Friday, June 10, passed as a bright pleasant day just it had been for many before. By ten that night most were asleep except for Melville, the officer on watch, who had taken up his position on deck. Shortly before midnight, the accustomed reverberations of ice action on the hull intensified as did the thumping and cracking of their surroundings. The vessel gave a sharp quiver, trembling sufficiently roughly to bring a hastily clad De Long on deck. Within moments his ship heaved abruptly and slid harshly from its iced cradle into the freedom of open water. Everyone appeared on deck to cheer their good fortune.

  Jubilation was short-lived, however, for within hours the ice closed in once more. Floes as thick as sixteen feet and jagged floebergs came on rapidly to attack the ship’s sides — a “contest between hallow hull and solid pack looked so unequal.” The Jeannette screeched and howled as its bow slowly lifted and the entire mass heeled sharply to starboard. Ice penetrated the hull and then seawater, at first slight, but then in a torrent, filling the engine room and flooding the holds. The bow and bowsprit pointed high into the air with the stern almost buried. The list was nearing 30° and the men clung to rigging and davits to prevent themselves from sliding into the scuppers. Water poured into all the holds and it appeared that the keel had been torn out. The snapping and crackling sounds seemed to be coming from everywhere — it was clear that the Jeannette was breaking up. De Long issued the order to abandon ship.

  The death of the Jeannette. With her hull staved in by the jagged ice and water pouring in, the vessel finally sank in the early morning of June 11, 1881, leaving her thirty-three men stranded on the ice packs.

  © Naval History and Heritage Command.

  Frenzied work began on removing provisions, equipment, dogs, and sleds onto the more stable, quieter spans of floes. Danenhower, eyes bandaged from a follow-up operation, was carried off the ship, as was the sick Chipp. Six nine-by-six-foot tents were set up two hundred yards from the stricken vessel with tons of stores piled about. Earlier, as a precaution, two cutters and a whaleboat had been removed together with eight sleds, three of which had been especially built to accommodate boats. When it was all done, and despite the drama of it all, the exhausted men fell into their sleeping bags and by midnight all was quiet, save the continuous groaning of the dying ship. At four in the morning only two witnessed the Jeannette’s death pangs, when with a final heave she disappeared beneath the waters. The masts had crashed long before and as it went down, the yards snapped noisily, “like a great gaunt skeleton slapping its hands above its head.” They were at 77°N, four hundred miles from the Siberian mainland and eight hundred miles from the North Pole.

  By the end of the next day the salvaged clothing stores had been divided among the men and preparations begun for the next step. De Long noted in his diary, “… where the ship sank nothing is to be seen but a signal chest floating bottom up … we have provisions to live on for some time without impairing our sixty days’ allowance for going south … all cheerful, with plenty to eat and wear. Lauterbach on the harmonica tonight. Keep the silk flag flying.” Four days later, De Long wrote a few lines and left it in a waterproof keg: “Latitude 77°8' Longitude 153°25'. We break camp and start southward over the ice tomorrow evening, hoping with God’s grace to reach the New Siberian Islands, and from there make our way by boats to the coast of Siberia. 17 June 1881.”

  Five hundred miles separated the party from their chosen destination, the delta of Siberia’s Lena River. According to Dr. Petermann, villages dotted the area, and there they would find food and shelter. They would rest before proceeding onto the journey’s next thousand-mile stretch to Yakutsk where communication with the outside world was available. The problem now: what to take and what things to leave behind? Baggage had to be hauled by sled and since thirty-three men and twenty-three dogs could do only so much, they were limited — piles of equipment and personal belongings would have to be abandoned.

  Three specially reinforced sleds would each bear a twelve-foot boat and nine lesser sleds would carry provisions, two small dinghies, and the medicine chest. Essential camping gear including tents, cooking equipment, fur-lined sleeping bags, and knapsacks of personal items would be placed into the boats. The men were instructed to dress as warmly as possible, but all other outerwear had to remain behind (with the exception of three pairs of boots). A pile of furs, parkas, and blankets remained on the ice. In view of the harsh restrictions imposed on them, more than one man grumbled when De Long insisted that a barrel of lime juice and what appeared to be an inordinate quantity of pemmican be loaded together with certain books and the expedition’s logs and records. By the time all was ready, the combined dead weight of the baggage train was estimated at eight tons. With everything in order, they set off in a joyous mood, relieved no longer to be cloistered in cramped, foul-smelling quarters and buoyed by the prospect of a safe haven on the mainland. The brilliancy — not necessarily the warmth — of the summer sun no doubt added to the lifting of spirits.

  But what followed in the next months was anything but joyous; a nightmare journey across treacherous floes and violent waters, a passage that became littered by a trail of abandoned items, dead dogs, and human bodies. De Long recorded only a part of the tale for his notebook entries cease on October 30, 140 days after abandoning ship. He died immediately thereafter. Of the thirty-three men who set out on that sunny June day, seven survived the ordeal. Danenhower and Me
lville were the two officers among them, and it is from the latter that we learn of the expedition’s final days. With canvas harnesses strapped across their chests, twelve men were hitched to the drag ropes attached to a sled or cutter and the heavy thing was hauled forward as others steadied the sides. After five hundred yards they unhitched, returned to where they had begun and repeated the process on the next load. Ice-pilot Dunbar proceeded well ahead of the troop, laying out the route with small black flags. By mid-afternoon the indicated path had become rutted, the ice had turned into slush and by the time it came to the final load, the team was in ankle-deep water. Sliding downhill, the loads sometimes overturned, causing delays and havoc among the dog-pulled sleds. At the close of the day they had covered a mile and a half. Ambler did what he could to attend blistered and skinned hands. Days later, they thought that ninety miles had been covered, but when De Long took careful sextant readings he was chagrined to find that the true distance travelled was a mere twenty-eight miles — as the group progressed south, the current had been driving their floe north.

  The men of the Jeannette, having abandoned their lost vessel, struggle in hauling boats over the ice as they head to the Siberian mainland, June–September 1881.

  © Naval History and Heritage Command.

  At one point Ambler fell into the water during a sleet storm and after swimming from floe to floe he managed to pull himself out. He rummaged in his knapsack for dry clothing, stripped, and changed — the temperature was 21°F. On July 4, cheers went up from the men as “all flags were flown” to celebrate the American national day. Signs of extreme fatigue began showing and feet had become blistered as moccasins rotted and sodden stockings tore apart. Sleep was often had “in wet clothes in a wet bag on wet ice … every bone and every separate muscle” aching. Yet Ambler’s diary noted, “For forty days we have been under way in all kinds of hardships; but not a murmur, and tonight after nineteen hours work, many of the men having been overboard, they are cheerful and come up smiling.” The ailing Chipp continued in his physical agony and for the first part of the journey had to be transported by sled. He was so distraught over his condition and from the worry of being a burden to others that he begged to be abandoned so he could suffer a natural death, but De Long would have no part of that and the “hospital sled” continued to be dragged along. On July 19, landfall was made on a barren, rocky island at the eastern tip of the New Siberian Islands, which, with ceremony, was named Bennett Island and claimed for the United States. Here they rested for nine days and before quitting the place, De Long left the following message in a cairn:

  It is my intention to proceed from here at the first opportunity towards New Siberian Islands and thence towards the settlements on the Lena River. We have three boats, thirty days of provisions, 23 dogs and sufficient clothing, and are in excellent health. Having rested here a few days, we are now detained by a westerly gale and fog …

  When the weather cleared, they set off by boats, but not before shooting ten of the most “broken-down” dogs. Supply of pemmican had been depleting and the dogs were deemed a luxurious drain on the supply. During their island sojourn and in anticipation of clear waters, De Long rearranged the “order of march.” The expedition would proceed by water in three boats: himself commanding one cutter with Ambler, Collins and ten men; a second cutter under Chipp’s command with Dunbar and eight men, and the whaleboat with Melville commanding, carrying Danenhower, Newcomb, and seven men.

  The over-packed boats stood low in the water and made slow progress — forty miles in nine days. Arriving at the next island after long stretches on the water the excited dogs ran off and disappeared into the interior not to be seen again — only their pet “Snoozer” deigned to remain behind. The boats’ loads lessened by that much, but it was not sufficient to noticeably increase the sailing speed. Time was passing, the season changing, food supplies diminishing, and there was far to go. Better time had to be made; to lighten loads further, De Long ordered the sledges destroyed and with that the rate of progress increased dramatically.

  Days of sailing, days of camping on ice floes, days of gales, snow and heavy fog. Provisions ran low; only pemmican and tea were left. The mouth of the Lena Delta was reached, but, contrary to Petermann’s assurances, they found no settlements. A particularly vicious gale struck the three small boats and they became separated. Chipp’s cutter was lost and never heard from again. Melville made his way to the east coast of the Lena, where a village was found in which a Russian exile resided, and here the broken men found food and shelter.

  De Long reached the Delta’s northern tip, where he was stopped by silted shoals. With all food gone, the faithful Snoozer was shot, and dog stew nourished the crew for the following days. On October 6, De Long noted, “At 8:45 a.m. our messmate Ericksen departed this life,” a victim of hypothermia. On the next day, “Breakfast, consisting of our last pound of dog meat and … our last grain of tea.” The entry for Wednesday, October 12, noted:

  One hundred and twenty-second day. Breakfast; last spoonful glycerine and hot water. For dinner we tried a couple of handfuls of Arctic willow in a pot of water and drank the infusion. Everybody getting weaker and weaker. Hardly strength to get firewood. S.W. gale with snow.

  A week later, the last strips of their boiled deerskin moccasins were consumed. On the 30th, the totality of De Long’s final notation: “One hundred and fortieth day. Boyd and Gortz died during night. Mr. Collins dying.” The death of the two seamen were the sixth and seventh of his small crew, and Collins must have followed immediately thereafter, as did the Jeannette’s commanding officer and the rest.

  By summer 1881, world anxiety over the whereabouts of the Jeannette deepened into alarm. Two expeditions were sent out by the United States government to seek signs of the ship or its survivors, but to no avail; it seemed that the ship had been swallowed up by the trackless Arctic. The following year, preparations were underway for a renewed search, but this time it was to be a concerted effort involving the navies of England, Russia, and Sweden. It was at that point that Melville’s haggard group appeared in Ikutsk, where word of the astonishing survival was telegraphed to an amazed world.

  Plans for an international search were put aside, but Melville, with a small select group, returned to the Delta to continue the search. One frozen tributary after another was travelled; streams, large and small, were explored. Then, by serendipity, they stumbled upon a Remington rifle, eight inches of its muzzle protruding from the snow. At a short distance from the find, a copper kettle resting incongruously on the snow, and as Melville approached to retrieve it, he spotted a human arm, stiff and stark, stretching skyward from the snow. It was De Long and near his frozen corpse were the bodies of Dr. Ambler and Ah Sam, the Chinese cook. Further digging uncovered the journal that De Long kept from the time of abandoning ship, and subsequently, Ambler’s notebook.

  The rigid, emaciated bodies were buried and prayers said over them. Months later, they were retrieved by the naval expedition and brought home for an internment with full honours in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York — a ceremony held in a blinding snowstorm and blistering wind.

  Notes

  1. Albert A Woodman, Lincoln and the Russians (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1952), 377.

  2. Alexander Tarsaidze, Czars and Presidents (New York: Obolensky and McDowell, 1958), 239.

  3. Ibid., 236.

  4. George Kennon, Tent Life in Siberia (G.P. Putnam’s Sons: New York, 1882), 422.

  5. Like his diplomat nephew, Kennan held an abiding interest in Russia, its people, culture, and policies. In subsequent trips to that country, he came to know it well and soon became a vocal critic of its government. He made a brilliant career as a sought-after lecturer and acclaimed journalist. Whereas the name of George Kennan, the diplomat, is well known to the contemporary world whose immediate history he helped to shape, his uncle is all but forgotten, a “posthumous misfortune” as one admirer put it, and today no more than a footnote in hist
ory, a shadow to his nephew.

  6. Bennett founded a French edition of his paper, The Paris Herald, forerunner of The International Herald Tribune.

  7. Edward Ellsberg, Hell on Ice: the Saga of the “Jeannette” (New York: Dodd, Mead &Co, 1938), 18.

  9

  The Scandinavians

  BETWEEN GREENLAND AND Norway, in the uppermost reaches of the North Sea, lies the Svalbard Archipelago, where the four Pomors passed their six desolate years on Edgeøya Island. It is certain that the early Scandinavians discovered this cluster of islands in the twelfth century, although definitive such evidence escapes us. It is, however, known that Pomori had hunted in the area as early as the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, but knowledge of it remained unknown in Western Europe.

  The first definitive record of the islands’ discovery lies with Willem Barents, who came across the archipelago in 1596 as he searched for the Northeast Passage. The largest of the islands — some fifteen thousand square miles in size — he found “nothing more than mountains and pointed peaks, therefore we called it Spitzbergen.” His expedition, however, encountered whales, many of them, and word of this find quickly spread. Whale oil in those days seems to have been more eagerly sought than fossil oil of today — Thomas Jefferson is said to have remarked, “next in value to bread is oil.”

  By 1615, Spitzbergen had developed into a centre for whaling, and opposing claims to the place had been staked by King Christian IV of Denmark and the Muscovy Company. The English stuck to their dubious assertion that Hugh Willoughby had discovered the island in 1533 and that therefore the land was rightfully theirs. Within a couple of decades, whalers from a bevy of nations were operating in the rich hunting grounds, principally the English, Danes, Dutch, French, Spaniards, and the Basques. In a setting of wild lawlessness, clashes between these groups were frequent and often bloody, particularly between the Danes and the English.