Voyage of the Narwhal

by Andrea Barrett

  “You refused to lead the men earlier,” Erasmus would remember saying to the captain. “When the men most needed you, you’d do nothing. Now that there’s a chance we might reach safety you want command, you want the credit.” The rifles and powder and shot were scattered throughout the boat, but he had all the percussion caps and felt secure. “I’ll shoot you if you disobey me,” he said.

  All the men would remember that: how nearly they’d come to having to choose sides, how only a waving gun had saved them. For the last few days, creeping around Cape Dudley Digges and then through a narrow lead at the base of the ice foot, no one spoke except to give or respond to orders. Every night the temperature dropped below freezing, although it was still warm at noon. Sometimes it snowed. They rowed through a dense sludge that dripped from the oars like porridge, and when at last they doubled Cape York they dreaded the emptiness. October 3, Melville Bay. Upernavik, on the far side of the breaking-up yard, was still so many miles away.

  WHAT GREETED ERASMUS in Melville Bay was dense pack ice, broken only by small, irregular leads; he’d expected this. What he didn’t expect were the dark specks on the horizon. A cluster of specks and threads of something that, wavering and wafting upward, made his heart leap. Smoke? By now he’d long been familiar with the way the blank ice shifted perspective and perception—how what looked like a bear, far away, might turn out to be a hare nearby; how a nearby gentle hill might resolve into a distant, mighty range. At first he couldn’t believe that the smoke was smoke. The specks, which seemed far away and large, might be closer, might be Esquimaux hunting. But the upright lines among the smoke threads were really masts, and those were truly ships. Seventeen ships, the men told each other, counting as they smashed the thin ice blocking their way and spun in a frantic, looping course through the seams around the floes. The ships appeared to be frozen in; a mile from the cluster their boat was stopped as well. They’d already burned the sledge for fuel and were too weak to haul the boat onto the solid ice.

  “I’ll go,” Captain Tyler said. “I’ll walk to the first ship and bring back enough men to help.”

  “No,” Erasmus said. “Too many of us are broken down, I need you here with me. The wind could change in a minute, and if the floes separate we could drift very quickly.” He longed to go himself, but knew he couldn’t walk more than a few steps. “Whoever is strongest and can move fastest must go. Barton, I think.”

  Barton leapt to his feet. “I’ll run,” he said. “I’ll run the whole way.”

  Four hours later he returned with with a crew of startled Shetland Islanders from a Dundee whaler. It was snowing and dark and very cold, and the ice was grinding beneath their feet. Erasmus greeted the sailors briefly, saying only that their ship was lost and they needed help. When he saw the pity on the sailors’ faces, he understood how ragged and worn they must look. “Can you help us back to your ship? Can you take us in?”

  The sailors, so strong and healthy, made short work of the task. They hauled the boat up on the ice, attached the drag lines, unloaded everything but the men’s personal belongings and then, after a quick examination of the Narwhal’s crew, sat Ned, Erasmus, and Ivan on the thwarts. Twelve of them dragged the boat, as if it weighed nothing, across the ice, while the others supported the men who could still walk. Thomas cringed at the sound of the keel splintering and grinding away.

  Their way was lit by the moon, and by several fires. As they drew closer, Erasmus saw that these weren’t bonfires, or cooking fires, but the remains of two ships burning. Nipped by the ice, they’d been sliced all the way through and partially sunk. Only the decking above the waterline remained. “It’s the custom,” one of the Shetland men said when Erasmus questioned him. “Among us whalers. When a ship is stove in, suchlike, we burn her remains.” By the firelight Erasmus saw masts scattered over the ice, broken whaleboats, and a whole ship lying broadside, her keel exposed forlornly.

  “Twenty vessels caught here,” said the Shetland man. Magna Abernathy, or so Erasmus understood; his accent was very thick. “Three lost so far. Their crews have been taken in by the other ships, but we still have some room. Our captain started preparing for you as soon as your messenger arrived.”

  Then a bark loomed before them like a castle. The Harmony, of Dundee, Magna announced. Captained by Alec Sturrock. Between the time Magna bolted up the planks and returned with his captain, Erasmus took in the cranes and whaleboats and the scarred, oily hull. After that everything happened so fast. Erasmus and his companions were carried, pushed, washed, tidied, bandaged, clothed; shown to newly hung hammocks where their belongings were stowed and then whisked away again. In the cabin they were blinded by the light of clean-burning lamps and stunned by the smell of baking bread. Ned was taken away by the ship’s surgeon, who was worried by his fever and the condition of his nose, but Erasmus was allowed to stay with the others; no one had yet seen his feet.

  Inside the Harmony, pressed hard to port by the ice, everything was tilted but the table had been leveled. Chairs were drawn up for them, plates set before them and wine, small glasses of red glowing wine. Only after they’d chewed and swallowed in silence for several minutes did Captain Sturrock ask, “How was your ship lost? How long have you been out in that boat?”

  Erasmus leaned forward, ready to speak, but Captain Tyler spoke first. “Amos Tyler, of New London,” he said. “I’ve captained whaling ships for twenty years.” A quick exchange of places and names followed; the two captains hadn’t met before, but had sailed the same waters and knew many people in common. Immediately Erasmus felt the balance of power shift like the bubble in a spirit level.

  “Which was your brig?” Captain Sturrock asked. “We didn’t see you among the fleet earlier in the season.”

  Captain Tyler curled his lip. “Not this season, indeed,” he said. Holding his glass out for more wine, he told Captain Sturrock his version of what had happened. How not this season, but last, he’d accepted a position as Sailing Master for an expedition in search of Sir John Franklin; how everything went wrong and they got stuck in the ice, because the expedition’s commander wouldn’t follow his advice. The eager questions about the fate of the Franklin expedition he answered briefly, impatiently. Then he went on and on and on, through all their own trials and the dark hopeless winter and their eventual escape. Erasmus tried to interrupt him, but couldn’t. He was dizzy, sweating; the room was horribly close after their weeks in the open air and it was so hot, there were so many smells. “The Narwhal will never be freed,” Captain Tyler concluded.

  “And your commander?” asked the other captain. He looked around the cabin.

  “Dead,” Captain Tyler said. “As are several others.”

  Turning to Erasmus, he said, “This is the Narwhal’s naturalist, Erasmus Wells, a friend of Commander Voorhees. Commander Voorhees delegated to him responsibility for the expedition’s goals in his absence, and it was his decision to abandon the brig and organize our boat journey. I merely navigated us through the ice.”

  Not his decision, Erasmus thought. But Ned’s. Even this he couldn’t take credit for. He must let them know that Zeke wasn’t surely dead, only possibly dead, that there might still be hope. When he stood to speak, the floor tilted under him and the lamps merged into one gold ball and then disappeared. He was on the floor, flat on his back. Someone had undone his boots. Captain Sturrock and his surgeon and two other men were looking down at him, talking among themselves. The surgeon touched his toes, as Dr. Boerhaave might have done. “They’ll have to come off,” he said.

  AFTERWARD, RECOVERING IN the first mate’s cabin, Erasmus heard the story of how the Harmony had been trapped. He and Ned lay side by side, too weak to talk but able to listen.

  In July the Harmony, along with ships from Hull and Aberdeen and Kirkcaldy and Newcastle, New Bedford, Nantucket, and Newfoundland, had crept through the heavy ice in Melville Bay. When the fleet had finally escaped into the North Water they’d crossed quickly to Pond’s Bay and then had f
ound their route to the south blocked by fields of drifting ice. An easterly wind had driven ice into the bay, sealing the fleet inside; they’d seen no whales at all. For weeks they’d waited, anxious and bored, only to find the route south still blocked when the wind finally shifted and released them.

  They’d tried to return to Upernavik; reaching Cape York again they’d found Melville Bay still choked with icebergs and heavy pack ice. Back to the west they’d gone, to be stopped again; back once more to Melville Bay, where the ice was even denser; back and forth a third time, twenty ships unable to find a safe route south. Strong winds from the southeast had crowded the fleet together, then pressed them against the ice trapped in the curve south of Cape York.

  With the jib-boom of one ship overlapping the taffrail of the next they’d towed the ships through the narrow cracks until the wind closed the ice around them. The Alexander of New London had been crushed, and the Union of Hull; the Swan had been heaved on her side, where Erasmus had seen her. Since September 15 the fleet had been stuck here. And now, said Mr. Haslas—the surgeon, who visited Erasmus and Ned several times daily, and chattered while he examined them—now they could only hope that the ice might part once more. A strong wind from the northwest might still separate the floes, and if they could beat their way free before the young ice sealed the open water they might yet reach Upernavik.

  The crews visited back and forth, held great gatherings on the ice, made music and gambled and danced; meanwhile the officers entertained each other, holding long dinners in their cabins. Captain Tyler and Mr. Tagliabeau went from one ship to the next, feted everywhere for their courage and wisdom. Or so Erasmus heard when, occasionally, one of the men tore himself away from the festivities and dropped by to see him and Ned. It was Thomas, after a visit to a New Bedford ship, who brought news of Dr. Kane.

  “He left his ship in the ice,” Thomas said. “Just like the Esquimaux told us. He and his crew made a journey like ours, in three small boats but earlier in the season. They crossed all the way to Upernavik and then were carried by a Danish ship to Godhavn, where they met up with the rescue expedition. They reached New York last October, and the men who told me this said it was in all the newspapers. Dr. Kane is a great hero now. Even though he was looking in completely the wrong place for Franklin.”

  He gazed dreamily past Erasmus’s ruined feet. “Maybe we’ll be heroes too,” he said. “When we get home, maybe everyone will be thrilled to see us.”

  Erasmus looked over at Ned, lying a few feet from him and listening intently. Mr. Haslas had debrided his nose and applied poultices. But the soft flare of his left nostril had corroded away, as if it had been burned; scar tissue, tight and misshapen, replaced the normal flesh. Instead of a neat round hole, his nose had a dark narrow slit on that side. His own deformity, Erasmus thought, could at least be hidden inside his boots—how had this happened to Ned, so young and handsome?

  “Do you think?” Ned said. “Will it be like that? Or will everyone blame us for abandoning the Narwhal, and for failing to bring back any evidence of what happened to Franklin?”

  Thomas turned to him, waving his scarred hands. “Dr. Kane left his ship,” he said. “He had to, and so did we.”

  Ned turned his face away, and Erasmus knew what he was thinking: that Dr. Kane had left no one behind except the surely dead.

  A FEW NIGHTS later a great snowstorm descended, and with it a gale that shifted slowly from southwest to west to northwest. Erasmus and Ned heard the rush of feet on the deck above, excited chatter all night long as the ship shifted beneath them and their tilted world slowly leveled. Early the next morning Captain Sturrock rushed into their cabin, his hair sticking up and his eyes dark with excitement.

  “The wind has opened the floes,” he said. “We’re afloat, all the ships are afloat, and we’re going to try to head south through the leads. If we could have just a few days of this, before the new ice cements everything—I’ve spoken to Captain Nicholson, of the Sarah Billopp. If we’re successful he’s agreed to take you to his home at Marblehead.”

  “Marblehead?” Erasmus said. Captain Tyler and Mr. Tagliabeau squeezed in through the door, both looking as if they’d been up all night. “We won’t stay with you?”

  “Of course not,” Captain Sturrock said. “You wish to return to Philadelphia, don’t you? And that’s as close as anyone in the fleet can get you.”

  Erasmus turned to Captain Tyler. “Do you agree that we should join the Marblehead ship?”

  “You should, certainly,” Captain Tyler said. “And Ned, and whoever else wants to join you. Ivan for sure, his fingers haven’t healed correctly. But Mr. Tagliabeau and Robert and Sean and I are staying on with the Harmony.”

  “Why would you want to go to Scotland?” Erasmus said. “I don’t think we should split up.”

  “The Harmony isn’t heading home,” Captain Sturrock said. “Not right away—our holds are empty, we have nothing to show for our voyage and no way to pay off the crew. We’ve decided to head for Newfoundland, in company with Captain Bowring. He tells me that if we overwinter there we can head out beyond the Strait of Belle Isle in March with the sealing fleet, and take on a load of furs before we go home.”

  “You don’t want to go home?” Erasmus said to Captain Tyler. “After all this time?”

  “Of course I want to,” Captain Tyler said scornfully. “But what will I live on? Do you think I’ll ever see the rest of the money Commander Voorhees owes me for the voyage? I’m not like you discovery men, I have to make a living. The trip will be a waste for me, if I don’t make up for the lost wages somehow. If we do well sealing, my share will be enough to send me home with at least something.”

  By his side Mr. Tagliabeau nodded away. This whole trip, Erasmus thought, all the man had done was nod. Never an opinion of his own, never an idea.

  “What are ‘discovery men’?” Ned asked.

  Captain Tyler and Mr. Tagliabeau snorted. Before either of them could speak, Captain Sturrock answered, looking at Erasmus as he spoke.

  “It’s what we call you arctic exploring types,” he said. “All you men who go off on exploring expeditions, with funding and fanfare and special clothes, thinking you’ll discover something. When every place you go some whaling ship has already been. We know more about the land and the currents and the winds than you ever will, and more about the habits of the whales and seals and walruses. I’ve met Russian discovery ships, and English, and French, and never known them to discover much of anything. What is it you discovered on your voyage?”

  “New coastline,” Erasmus said. “We charted a good deal of new coast, north of Smith Sound. And we found relics from Franklin’s expedition, just as I told you—that they’re lost is surely not our fault.”

  “That’s what discovery men do,” Captain Sturrock said. “Get lost. Lose things. Franklin is lost, and his ships and his men, and Dr. Kane’s ship is lost, and yours and all your precious relics and specimens. If the captain of a whaling ship ever lost things at the rate you do, he wouldn’t be long employed.”

  “If I had known,” Captain Tyler said. “If I had ever known . . .”

  “At least American discovery ships take note of whales and seals on their voyages, and report back when they arrive home,” Captain Sturrock continued. “Our discovery men apparently think whales are beneath them; they never so much as mention them when they return to England and write their fancy books. They’re jealous of us is what it is. On the west side of Baffin’s Bay, all the points and bays were named by whalers, not by discovery men.”

  “That British discovery ship we saw?” Captain Tyler added. “The Resolute, the one that set Commander Voorhees to thinking he should go north in the first place—all we did was look at it, but I heard an American whaler brought it home. It was cleaned and given back to the British government.”

  “We could have done that,” Mr. Tagliabeau said. “That could have been us.”

  SEAN AND ROBERT stayed on the Harmony w
ith Captain Tyler and Mr. Tagliabeau. On the Sarah Billopp, small and cramped, Captain Nicholson made room for Erasmus, Ned, Ivan, Barton, Isaac, and Thomas. Six men only, Erasmus thought. Out of the fifteen who’d left Philadelphia. He couldn’t imagine arriving home with such a small remnant of the expedition. He couldn’t imagine what he’d say to the families of the men who’d been lost or even the families of those who’d survived but who, because the expedition had so failed to achieve its goals, were headed off for another half a year, slaughtering seals. Partly he couldn’t imagine these things because he couldn’t truly imagine he was headed home. Yet as if the goblins had fallen asleep, the weather stayed fine just long enough for them to escape. Slipping through the ice-choked water, the fleet made its way to Upernavik, then quickly to Godhavn. There the ships went their separate ways.

  The Sarah Billopp’s surgeon assured Erasmus that his feet were healing and that he’d be able to walk again someday. And it was only afterward, with some of the ships heading around the tip of Greenland while the Harmony carried Captain Tyler and Mr. Tagliabeau and Sean and Robert away from him, that Erasmus really understood all he’d lost. Ships turned east, ships turned west, and the shell in which he’d enclosed himself so he could bring the men to safety split like a sprouting seed.

  He lay in his bunk, weeping. His toes were nothing. The failed goals of the expedition were not exactly nothing, but they’d always been Zeke’s goals, not his. He’d lost the glorious collection of specimens he and Dr. Boerhaave had made together: all the birds and insects and flowers and ferns, the skins and scales and fossils and bones—gone, gone, gone. And with them his hope of writing a natural history of the arctic. Yet those losses were misfortune, which anyone might learn to accept.