Trial by Ice

by Richard Parry

  Things were not all rosy for Tyson's boat, the Robeson, however. Threading his vessel through the sea ice, Tyson passed Cape Folly and angled along Robeson Straits as far as Newman Bay. There ice thwarted him completely. A solid sheet of white sealed the waters north. Learning from Chester's mistake, Tyson beached his craft on solid ground, pitched camp, and waited for the channel to open. Unable to trap this group as it had Chester's men, the perverse nature of the far North struck at Tyson's team in another way.

  Two days of staring at the endless fields of bright snow and ice reactivated Emil BessePs snow blindness. The intensity of the reflected light bouncing off the ice inflamed the doctor's eyes, robbing him of all useful sight. To combat this glare, the Inuit fashioned goggles of wood with narrow slits cut in them to limit the amount of light reaching the eye. Hans and Ebierbing used them, as did the late Capiain Hall and Tyson. Why Bessei did not is unclear. The goggles had to be made, so no extras were available. Certainly Bessel's attitude toward the Inuit guaranteed they would not offer him a pair. He might have disdained such a primitive device. However, his failure to use this protection cost him dearly, for dark glasses w ere yet to be developed.

  Confined to the relative darkness of the tent, the doctor fretted away the long hours with his eyes swathed in rags. Discouraged to the poin: of despair, Bessei forced himself to finger the scraps of driftwood brought to him by the sailors and skin the various birds they caught. Equally maddening to this entomologist were the mosquitoes end black flies that buzzed about him and bit him but that he could not collect.

  Eventually Chester's men reached Tyson's camp. While the two boai teams waited, more precious time dwindled away. On the sixteenth of July, a flock of geese passed overhead. To the men's alarm, the geese were flying south this time, not north as beforea sure sign that summer was drawing to a close. The next day it snowed.

  Behind them the channel leading back to Thank God Harbor closed as pack ice crowded ashore. Now they could row neither north ncr south. Without dogs and sleds, the Robeson proved too heavy to drag overland, and no one wanted to set foot inside the Heggleiran boat again.

  In desperation Tyson suggested that the two teams combine forces aid mount an overland attacka “pedestrian exploring party,” he named it. His plan called for squads of men leapfrogging their wav north on foot, leaving caches of food as they went for the journey Dack. Struck again by a flash of blinding optimism, Tyson described his incredible plan: “In this way, taking our guns with us to assist in procuring food, we could have walked to the pole itself if the land extended so far, without any insuperable difficulty during the Arctic summer.”

  To his amazement his plan failed to inspire his fellow shipmates. “But, I could get no one to join,” he wrote in consternation. “Some were indisposed to the exertion of walking, and some did not know how to use the compass, and were probably afraid of getting lost; and so the project fell through.”

  In their collective wisdom, the sailors realized that summer was over. Instinctively they also sensed that Captain Hall's speculation was accuratethat they stood on the northern tip of Greenland and the end of all land. Had Tyson occupied a well-defined place in the command structure, he would have built up his authority as well as earned the trust of the crew, and the men might have followed his plan. Being placed in limbo by Hall's nebulous appointment, Tyson had none of those things working for him.

  An equally frightening thought lurked in the back of each man's mind: Captain Buddington could not be trusted to wait for their return to the ship. More than once Buddington had voiced to Tyson and Chester that if the way south opened for the Polaris and if he “got a chance to get out he would not wait.” That scuttlebutt spread below deck faster than the speed of light. Even the lowest seaman clearly knew the captain's mind in that matter. If they pressed farther north, chances were slim that their ship would be waiting for those lucky enough to find their way back to Thank God Harbor.

  Back on the Polaris Captain Buddington wrestled with his own demons. Rising water in the holds had ruined a number of provisions. The worsening leaks now required the pumps to be run every other hour. Having burned every bit of scrap wood, the captain resorted to fueling the boilers with coal bags soaked in turpentine to conserve their dwindling supply of precious coal.

  Next a northeast gale struck, blasting the harbor with winds exceeding forty knots. Providence Berg shifted and ground along the shallow floor under the force of the storm, and all hands feared that their mooring platform would break free and drift out to sea with the rest of the pack ice. The captain ordered the observatory cleared of its instruments and every fragment of wood salvaged for fuel. As fie advance boat parties feared, Buddington was preparing to retreat.

  Complying with Bessel's impractical “sketch,” he left written instructions for the two boats. Here another flaw in the doctor's plan made Buddington's message useless. Unknown to Buddington, ice prevented any movement of the scouting boats. With the crew already preparing to abandon their craft, they would be unable to follow him south.

  The gale passed, clearing all ice out of the harbor and turning the way s 3uthwest into one broad expanse of water. But Providence Berg remained firmly grounded and the twelve-foot-thick spread of ice linking the Polaris to the iceberg unbroken.

  Frant cally Buddington tried another powder charge to no avail. Asr es of coal dust spread around the ship cloaked the ice like funeral bunting and aided in melting the top few inches. Resorting to ice saws, the engineers erected derricks and commenced sawing the vessel free. Close to the hull, the ice grew to fifteen feet in thickness, exceeding the ability of the saws, so the men resorted to pulleys.

  Four iouble blocks of tackle rigged around the last remnants of entrapping ice broke loose this last impediment. A cheer rose from the men working the capstan as the Polaris slipped off the tongue of ice that had imprisoned her for so long and slid into the water. The ship »vas floating at last.

  Being adrift only aggravated the ship's leaking. The steam donkey pumped all day while the crew frantically stopped whatever leaks the) could.

  Anxious to sail, Buddington found that retrieving his anchors proved a lother problem. Without them the vessel could not be stopped. Both starboard and port anchors had been deployed to save the ship. Providence Berg lay on top of the starboard anchor, so it could not be raised. Reluctantly its cable was cut. The port anchor lay so deeply embedded in the ocean floor that it could not be broken fr«3e.

  While they struggled with the anchors, more and more pack ice drifted in :o the mouth of the bay. Buddington watched his chance for freedom slowly slipping away with each arriving block of ice. In desperation the captain ordered his last anchor marked with a buoy and unshackled.

  Steaming out of the bay, Buddington quickly encountered a solid wall of pack ice blocking the passage. Throughout the night he steamed back and forth, searching in vain for an open lead. By morning the captain admitted defeat and returned to Thank God Harbor to hook onto his waiting port anchor.

  To make matters worse, the ship rode even lower in the water than before. A hasty inspection revealed that the drain holes in the bulkheads were plugged by debris shaken loose while the ship sailed. Tons of seawater filled the forepeak, the chain lockers, and the main hold. Boring additional drain holes in the bulkheads allowed the water to gush forth. The water drained into the bilge, where the overworked steam donkey pumped it overboard, correcting that problem, but salt water had ruined even more provisions.

  The rising tide provided mixed blessings for the beleaguered officer. The port anchor broke free, and the clear water surrounding the ship revealed the full extent of the damage done to the hull by the long winter's rocking. The heavy oak stem section of the keel was ripped loose and twisted to port, while a half-inch gap separated the two planks near the six-foot marking on the same side. Buddington retreated to his bunk that night to listen to the clank of the steam pumps and ponder what kept his ship from sinking outright.

  Tw
o gunshots the next morning announced the return of Kruger and Sieman with a note from Mr. Chester asking for supplies of bread. Buddington eagerly moved to absorb the two sailors back into his ship's company. Barely able to handle his newly liberated vessel with so shorthanded a crew, he denied the request and ordered the men to stay. He would sail north and pick up the rest of their party, he boldly announced, and then he would sail even farther north.

  Two halfhearted attempts yielded nothing of the sort. While burning precious coal, Buddington steamed about but never cleared the harbor. Ice blocked his way, and the badly split stem discouraged any thought he might have entertained of crashing his way through the ice fields. After failing in his last attempt to break out, Buddington wrote in his journal that the low sun had blinded his eyes and kept him from seeing far enough ahead to navigate safely. Faced wit h this bumbling, Kruger and Sieman urged Buddington to release them and walked back with his orders for Chester to return at once.

  North of Cape Lupton, Chester and Tyson greeted the command with contempt. “I won't go!” Chester shouted when ordered to turn back. Every man clustered around the beached boats sensed that this vvas their last chance to press farther north. To their embarrassment none of them had ventured farther north than Captain Hall and Ebierbing had gone almost nine months before. Repeatedly well- provisioned teams of healthy men had failed to pass the mark reached by those two in a dogsled.

  Tysor overheard the sailors muttering, “if the captain got a good chance, he would sail south without waiting for anyone.” Kruger aid Sieman's report confirmed the crew's assessment of their drunken commander. In disgust one man spat out that he “didn't cure” if Buddington left or not, that they had a better chance of escaping south in their whaleboat before winter arrived.

  Ebierbing's arrival two days later settled the debate. Solemnly the Inuit s tepped off his sled and handed a written order to Chester. Return at once, it commanded. Chester could not disobey a written order. Boih he and Tyson knew that the crafty Buddington would have copies of that specific order safely preserved for any later hearing. Buddington's blunt command had incisively ended any further exploration by them.

  With heavy hearts they turned back. Buddington would sail south as quickly as he could, they all realized. Regardless of what he boasted, he would never take the Polaris farther northward. No more forays north to plant the Stars and Stripes on undiscovered territory would come from their expedition, either by land or by sea.

  Their mission had failed. The North Pole would remain unclaimed. The United States would add its name to that of England, France, R issia, Denmark, and every other nation that had mounted an expedition to the North Pole … and failed.

  Nothiig remained but to get back alive.

  They abandoned the unwieldy collapsible boat to the Arctic, leaving the winds to tear the canvas and the lemmings and voles to gnaw the wooden struts. The remaining useful whaleboat presented another problem. The sturdy oak planking that served so well against the floating ice made the craft too heavy to drag across the broken ice fields. Loading it on a sledge would work, but Ebierbing's sled was not the heavy type built especially by the half-mad Coffin to carry sledges. Besides, the sled was gone. The half-blind Bessel snatched at his chance and rode back to the ship in the Inuit's sled basket.

  They dragged the whaleboat high onto the bluffs, where the tide and the evu would not wreck it, and covered it with canvas. It took all hands and forty-eight hours to haul the skiff up a ravine to the safest place they could find. Caching an extra tent and boxes of provisions too heavy to carry, Meyer buried another copper cylinder nearby with their meager achievements and the record of Captain Hall's death.

  Hiking the twenty miles back to the ship took two days. Worn out on arrival, Chester found Captain Buddington at his wit's end. All throughout the Fourth of July, a northeastern gale had battered the ship and driven blocks of ice against the hull. The men had spent their holiday fending off the icy battering rams with long poles.

  That night the ship's company watched helplessly as an iceberg half the size of the Polaris cruised down on their moored vessel. Streaming directly toward the midships like a well-aimed torpedo, the icy ram would easily stave in the side. Moored powerlessly to Providence Berg, the Polaris had no chance to escape. Backing them, this frozen mountain would act as the anvil to the charging iceberg's hammer, ensuring greater damage to the weakened hull.

  Buddington and his crew gritted their teeth, gripped the rail, and forced their watering eyes to peer into the blowing snow while they watched their destruction cruising silently closer. One hundred, seventy-five, fifty yards nearer drifted the iceberg. Men prayed and sinners repented as their white destroyer loomed overhead with cold indifference. The icy breath of the iceberg chilled their lungs, the air growing more frigid with each long second that passed.

  Twenty yards from the ship, the iceberg struck the underwater beak of Providence Berg. With a grinding rumble, the iceberg turned aside and swept past the astonished men, mere feet from the wooden railing. The submerged tongue of Providence Berg that had tortured :he ship's keel for so long had deflected the charging monster and protected the vessel.

  Dodging more ice, Buddington moved his ship closer and closer to shore. Two days before Chester and Tyson returned, a thick fog had descended on the bay. Disoriented, Buddington ran the ship iground in eleven and one-half feet of water. As the tide ran out, the ship heeled over until the port-side scuppers slipped underwater. This added more water to the beleaguered bilge and necessitated burning more coal for the steam pumps. Shorthanded, Buddington could not free the ship. Fortunately the tide rose and lifted the ship enough to raise the scuppers out of the sea, but the keel remained firmly wedged into the floor of the bay. As soon as Chester and Tyson arrived, the full crew rowed the remaining anchor out into deeper water, and all hands laid on the capstan to warp the ship free. The anchor bit into the bottom ground, the men strained 2 gainst the wooden bars protruding from the capstan, and the drum slowly wrenched the ship into the deeper sea, where it refloated.

  Unbe ievably the Polaris had dodged two disasters in close succession, but the near misses wore away at whatever resolve Buddington s :ill had to continue their mission to reach the North Pole. Nothing on earth could compel him to face those floating white mines again.

  Grasping for straws, he decided the scientific portion of the expedition c ould be claimed a great success. Emil Bessel had stocked the hold lull of collected rocks, bones, and specimens preserved in those boti les of alcohol that had not been drunk. Pages of scientific readings, measurements of seawater temperature, magnetic flux, and star sightings filled dozens of notebooks that Mauch, Meyer, Bryan, an d the good doctor had kept. All that must count for something, Buddington reasoned. He hoped it would help offset their dismal failure to reach the top of the world and the death of Charles F ancis Hall.

  Washington would appreciate their difficulties, he hoped. In spite of them, Hall had carried the flag higher than any white man had previously done. And there was all that new land named after President Grant, Secretary Robeson, and Senator Sumner.

  Drinking heavily now, he announced to Chester and Tyson that there existed “no probability” whatsoever for them to do anything other than help him head home. Realizing how the two boat teams had robbed him of sufficient hands to man the ship, he resolved never to repeat that error. As the men rightly feared, their mission was finished.

  Sadly his poorly concealed anxiety only subjected him to more of his sailors' scorn. Arising out of Buddington's patent dread of the floating ice, a growing, open contempt for him developed on the part of his crew. An incident described by Tyson highlighted this disdain.

  Shortly after the boat crews returned, Tyson suggested the three watches be assigned to use the hand pumps instead of the steam donkey. Doing so would save burning their dwindling supply of coal yet provide pumping round the clock. While Buddington considered the idea, a sudden rush of fresh seawater flooded into th
e hold. The amount of this new leakage far exceeded the capacity of the hand pumps, so the steam pumps remained active and the idea of the men's taking turns pumping by hand was abandoned.

  The suddenness of the new leak and its timing raised suspicions that someone in the engine room had deliberately opened the seacocks and flooded the bilges. Tyson suggested this idea to Budding-ton, citing that it was done “so that those in favor of hand pumping ‘should have enough of it.’ “

  Showing uncharacteristic resolve, Buddington marched down to the engine room to see for himself. He arrived outside the engine room only to have the door slammed in his face. Those inside presumably Emil Schuman; the assistant engineer, Odell; and the two firemen, Campbell and Boothrefused to allow their commanding officer to enter. Adding insult to injury, they also refused to answer his orders to open the door.

  Chagrined, Buddington could do nothing but return to the cockpit and hope that the new leak had indeed arisen from a deliberate act of sabotage to gain his concession. When word reached those below decks that the idea of hand pumping had been scrapped, the massive new leak miraculously ceased. This dangerous act of defiance greatly threatened the command and safety of the ship but went unpunished.

  Since Charles Francis Hall's suspicious death, discipline and cohesion o the expedition had weakened and dissolved by degrees over the long winter. Now little remained of the United States North Polar expedition but an unruly, self-serving mob bent on having their own way with no regard for the consequences.

  Like grains of sand silently scattered by the wind until the wall they support collapses, minuscule events, affecting both men and materiel, were conspiring to fatally hamstring the Polaris expedition. The chain of command had virtually vanished from the crew while irreplaceable losses went largely unappreciated.