The Ice Master

by Jennifer Niven

  One thing was clear—either the Karluk was nearing the crushing ice field, or it was nearing her. In his bones, Mamen predicted trouble. He could feel a storm coming, just as he had predicted it before from his aches and pains. “I suppose this7 storm may have serious consequences for us if it lasts long,” he wrote, “but we have to take it as it comes. It will be worse if we have to take to the ice, I don’t know how we are going to manage it, so many together and, besides, such a crowd, for there are many on board who won’t stand a week’s hard work . . ..”

  Captain Bartlett and Mamen had a long discussion about their situation, and both agreed that everything would be manageable as long as the wind was moderate. Still, they would prepare themselves, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.

  “Look out for8 next Saturday,” Bartlett told his men gravely. “The chances are that we will get a bad one on January 10th.” He did not want to alarm them, but he didn’t want to mislead them either. He needed them to be ready and prepared for what he knew was coming.

  THE STARS SHONE the morning of January 5, and the moon glowed in its last quarter. It was bitterly cold when Mamen went out to check the thermometer: minus twenty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. There was no wind, though, so he didn’t feel the chill. It wasn’t long before the sky grew overcast, the fog rolled in, the barometer dropped, snow began to fall, and the wind began to blow again; soon they were in the heart of another gale. The snow fell in thick sheets, and then, once on the ground, drifted into great piles. A heavy mist draped the air, clearing only briefly at night, just long enough for Malloch to make his observations.

  Late in the night of January 7, the wind shifted and the Karluk began drifting rapidly westward. The ice had crashed and creaked all night long, growing ever closer to the ship. But around 2:00 in the morning, the noise suddenly stopped. Everyone waited, listening, expecting it to start up again. But there was nothing. The men breathed a little easier and began to relax for the first time in several days. Perhaps they would be all right after all.

  SOON AFTER STEFANSSON’S departure, the captain had moved into his quarters. It was here that McKinlay sometimes spent hours a day engaged in deep conversation with the skipper. Bartlett welcomed visitors, no matter what the purpose of the visit, and seemed to appreciate having someone with whom he could talk. McKinlay and Mamen were, in his words, two souls after his own heart, and in their company he found both intellectual and emotional companionship. The magnetician and the assistant topographer were young, but each possessed a wisdom well beyond his years. Bartlett trusted them both implicitly.

  The latest book the captain had given McKinlay to read was The Inside of the Cup by Winston Churchill. Bartlett’s library was endless and wildly eclectic. One never knew what one was going to find in there, buried beneath the favored classics and stories of sea adventures. One night, among the expected nautical and maritime volumes, McKinlay noticed a slender text called A Book About Roses by Reynolds Hole. It was an odd sight, for no one would ever have connected Bartlett with the flower.

  McKinlay himself was passionate about roses. They talked about flowers that night and McKinlay was filled with longing for the sight of one of the gardens back home. Bartlett, it seemed, was a prodigious grower of roses when he was back in Newfoundland. He had a deep love for them, and he had a gift for cultivation.

  There were no illustrations in A Book About Roses, just prose interspersed with poetic lines and stanzas: “He who would9 have beautiful Roses in his garden must have beautiful Roses in his heart.”

  Roses in the Arctic. It was, indeed, an odd topic of conversation, considering they were as far from a garden as they could get. But it was a reminder of life and of hope in the midst of all that ice, and it helped remove them—however temporarily—from this dead white world where nothing grew and where they themselves were the only signs of life.

  During their talk, McKinlay gazed at the captain and saw him clearly for the first time. He looked tired, neither gruff nor profane, neither scolding nor blustering. No matter how brave and encouraging he seemed in the light of day, at the end of it all he was just a man who craved company and missed his roses.

  AFTERWARD, MCKINLAY went up to the deck. There was a full moon that night, making the dark world a little brighter than usual. Knowing he would not be able to sleep for a while, McKinlay decided to go for a walk. The moon lit the ice like a torch, casting shadows over the ice fields and mountains. The frozen world took on a luminous, almost translucent quality. The gale force winds of their recent blizzard had swept clean the great pillars of ice that littered the landscape. Now they glowed like giant emeralds, diamonds, sapphires. The ice statues, sculpted into graceful, breathtaking shapes, shone and glittered. The ice-ground beneath his feet was brilliant and alive, with myriad shades of white, blue, and green.

  Rising out of it all sat the Karluk, covered in snow and ice crystals, an eerie sight. There was a faint auroral arch in the sky above her and a beautiful corona of vivid reds and blues. That evening the lights were especially brilliant, and McKinlay watched them in awe. At times like this, he felt nothing could go wrong in the world; there seemed to be no danger, no doom hovering on the far horizon. There were only reds and blues, arcs of radiant, graceful light sweeping across the sky.

  It was as if McKinlay were the only soul alive, yet, he had the resounding feeling that he was not alone. Something filled him with a wondrous peace. It was not the first time he had felt that way on this journey. Now as he stood there savoring the feeling, he was filled with exultation. He wanted to memorize the moment so that, whatever lay ahead, he would never forget how he felt at that instant. All too quickly, it passed, but he was left feeling warmed and at peace. At last, he knew he could sleep.

  AT DAYBREAK ON JANUARY 9, disaster seemed inevitable. They worked in a panic. Ammunition was laid out—one thousand rounds of Mannlicher, one thousand rounds of 30-30, and one thousand rounds of .22 shot or shotgun. Tea was divided up in twelve tins of 1200 tablets, which would hold them for 120 days. Mamen spent the morning doing what he hated most on earth—washing his clothing. But it had to be done because his clothes were filthy.

  A ferocious wind had blown all night, but by morning only a light breeze remained. The Karluk, at least, was not drifting too rapidly now because of the proximity to land. “If we only10 could get about 100 miles farther north, the drift would be considerably stronger westward,” Mamen wrote. “We must wait and hope for it.” If their course would change northwestward, they might reach the mainland of Siberia and be freed.

  At 9:30 A.M., Sandy again reported land in sight, although no one else—no matter how they strained their eyes—could see it. They figured it must be Wrangel Island, and the thought was a comforting one.

  After the wind blew itself out and the weather cleared, Mamen couldn’t resist taking a ski trip. He headed onto the ice alone, happy to be back on skis once again. Mamen always felt more at home on skis than on his own two feet. He loved the wind in his face as he glided across the frozen surface, turning this way and that, and jumping when he could. He embraced any excuse to jump, launching himself off an icy slope or hill and sailing into the air, the earth spinning below him. He was good at it, a champion back home in Norway. Now he stood still and didn’t move his legs, using his arms instead to push himself along. He traveled fast and hard across the ice, filled with a sense of freedom and speed as he left the ship behind.

  Suddenly, he was aware of the ice cracking and grinding. It creaked terribly beneath his feet and he found himself surrounded by trembling, shivering ice. The sound it made was bone-chilling. It was the same thrum-thrum-thrum, the same beating drum, the same cannonade, but even louder now and more urgent—an entire chorus, uniting in a great, deafening crescendo.

  Back on board the ship, Mamen opened his diary and wrote “We may expect11 disturbances . . . any moment now, for it is full moon tomorrow, and according to our own observations as well as those of DeLong, the disturbances always co
me with the full moon, we have to wait and see what the morrow offers . . ..”

  ON JANUARY 10, between 4:45 and 5:00 A.M., the inhabitants of the Karluk awoke to a sound like gunfire. The noise jarred Bartlett, McKinlay, Mamen, and almost everyone else from sleep. Distant, at first, it grew louder. Then it sounded like drums, and then thunder. Suddenly, there was a harsh, grating noise, and the Karluk shuddered violently.

  It took just seconds for Mamen and McKinlay to leap from their bunks and rush up to the deck. Bartlett and Hadley and a few others were there already, and it was then that Mamen realized he had forgotten to put his clothes on. He slept naked, so there he stood, in the shivering cold, without a stitch of clothing. Bartlett immediately sent him back to get dressed.

  In the dark Cabin DeLuxe, Mamen pulled on some clothes, lit the lamp, and awakened Beuchat and Malloch. It was not an easy job to rouse Malloch because he was extremely hard of hearing and probably would have managed to sleep through everything. Mamen shook him awake and they joined everyone else above.

  Seaman John Brady had been the night watchman that night, and he had already ventured onto the ice to investigate when Bartlett arrived on the scene. He met the sailor on the ice gangway and Brady gave his report. There was a small crack in the ice at the stern of the ship. Bartlett followed him to the spot and saw that the crack ran in a jagged line in a northwesterly direction for two hundred yards or so.

  The wind was now blowing strongly from the north. The ice continued its deafening symphony, until McKinlay covered his ears and thought he would go crazy from the noise alone. Soon the crack in the ice along the starboard side gaped open all around. And then the ship began rising to starboard, shaken and pushed by the ice. Before, the Karluk’s deck had stood two inches above the ice, but now, as the men watched helplessly, the ship rose six inches above, and then seven, eight, nine, ten, until her deck stood a foot higher than the gangway. By now she was listing badly to port, heeling at twenty degrees, then at twenty-five.

  “The ship was12 now entirely free on the starboard side but still frozen fast in her ice-cradle on the port side,” Bartlett wrote; “her head was pointed southwest. On account of the way in which the ice had split the ship was held in a kind of pocket; the wind . . . increased to a gale, with blinding snowdrift, and the sheet of ice on the starboard side began to move astern, only a little at a time. The ship felt no pressure, only slight shocks, and her hull was still untouched. . ..”

  It was clear to the captain, however, that the Karluk would soon be crushed. He immediately ordered his men to remove all the blocks of snow they had placed on her deck and around the outer walls of the cabin. For three hours, they all worked, side by side without speaking. The captain hauled snow just as his men did.

  “It was hard13 to see what was going on around us,” wrote Bartlett, “for the sky was overcast and the darkness was the kind which, as the time-honored phrase goes, you could cut with a knife, while the stinging snowdrift . . . under the impetus of the screaming gale, added to the uncertainty as to what was about to happen from moment to moment.”

  The ice was grinding, churning, like an explosion of thunderclouds overhead, and it engulfed them. All at once, the Karluk gave an enormous shudder and seemed to settle. The men waited helplessly, not knowing what to expect—rushing water, the flooding of the decks, an abrupt descent into the ocean. Instead, all was silent and still. The sudden hush was as deafening and intimidating as the noise. The ship didn’t move. The ice was calm. The night was quiet.

  The ice had cracked along the port side and the ship righted itself. The Karluk, it seemed, had outlasted the Arctic. But for how long? They had been spared for now, but it was clear their reprieve was temporary. The men retired, on edge, to their cabins, and waited for the worst to come.

  “I think we14 should probably look out for this evening at the turn of the tide,” said Bartlett quietly. He then turned and walked away, leaving his men to themselves.

  The racket resumed and continued throughout breakfast. Afterward, the ice opened dramatically both at the bow and at the stern. Mamen remarked: “Then it was15 quite clear to me that our dear old Karluk was through with her voyages.”

  To guard against fire, they extinguished all the stoves and lamps aboard ship, except for the stove in the galley. They also fastened the stoves to the floor to keep them from toppling over with the dramatic listing of the ship. Then the men set to work preparing to leave their home, using hurricane lanterns to find their way around.

  Bartlett had made them take every possible precaution to lessen the impact of the loss of the Karluk. Their only critical shortage was adequate clothing to withstand an Arctic winter on the ice. They had plenty of untanned skins, but no stock of completed garments. Because of the poor outfitting of the expedition, they weren’t even close to being equipped to survive in the frozen world that awaited them outside the ship.

  They spent the rest of the day sewing frantically. McKinlay sat on the edge of his bunk, working on a pair of sheepskin socks. Kiruk worked at three times the speed of the rest of them and her older daughter, Helen, helped her. As they sewed, the ice thrummed ominously.

  Finally, around 6:45 P.M., there was a horrific blast, right outside McKinlay’s bunk on the port side. It sounded like an explosion.

  Bartlett raced to the engine room and found Munro already there. As they held up their lanterns, they could see the water pouring in. They struggled with the pump, which had been destroyed by a shard of ice that jutted through the opening, piercing the planking and timbers of the engine room, ripping off the pump fixtures. The port side was crushed amidships, the water crashing in and the holds filling foot by foot. As Bartlett had feared, the ice astern had collapsed, caving and crumbling around the ship with a violent force, and the sheet of crushing ice along the starboard side had smashed against the ship, damaging her beyond repair.

  The Karluk was beginning to move forward, ahead six yards, and then back again. The stern swung to port and the bow swung to starboard while the ship herself listed to port.

  Bartlett gave the orders: “On the poop16, clear the pemmican and all emergency stores.” The men went to work, heaving their remaining provisions—tents, stoves, skins, paraffin, chocolate—from the deck onto the ice on the starboard side, since the ice on the port side had been crushed to powder.

  By this time, the water was rising rapidly in the engine room. Now all they could do was save themselves and whatever provisions they could rescue.

  Bartlett then gave the orders they had dreaded hearing and he had dreaded having to give: “All hands abandon17 ship.” He sent Kiruk and her two little girls to the box house that had been built on the ice to start the fire in the stove, and Templeman was ordered to remain in the galley so that the men could have hot food and coffee. The captain then doled out a shot of alcohol to everyone, to help bolster them for the ordeal.

  The men were surprisingly calm, even the ones new to sea travel, which was just about all of them. They all moved methodically and swiftly, as if abandoning a ship was something they were used to doing on a daily basis. Because of the unrelenting weather, they could barely see their own noses, much less the emergency stores and equipment they were moving off the ship and onto the ice. Ship, ice, ocean—they couldn’t tell what they were stepping on. Too often the loosened ice would up-end and they had to hopscotch to avoid being tossed into the water.

  Dr. Mackay was the unlucky one, plunging through the ice, right up to his neck. He didn’t seem to realize what had happened or what he was doing because after Sandy pulled him out, he walked about, up and down the ice, with his wet clothes freezing on his body. He had been in a fighting mood all evening, at one point threatening Mamen, who quickly and angrily put him in his place.

  But during that most crucial moment of abandoning ship, Mackay was a tornado. The problem, they quickly discovered, was that somehow Mackay had gotten hold of extra alcohol and was completely and utterly drunk.

  Bartlett force
d the doctor to his cabin afterward, and gave him some more whiskey and offered him some dry clothes. Mackay took the whiskey, but refused the clothes. He was too stubborn and angry, but his shipmates won out, and managed to hold him down and change every stitch of his wet clothing.

  For hours, everyone but Mackay, Murray, and Beuchat—who refused to do anything but move their own belongings—transferred boxes of eggs, bacon, butter, and other goods, and finally the precious drums of coal oil. After all the essentials were on the ice, the men returned to the doomed Karluk and salvaged all the extra items they had time for, including a camera belonging to Stefansson, which he had left aboard.

  By 9:30 P.M., everything they could move was on the ice. To their alarm, however, they couldn’t find the little black kitten, who had hidden herself away when the commotion started. They searched the ship throughout, but she was nowhere to be seen. She had been their good luck mascot, their pet, but now there was nothing to be done. As much as they hated to, they would have to leave her behind.

  Because a wide lead had opened in the ice on the port side where their camp of supplies had been stored, there was a great deal of delicate maneuvering to be done. They had to heave everything to starboard, then try to bridge with the sled the moat surrounding their stores. The frightened dogs were stranded on the other side of the open water, and one by one the men had to fetch them and throw them across the chasm.

  As soon as the lead came together at certain points, the men sledged the stores to the place on the ice where Bartlett had cached the other provisions months ago. As they worked, the men were so focused that they were, as McKinlay noted, “too busy to18 be conscious of the danger & the discomfort, for in the pitch darkness & the constantly moving ice, every step was fraught with risk.”