Off the Map

by Fergus Fleming

  Stanley suffered a stroke in 1903 and died of pleurisy the following year. He had always wanted to be remembered in the same breath as Livingstone, and on his deathbed asked his wife where she thought he should be buried. ‘Westminster,’ she replied supportively. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘they will put me beside Livingstone.’ But they never did. He was cremated and his ashes were buried near his home in Pirbright, Surrey. Arguably Britain’s most effective – if also one of its most ruthless – African explorer, he had survived just long enough to see his life’s work exposed as one of the more unsavoury episodes in Europe’s scramble for Africa.

  THE DISCOVERY OF FRANZ JOSEF LAND

  Carl Weyprecht and Julius von Payer (1872–4)

  August Petermann was not disappointed by the Hansa calamity of 1869–70. If anything, it vindicated his theory: the current that had carried Hegemann south was clearly a branch of the Gulf Stream, but one so diminished as to make northward progress impracticable in that area. If Teutonic navigators were to find a true ‘thermometric gateway’ they should try for the point where the Gulf Stream hit the Arctic pack somewhere above Scandinavia or Russia. He appreciated that Germany had its hands full, what with the Franco-Prussian War, but Austria-Hungary was free – not only free but keen, if Captain Carl Weyprecht was to be believed.

  In 1871 Weyprecht took a ship to the seas above the Siberian coast and found that the Arctic pack was considerably weaker than he had anticipated. Indeed, north of the islands of Novaya Zemlya it comprised a jumble of loose floes through which he would have been able to barge with ease had he had a steam vessel. In December of that year, before a congress of German and Austrian scientists, he declared publicly his faith in Petermann: ‘The Gulfstream theory of Dr. Petermann ... has been fully confirmed ... we are convinced that a well-managed and energetically-managed expedition must succeed in reaching far higher latitudes in this sea than on any other point of the earth.’ It was time, he said, for the Habsburg Empire to join the race for the North Pole.

  On 14 July 1872 the newly built Admiral Tegetthoff left Bremerhaven with a crew selected from every corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – Slavs, Austrians, Hungarians, Italians and even a couple of alpine guides from the Tyrol who spoke a dialect quite incomprehensible to the others. The expedition had two commanders: at sea, Weyprecht was in charge; but when they reached land (as he was sure they would) Julius von Payer, who had participated in Germany’s 1869 foray to Greenland, was to take control. Officers and crew were supremely confident that this would be the most successful polar expedition to date. They had supplies to last 1,000 days, their ship had a 100-horsepower engine, making it one of the most powerful vessels to have entered Arctic waters, and their route had been chosen by Germany’s most respected geographer. A support ship had deposited a cache of food and fuel on Novaya Zemlya just in case they were forced to retreat in their boats. But they were certain they would not need it. The sea was going to be clear all the way to the top of the world.

  By 21 August the Tegetthoffwas frozen solidly in the pack and being carried helplessly north. Petermann had been right: the Gulf Stream did continue towards the Pole. He had also been wrong: it very palpably did not melt the ice as it went. The Tegetthoffwas in the worst position a ship could be: unable to move, at the mercy of every random whim of the pack, and heading into uncharted seas from which there was no obvious means of escape. ‘We were no longer discoverers, but passengers against our will,’ wrote Payer. ‘From day to day we hoped for the hour of our deliverance! At first we expected it hourly, then from week to week; then at seasons of the year and changes of the weather, then in the chances of new year! But that hour never came.’

  After two months of drifting the Tegetthoffmet its first test. On 13 October a pressure ridge rose up and threatened to crush it. The two commanders ordered every man on deck, prepared boats, sledges and provisions, and waited for the moment when they would have to abandon ship. Four suspenseful days later the ice subsided and they were able to return to quarters. But it was not long before another pressure ridge came their way and the procedure had to be repeated. No sooner had that ridge abated than a new one arose. It continued month after month. ‘Daily – for one hundred and thirty days – we went through the same experience in greater or lesser measure, almost always in sunless darkness,’ Payer wrote. By March 1873 the ice had calmed and the sun had reappeared. But they were engulfed by mists so thick that they could not see where the current was taking them. Come summer they were at latitude 79° 43’ N and should by rights have encountered open water – Weyprecht had penetrated to 79° in 1871 – but still the pack held them. Weyprecht and Payer were pondering an escape over the ice when, on 30 August, a miracle happened: at midday, for a brief moment, the mists cleared and they saw a chain of mountains on the north-eastern horizon. Abruptly they forgot their suffering and broke out the grog. Here was a landmass – which they christened Franz Josef Land after their emperor – that would lead to the Pole.

  Payer, who had become increasingly impatient while at sea, was beside himself with excitement. But the pack was too broken for sledge or boat travel and, to his frustration, the wind now began to blow them south. When they eventually resumed their northward course it was with such impetuosity that they were nearly crushed against the ice surrounding Franz Josef Land. The Tegetthoff splintered beneath their feet as they rushed on to the deck clutching their escape bundles. ‘As we watched the advancing wall of ice, and heard the too well-known howl it sent forth, and saw how fissures were formed at the edge of the floe, the days of the ice-pressures were painfully recalled,’ Payer wrote. ‘And the thought constantly returned – what will be the end of all this?’

  It was November before the pack settled and Payer managed to set foot on Franz Josef Land. It was utterly barren, apparently lifeless and possessed of only the meagrest vegetation. But after so many months at sea ‘[it] had to us all the charms of a landscape in Ceylon’. Moreover, ‘there was something sublime to the imagination in the utter loneliness of a land never before visited’. Payer made a brief examination of the immediate coast, erected a cairn in which he placed a note claiming this desolate spot for the emperor, and raised a silk flag bearing the Habsburg double-headed eagle. Then he returned to the Tegetthoff to await the arrival of spring, when improved weather conditions would allow a fuller examination of Austria-Hungary’s latest possession.

  Weyprecht did not share Payer’s enthusiasm. While the discovery of Franz Josef Land made their harrowing drift worthwhile, it was not the end of their voyage – that would come only when his ship and his men were safely home. How, though, was this to be achieved? Their supplies were now at a point where they would have to leave by May 1874 at the latest. If the ice was as unrelenting the following year as it had been the previous two, there was no hope of the Tegetthoffbreaking free. Therefore, they would have to man-haul their boats over the pack until they met open water – a journey of at least 100 miles, fraught with pressure ridges and uncertain floes – then sail for Novaya Zemlya, where the caches that they had never expected to use now seemed increasingly important. But would the men be equal to such a monumental task? Most of them were suffering from mild scurvy, and although there were polar bears to be shot off Franz Josef Land – that winter they killed 67 – the fresh meat was insufficient to keep the disease at bay for long. Accordingly, Weyprecht gave Payer the following ultimatum: he could lead three expeditions in spring; if the ice broke, however, the Tegetthoff would sail; if he was aboard, fair and good; if he was not, they would leave a boat and a stock of food; from that point he would be on his own.

  Payer was beginning to detest Weyprecht. A poet and alpinist at heart, he had little in common with the stern naval man who was his superior. They had already quarrelled so fiercely that at one point Weyprecht had pulled a revolver on him. In a fit of defiance Payer accepted the conditions. But he accepted too the gravity of their situation. By 15 January the ship’s engineer, one Otto Krisch, was so weakene
d by scurvy that he no longer had the strength to write his daily journal. By February the sick ward was filling up. On 10 March 1874 Payer took his first party out. It was not a success. They met temperatures so low that their breath fell to the ground with an audible tinkle – a phenomenon known as ‘angels’ tears’ in Siberia. Their woollen outfits turned to stone, their eyelids froze shut, their beards became bleached, and in between bouts of constipation and diarrhoea they urinated blood. One scorbutic man had to be sent back to the ship. When he arrived he was speechless with cold, and blood was seeping from his pores. Weyprecht raised the man’s arm, swivelled him until he pointed in the direction from which he had come, and leaped forthwith onto Franz Josef Land. Wearing no protective clothing, he trudged after the bedraggled party. To Payer he appeared like an apparition from the Bible: ‘Suddenly I saw Weyprecht coming towards me among the crags of ice: a figure in white – beard, hair, eyebrows, clothing, all stiff with ice. The shawl around his mouth had frozen fast.’ Weyprecht turned them about and personally – if irritably – escorted them back to the ship.

  Payer’s next foray was no more successful. Roped to a single Tyrolean guide, he was crossing a glacier when he felt a tug on his rope. He dropped at once to the ground and dug his ice-axe as deep as it would go. Behind him the rope broke as the guide fell into a crevasse, carrying with him the sledge, the dogs that were pulling it, and all their supplies. Looking into the hole, Payer heard a stream of Tyrolean invective and a faint howl from the dogs. Reassured that they were still alive, he leaped the gap – ten feet across – and ran for assistance. His previous journey had been cold, but now, by freak chance, the weather was hot and his Arctic gear hindered him. As he ran he discarded items of clothing. Off went his leggings, then his boots (feather-lined, from Greenland), then his hat, scarf and gloves. Sprinting through the snow in his stockings, he saw a small black dot – the tent in which he had left the three men who were his reserve party. For an age, it seemed, he ran, and the black dot looked no bigger – then suddenly he was upon it. Pausing only for a gulp of brandy, he led his men back to the crevasse, where they pulled the guide, the dogs and the sledge to the surface. After toasting themselves on a successful mission – Payer noticed that the guide had enjoyed a toast or two himself while down the crevasse – they forged onwards.

  It was a dispiriting journey. At every turn they expected to make some momentous discovery, to see something – anything – that would reward them for their effort. But they never did. Of one mountain Payer wrote: ‘We climbed up onto its ice-covered spine; full of high expectation we stood on its summit. To the north lay an indescribable wasteland, more desolate than any I ever met in the Arctic.’ Wherever they went the same frigid scene presented itself. On 12 April, at a latitude of 82° 5’ N, Payer finally abandoned the quest. There was nothing to be gained by continuing. In Payer’s estimation Franz Josef Land was an archipelago, of approximately the same size as Spitsbergen, and certainly did not lead to a larger polar landmass. Nor did he believe for one minute that if he travelled to its furthest tip he would find anything other than ice. Petermann, and others, had conjectured that there might be an open sea at the pole, but Payer condemned this as a ‘venial exaggeration’, an ‘antiquated hypothesis’. He built another cairn to mark their furthest north and deposited a message detailing his discoveries. To it he appended a terse note: ‘After [the sledge party’s] return to the ship it is the intention of the whole crew to leave this land and return home. The hopeless condition of the ship and the numerous cases of sickness constrain them to this step.’

  As they struggled back to the Tegetthoff they were hampered by another burst of warm weather. The snow turned to slush, in which they sank to their waists. Sometimes, when skirting the coast, they fell through the ice. This was good news in a way, because it meant the Tegetthoff would be able to steam to freedom. It was also bad news: the ship might have already left, as Weyprecht had threatened. Redoubling their efforts, they reached the coast on 19 April, so exhausted that they could hardly stand. To their dismay their path was blocked by open sea. ‘Pieces of ice tossed and tumbled about as if playing some carefree game for our amusement,’ wrote Payer, ‘as if nothing had changed in the least for this small band of men, who in reality found themselves before an impassable abyss.’ He climbed a nearby mountain, from whose peak he saw the familiar outline of the Tegetthoff and a string of floes that led towards it. Picking their way over the pack, they at last regained the safety of their ship. The ice may have melted around Franz Josef Land, but the Tegetthoff was still fast. Weyprecht permitted Payer one last expedition – to investigate a nearby island – but after that their bargain was complete. On 20 May he ordered the evacuation to Novaya Zemlya.

  Nobody in the annals of Arctic exploration has ever undertaken a journey such as that of the Austro-Hungarians during their retreat from Franz Josef Land. It was approximately 400 miles to Novaya Zemlya. Across this distance Weyprecht expected his men to drag three heavy whaling boats, burdened with 4,000 pounds of supplies. Even in winter, when the ice was firm, this would have been a hard task. In the spring, with the floes separating and the ice mushy, it was nigh impossible. The boats were so overladen that they could only haul one at a time. They chopped through pressure ridges so high that by the time they returned to the boats the ice had shifted and a new path had to be cut. Here they waded thigh-deep through a bog of newly melted snow. There they unloaded a boat to cross a few score yards of open water. And they had to repeat it all three times, once for each boat. The magnitude of their ordeal can be gauged by the fact that after two months’ backbreaking toil they had travelled only nine miles.

  On they went. Weyprecht enticed them with the prospect of Novaya Zemlya. There they would surely meet ships. If there were no ships then they would sail their boats to Norway. It was only 1,000 miles or so, and the provisions their supply ship had deposited were more than enough for the journey. What Weyprecht did not reveal was that the pack was moving north faster than they trudged south. ‘Every lost day is not a nail but a whole plank in our coffin,’ he wrote. ‘Dragging the sledges over the ice is only a bluff, for the few miles we gain are of no importance to our purpose. The slightest breeze moves us about in random directions far more than the most exhausting day of labour ... I put on an unconcerned face to all this, but I am very much aware that we are probably lost if conditions do not change radically.’ In his own mind there was only one solution: he and the other officers had pistols; when the time came they would use them on themselves. The crew would have to look to their own salvation. ‘I sometimes feel as if I were not involved at all. I have resolved what I shall do if worse comes to worst, which is why I am so calm. But the fate of the sailors lies heavy on my heart.’

  As the trek progressed the men began to fight with each other. Then they fought with the officers. After a while the officers fought among themselves. Their anger was directed at Weyprecht for having made them undertake such a march. Payer told him to his face that he intended to kill him as soon as it became clear they would not reach safety. Weyprecht must have been an extraordinary leader, for not only did he put Payer in his place, but he also cajoled the crew into continuing their journey. His efforts were rewarded on 15 August when the pack suddenly opened before them. They clambered into their boats and rowed for Novaya Zemlya. When the wind and ice allowed, they raised sail, but mostly they rowed, 24 hours a day, through mist and storm. After ten days, and having been blown past their carefully stashed depots on Novaya Zemlya, they rounded a cape and saw two Russian whalers. Weyprecht climbed aboard the largest ship, the Nicolai, and from his uniform pocket withdrew a tattered piece of paper. It was a letter of safe conduct signed by Tsar Alexander II three years previously. The Russian captain and his sailors stood silently on deck as the rest of the Austro-Hungarian expedition followed their commander.

  Their return was greeted with jubilation. When they landed at Hamburg fireworks exploded in the night. Crowds cheered as a garlanded
train carried them to Vienna. In the Austro-Hungarian capital a throng of at least a quarter of a million mobbed the route to the centre, where ancient balconies threatened to collapse under the weight of handkerchief-waving wellwishers. Emperor Franz Josef greeted them in person, and within weeks of their arrival ‘Payer coats’ and ‘Weyprecht cravats’ were being sported by everyone with pretensions to style. And why not? The creaky old empire had at last done something to prove that it was the equal of modern states. And it had done so in powerful fashion. Its subjects had opened a whole new sector of the Arctic. They may have lost their ship, but they had come back alive, and they had done so against odds that no one had hitherto surmounted.

  Unfortunately, Weyprecht and Payer did not feel the same way. The two men, who had been such ardent exponents of polar exploration when they set out, returned disillusioned and shaken. They had not found the Pole; Petermann’s theories were wrong; and the journey had been a nightmare. Their experiences destroyed them physically and mentally. Neither one was ever the same again. Weyprecht thought the expedition had been a waste of time. ‘As a scientific goal,’ he wrote, ‘the pole itself is of perfect indifference. To have approached it serves at most the gratification of vanity.’ Payer said much the same: ‘We discovered (after our return from the north) that we were honoured far beyond our due... As to the discovery of a land unknown before, I personally place no value in it today.’

  Their sense of hollowness reflected, presciently, the state of Austria-Hungary as a whole. On their way north, past Novaya Zemlya, the two commanders had thrown out bottles containing messages. Forty years later the bottles made their way home. They were addressed to dead men in redundant offices, ghostly servants of a navy that had no ships and an empire that had ceased to exist.