True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World

Two Boothian families now told McClintock that one ship sank and that the other broke up on shore where she was forced by the ice. The body of a very large man with long teeth had been found in the ship visited by the Inuits. The crew had gone, taking boats along, to the "large [Back] river," where their bones were later found. An old Eskimo woman and boy had last visited the wreck during the preceding winter, 1857-8.

On leaving the magnetic pole, in order to extend the field of search, Hobson was sent down the west coast of King William Land. McClintock following the land to the east of that island fell in with forty natives, who confirmed the information earlier obtained, and from whom he bought silver plate marked with the crests of Franklin, Crozier, Fairholme, and McDonald.

It was the middle of May when he reached snow-clad Montreal Island, which he fruitlessly searched with as much thoroughness as was possible under conditions of blizzard weather and zero temperatures. Of his travel troubles he tells us that driving a wretched dog team for six weeks had quite exhausted his stock of patience. He relates: "None of the dogs had ever been yoked before, and they displayed astonishing cunning and perversity to avoid whip and work. They bit through their traces, hid under the sled, leaped over each other until the traces were plaited and the dogs knotted together. I had to halt every few minutes, pull off my mitts, and at the risk of frozen fingers disentangle the lines. When the sledge is stopped or stuck fast in deep snow, the perfectly delighted dogs lie down, and the driver has to himself extricate the sledge and apply persuasion to set his team in motion."

His hopes of finding tangible information as to the Franklin records had been centred on Montreal Island, which Rae's report (p. 139 (#pgepubid00014)) indicated as the scene of the final catastrophe. McClintock's thorough search of that region had been futile. Must he return to England and face Lady Franklin with the admission that her years of effort and her sacrifice of personal fortune had produced no additional results? Was the fate of England's noted explorers to remain always a mystery? Were the records of work done and of courage shown by the officers and the men of the royal navy lost forever to the world? A thousand like and unbidden thoughts filled incessantly the tortured brain of this the greatest of arctic sledgemen. However, it was not in the nature of this noble-hearted man to despair utterly, or to cease from labors to the very end.

Sick at heart and worn in body, the indefatigable McClintock turned shipward, and almost despairingly took up the search of the south coast of King William Land. Here he tells us: "On a gravel ridge near the beach, partially bare of snow, I came upon a human skeleton, now perfectly bleached, lying upon its face. This poor man seems to have fallen in the position in which we found him. It was a melancholy truth that the old woman spoke when she said: 'They fell down and died as they walked along.'" Sad as may appear the fate of this man, one of the rank and file of the expedition, his indomitable courage in struggling to the last moment of his life will always stand as an instance of the high endeavor and heroic persistency of the British race.

Welcome as was the indirect information obtained in this and in other places near by, McClintock's heart was supremely gladdened at finding in a small cairn, prominently placed, a note from Hobson who had found an abandoned boat, in which were two skeletons, with crested silver, etc., and, most vital of all, a record from Franklin's expedition.

It appears that Hobson found on the south side of Back Bay, King William Land, a record deposited by Lieutenant Graham Gore in May, 1847. It was in a thin tin soldered-up cylinder, and proved to be a duplicate of the record also found by Hobson at Point Victory. The latter record was in an unsoldered cylinder which had fallen from the top of the cairn where it was originally placed. It was written on one of the printed blanks usually furnished to surveying and to discovery ships to be thrown overboard in a sealed bottle, with a request to return it to the admiralty. This written record, in full, ran as follows:

"H. M. Ships Erebus and Terror 28th of May 1847. Wintered in the ice in Lat. 70° 5′ N., Long. 98° 23′ W. Having wintered in 1846-7 [should read 1845-6] at Beechey Island, in Lat. 74° 43′ N., Long. 91° 39′ 15′′ W. After having ascended Wellington Channel to Lat. 77°, and returning by the west coast of Cornwallis Island. Sir John Franklin commanding the Expedition. All well. Party consisting of 2 officers and 6 men left the ships on Monday 24th May 1847.

    "Gm [Graham] Gore Lieut.
    "Chas F Des Voeux Mate."

On the margin of the above record was written the following:

"April 25, 1848, H. M. Ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22nd of April, 5 leagues N.N.W. of this, having been beset since 12 September, 1846. The officers and crew, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Capt. F. R. M. Crozier, landed in Lat. 69° 37′ 42′′, Long. 93° 41′ W. This paper was found by Lieut. Irving, under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831, 4 miles to the northward, where it had been deposited by the late commander Gore in [May, erased and therefor substituted] June, 1847. Sir James Ross' pillar has not however been found and the paper has been transferred to this position, which is that in which Sir J. Ross' pillar was erected. Sir John Franklin died on the 11th of June, 1847, and the total loss by death in the Expedition has been to date 9 officers and 15 men.

    "F. R. M. Crozier, Captain and senior officer.
    "James Fitzjames, Captain H. M. S. Erebus.

"And start to-morrow, 26th, for Back's Fish River."

These are the only records that have ever been found, and the thorough search made by Hall, Schwatka, and Gilder make it most improbable that any other will ever be discovered.

The heroic persistency of Hobson in locating these precious papers is akin to that shown by the steward who fell down and died as he walked. When ten days out from the ship Hobson found that he was suffering from scurvy, but he went on and in a month walked lame. Near the end of his journey of seventy-four days he was not able to walk more than a few yards at a time, and so had to allow himself to be dragged on the sledge. When he arrived at the ship he was neither able to walk nor even to stand without assistance. Worthy comrades were Sir Allen Young and Dr. Walker, whose strenuous and co-operating labors made this success possible, for which they also paid the price in physical suffering and in impaired health.

McClintock himself played many parts, for with his two engineers dead he stood at a critical time twenty-four consecutive hours at the engine, while Young from the crow's nest piloted the Fox out of the ice-pack on her homeward voyage, in August, 1859.

With characteristic modesty McClintock dwells lightly on his own work, and ends his story with a merited tribute to "those heroic men who perished in the path of duty, but not until they had achieved the grand object of their voyage —the discovery of the northwest passage."

While the self-sacrificing heroism of McClintock and of his loyal companions solved the mystery of the English sailor dead, which their powerful government had been unable to reveal, yet the initiation and in part the prosecution of this work were due to the wifely and patriotic devotion of Lady Jane Franklin.

Well and truly has it been said of this true woman: "So long as the name of Franklin shall be bright in the annals of British heroism will the unwearied devotion and energy of his widow be with it remembered and honored."

THE MARVELLOUS ICE-DRIFT OF CAPTAIN TYSON

"To die be given us, or to attain!
Fierce work it were to do again."

    – Arnold.
Only once in our history has the United States sent forth an expedition to reach the north pole, and that was under Charles Francis Hall, already distinguished for his daring arctic work in search of relics of the Franklin squadron. Hall sailed in the Polaris, and in a voyage of unusual rapidity, passing through Smith Sound, added to his fame by discovering Robeson Channel and its bordering lands. He broke the record in navigating his ship to 82° 11′ north latitude, in the Great Frozen Ocean, which was reached August 30, 1871. The Polaris, forced southward by the arctic pack, wintered at Thank God Harbor, Greenland, where Hall died of apoplexy. With his death the north-polar quest was abandoned, and the ice-master Buddington sailed homeward the following summer. Pushed hastily into an impassable pack, the ship was subjected to its vicissitudes for two months without possibility of escape. Drifting steadily southward the Polaris was off Northumberland Island on October 15, 1872, when she was nearly destroyed by a violent blizzard and her crew was separated – half on the floating pack and the rest on shipboard. The latter party beached the sinking ship in Life Boat Cove, where the crew wintered. Going south in 1873 they were picked up by the whaler Ravenscraig near Cape York. The story of the separation and of the experiences of the castaways follow.

Above the shining waters of the blue and historic Potomac at Washington rise the oak-crowned hills of Arlington where repose many heroic dead in our American Valhalla. Side by side in almost countless rows stand thousands of plain white stones which preserve for coming patriotic generations the names and memories of those who died for the Union. Here and there the prevailing monotony is broken by a more ambitious monument raised by family or by friends. These men, inspired by patriotism as a rule, did deeds of valor, with weapons in hand, in the face of an armed foe. But the men of the American nation have conquered fate in other fields than those of war, and such services are elsewhere commemorated in Washington. In the Hall of Fame at our national capital each American State places the statues of its two most distinguished servitors – in memory of deeds done for the good and the greatness of the State. And near by the Congressional Cemetery contains stately shafts and memorial columns that mark the graves of other men famous in national annals through civic worth.

Yet there are other heroes than those of war or of civic service buried within sight of the majestic monument to Washington or of the graceful dome of the Capitol. In the shades of Greenwood stands a plain shaft of black marble whereon the passer-by may read as follows:

"To the memory of an arctic hero, Captain George E. Tyson, 1829-1906. In 1872-73, while adrift on an ice-floe 196 days, he saved the lives of 18 companions. They serve God well who serve his creatures."

This memorial, built through small contributions from self-denying men of meagre means, was in honor of a plain man of small education, of humble occupation, who loved his fellows. It therefore seems well that the tale of his arctic services thus recognized should be told anew to the rising generation of Americans that his deeds may not soon fade from the minds of men.

The fateful disaster of October 15, 1872, which led to the Tyson floe-drift occurred in the midst of a dark winter night when a snow-filled hurricane wind drove huge icebergs through the solid and seemingly impenetrable ice-field in which the Polaris was fast beset. As if by magic the solemn, quiet calm of the polar night was broken by a series of tornado-like gusts, and soon the responsive ice-field quivered as though upcast by a marine earthquake. The howlings of the wind were broken by horrible groanings from the moving polar pack, while now and then arose deafening sounds, as of a cannonade, from the explosions of the ice-surface. It takes much to move to fear men long in arctic service, but the quiet ship life was stirred into startled action when heavy floes near the ship began to split into countless fragments. One and all knew that the long-dreaded peril was upon them – the disruption of the polar pack. For weeks they had watched with pleasure the changing lights and reflected tints from their azure-colored neighbors – the tall, white sentinels of the arctic seas. After pleasure the pain, and now with terror they saw the pale blue icebergs of enormous size – wind-driven and slow-moving – plough their way serenely through the main pack of flat-topped paleocrystic floes scores of feet in thickness.

Under these awful pressures the huge floes, as they met, crumbling at the edges, threw up vast masses of broken ice which in long pressure-ridges acted as buffers. Caught in this maelstrom of whirling, upturning ice the Polaris was bodily lifted many feet, quite out of the water, so that she careened on her beam ends.

In this crisis, amid intense excitement, some one cried out that the ship's sides were broken in and that she was making water freely. At this Buddington shouted: "Work for your lives, boys! Throw everything overboard" – meaning the emergency packages of stores and provisions which for weeks had been kept ready on deck in view of possible and sudden shipwreck. Stores, clothing, records, boats, food, and other articles were frantically cast upon the main floe to which the ship was secured by ice-anchors. Fearing that the Polaris would soon sink and carry down in her final plunge everything near her, Captain Tyson busied himself in removing and piling together, at a safe distance, the scattered stores. While thus engaged the main pack loosened up near the Polaris. The ice pressures slowly relaxed, the pressure-ridges dropped apart, and the ship, slipping down into the sea, dragged her ice-anchors, broke her hawser, and was driven out of sight – disappearing almost in the twinkling of an eye, as it seemed to the dazed men yet on the floe.

The stranded men and supplies were not on a single floe, but scattered on several, which were separated by rapidly widening lanes of water. Tyson acted with decision and promptness, and launching a whale-boat at the risk of his life succeeded during that dark, tempestuous night in bringing together the nineteen men, women, and children on the immense floe to which the ship had been anchored for weeks. Here the exhausted party huddled together under some musk-ox skins, which in a degree protected them from the increasing southwest blizzard that then prevailed; but dawn found them chilled to the bone, covered with the heavy snow-fall of the night.[12 - Of this situation Hans Hendrik, in his "Memoirs," written in Eskimo, says: "But especially I pitied my poor little wife and her children in the terrible snow-storm. I began thinking: 'Have I searched for this myself by travelling to the north? But no! we have a merciful Providence to watch over us.' At length our children fell asleep, while we covered them with ox-hides in the frightful snow-drift."]

Tyson took charge and at once decided to abandon the floe and the main supplies, knowing that the party would be safe if it could reach land and the Etah Eskimos. The ice had so drifted that the shore was within a few miles, and the party in an attempt to reach it was hurried into the boat, which unfortunately had only three oars and was rudderless. Two men actually reached the land over the ice, on a scouting trip, but later the wind, ice, and tides were so adverse that Tyson decided, as the pack closed in front of the boat, to return to their original floe.

Although sadly reduced in size by the action of the grinding pack and by the ploughing icebergs, the flat-topped floe-berg was still enormous. Nearly circular in shape, and averaging quite a hundred feet in thickness, its area was about seven square miles. With its diversified surface of hill and dale, favored by several fresh-water lakes, and of marble-like texture and hardness as to its ice, it seemed to be a floe-berg of such solidity and extent as would insure safety under any and all conditions.

The castaways numbered nineteen in all – Captain Tyson, Signal Sergeant Meyer, eight seamen, and nine Eskimos, of whom seven were women and children. Except Tyson and the negro cook Jackson, there were no Americans in the party.

With the foresight, system, and judgment which insured the final safety of the party, Tyson collected the materials scattered over the several floes, inventoried and provided for the safety of the food, and insisted on a fixed ration. Their food supplies on October 18 consisted of 14 hams, 14 cans of pemmican, 12 bags of bread, 1 can of dried apples, 132 cans of meats and soups, and a small bag of chocolate. They also had 2 whale-boats, 2 kayaks, an A-tent, compasses, chronometer, etc., rifles and ammunition.

Food was of surpassing importance, and Tyson calculated that the supply would last four months at the rate of twelve ounces daily to each adult, the Eskimo children to receive half rations.

To insure an equable distribution of the food, Tyson took charge and personally measured out both bread and pemmican. Later he was able to give exact weights through a pair of improvised scales. They were made by Meyer most ingeniously of a lever balance taken from an aneroid barometer and connected with a three-cornered rule; the weights used were shot from their shot-gun ammunition.

The foreigners of the party, except the docile Eskimos, were not thoroughly amenable to command. After Hall's death the failings of the sailing-master in command, Captain Buddington, were such that he could not maintain proper discipline, and hence a certain degree of demoralization existed among the seamen. The rule of the sea that loosens bonds and makes seamen free from service on the loss of a ship, was also injuriously felt.

As a result Tyson's powers of control simply arose from his high character, sound judgment, and professional knowledge. His orders were obeyed as seemed convenient, but, as one man testified under oath, "When we didn't [obey his orders] we found out it didn't turn out well" – the highest of praise.

With increasing cold the tent was no longer habitable, and it became necessary to provide warm shelter, which was done through the building of igloos, or snow huts, by the Eskimo Ebierbing (Joe) and Hans Hendrik. Hans and his family of six built their igloo a little apart from the others. While there were five separate igloos, they were thrown into close connection by a system of arched snow passages through which the men came and went without exposure to the weather. Some delay and trouble occurred in finding suitable drifts of packed snow from which were dexterously carved the snow slabs needful for the huts. The very low entrances to the igloos were covered by a canvas flap frozen into the outer wall so as to exclude almost entirely the entrance into the hut of either cold air or wind-driven snow. Feeble light was introduced through windows made of thin slabs of fresh-water ice cut from an adjacent lake.

From the entrance the canvas-covered snow floor sloped gently upward to the rear of the igloo, thus making that portion of the room a little higher and somewhat warmer, as the colder air flowed down toward the door. Their scant bedding of sleeping-bags and musk-ox skins was arranged in the rear of the hut, on canvas-covered boards, where, however, the arched snow roof was near the head of the sleeper. The only place where one could stand erect was in the very centre of the hut, where the separate messes cooked their scanty meals.

Tyson and the Eskimo families did their cooking from the first by lamp, native-fashion, the lamps being made from pemmican cans with wicks of canvas ravelings. He urged the others to follow the example thus set, telling them that this economical method was necessary owing to scarcity of fuel. The seamen tried it for a while, but as there was much smoke from lack of care they abandoned the lamp. Despite Tyson's advice, they began, with reckless disregard for the future, to break up the smaller of the two boats and use it as fuel for cooking. In excuse they said that the astronomical observations and opinions of Meyer showed that the floe was drifting toward Disco, Greenland, and that they would soon reach that place and the occupancy of the ice camp would be of short duration.

On October 27 the sun left them permanently for three months, and soon the bitter, benumbing cold of the arctic winter was felt by all. The cold, hunger, and short rations soon affected both body and mind, causing less bodily activity and inducing a sharpness of temper which often led to long and angry discussions among the seamen.

An unfortunate loss of food occurred in connection with the dogs, all nine having been kept for bear-hunting. Slowly perishing of starvation, the wolfish dogs succeeded in breaking into the storehouse, and devoured everything within reach before they were discovered. Five of the most ravenous brutes were shot, greatly to the advantage of the Eskimo, who made a royal feast. The white men, not yet reduced to extremities, looked on with amusement as their native companions with luxurious satisfaction cooked and swallowed the slaughtered animals.

Tyson's experiences as a whaler made him realize that the only chance of life lay in obtaining game, and so he organized and encouraged hunting-parties. All the men were armed except the captain himself, but it must be here admitted that the entire crew of seamen did not obtain enough game, during the drift of six months' duration, to make a single meal for the party. The successful hunters were the Eskimo, Ebierbing (Joe) being most successful, though Hans Hendrik killed many seal.

Once Hans barely escaped death from the rifles of Ebierbing and Seaman Kruger, as in the darkness they mistook him for a bear owing to the color of his snow-covered fur clothing and to the lumbering methods by which he climbed over the hummocky ridges. Fortunately the hunters waited for a better shot, and meantime saw that it was Hans.

Matters were getting bad after one boat had been burned and there was no blubber left for cooking. Some of the men were so weak that they trembled as they walked, and the native children often cried from the pangs of hunger. Once the men ate the seal meat uncooked and undressed, so keen was their hunger.

As no bears appeared, seal-hunting was followed with renewed and feverish energy. At first seal were killed in open water-spaces around the edges of the floe. When the extreme cold cemented together the floes, it was necessary to hunt carefully for seal-holes – places where the seal comes regularly for air, keeping the hole open by his nose, rising and breaking the new ice as it forms from day to day.

Such holes are only three or four inches across, and it often requires long search before the trained eye of the seal-hunter locates a breathing space. Even then unwearied patience and great skill are needful for successful hunting. Seated by the hole, with his back to the wind, his feet on a bit of seal-skin, with a barbed spear in his hand, the Inuit hunter steadily and intently fastens his eyes on the glazed water-space where the animal rises. Often it is hours before the seal comes, if indeed at all, and he is caught only through a swift, single stroke by which the spear unerringly pierces the thin skull of the animal. Five seals were killed during November, and Thanksgiving day was celebrated by adding to the usual meal a little chocolate and some dried apples.