CHAPTER XII

OUR HOME AT SHIPWRECK CAMP

The point where the Karluk went down was hard by the place where the Jeannette of the De Long expedition was frozen in the ice and began her westward drift to a point off Henrietta Island, where she was crushed, in much the same manner as the Karluk, by the opening and closing of the ice, and sank June 12, 1881.

As I study the map of the polar regions and see how we drifted from a point near the 145th meridian to a point near the 175th meridian, west longitude, and how the Jeannette drifted from a point near the 175th meridian, west longitude, to a point near the 155th meridian, east longitude, and then how the Fram drifted from a point near the 140th meridian, east longitude, to a point near the 10th meridian, east longitude, and realize that the sum of these three drifts embraces more than half the distance around the continental periphery, I can not help coming to the conclusion that the idea of casks and wreckage drifting across the Pole from the waters of Alaska and Siberia to the Greenland Sea opposite is a mistaken one. Wreckage from the Jeannette drifted ashore on the southern coast of Greenland in 1884, and this gave Dr. Nansen the idea on which he based his expedition in the Fram, that a ship allowed to freeze in the ice north of the New Siberian Islands, near the point where the Jeannette sank, would be carried by the currents in a drift across the Pole. Nansen himself left the Fram in the course of her drift and made a journey over the ice in an attempt to reach the Pole, getting to 86° 34 N., and after his departure the Fram, in her drift, reached almost as high a latitude as he attained on foot, without, however, giving evidence of the accuracy of the theory of a drift across the Pole. I believe, that the drift follows the general outline of the land, from east to west around the periphery of the Arctic Ocean, and that a craft, built in general like the Roosevelt but not so large, with a ship’s company of eight who should be crew and scientific staff in one, could follow this drift from beginning to end, and would, in a period of three or four years, cover the greater part of the circuit of the Arctic Ocean.

Such an expedition would add much to our scientific knowledge of the Arctic regions, working out the ocean currents, exploring the floor of the sea, obtaining accurate soundings for plotting positions on the chart, outlining the continental shelf, gathering information about the air currents for the use of students of aviation, collecting valuable meteorological data, continuous for the period of the drift, for the use of weather bureaus, and perhaps making possible the finding of new lands in the vast unexplored region north of Siberia. England and Norway have turned their attention to the Antarctic and it is America’s place to undertake the task of completing our knowledge of the Arctic, so far advanced through centuries of Anglo-Saxon endeavor. As Nansen said, in stating his plans for his expedition in the Fram: “People, perhaps, still exist who believe that it is of no importance to explore the unknown polar regions. This, of course, shows ignorance. It is hardly necessary to mention here of what scientific importance it is that these regions should be thoroughly explored. The history of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness towards light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, he is no longer man.”

As soon as the Karluk sank, I turned in at the igloo to have a good sleep, for I had been awake since five o’clock on the morning of the tenth, and it was now late in the afternoon of the eleventh.

It was nearly noon of the next day before I awoke. The sky was clear overhead but the fresh northwest wind kept the snow spinning over the ice and there was still only a brief twilight in the middle of the day. As soon as they could see their way around in this half light, I had all hands at work picking up the odds and ends scattered about on the ice and had a tent erected to house the supplies sledged from the ship on the previous night.

In this tent, into which no one was allowed to go but McKinlay, who acted as a kind of stock-clerk, and myself, were placed the following supplies which will show how well equipped we were with the essentials for life in the Arctic:

On the floe itself and arranged to be easily accessible were:

Besides these supplies in the tent and on the floe we had, of course, the coal, clothing, and equipment which we had been placing on the ice through the previous months, consisting, besides ammunition, pemmican, milk, clothing, tea, coffee, sugar, and butter, of these things:

The snow igloo was fifteen feet long and twelve feet wide, with rafters and a canvas roof. The box-house was twenty-five feet long by eighteen feet wide, well banked up all around with snow. We partitioned off one end of the box-house to make the galley and put a big stove in it so that the cook could have a place by himself. We also built another house for the Eskimo. McKinlay afterwards drew a plan of Shipwreck Camp, as we called it, which will show how our dwelling-places and supplies were arranged.

So here we were, like the Swiss Family Robinson, well equipped for comfortable living, waiting until the return of the sun should give us daylight enough for ice travel, which was altogether too exacting and dangerous to attempt in the dark. I did not consider it wise to use up the energy of men and dogs when they were still unaccustomed to travelling over the sea-ice and before there was light enough to make their work effective.

The place where the ship had gone down was frozen over. The ice had simply opened for a while and then closed up again, and young ice had formed in the opening.

Plan of Shipwreck Camp

10th January to 1914.

On the thirteenth we began sewing and kept it up day in and day out. We had done a good deal of sewing on shipboard, but I told the men that we must have plenty of fur clothing and skin-boots and that we had better do all the sewing we could. We also made tents and covers of light canvas for our sledges. We should of course be unable to do any sewing when we once got under way for the land. We had lanterns and lamps for light in the various houses.

Fur clothing is so heavy that it has to be sewed by hand but much of the other work was done on sewing-machines of which we had saved two, one for the box-house and the other for the snow igloo. Keruk used one sewing-machine and Mr. Munro the other. He was skilful at this as at a good many other useful things. He had formerly been a junior officer on the British warship Rainbow, which was afterwards transferred to the Canadian service; his term of enlistment expired at the time of the transfer and Captain Hose of the Rainbow, commandant of the Esquimault Navy Yard, recommended him to me for chief engineer of the Karluk.

On the fourteenth it was fine and clear with a temperature of thirty-eight degrees below zero. The wind was west; our soundings through a hole cut in the ice gave us thirty-four fathoms. In the noon twilight we could see land in a southwesterly direction. The men worked all day long making footbags to use when sleeping; it would be a great relief to take off the deerskin boots and put on these footbags, which had fur inside and Burberry cloth outside. I had with me a coonskin coat which I had bought a few years before in Boston. I now cut this up and divided it among the men, as far as it would go, to be made into these footbags. In addition I told each man that he must have at least four pair of deerskin or sheepskin stockings and three pair of deerskin boots. We used scissors and knives to cut the skins into suitable pieces for making boots and clothing. The Eskimos used a crescent-shaped implement called the hudlow, not unlike a mince-meat chopper; they could use it very deftly and cut out clothing exceedingly well with it. The skins had to be softened, as I have mentioned before, by breaking the vellum; this was done by scraping it with a piece of iron like a chisel. Some Eskimo women soften the vellum by chewing it.

We conducted our lives according to a regular routine similar to that which we had followed on shipboard during the last few months of our drift. We kept our records of wind and weather, of soundings and of temperature, which remained in the minus thirties for a good many days. We did not bother with latitude as we had the land in view some sixty to eighty miles away, not distinctly visible but plain enough on a clear day when the light was fairly good. The light of course came from the south and the land, being in that direction, was set off by the twilight glow, and the sun was getting nearer and nearer to the horizon as the days went by. We saved a chronometer from the ship but it got somewhat banged about in the transfer from the ship to the camp, so that we could not depend upon it. I had a watch which I have carried for a number of years and which I was careful never to allow to run down.

Each house had a watchman, every man taking his turn. It was his duty to keep the fires going. At 6 A. M. the watchman would call the cook; our meal hours were the same as those which we had observed during the past few months on the ship.

Lights were out at 10 P. M. and all hands turned in. We had a stove in the centre of the room in each house and around the stove on three sides, built out from the walls, were the bed-platforms, which came close to the stove and were on a somewhat higher level. Here we slept warmly and comfortably on the mattresses we had saved from the ship.

There was plenty to occupy our minds. In addition to our sewing and other daily tasks, there was time for games of chess and cards and frequently of an evening we would gather around the fire and have a “sing.” Sometimes, too, we would dance; I remember one night catching hold of some one and taking a turn or two on the floor when we tipped over the stove. It took some lively work to get it set up again.

CAPTAIN BARTLETT’S COPY OF THE RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYAM

“My own constant companion, which I have never tired of reading,
was the ‘Rubáiyát’ of Omar Khayyam.
This book I have carried with me everywhere.”

The Karluk had a good library and we saved a number of books which enabled some of us to catch up a little on our reading. We read such books as “Wuthering Heights,” “Villette,” and “Jane Eyre,” besides more recent novels. My own constant companion, which I have never tired of reading, was the “Rubáiyát” of Omar Khayyam. I have a leather-bound copy of this which was given me by Charles Arthur Moore, Jr., who, with Harry Whitney and a number of other Yale friends of his, was with me on a hunting trip in Hudson’s Bay on the sealer Algerine in 1901. This book I have carried with me everywhere since then, until now, if it had not been repaired in various places by surgeon’s plaster, I believe it would fall to pieces. I have had it with me on voyages to South America and other foreign parts on sailing vessels when I was serving my years of apprenticeship to get my British master’s certificate in 1905; on both of my trips with Peary as captain of the Roosevelt; on my trip to Europe with Peary after the attainment of the North Pole; on a hunting trip in the Arctic on the Boeothic in the summer of 1910, when we brought home the musk-oxen and the polar bear, Silver King, to the Bronx Park Zoo in New York; on various sealing trips; and now the self-same copy was with me on the Karluk and afterwards on my journey to bring about the rescue of our ship’s company. I have read it over and over again and never seem to tire of it. Perhaps it is because there is something in its philosophy which appeals to my own feeling about life and death. For all my experience and observation leads me to the conclusion that we are to die at the time appointed and not before; this is, I suppose, what is known as fatalism.

On the night of the fourteenth the dogs had a fight and one of them was killed. We could ill afford to lose him, for dogs were at a premium with us, now.

On the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth the weather was threatening; the sky was overcast and the wind from the north and northeast, with temperatures not far from forty below zero. The sewing continued busily. On the sixteenth we overhauled our Primus stoves, of which we had two of the Swedish and eight of the Lovett pattern. We also reckoned the amount of oil necessary for them and found that an imperial gallon, which would fill a stove three and a half times, would make tea twice a day for fourteen days. The imperial or English gallon is larger than the American gallon; ten gallons English would mean a little more than twelve gallons American, according to our measurements, for we had bought the oil in Nome according to the American measure and now in transferring it to our handy containers we used the English measure. I have known this difference between English and American gallons to make a good deal of trouble for skippers buying supplies in foreign ports.