Hell on ice

by Edward Ellsberg

CHAPTER XIX

The Jeannette sinking? Sharvell must be crazy. The ship had gone through far worse squeezes before without a leak. Nevertheless, forgetting our encounter, I raced down the ladder. There was the fireroom entirely flooded from port to starboard, with water already over the floorplates and rising steadily toward my empty boilers!

For a second I stared in cold dismay. No steam on the ship to run a pump. If the water rose over our furnaces before we got our fires going and steam up, there would never be any steam—and we were through! Once the water got that high, nothing under Heaven could prevent the ship from filling at her leisure and sinking from under us. I had to get steam and get it fast!

On deck, Sharvell had already spread the alarm. Even as I watched the rising water, sizing up my procedure, estimating my chances of getting steam before the water got us, overhead I heard the noise of running feet, guns being fired to recall the men on the ice, the shrill piping of the bosun, and Jack Cole’s stentorian call,

“Man the pumps!”

Man the pumps? Why man them? There in the engine room a little abaft me, their bases already in the water, were my frost-covered pumps. What they imperatively needed in those frozen cylinders was steam, not manning. Then it came to me. The Jeannette was a sailing ship as well as a steamer—she still carried hand pumps, the same crude hand pumps with which Columbus had kept his leaky caravels afloat. And they might save us too; keep the water down below the level of my furnace grates till I raised steam!

And now came action. Down the ladder to join me slid my black gang—Lee, machinist; Bartlett, fireman; all my assortment of coalheavers—Boyd; Lauterbach, the German; Iversen, the Swede; and even that frightened little Englishman, Sharvell. In the biting cold of the fireroom, 29° below zero (it was 45° below outside), I hastily detailed them.

“Lee! Get aft into the engine room and line up the main steam pump to suck on this fireroom as soon as you get steam!”

“Bartlett! Outboard there with you! Open the port sea cock and flood the port boiler to the steaming level. Open her wide, and four bells on that flooding!”

“Lauterbach! Get some kindling wood down here from the galley! Shake it up now, and mind you keep that kindling dry! And while you’re on the topside, tell the skipper I’m firing up the port boiler!”

“Iversen, you and Sharvell start breaking out the coal. Get plenty, and keep it in the buckets, out of this water!”

“Boyd! Spread the fuel in both furnaces in the port boiler as fast as it comes to you, and get an oil torch going, ready to light off when the water’s up to level!”

In the faint gleam of a few oil lamps in that frigid fireroom, off the men splashed through the ice water on the floorplates, an incongruous group for a black gang if ever there was one, as clad all in furs from hoods to boots they stumbled away to their stations in a temperature more suitable to the inside of a refrigerator than to a boiler room.

On deck, I heard the clatter of equipment and the banging of mauls, Cole’s shouts, the hoarse responses of running seamen, and the curses of Nindemann and Sweetman struggling to break out crossbars and handles frozen to the bulkheads and rig the hand gear for working the forward bilge pump—a tough job in that sub-zero atmosphere on the topside with everything iron shrunk by the cold, everything wood swelled by frost and moisture, and nothing fitting together properly as it should.

But long before they got the hand pump on deck assembled, I ran into troubles of my own. Bartlett, wrestling with the port sea cock (I had chosen that side because the ship being heeled to starboard, it was the only one still showing above water), his stocky frame and brawny shoulders straining against the wrench, sang out to me,

“This cock’s frozen, chief! I can’t get her open!”

I jumped to his aid. Together we heaved on an extension handle to the valve wrench. No movement. I was desperate. We had to get that cock open to the sea or we could not fill our boiler. More beef was needed on the wrench. I looked inboard. There in the dull light of the oil torch in his hand, before the port boiler waiting for fuel to arrive, was big Boyd, doing nothing.

“Boyd! Lend a hand here!”

Boyd shoved his torch into the cold furnace, splashed over to us. The three of us, fireman, coalheaver, engineer, braced ourselves against a floor stringer, put our backs into it, heaved with all our might against that wrench handle. The cock gave way suddenly, twisted open. I sighed thankfully, let go the wrench.

“Watch her now, Bartlett,” I cautioned. “Wide open to the sea till the water shows halfway in the boiler sight glass, then shut off! Careful now; it’ll only take a few minutes. Don’t overfill her!”

But I might have spared both my thanks and my caution. Bartlett waited a moment for the water to rush through from the sea into the empty boiler, then feeling no vibration in the pipe to indicate flow, stooped, pressed his ear near (but not too near) the frost-coated sea cock, and listened carefully. Not a murmur of running water. Bartlett lifted his head.

“No water coming through, chief.”

No water? I felt sick. Then that long disused seachest must be plugged with ice! Frozen solid where beyond the valve it passed through our thick wood side to the sea, totally beyond our reach for thawing out, effectively blocking off any flow of water. We could not fill our boiler!

I cursed inwardly. Literally we were sunk now. Caught with no steam, boilers empty, unable to get water into them to raise steam, what good to us now was all the coal we had saved for our exploring by that economy? There the saved coal lay, worse than useless in the bunkers, serving only to ballast down the ship that she might sink the faster under us!

Thump, thump! Thump, thump!

From on deck came a welcome sound. The carpenters had at last got the handles rigged. The hand pump was starting! With four men on each side swaying over the bars, vigorously putting their backs into each stroke, that steady thumping gave me new hope. If the hand pump, inefficient though it was, could only keep the leak from gaining too fast on us, I still had a chance! Water to fill the boiler? Why bother about the sea? We were standing in an ocean of salt water right there in our fireroom and more was coming in all the time! All I needed was time enough to get a boiler full of it off the submerged floorplates into that port kettle, and I could light off!

“Bartlett, forget that sea cock! On top of that port boiler with you and your wrench. Open up the manhole there, then stand by the opening to receive water in buckets! Boyd, get Sharvell and Iversen out of the bunkers, get some buckets, and form a line to pass water up to Bartlett as soon as he gets that manhole open!”

Bartlett scrambled over the furnace fronts and up on top of the boiler. Boyd passed up his torch to illuminate the work, and I tossed up a sledge hammer to help him start the bolts on the manhead. While Bartlett labored over the bolts and Boyd and the other coalheavers scurried through the engine room and the fireroom collecting all the buckets, I stood a moment before the port boiler, sizing up the situation.

Where was all that water coming from anyway? There was no sign of damage, no sign of leak in the machinery spaces. From forward, probably; we had got some very bad raps on the bow during the morning’s excitement. Perhaps an underrunning floe had rammed our stern, opened up our forepeak. If such were the case, that hand pump running on deck forward was in the best location to hold down the water, to keep it from rising too rapidly here amidships. I listened an instant to the rapid thump, thump of the oscillating handles, then caught mixed with the noise a husky cry from the men at the pump,

“Spell O!”

There was a break in the rhythmic thumping, a new gang stepped in and relieved the men at the handles, then the monotonous throbbing was resumed. Spell O, the cry for relief, already coming from the first gang manning the pumps! Backbreaking work that, all right. How long could the sixteen men we had on deck, even relieving each other frequently, keep those handles flying up and down fast enough to give us a chance in the fireroom? Not for long could human muscles stand that pace, I feared. It would be nip and tuck between us and the rising water.

From atop the boiler came the banging of metal on metal and the muffled curses of Bartlett as sprawled out in the scanty space between boiler and deck beams overhead, he fought with sledge and wrench to loosen the manhole bolts. Lauterbach came cautiously down the fireroom ladder, balancing a huge armful of kindling. I motioned him to toss it onto the grates, then to join Boyd, Iversen, and Sharvell with the buckets. In silence, we waited below, listening to the mingled chorus of the banging sledge hammer, the rasping screech of rusty nuts, and the fluent profanity of Bartlett, prone on his stomach, a fantastic fur-clad demon with his distorted face showing up intermittently in the flickering flame of the torch, battling the boiler beneath him. No one could help him; there wasn’t room for two men to work in those confined quarters. And there was no use giving him any advice either. So below we stood, straining our eyes impatiently toward Bartlett, while inch by inch the water rose on us and the margin between water level and furnace grates shrank. The hand pumps on deck were losing out—they had slowed up the rise, but they could not stop it.

My chilled legs felt cramped. Instinctively, not taking my gaze off Bartlett, I tried to flex my knees to relieve them, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. I found I could not lift either leg. Looking down sharply, I saw for the first time what before in the poor light had escaped my notice—in that intense cold, far below zero, the water was turning to slush, ice was forming here and there over its surface, and both my feet were solidly frozen down to the iron floorplates on which I stood!

I gripped my legs one at a time with both hands, savagely tore them free.

“Keep moving, boys!” I warned the men in the water alongside me. “If you stand still a minute, you’ll be frozen down!” And standing there in that fast freezing water, at 29° below zero, I was at least thankful for the four pairs of wool socks, the three suits of blue flannel underwear, and the two pairs of woolen mittens which encased me under my fur suit and boots, for otherwise by now, between cold water and cold air, I should have been frozen stiff as a board.

Bang!

With a final blow of his sledge, Bartlett knocked free the last dog, lifted out the boiler manhead, shouted,

“All clear, chief!”

“Start those buckets!” I ordered, but it was unnecessary. Already Boyd had dipped the first one full, was passing it up to Bartlett, who dashed the contents through the open manhole into the boiler, where splashing over the frigid iron plates inside, I haven’t the slightest doubt but that it promptly became ice.

Round and round went the buckets, Lauterbach filling, Boyd and Iversen passing them up full to Bartlett, and little Sharvell catching the empties as they came tumbling down the boiler front. All the men were soon coated from head to foot with ice from the water slopping from the buckets—only their constant stooping, rising, and twisting which kept cracking the ice off in sheets prevented their soon accumulating so heavy a weight of it as no man could even stagger under.

Meanwhile, as they labored, I turned to, and took Boyd’s place in spreading fuel on the grates, preparatory to lighting off. Hastily I scattered the kindling over the cold furnace bars, then slid several buckets of coal out the nearest bunker door, carefully maneuvering them through the slush and ice across the flooded floorplates to avoid slopping the sea water which reached nearly to the tops of the buckets, in on the coal. Seizing then a shovel, I started to heave coal into the furnaces, an awkward job, for getting the shovel into the tops of the upright buckets was difficult, and naturally I dared not dump the coal out on the floorplates first. As best I could, I managed it, spreading the coal over the kindling, a little thin at the front of the grates, a thicker bed at the rear. That done, I leaned back on my shovel, and alternated between watching the waterline creeping up the boiler fronts and my men frantically passing up buckets to fill the boiler.

It was a big boiler, eight feet in diameter, and would require innumerable buckets. Mentally I calculated it, making a rough estimate. Nine tons of water had to be manhandled up into that boiler to fill it properly, a thousand bucketfuls at the very least. I timed the heavy buckets; about six a minute were going up, but the men could hardly maintain that pace. Still, even if they could, it would take three hours to fill that boiler to the steaming level! Long before then, the fireboxes at the bottom of the boiler would be flooded, we could never light off! Somehow, we had to keep the water down in the fireroom till I got steam, or the Jeannette was doomed. And her going meant a two hundred mile retreat over the broken pack to Siberia—in mid January at 40° or worse below zero, an absolutely hopeless journey!

“Keep ’em flying, boys!” I called out to my coalheavers, “while I lay up on deck for help. I’ll be back here in a minute!”

Coated with ice to the waist, I clambered up the ladder, went forward into the deckhouse. Swinging on the pump bars there, were eight straining seamen; against the bulkhead, resting a moment, were eight more, including even the Chinamen Ah Sam and Tong Sing. A little forward of them was De Long, anxiously peering down a hatch into the forepeak, while below him in that gloomy hole, Lieutenant Chipp and Nindemann were sloshing round in deep water with a lantern, searching for the source of our troubles.

“Where’s the leak, captain?” I asked, bending down alongside him.

De Long straightened up, intensely worried.

“We don’t know, chief; Chipp can’t find it. All he can see is that the water’s gushing through that supposedly solid pine packing the Navy Yard filled our bow with, as if it were a sieve. The leak’s in the stem, down somewhere near the keel; I think our forefoot’s twisted off.” He looked at me with haggard eyes. “We’re still holding our own on the forepeak with the hand pump; but the men’ll break down before long. How soon can you give us steam and help out, chief?”

I drew him aside, a little away from that squad of resting seamen, not wishing to discourage them.

“Never, captain!” I whispered hoarsely, “unless we get help ourselves!” Briefly I outlined our desperate position. There was no hand pump in the fireroom, the water was gaining on us there also. “I’ve got to have a gang to hoist water out of that fireroom by hand someway to keep it down till my boiler’s filled and I get steam up, or we’re done for! And it’ll take three hours yet. My gang’s all busy. Who can you spare?”

De Long gazed at me somberly.

“Except Danenhower, who’s blind, every man and officer’s working now. But Newcomb and Collins are only collecting records in case we abandon ship. Will they do?”

I laughed bitterly.

“Newcomb isn’t worth a damn for real work, captain; and from what I’ve heard from Collins, you could shoot him before he’d turn to as a seaman! Besides, two are not enough anyway. It’ll take six good men at least, to keep ahead of that water, and then they may not do it. But give me Cole and half of that relief gang at the pumps there and I’ll try.”

“That’ll reduce us here to six men a shift on the pump handles,” muttered the captain, dubiously eyeing the crew at the pump. “But we’ve got to get steam! All right, Melville, take them. But for God’s sake, hurry it up!”

“Aye, aye, sir!” I turned abruptly to our Irish bosun, who was nearby supervising the pumping. “Jack, pick four men out of the gang here, any four, and come aft with me. Shake a leg, now!” I started for the after door in the deckhouse.

Cole grabbed Starr, a Russian and physically the strongest seaman in our crew, off the starboard pump handle; took Manson, a burly Swede, off the port handle to even things up, and beckoned to Ah Sam and Tong Sing from the relief gang.

“C’mon, me byes; lay aft wid yez!” Cole marshalled his little detail out of the compartment and slammed the deckhouse door behind them almost before the twelve startled men left at the pump could realize that they now had the work of all sixteen to carry on.

Close outside the deckhouse stood the barrel which received the fresh water condensed in our distiller. That barrel was just what I needed; distilling for the present was the least of my worries.

“Jack,” I explained briefly, “the fireroom’s flooding on us. We got to keep that water down till I get fires started. Sling that barrel in a bridle, rig it on a whip to the davit over the machinery hatch, and start hoisting water out of the fireroom, four bells and a jingle! She’s all yours now, Jack! Get going!”

Cole, a rattling good bosun if I ever saw one, needed nothing further.

“Aye, aye, sor. Lave ut to Jack!” In a moment he had that Russian, the Swede, and the two Chinamen round the barrel, emptying it; in another second they were rolling it aft; and as I started down the ladder to the fireroom, Cole had the barrel on end again and already was expertly throwing a couple of half hitches in a manila line round it to serve as a sling.

Almost before I got down the ladder to my fireroom again, the barrel came tumbling down the hatch at the end of a fall and landed alongside me with a splash, while above, Cole roared out,

“Below there! She’s all yours! Fill ’er up!”

Being nearest, I tipped the barrel sidewise in the water, pushed it down till it submerged, then righted it. It filled with a gurgle, settled through the slush to the floor plates.

“Full up!” I shouted. “Take it away!”

“Aye, aye!” The line to the barrel tautened, then started slowly to rise. Down the hatch floated Cole’s voice, encouraging his squad on the hoisting line,

“Lay back wid yez, Rooshian! Heave on it, ye Swede! An’ git those pigtails flyin’ in the breeze, ye two Chinks, or we’ll all be knockin’ soon at the Pearly Gates, an’ fer sailor min the likes of us, wid damned little chanct to get past St. Peter! Lively wid yez; all togither now. Heave!”

The loaded barrel suddenly shot up the hatch.

Hurriedly Cole swung it over to the low side scuppers, dumped it, and sent it clattering down again. Once more I filled it, started it up, then called Lee, my machinist, from the engine room pump to stand by on that filling job while I went back to the all-important boiler.

Why go into the agony of the next two hours? Wearily, without relief, my men heaved water, ice, slush, whatever the flying buckets scooped up, indiscriminately into the yawning void inside that boiler; just as wearily, with aching shoulders, Cole and his little group labored, unrelieved and unshielded from the bitter cold on deck, heaving that barrel up and down; while from the deckhouse, the more and more frequent cries of Spell O! showed that at the undermanned pump, backs were fast giving way under that inhuman strain.

And in spite of all, I could see that we were going to lose. Another hour yet to fill the boiler to the steaming level, but from the rate with which the flood waters were still rising, in another hour it would be too late—the water would be over the grates. Hoping against hope that perhaps I was wrong, that perhaps the water was going into that kettle faster than I thought, I crawled myself to the top of the boiler. Keeping as clear of Bartlett as the scant space allowed, not to slow up the stream of buckets, I seized the torch and in between the dumping of those cumbersome buckets peered through the ice-rimmed manhole into that Scotch boiler. As I feared. The upper tubes down there were still uncovered; the crown sheets of the furnaces were still perhaps a foot above the level of the slush (I could hardly call it water) line. As I looked, Bartlett, sprawled out beside me, sent another bucketful splashing through the manhole, which soaked my beard and almost immediately froze it into a solid mass. But I hardly noticed it, staring with leaden eyes into that still half-empty boiler. With a sinking heart, I slid away on the ice-coated cylinder from the manhole, and crawled down the breechings to stand once again on the thickening ice covering the flooded floorplates.

Dare I fire up without waiting further?

I was in a terrible predicament. To light fires under a partly filled boiler like that, with tubes and furnace plates not wholly covered with water, was not only the surest way to a courtmartial which would probably end my naval career, it violated also every tenet in my engineer’s code, violated every principle of safety, practically insured a boiler explosion! But if I did not get fires going right away, I would never have a chance to fire up, and not only that boiler but the ship herself and all her crew besides would vanish in that Arctic ice.

I must risk whatever came.

With flying buckets and tumbling barrel splashing and spilling water all around me, I applied a match to another oil torch, fanned it a moment in the chilly air till it blazed brightly, shoved it (in the narrow space still remaining between the flood waters and the grate bars) into the inboard furnace under the kindling, till the wood took fire and then hurriedly transferred it to the outboard furnace until that also lighted off. The extreme cold of the outside air favored me, creating a tremendous draft as soon as a little warm air filled the flues, and in no time at all it seemed, the wood was blazing up fiercely and igniting the coal which, shining brightly down through the grate bars onto the water flooding the lower part of the ash-pits, cast a lurid red glare out into the dark fireroom, evidently putting new life into the drooping sailors, for both below and on deck, a ragged cheer greeted that crimson glow.

“Keep that water going, lads; we haven’t won yet!” I warned, flinging open the furnace doors and heaving in more coal. “We’ve got to get that water level up over the crown sheets before they get red hot, or we’re all going straight to hell! Twice as fast now on those buckets!” And whatever it was, fear or hope, that inspired those coalheavers, a moment before ready to drop from utter exhaustion, the buckets started to fly faster than ever.

I finished heaving coal, slammed to the fire doors, and leaned back on my shovel. I was in for it now. Never in the history of steam, before nor since, has a boiler been fired under such weird conditions—furnaces half-flooded, no water showing in the sight glasses, slush and ice for what charge there was, and the boiler manhead still off! But I was relying on some of those very dangers to save my bacon—till I put the manhole cover back, there could be no pressure to cause real trouble; and till we had melted down and warmed up that ice and slush, I counted on that chilly mixture and the water still splashing in to soak up heat so rapidly as to keep the bare tubes and exposed crown sheets from getting red hot and collapsing.

My other fears I need hardly go into—the dangers of bringing up steam suddenly in a cold boiler instead of gradually warming up first for twelve hours as was usual; of frozen gauge glasses; of frozen feed pumps—all these I deliberately put out of my mind. Only one thing counted now—to get some steam at any cost whatever before the water reached the grate bars and flooded out my fires.

And we did. With only a few inches left to go, came at last from Bartlett the long-awaited cry,

“The crown sheet’s covered now, chief!”

“On with that manhead!” I roared back.

The clanking of Bartlett’s sledge hammer, breaking away the ice round the manhole so the cover would fit, was my only answer. The worn-out coalheavers dropped their buckets, rested for the first time in hours, sagging back against the boiler fronts to keep from dropping into the icy water. No time for that. I seized a slice bar, started savagely to slice the fire in the outboard furnace, sang out,

“Boyd, get busy with another slice bar on that inboard fire! Lauterbach, relieve Lee on filling that barrel! Lee, get back to your pump now! And, Sharvell, you and Iversen, get into those bunkers and break out some more coal! Come to life now, all of you!”

Boyd, nearly dead from his half of heaving up over eight tons of water, staggered over to my side, gripped a slice bar. Together we labored over the fires, forcing them to the limit, nursing in more coal without deadening the blaze, till helped by an amazing draft from the stack, we had them roaring like the very flames of hell itself. Never have I seen such fires!

Leaving the stoking job now wholly to Boyd, I dropped my slice bar and stepped back to examine the gauge glasses. Water was barely showing in the sight glass, but, thank God, it was showing! And the needle of the pressure gauge was starting to flutter off the zero pin. Steam was coming up! If we could only hold down the flood for a few minutes more now, till I could get that pump warmed up and going, we were saved! But that part was up to Jack Cole.

“Jack!” I shouted up the hatch. “A little more and you can quit. But right now, for God’s sake, shake it up; faster with that barrel!”

“Aye, aye, sor!” Then to his strangely conglomerate crew, ready undoubtedly to collapse in their tracks, Cole called gruffly,

“C’mon me byes! Lit’s raylly git to liftin’ now, an’ work up a sweat, or we’ll freeze to death in this cowld! Lay back on ut, Starr! Heave there, Manson! Wud yez have thim two Chinks outpullin’ yez? An’ step out there now, ye Chinese seacooks, an’ don’t be clutterin’ up the decks, or whin that Rooshian gits goin’, he’ll be treadin’ heavy on thim pigtails! Yo heave! Up wid ut!” And with astonishing speed I saw the loaded barrel vanish up the hatch.

I breasted my way through the water aft to where Lee in the engine room stood by my largest steam pump. No need to worry about priming the pump for suction; another foot higher on that flood and we would have to go diving to reach the pump valves. I felt the steam line. The frosty chill was gone; a little steam at least was already coming through to the pump.

“All right, Lee; let’s get going,” I mumbled. We cracked open the steam valve a hair, started to drain the line. And no mother nursing her baby ever handled it more tenderly than Lee and I nursed that frozen pump, gradually draining and warming the steam cylinder, lest the sudden application of heat should crack into pieces that abnormally cold cast iron, and after our heartbreaking struggle with the boiler, leave us still helpless to eject the sea. With one eye on Jack Cole’s rapidly moving barrel and the other on that narrowing margin between flood water and furnace fires, I nursed the pump along by feel, taking as long to warm it up as I dared without swamping those flames. At long last the pump cylinder was hot; steam instead of water was blowing out the drains. And the boiler gauge needle stood at thirty pounds. Enough; we could go.

I straightened up, motioned Lee to start the pump. He opened the throttle valve. With a wheeze and a groan the water piston broke free in its cylinder, the nearly submerged pump commenced to stroke.

Leaving Lee at the pump, I ran (that is, if barely dragging one ice-weighted foot after another can be called running) up the ladder toward the deck. While I climbed, the empty barrel came hurtling down the hatchway, splashed into the water in the fireroom. Before Lauterbach could fill and upend it, down on top of the barrel in a maze of coils came the slack end of the hoisting line. Apparently Cole’s gang was through.

As I poked my head above the hatch into the open, there—Oh, gorgeous sight for bleary eyes and aching muscles! was a heavy stream of water pulsing into the scuppers! Nearby, prone on the deck where they had dropped in their tracks when they let go the hoisting line, were four utterly worn-out seamen, gazing nevertheless admiringly on that beautiful stream. And leaning against the bulwark watching it, was Jack Cole, who as he saw me, sang out,

“Praises be, chief; we’re saved! There’ll be no calls for Spell O from that chap!”