THE SAVING OF PETERSEN
"Only action gives life strength."
—Richter.
In 1875 the British arctic expedition steamed northward through Kane Sea in its attempt to reach the north pole. Its commander, Captain George S. Nares, R.N., thought it prudent to insure a safe retreat by establishing a southerly base of operations where one ship should remain. Nares, in the flag-ship Alert, chose the dangerous and exposed winter quarters at Floeberg Beach, an open roadstead of the ice-clad Arctic Ocean at the northern entrance of Robeson Channel. The Discovery, under command of Captain S. F. Stephenson, R.N., was laid up at a sheltered anchorage in Lady Franklin Bay, more than a hundred miles to the southward of the Alert. An attempt to open communication between the two ships by sledge party failed in the autumn of 1875. With the return of the sun in 1876, after an absence of one hundred and fifty days, it became most important to establish communication with the Discovery at the earliest moment. From the Alert there was visible far to the eastward, on clear days, the mountains of northwest Greenland, which Nares wished Stephenson to explore instead of making a sledge trip to the Etah Eskimos to the south as originally planned. The heroic conduct of the officers attempting this journey and their success in saving the life of Petersen are set forth in this tale.
Robeson Channel and Lady Franklin Bay.
The efficiency of every army and of every navy of the world is known only by the final and supreme test of active service in war, but it is plain that the essential attributes to success—skill, solidarity, and devotion to duty—are acquired in times of peace. Nowhere are greater efforts made to cultivate these admirable qualities than in the royal navy of Great Britain, the most formidable of the world.
Among its chiefs is the second naval lord, whose duties lie especially with the hearts of oak, the men behind the guns, whose courage and skill are the very soul of the service. The second naval lord has in charge the manning and officering of the war-ships; he plans the bringing together at a special place and in a given time the mighty dreadnoughts, the tiny torpedo-boats, the swaying submarines, and the swift destroyers; and he sees that gunnery, marksmanship, and other special training are up to the highest mark. Such a lord should, above all, be a man among men—one inspiring confidence both by knowing when and how times of peril should be met and also through having himself done such service in earlier life.
Such is the life history of Admiral Sir George Le Clerc Egerton, who, passing from a high sea command to duty as the naval aid to his majesty the King, rose a few years since to this lofty station and assumed its important duties. Great as may be the respect and high as can be the admiration of the world for efficient performance of public duties by officials of high station, yet the hearts of sympathetic, tender-hearted men and women are more deeply moved whenever and where-ever they hear a tale of self-sacrifice and of heroic comradeship. Such is the story of this great naval lord, enacted by him as a sub-lieutenant far from the civilized world, on the ice-bound coast of a desolate arctic land, for the safety of an humble dog driver. The nobler the heart the greater is its sense of duty to helpless dependents in deep distress. And more heroic was the work of Lieutenant Egerton, flying his sledge flag, "Tanq je puis (All that I can)," than any done under his stately flag as a naval lord or as admiral of the fleet.