The Arctic World

by Anonymous

The sledging-expeditions began in earnest in the first week of April, only a few men being left on board each ship. Captain Stephenson, of the Discovery, paid a visit to the Alert, and also crossed Hall’s Basin twice to Greenland. Captain Nares, with Captain Feilden, was not less energetic; and for a considerable area round the two ships all was activity and motion. When at Polaris Bay, Captain Stephenson, in memory of the gallant and unfortunate Hall, hoisted the American ensign, and erected a brass tablet above the explorer’s lonely grave. It bears the following inscription:—

“Sacred to the memory of Captain C. F. Hall, of the U.S. ship Polaris, who sacrificed his life in the advancement of science on November 8, 1871. This tablet has been erected by the British Polar Expedition of 1875, who, following in his footsteps, have profited by his experience.”

It may be noted here, in illustration of the labour attendant on the equipment of an Arctic sledge-party, and the despatch of provisions for their sustenance, that, in order to support the expeditions on the north coast of Greenland and in Petermann Fiord, “Robeson Channel was crossed eleven times from the position of the Alert to a depôt established north of Cape Brevoort, and Hall’s Basin eleven times between Discovery Bay and Polaris Bay; making a total of twenty-two sledge-parties crossing the straits, including the transporting of two boats. The main depôt at Cape Joseph Henry, for the support of the northern and western divisions, thirty-seven miles from the Alert, was visited by sixteen different sledges.”

Our travellers did not fail to examine the various cairns erected by the seamen of the Polaris. At one place a box chronometer was found to be in excellent order, though it had undergone the test of four Arctic winters. And some wheat, which the Polaris had brought out in order to ascertain the effect upon it of exposure to extreme cold, was successfully cultivated under a glass shade by Dr. Ninnis—almost as interesting an experiment in its way as the sowing and successful harvesting of Mummy wheat, the grains found in ancient Egyptian sepulchres.

The British expedition had advanced so far north that it was beyond the life-limit of bears, birds, and even seals; and the sledging-parties, unable therefore to obtain any fresh game, were severely attacked by scurvy. This fell disease invariably broke out when its victims were farthest from any assistance. The journeys back to the ships were consequently undertaken, as we have already pointed out, by men whose strength decreased daily; and the burden became all the greater as man after man was smitten down, and, to save his life, placed upon the sledge. Great was the alarm on board the Alert, when, towards the close of the 8th of June, Lieutenant Parr suddenly presented himself. He was alone. Where were his comrades? What calamity had befallen them? He soon explained that he had undertaken a journey of thirty-five miles, toiling for twenty-two hours through mist and drift and snow, and guided only by the fresh track of a stray wolf, to convey the news of the prostrated condition of the members of the northern expedition. Preparations were immediately made for hastening to their assistance. With the help of the officers, who all volunteered to drag the sledges, Captain Nares was able by midnight to start with two strong relief-parties—Messrs. Egerton, Conybeare, Wootton, and White, the officers who could best be spared from the ship, taking their places at the drag-ropes; and Lieutenant May and Dr. Moss pushing forward with a supply of medicines in the dog-sledge.

Such was the alacrity and energy of the two latter, that they contrived to reach Commander Markham’s encampment within fifty hours of the departure of Lieutenant Parr; though, unfortunately, not in time to save the life of one of the marines, who but a few hours before had expired and been buried in the floe. On the remainder of the stricken company, their arrival, however, had a most beneficial influence; and when, early the next day, Captain Nares came up to their relief, their courage and resolution, which had never deserted them, were quickened to the utmost, and even the invalids threw off that dread depression an attack of scurvy invariably produces. On the morning of the 14th all were once more safe on board the ship, and offering up their heartfelt thanksgiving to God.

Captain Nares furnishes some particulars which illustrate very vividly the terrible experiences of the adventurous sledge-party, and also the ravages which scurvy never fails to commit. He says that of the seventeen officers and men who originally left the Alert, only five—namely, three officers and two men—were able to drag the sledges alongside. Three others—heroes as true as any of those whom Homer has made famous!—manfully kept on their feet to the last, enduring the extreme of pain and fatigue rather than, by riding on the sledges, increase the burden their weakened companions had to drag. They were just able to crawl on board ship without assistance. The remaining eight had struggled gallantly, but the disease had proved too much for them, and they were carried on the sledges. Out of the whole number, only two officers escaped the ravages of scurvy. After due rest and medical attention, the chief carpenter’s mate returned to his duty, and three others recovered so as to be able to wait on their sick comrades; but Jolliffe, a petty officer, who had nobly borne up against the disease while actively employed, when his legs became cramped from resting on board proved to be one of the most lingering cases.

Surely the nation will never begrudge the cost of expeditions which give such occasion for the display of the most generous unselfishness and the noblest devotion!

These sledge-journeys were performed in the face of tremendous difficulties. Beyond the mere coast-belt, there was little smooth ice; the tolerably level floes or fields, usually about six feet above the neighbouring ice, seldom measured a mile across. Their surfaces were thickly covered with rounded blue-topped ice-humps, averaging twenty feet high; which lay sometimes in ranges, and sometimes a hundred to two hundred yards apart, the intervening spaces being filled with wind-driven snow, and the whole resembling a gusty ocean suddenly stiffened into rest.[12] Between these floes, like an embankment of rude formation, extended a vast pile of the wreck and refuse of previous summers’ broken-up pack-ice, regelated during the winter into one rugged and confused mass of angular blocks of various heights up to forty and fifty feet, and of every imaginable variety of configuration, like the disrupted lava at the mouth of a crater. These were interspersed with a continuous series of “steep-sided snow-drifts,” which stretched downwards from the highest summit of the ice-chaos until lost in the general level at a distance of about one hundred yards. It may be conceived that it was not easy to find a passage for the sledges through these labyrinths of ice and snow. The snow-slopes were by no means an assistance, for the winter-winds coming chiefly from the west, and the course of the sledges being due north, they had to be encountered almost at right angles. Consequently, the journey was an incessant struggle with ever-recurring obstacles; as fast as one had been conquered, another presented itself. The pickaxes were in constant requisition, either to cut a way through the packed-up ice, or out of the perpendicular side of the high floes. Instead of a steady advance, the whole party were frequently detained half a day by the necessity of facing the sledge and hauling it forward a few feet at a time. These considerations will enable the reader to judge how great must have been the “pluck,” persistence, and energy which could accomplish a journey of seventy miles in such exceptional circumstances.

Captain Nares observes—and his eulogium will be endorsed by the reader—that no two officers could have accomplished this laborious enterprise with greater ability or courage than Commander Markham and Lieutenant Parr. And it is but just that the services of Rawlings and Lawrence, the captains of the two sledges, should be put on record. In addition to their general cheerfulness and good-humour,—qualities which always help to lighten difficult work,—to their care and skill were due the safe return of the sledges, on which the lives of all depended—safe, uninjured, and in as serviceable a state as when they left the ship, notwithstanding the terrible character of the road they had travelled. To such men as these, and to the brave, patient, resolute sledge-crews generally, we owe the tribute of our praise. However severe their privations, they never complained. During this memorable journey to penetrate to the north over the rugged Polar Oceanic ice, a journey in which the “pluck” and determination of the British seaman were most conspicuously displayed, day after day, against obstacles which might well have been regarded as insurmountable, the two officers and their brave followers succeeded in advancing the Union Jack to latitude 83° 20’ 26″ N.,—or within four hundred miles of the North Pole.