The last voyage of the Karluk

by Bob Bartlett; Ralph T. Hale

IN WINTER QUARTERS

We made another change in our routine October 28, going on to a schedule of two meals a day, breakfast at nine o’clock and dinner at half-past four. Tea could be obtained at one o’clock and at night, before going to bed, any one could have tea or coffee or chocolate. From six o’clock at night to six the next morning whoever was assigned for that night to be watchman was on his rounds, looking after the fires and lights and keeping the water from freezing in the water-tank. All lights except the watchman’s lantern were out at mid-night. At six o’clock he would wake the cook, who slept in a room off the galley, and after waiting to have his breakfast would turn in, a day watchman taking his place from 6 A. M. to 6 P. M.

For breakfast we always had oatmeal porridge, with condensed milk. This was followed by various things, for we tried to make the menu interesting. We would have eggs, ham, bacon, codfish, sausages, and of course coffee. For dinner we would have canned oysters or clams, shredded codfish from Newfoundland, potatoes (desiccated and frozen, to be thawed out as we wanted to use them), carrots, parsnips, spinach, pickles, asparagus, beans, corn, tomatoes. We always had fresh meat at least once a day, seal meat or, when we got any, later on, bear meat. For dessert we had ice-cream, in all flavors, or sherbet, pies, puddings, fancy cakes, and earlier had had watermelon and cantaloupe. At all times we had a great variety of canned fruits. In fact we were well supplied with about everything obtainable.

About this time we began putting the clock back to get the benefit of all the daylight. The men did not have to get up until breakfast-time but at ten o’clock they had to be ready for the day’s work. This consisted of sewing canvas, making clothing, sewing pemmican up in canvas, shifting boxes and putting things over on the big floe, shovelling snow, filling up the locker with coal, bringing in fresh-water ice for melting in the tank, doing various odd jobs around the ship and fixing up the dredge-hole.

We had plenty of soap and razors and plenty of underclothing, so we kept clean. We made it a rule to shave at least three times a week and to bathe at least once. Even the Eskimo bathed like the rest of us. When Kataktovick joined us he said, “I like my bath.” In Nome and St. Michael’s the Eskimo have a bath-house where they can bathe by paying twenty-five cents and they patronize it freely. We had several bath-tubs on the Karluk.

On the twenty-seventh, too, we blew down the boiler, drew the water off, disconnected the engines and blew all the water out of the pipes.

At eight o’clock on the evening of the twenty-eighth we were gathered in the saloon, some of us reading, some playing chess, others playing cards, when we were alarmed by a loud report coming from the direction of the bow. In an instant, with practically no interval, we heard another report, from the port quarter. The watchman came in and said there was a crack in the ice at the stem of the ship. I went out and with our lantern we could see what had happened. The ice had cracked at the bow and again about fifty yards away on the port quarter and the ice had opened up for about two feet running in a westerly direction on the port bow. The dogs were separated from the ship by the crack. We made haste to get them on board, together with skin-boats, sledges and sounding-machines, for we were afraid the ice might break up all around the ship. I stayed up all night and had every one standing by for trouble, but again nothing happened, and next morning with a high wind blowing the drifting snow along the surface of the ice and a temperature of twenty-four degrees below zero, we found that the cracks had closed up again. Twice during the day the ice opened again but closed up at once. These cracks were only an inch or two in width.

November began with a renewed violence of the gale and we drifted to the northwest. For the first time we pumped out the hold with a hand-pump in the engine-room. As long as we had steam up we did the pumping with steam from the boiler but now that the boiler was blown down we pumped by hand on deck, but that was a difficult job on account of the cold, so by having a stove in the engine-room which kept the temperature above freezing we found that we could handle the pump to better advantage there.

We built an observatory for Malloch by covering in the bridge with boards and sails with an opening at the top. Malloch had his transit here and was untiring in his efforts to get our position. He relieved me of much of the labor of taking the observations and was a great help throughout. In the afternoon of this first of November we had clear weather for a short time and were treated to a remarkable display of the aurora, one of the few that we had in all our months of drifting and ice travel. During the gale that kept up all day we dragged our dredge and parted the line, so that we had to put on a new dredge. The next day we got specimens of several species, including a number of different kinds of starfish. Our soundings showed that we were drifting in comparatively shallow waters shoaling to 105 fathoms on the first and to 36 on the second. Mr. Hadley and I busied ourselves scraping deerskins, a necessary preliminary to their use in making clothing; the scraping is done to break the vellum, to loosen them up, for when they are hard they do not keep you so warm.

November 4 we found another new animal in the dredge. The soundings now gave us only 28 fathoms. The wind fluctuated in violence all day long, finally settling down to a good-sized gale, with drifting snow. On the seventh open water appeared about two miles from the ship. The Eskimo went out and shot ten seal. I was with them and we saw many more seal out in the water but they were too far away for us.