On August 4th, with the boats all repaired, we made ready to leave. To the southward of Bennett Island, the pack looked to us badly broken up with enough large water openings to make it seem that thereafter we could proceed mostly in the boats among drifting floes, keeping the sledges for use when required. To this end, since the dogs would be less necessary and feeding them on our pemmican an unwarranted further drain on our stores, De Long ordered ten broken-down dogs to be shot to avoid their suffering should we abandon them, keeping only the twelve best for future sledging, including husky Snoozer who was by now quite the captain’s pet.
By sledge over the pack we had travelled almost exactly a hundred miles in a straight line from where the Jeannette had sunk to Bennett Island, though over the winding track as we actually crossed the drifting ice we had dragged our sledges more than a hundred and eighty miles and in so doing had ourselves tramped far beyond a thousand miles on foot. We prepared hopefully to rely from then on mainly on our boats, and for this purpose the captain rearranged the parties, breaking up the sledge and tent groups in which we previously had journeyed.
Into the first cutter with himself he took a total of thirteen—Dr. Ambler, Mr. Collins, Nindemann, Erichsen, Kaack, Boyd, Alexey, Lee, Noros, Dressler, Görtz and Iversen.
Into the second cutter (a smaller boat) under Lieutenant Chipp’s command, he put ten—Mr. Dunbar, Sweetman, Sharvell, Kuehne, Starr, Manson (later transferred to my boat), Warren, Johnson, and Ah Sam (who later to lighten still further the second cutter, was transferred to De Long’s boat).
Into the whaleboat, of which he gave me the command, also went ten—Lieutenant Danenhower, Mr. Newcomb, Cole, Bartlett, Aneguin, Wilson, Lauterbach, Leach, and Tong Sing.
Thus we made ready, with De Long commanding the largest and roomiest boat, Chipp commanding the smallest boat, and me in command of the whaleboat, considerably our longest craft though not our greatest in carrying capacity. And promptly there flared up in the Arctic an echo of that Line and Staff officer controversy agitating our Navy at home. (At home, it lasted until the Spanish War showed that we engineers were as important in winning battles as deck officers, and maybe more so.)
I, as an engineer officer, belonged to the Staff; Danenhower, as a deck officer, belonged to the Line, which alone maintained the claim to actual command of vessels afloat. A whaleboat was not much of a vessel, but nevertheless Danenhower, when he heard of the assignments, promptly informed me he was going to protest to the captain.
“Go ahead, Dan,” I said. “That’s perfectly all right with me.” So the navigator went to the captain to object to a staff officer being given command while he, a line officer, was put under my orders. In that congested camp on Bennett Island, he didn’t have far to go to find the skipper.
“Captain,” asked Dan, “what’s my status in the whaleboat?”
“You are on the sicklist, sir,” replied De Long.