The command of the Lady Franklin Bay Station was assigned to Lieutenant A. W. Greely—not a naval lieutenant, but, like Schwatka, a cavalry officer, then assigned to duty in the Signal Service, to which (because it then supervised the Weather Bureau) the government had intrusted this matter. A steamer easily conveyed Greely and his party to Lady Franklin Bay, and left them there with a good house ready to be set up, and supplies of all sorts for two years. The prescribed series of observations with barometers and thermometers, wind-gages, tide-gages, magnetic instruments and all the rest, were at once begun, and two winters passed comfortably enough. Dogs and Eskimo drivers had been obtained, and several journeys were made, of which the most important was Lockwood’s advance toward the pole, of which an account has been succinctly supplied by General Greely himself in his admirable “Handbook of Arctic Discoveries.”
SCENERY OF GRINNELL LAND AND THE ARCTIC SEA.
Lieutenant J. B. Lockwood, one of the principal assistants, who had already displayed great skill and energy in sledging, even in prolonged temperature as low as 81° F. below freezing, undertook a long exploring trip up the Greenland coast, to or beyond Cape Britannia. A large party went with him at first, but gradually men were sent back, after establishing supply-depots. “The journey onward was marked by severe storms, rough ice, broken sledges, snow-blindness, minor injuries, and—worst of all for loaded sledges—soft, deep snow.” At last, some distance north of Cape Bryant, all turned back except Lockwood, Sergeant Brainard, and an Eskimo, Christiansen, who, with twenty-five days’ rations, pushed on. In five and one half days they had reached Cape Britannia—the farthest north of the Nares expedition—82° 20´ N. Halting here only long enough to study the landscape from its summit, and make sure of the remarkable fact that this northern end of Greenland is free from the ice-cap, whose northern limit is about lat. 82° N., they rounded a cape, and crossing channel after channel filled with ice, which showed that all this district is an archipelago, reached on May 10th Mary Murray Island, 83° 19´ N. “A violent gale delayed them sixty-three hours, the cold exhausting them physically and the delay mentally. If weather forbade travel, life must be sustained; but they tasted insufficient food only at intervals of fifteen, twenty-four, and nineteen hours—the last as clearing weather made progress possible. Floes so high that the sledge was lowered by dog-traces, ice so broken that the ax cleared the way, and widening water-cracks in increasing numbers impeded progress. But, despite all obstacles, they reached, May 13, 1882, Lockwood Island, 83° 24´ N., 42°, 45´ W., the farthest of their journey, and the highest north [by land], then or now.”
They could see land several miles northeast, which they named Cape Washington, the highest known land, and toward the north could overlook a polar sea to within three hundred and fifty miles of the pole. Even here plants were numerous, and foxes, hares, lemmings, and ptarmigans existed. The three heroic travelers returned safely, reaching headquarters on June 3d. Another expedition by Lockwood and his two companions explored and located the west coast of mountainous and glacier-girt Grinnell Land, where the musk-ox and Eskimo hunters range to the northern border.
The summer of 1883 brought no relief-ship, and the plan of escape must be put into execution at once. A ship had, in fact, tried to reach Greely in 1882, but, failing, had left supplies of provisions at Cape Sabine and elsewhere. In 1883 another relief expedition sent north was dreadfully mis-managed, and finally the ship itself was lost, and, instead of leaving supplies, took away all that had been stored at Cape Sabine—the precise point where they were to be needed.
Leaving Lady Franklin Bay in August in open boats, the party managed, after desperate exertions, to get near Cape Sabine, and safely landed on Bedford Pim Island, on the northwestern shore of Smith Sound, October 15, 1883. Of the misery that followed, let Greely himself tell us:
Winter had begun, the polar night was imminent, clothing in rags, fuel wanting, and forty days’ rations must tide over 250 days, till help could come. The main party put up a hut of rocks, canvas, boat- and snow-slabs, while selected men scoured the coasts for caches, sought land-game, and watched seal-holes, until utter darkness drove all to the hut. Scientific observations were unremittingly made, amusements devised, a spring campaign planned, and the returning sun found only one dead. Efforts to cross Smith Sound failed, and a hunting trip to the west found a new (Schley) land, but no game. Finally game came so inadequately that food failed, and one by one men died—Jens seal-hunting, and Rice striving to bring in a cache. Courage and solidarity continued; and if Greely gave to the maimed Ellison double food while it lasted, he did not hesitate to order in writing the execution of a man serving under an assumed name of Henry, who repeatedly stole sealskin thongs, the only remaining food. Flowers, plants, seaweed, and lichens eked out life for the six, till June 22, 1884, when the relief-ships, Thetis and Bear, under Captain W. S. Schley and Commander W. H. Emory, rescued them. Records, instruments, and collections were saved to tell the story of an expedition that failed not in aught intrusted to it, and whose members perished through others.
To another piece of brilliant work, that of Lieutenant R. E. Peary, U. S. N., I can give only a few words, because, like so much else that might be said of Arctic researches, it was by land rather than by sea. By extraordinary courage, skill, and endurance, he twice crossed northern Greenland, showed that it is an island having a northern shore free from inland ice in about 82° north latitude, and made stronger Greely’s conclusion that the lands visited and seen by Lockwood, north of Cape Britannia, are detached islands. Peary’s work may be said to have completed the map of the continental boundary of the Arctic Ocean, but he is still busy there.