Through the first Antarctic night, 1898-1899

by Frederick Albert Cook

January 12.—We have finished the trenches. For three days we have worked, not like men, but like dogs in chase of game. With picks and axes and shovels, we have excavated the ditches, and have hardly taken time to eat or sleep, because we have been so eager to watch the progress and effect of our work. As the work is completed, we find that our project is a failure. The sun at midnight is now so feeble that it permits the formation of new ice to such a thickness that the heat of the following day is barely sufficient to melt it. Had we done this in December, the result might have been more satisfactory, but now it is too late.

With the cutting of these trenches I proposed, as a last resort, to cut a canal through the ice from the Belgica to the edge of the field. The lines for the trenches were so laid that the saws might be run through the same groove; in this way we hoped to save the labour of twice removing the upper sheets of ice and snow. The work of sawing was begun last night and at first the progress was encouraging. Upon more careful examination, however, by drilling, we found that the lines which we had laid out for the canal, though shorter, ran over several submarine projections of ice from fifteen to twenty-five feet thick. We had learned by this time that with the saws it is nearly impossible to cut ice more than seven feet in depth. We now began renewed experiments with tonite, an explosive said to be more powerful than dynamite and much safer. It certainly is decidedly safer, but we were unable to discover its power.

Two months ago we all had faith in tonite. We had on board a large supply, and believed that with it we could blow the Belgica’s ice-fetters to atoms. Our confidence was much shaken with the early experiments. In the first trial we were afraid of the stuff. We handled it with the greatest care, placed it cautiously on a sledge, and drew it with a long rope. We selected a spot nearly two miles from the Belgica for the first explosion. At the time of this experiment the bark was not yet ready for the sea, and we thought it not wise to break the ice in close proximity. We also feared the “great power” of the tonite, and thought the whole field would be broken and scattered in the air, only to fall down and smash the decks, but all of this faith in, and fear of, tonite changed upon a more intimate acquaintance with the stuff. We are now amused at our extraordinary precautions during the first experiments. We took the tonite far away, put to it long fuses to permit us to run off a great distance out of the reach of the expected shattered fragments. The explosion went off with a hiss and a great fire, but in the air there was only smoke, and under the explosion there was only soot and a concavity in the snow. There was nothing broken, not even a hole through the ice, and we stood a half mile away behind a hummock, shivering for fear the ice would be so broken that we could not return to the Belgica. In later experiments we were more bold, and brought the scene of action nearer the ship, but we found that in temperatures lower than -10° C. (14.0° F.) the tonite exploded feebly, so much so, indeed, that the engineer, seeing the beautiful fire it made, vowed he would get better service by using it to get up steam. Most of us have lost faith in the power of tonite to release the Belgica, and we have also lost faith in its power to do damage of any kind. Instead of handling it with the extreme care of a few months ago, we now have it in our beds, on the table, and in every corner of the cabin. Lecointe and Racovitza, however, still have some confidence in the destructive powers of the explosive, and before we begin the seemingly impossible task of sawing a canal it is important to determine the limits of tonite in breaking the ice.

A number of experiments were made yesterday and to-day, but the consensus of opinion is that tonite will “cut no ice.” If we are to get freedom, we must seek it by our own muscular efforts with the saw and the axe. We have argued for several days in favour of sawing a canal. To this there has been considerable opposition, based upon the fact that the entire working force could not be spared for such work, and that the suggestion, at best, gave little promise of success. The sawing experiments in the trenches, however, proved that much could be done, and the eagerness of the men assured a concerted effort if the plan could be made the one aim of everybody. The repeated failure of the tonite proved that a continuation of our work in the old trenches was unwise, because ice of more than seven feet was impregnable to us. Gerlache has suggested the sawing of an old lead over the stern which might prove less obstructed by hummocks. A vigilant sounding of this lead proved the general depth of the ice about five feet, but the distance was somewhat greater than the line of our trenches. A careful study of all other possible routes easily proved this the most practical. The plans were then made as cautiously as if we were to dig the Nicaragua Canal, and every contingency was vigorously discussed by the officers. When the project was once thoroughly developed we divided into three or four crews according to the work, and every man, from the highest officer to the cabin-boy, took to the saws and the axes.

The work on this canal was begun on the evening of January eleventh, and was continued night and day until the bark was released. The distance of the canal was about 2200 feet. The sawing of the two sides with the cross sections made the distance to be cut, in a straight line, something over a mile and a half. We were able to remove the upper sheets of ice and snow by shovels and picks and specially constructed implements to the depth of from one to two feet. This left solid ice from three to four feet thick to be cut by the saws. We kept at it day after day, working eight hours daily, as do day labourers. No men ever worked harder or more faithfully. We were sixteen in number, officers and sailors working side by side, with no easy berth for anybody. Our main food supply was only sufficient to last three months longer. We were accordingly put on reduced rations, but we had a plentiful supply of seal and penguin meat and were adding to the larder every day the game coming into our new canal. We ate ravenously, and were contented with the fishy penguin steaks, developing strength and enthusiasm with the increased length of the canal.

January 23.—We are still hard at work at the channel for the release of the Belgica. Every man is still putting in eight hours daily on the work except the cook, and he is working twenty hours a day in doing his own work and that of the cabin-boy and steward. The work is proceeding nobly, so quickly and so perfectly as to surpass all expectation. This can only be explained by the cheerful manner and manly vigour with which every man is at work. The men need no urging, no special direction, no superintendence. Given a plan and system of action, they arrange themselves and work with an effort almost superhuman. The Commandant, the captain, the first officer, the meteorologist, zoölogist, and the doctor are all shoulder to shoulder with the sailors, and occupied at the same work. The meteorologist says, “There simply exists no longer a Commandant, no captain, no officers. We are all ordinary workmen.”

I have had little time to write for one week. Eight hours daily with a heavy saw, and the spine twisted semi-circularly, is not conducive to literary ambitions. It is, however, a capital exercise. Everybody is being hardened to the work and developing ponderous muscles. Our skin is burnt until it has the appearance of the inner surface of boot leather. Our hands, we have found by experience, are more comfortable if not washed, especially with soap, because then they crack and become painful. The result is that we all have a more savage physical appearance than most Indians. But this is of little consequence to us. There are no ladies here to arouse the sleeping vanity which we all once possessed, and our one ambition is to free the ship. This now seems quite certain. We eat like bears the meat of seals and penguins twice daily, disposing of three, four, and five steaks each. We find time and gastric capacity for no less than seven meals daily. All work was stopped Sunday morning at 4 A.M., and it began again Monday, at 8 A.M.; during that time we slept no less than thirty-six hours, and twelve hours is about an average of our daily sleep with the channel work. Before the canal was begun we could barely sleep eight hours.

By the first of February we had extended our canal to within one hundred feet of the Belgica, but the ice which remained to be cut was from six to seven feet in depth, and of a consistency so hard that the saws barely made an impression upon it. In one spot we sawed eight hours and cut less than five feet. While we were busily occupied in devising new plans to cut this ice, the wind changed and altered the drift of the ice, bringing a strong pressure on a tongue of the floe, which caused a fracture contiguous to our canal, around the bark and through the remaining ice to the edge. This new crevasse opened, and in so doing, the new floe drifted, partly closing our canal. This sudden and unexpected change, before our canal was completed, brought a look of disappointment and despair to every face. Now our prospective way of retreat was not only useless, but our position was such that the Belgica was subjected to dangerous pressure. To relieve this pressure we cut an oblong concavity in the body of the main floe with the idea of taking the vessel to this as a harbour. In this effort we succeeded on the evening of the thirteenth, but our canal was so effectually closed by new ice and the pressure of neighbouring floes, that we could not escape. On the morning of the fourteenth, the wind again changed. There was a general expansion of the pack, leaving wide open leads on all sides, and our canal again widened. We lost no time in steaming out. No body of men were ever happier than the officers and crew of the Belgica as the good old ship thumped the edge of the ice which had held her a prisoner for nearly a year.

Our supply of provisions did not permit a continuation of the campaign, and after all our mission was about fulfilled. Accordingly we headed northward in the most direct manner for the open sea. In two days we pushed, through closely packed ice, twenty miles northward, and then we entered a zone of the pack where the ice was broken into small pieces and closely pressed by an almost continuous line of icebergs. Beyond the bergs there was a dark blue-black sky which, after a time, we recognised as a water sky, indicating that under it there was the open ice-free Pacific. Here, within sight of the open sea, we were again imprisoned by the closely packed ice for thirty days, but at last, when we had almost abandoned all hope of escape and were preparing for work during a second winter night, a gentle southerly wind drove us with the sea ice out beyond the line of icebergs, and then we were free to seek the world of life in our own way. We left the pack-ice in latitude 70° 45′ south, longitude 103° west, and then headed for Cape Horn.