The Pandora was bought from the Navy Department by Captain Allen Young, and specially fitted out by him for Arctic navigation. This was no small matter. Although built for a gunboat, she had to be considerably strengthened. Heavy iron beams and knees were put in amidships, to increase her resisting powers to a squeeze or “nip” in the ice; her hull was enveloped in an outer casing of American elm four and a half inches thick, to strengthen her sides; her bows were encased in solid iron. These changes, while injuring her sailing qualities somewhat, enabled her to work her way among ice, where an ordinary ship would be crushed like an egg-shell. She was a small barque-rigged vessel, of 438 tons register, with steam-power which could on emergencies be worked up to 200 horse-power. The crew and officers numbered thirty men, all told. She was provisioned for eighteen months.
“The promoters of our expedition,” says Mr. J. A. MacGahan, who accompanied it as correspondent of the New York Herald, and has since collected his notes in a most interesting [pg 93]book,[14] “were Captain Allen Young, on whom fell the principal burden and expense; Mr. James Gordon Bennett, whom I had the honour to represent; Lieutenant Innes Lillingston, R.N., who went as second in command; and the late Lady Franklin. She had insisted on contributing to the expenses of the expedition, almost against Captain Young’s wishes, who felt by no means confident of doing anything that would entitle him to accept her willing contribution.” It will be remembered that Captain Young had been navigating officer with the memorable McClintock expedition in 1857-9, and that during that time he had made many perilous sledge-journeys. A representative of the Dutch royal navy, Lieutenant Beynen, accompanied them, and was sent out by his Government to report on the expedition, and gain experience in Arctic navigation. Probably, at some future time Holland may resume the thread of Arctic exploration where it was dropped by Barentz, the old Dutch navigator, 300 years ago.
On the morning of the 28th of July they arrived in sight of Cape Farewell, and were surrounded on all sides by a field of floating ice. The horizon was white with it, while near the ships great pieces, of every imaginable shape and size, went drifting by in dangerous proximity. There were old castles with broken ruined towers, battlements, and loopholes; castellated fortresses; cathedrals with fantastic Gothic carving, and delicate tracery, and triumphal arches. The narrator says that the animal and vegetable kingdoms were repre[pg 94]sented by huge mushrooms with broad drooping tops, supported on a single slender stem, and great masses of ice-foliage that crowned groups of beautifully-carved columns, like immense bread-fruit trees, covered with ice. There were swans with long slender necks gracefully poised in the water; there were dragons, lions, eagles; in short, almost every fantastic form that could be imagined, sparkling and gleaming in the bright morning sun. In the path of the vessel great flat pieces, or floes, presented themselves, and grew closer and thicker together, with but very narrow channels of water between them. At last they came to a place where there was no passage at all, unless they went two or three miles out of their route.
Toms, the old gunner, who was out with Captain Young in the Fox, was on the bridge conducting the vessel’s course, and instead of going around they drove straight at the floe. What had been taken by some on board for a solid field of ice was in reality two large floes joined together at one spot, and thus forming a narrow isthmus only a few feet wide. It was this isthmus that old Toms was going to charge. The wind in the course of the morning had sprung up from the east, and they had it, consequently, on the starboard quarter. The Pandora was coming smoothly along under reefed topsails, at the rate of about five knots. In a moment her prow plunged into the ice with the force of a battering-ram. There was a loud crash; the ship quivered and shook; the masts, with the sails pulling at them, bent and creaked; the ice rolled up before her in great blocks, that fell splashing in the water, and the Pandora stopped quite still for the moment, completely jammed. But it was for a moment only. Her sharp iron prow had quite demolished the neck of ice, and it only remained to squeeze herself between the floes into clear water beyond. She wriggled through like an eel, and then shot gaily forward, as though eager for another encounter.
“That was rather a hard bump, Toms, wasn’t it?” said somebody.
“Oh, bless you! that’s nothing,” replied the old sea-dog, with a smile. “We’ll have harder ones nor that before we gets through the north-west passage.” And so they did, as the narrative abundantly shows.
The seals, with their round smooth heads just barely above the surface, are described as looking like plum-puddings floating in the water. As they had been living on salt provisions for twenty days, a great longing for fresh meat came over them. Seal’s liver with bacon is said to form an excellent dish. On one occasion they had nearly killed a seal, when a man was sent after it to finish the business. His weight, when he arrived on the floe, broke the ice, and both fell in together. The seal was lost, but happily the sailor was rescued. Later they were more successful. The officers took to the seal-flesh most kindly, but the sailors were by far too dainty to feed on such unusual food. It is a curious fact that men on Arctic expeditions will often refuse to touch seal or walrus meat, as well as preserved or tinned beef and mutton. The result is the scurvy, which often enough proves fatal.
Captain Young, on the way up to Ivigtut, a little Danish settlement on the west coast of Greenland, brought his vessel alongside a large floe on which five seals were observed, apparently asleep. Thirty gun-barrels were soon levelled on the hapless animals, which lay quite still as the ship came up, apparently unconscious of their danger. [pg 95]As about two hundred rounds were fired, and yet three of the seals got away, their bravado was partially excusable. One of those killed was perfectly riddled with shot. This animal takes a great deal of killing unless hit exactly in the brain. Soon the ship was moored to the floe, and the officers and men were out to secure their game. On this floating island of ice they found a little lake of water, and having been on short allowance for some days, they hailed it with delight. They took a long drink first of all, then a run over the island and a good roll in the snow, as pleased as schoolboys out for a holiday. After this the ship was watered, amid a great amount of fun and frolic, everybody being so glad to stretch their legs. At Ivigtut the officers went on shore to visit the few Danes of the colony while the vessel was being coaled, and an amusing account is given of the hospitality extended to them. The chronicler mentions very particularly an insinuating drink called “banko,” which was ordinarily mingled with layers of sherry, and sometimes claret and sherry. It had a mild, pleasant taste, quite disproportionate to the powerful effects it produced. The governor had entertained the officers of the Tigress when she came here in search of the crew of the Polaris, Captain Hall’s vessel, and they had also drunk banko punch till some of them had been observed to stir it up with their cigars for tea-spoons, and then to express astonishment at the cigars appearing damp! It is at this settlement that the kryolite mines are worked by a Danish company. The mineral is used for a variety of purposes, but principally for making soda, and in the United States for preparing aluminium. McClintock’s little steam yacht, the Fox, so celebrated in Arctic history in connection with the Franklin search, is now in the employ of this Company.
The Greenland coasts at this season are described as beautiful in the extreme, a broken, serrated line of high, rugged mountains rising abruptly out of the water to a height of 3,000 feet. Over these the sun and atmosphere combine to produce the most fantastic effects of colour, while ever and anon glimpses of that mighty sea of ice which has overwhelmed Greenland are to be caught. Captain Young, in his progress up the coasts was met by several kyacks—skin canoes—whose occupants had travelled, or rather voyaged, fifteen miles at sea merely to barter their fish for tobacco, biscuit, or coffee. “Imagine a man getting into a canoe and paddling across the English Channel from Dover to Boulogne or Calais in order to sell half-a-dozen trout!” They were thoroughly drenched with the water dashing over them, but had very little in the kyacks, so closely does the skin jacket they wear fit the round hole in the top of the canoe. They were rewarded with a glass of rum, and sold about fifty-five pounds of delicious fish for half a pound of tobacco and a couple of dozen small sea biscuits.
