THE FUNERAL OF CAPTAIN HALL.
The death of Captain Hall threw the command of the Polaris on Captain Buddington. In the second week of November, during a very heavy gale, the vessel dragged her anchors, but at last brought up safely in the lee of a large iceberg aground in the bay. She was made fast to it, and remained in that position for some time. During the winter and spring she was much damaged by the ice, and when she once more floated, in June, leaked badly. After sending out an expedition to Newman’s Bay, during the progress of which one of the boats was crushed like a nutshell by the grinding ice, Captain Buddington determined to sail for the United States. On August 15th the Polaris was in a position so dangerous among the ice that it was deemed necessary to place the boats with provisions on a large level floe, in order to prepare for contingencies. A dark night came on, a gale arose, and the steamer drifted away in an utterly unmanageable condition, her steam-pipes, valves, &c., being frozen up. For hours they could not get up steam on board, while they had little coal, and the boats were on the ice.
The condition of those left in charge of the boats and stores on the ice was apparently [pg 270]desperate. Tyson, the second officer, with the steward, cook, six sailors, and eight Esquimaux, passed a miserable night on the drifting floe. Next morning hope revived in their breasts when they saw the Polaris apparently steaming towards them, and all kinds of attempts were made to attract attention: an india-rubber blanket was hoisted on an oar, but all to no purpose. The steamer altered her course, disappearing behind a point of the land, and eighteen deserted beings were destined to a series of experiences similar to those recorded of the Hansa men. At the Washington investigation, it was shown that the captain had at the time hopes of saving his vessel, which, after all, had to be run ashore on Lyttelton Island, in a sinking condition. As they had the boats and a supply of provisions, he considered their condition better than his own.
The men on the ice did their best under the circumstances, and their experiences were hardly less eventful than those of the Germans in a similar strait. Their food became scarce as the winter advanced, but the Esquimaux were of considerable use to them in catching seals. They passed nearly six months on the drifting ice-floe (from October 15th, 1872, to April 1st, 1873), and when at length they left it, and were rescued by the sealing steamer Tigress, we can well imagine the revulsion of feeling described in their evidence before the Washington committee. Meantime the Polaris herself was ashore on Lyttelton Island, where Buddington, his officers and men, fourteen souls in all, had to pass the winter, fortunately under no great privations, as the stores were saved. They were eventually rescued by the Ravenscraig, a steam-whaler, and later, having been transferred to the whaler Arctic, reached Dundee, and eventually their own homes, in safety. In spite of the perils encountered by both parties, Captain Hall was the only one of the little band who did not live to reach his native land.
The Americans have, therefore, as we have indicated, stuck bravely to the Smith Sound route to the Pole, and a large proportion of English and foreign authorities still favour the same idea.
We have seen the staunch little Fox of M’Clintock’s expedition miraculously escape from the grinding surging ice after a detention of 242 days, any one of which might easily have been the last for its brave company; we have witnessed, in mental vision, the philosophical German crew of the ill-fated Hansa drifting 1,100 miles on their precarious ice-raft, to be saved, every man of them, at last; and we have just seen half of the Polaris men rescued from their peril on the floating ice-field after nearly six months of weary watching. Turn we now to one more example of the dangers of the Arctic seas to find a vessel to all appearance hopelessly encompassed in the ice-drifts, and destined not to make its escape before two long and dreary years had passed away.
When in 1874 the Austro-Hungarian expedition, after a long absence, during which nothing had been heard from it, returned in safety, many fears which had been felt were sensibly allayed; and when the public learned of the difficulties they had encountered and the grand discoveries made, it was generally voted a complete success. This expedition, under Lieutenant Weyprecht of the Navy and Lieutenant Payer of the Engineers—who had already made himself a name as an Arctic explorer in the second German expedition—had been partly organised at the expense of the public, and greatly aided by Count Wilczek, who accompanied it in his yacht as far as Barents Island. A very small steamer—no more [pg 271]than 220 tons—named the Tegethoff, was employed, and among its officers was Captain Carlsen, who it will be remembered, had circumnavigated Spitzbergen some time before, and was the discoverer of the Barents relics; he served in the capacity of ice-master. The crew, all told, only numbered twenty-four men. The expedition sailed from Bremerhaven on June 13th, 1872, provisioned for three years, and was soon among the ice of the north-east. Early in August the vessel became beset in such a manner that progress was next to impossible. “Subsequently,” says Lieutenant Payer, “we regained our liberty, and in latitude 75° N. we reached the open water extending along the coast of Novaya Zemlya. The decrease in temperature and quantity of ice showed, indeed, that the summer of 1872 was the very opposite of that of the year before.” The vessels kept company as far as the low Barents Islands, where the “thick-ribbed ice,” agitated and driven on the coast by winds and gales, stopped their progress for a week. On the 21st of August the Tegethoff got clear, and left her consort, the former steaming slowly towards the north. “Our hopes,” says Payer, “were vain. Night found us encompassed on all sides by ice, and (as it eventually proved) for two long and dreary years! Cheerless and barren of all hope the first year lay before us, and we were not any longer discoverers, but doomed to remain as helpless voyagers on a floe of drifting ice.” This is, so far as is known, the longest period for which a vessel has been ice-encompassed, and the reader will require no assistance to picture the apparently hopeless condition in which they found themselves, with but little prospect of accomplishing anything approaching exploration. With the autumn of 1872 came unusually severe weather, which caused the ice-blocks to re-freeze as soon as they were sawn asunder, and they were utterly unable to extricate the vessel, although every effort was made. On October 13th the ice broke up, and the collisions of and with enormous masses placed them in great danger. They were quite ignorant of their position and where they were drifting. In the sombre darkness of the long Arctic night they had to keep the boats and stores in readiness, as they might have to abandon the vessel at any moment. The floes were constantly uplifted by other ice underneath, but the little Tegethoff proved herself staunch and true. Eventually a rampart of ice was erected about the little vessel, which had to be continually watched and repaired, on account of the damage received from the pressure of surrounding ice. Amidst all these dangers the routine of the ship was admirably kept up. Divine service was observed, and a school established for the crew. The men suffered severely from scurvy and pulmonary complaints during the winter.
In the autumn of 1873 an important discovery was made. “We had,” says Payer, “long ago drifted into a portion of the Arctic sea which had not previously been visited; but in spite of a careful look-out we had not been able hitherto to discover land. It was, therefore, an event of no small importance, when, on the 31st of August, we were surprised by the sudden appearance of a mountainous country, about fourteen miles to the north, which the mist had up till that time concealed from our view.” They had no opportunity of reaching it until the end of October, when a landing was effected in lat. 79° 54′ N., on an island, lying off the mainland, to which they affixed the name of Count Wilczek, to whom the expedition had in great measure owed its existence. Their second Polar night of 125 days prevented any further exploration, but was passed without a recurrence of [pg 272]the dangers they had met the previous winter. Their winter quarters were comparatively safe, and being near the land they obtained a sufficiency of bear-meat, the animals often approaching the ship closely.
