Thus ended one of the most remarkable escapes on record. For five months the little band of shipwrecked men and women had drifted at the mercy of the Arctic ice-pack, a distance of 1300 miles.
CHAPTER XIV
Captain Thomas Long.—Discovery of Wrangell Land.—Captain Carlsen and Captain Palliser sail across the Sea of Kara.—Captain Johannsen circumnavigates Nova Zembla.—First German expedition.—Second German expedition.—Germania, Captain Koldewey commanding.—Hansa, Captain Hegemann.—Departure from Bremen.—Crossing the Arctic Circle.—Island of Jan Mayen.—The ice line.—Separation from the Hansa.—Adrift on the ice-floe.—Winter.—Final rescue.—Germania beset.—Winter.—Sledging parties.—Lieutenant Payer’s remarkable journey.—77° 1´ north latitude.—Return of the Germania.
CAPTAIN THOMAS LONG
Other important discoveries followed the journeys of Dr. Hayes and Captain Hall, including that of Captain Thomas Long, an American whaler, who in 1867 discovered “a mountainous country of considerable extent in the Polar Ocean, beyond Behring Strait,” supposed at that time to be the western prolongation of Plover Island.
The same year Captain Carlsen and Captain Palliser sailed across the generally inaccessible Sea of Kara to the mouths of the Obi,—and Captain Johannsen succeeded in circumnavigating the whole archipelago of Nova Zembla. In 1868 the first German north polar expedition was fitted out through the exertions of the scientist Dr. A. Peterman of Gotha. The yacht Greenland, commanded by Captain Koldewey, sailed to Spitzbergen, reaching 84° 05´ N. off the north coast, and, passing down Henlopen Strait, sighted Wiche Land, returning home the fall of the same year.
SECOND GERMAN EXPEDITION
In 1869 and 1870, the Germans made a more successful attempt to enter the lists of Arctic discovery by exploring a considerable part of the previously unvisited coast of East Greenland. The ship Germania was chosen for this purpose, being expressly adapted for ice navigation; the Hansa of nearly the same size was to accompany her. Captain Karl Koldewey and Captain Fr. Hegemann were first and second in command respectively.
“The departure of the expedition from Bremerhaven,” writes Captain Koldewey, “took place on the 15th of June, 1869, in the presence of his Majesty, the King of Prussia, whose warm interest in this great national undertaking showed itself in this solemn hour in a manner never to be forgotten. Amongst the numerous gentlemen in attendance on his Majesty were his Royal Highness, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Schwerin, Count Bismarck, the Minister of War and Marine, von Roon, General von Moltke, and Vice-Admiral Jackman. The ships lay at the entrance of the new harbour just outside the sluice. The king, having been introduced to the scientific gentlemen and the commander of the expedition, and having greeted them with a hearty shake of the hand, the President of the Bremen Committee, Herr A. G. Mosle, requested his Majesty’s permission to speak a few parting words; and in an earnest and impressive manner the speaker referred to the greatness and importance of the object, the self-denial, difficulties, and dangers which lay before them, but which they all willingly braved for the honour of their native land, for the honour of the German navy, and of German science.”