On July 18, 1879, the Vega was set free, and on the 20th she rounded the East Cape, thus being the first ship to accomplish the difficult passage in a single journey.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE STORY OF THE “JEANNETTE”
There is a double interest attached to the voyage of the Jeannette, for not only is the story itself one of the most terrible tragedies in the whole history of Arctic exploration, but, as will be seen later, it was the fate of the unlucky ship which prompted Nansen to formulate his plan for reaching the Pole by forcing his ship into the ice, and allowing her to drift north with the current.
The Jeannette expedition owed its inception to Mr J. G. Bennett of the New York Herald, who had frequently shown his interest in Arctic research by equipping and sending out vessels at his own expense. He purchased the Pandora from Sir Allen Young, renamed her the Jeannette, and placed her under the command of Commander De Long, who had been a member of the relief expedition sent out to the succour of the Polaris. Admirably fitted out in every detail both for navigation and for scientific research, the Jeannette set sail from San Francisco on July 8, 1879. After a brief call at St Michael’s, where she took on board sledges, furs, dogs, and two Alaskan dog-drivers, she set sail once more and made for Behring Strait.
The plan of the expedition was to spend the winter at Wrangel Land, and then to push on northward, if possible to the Pole. Unfortunately for De Long’s arrangements, however, the Wrangel Land of the geographers of the day had no real existence, and he was destined never to reach it. For over a century it had been held, on the strength of Chukche reports, that a vast continent existed to the north of Asia, which extended right across the Pole to Greenland. No less an authority than the great Petermann himself believed in it, and the reports of the American whaler, Thomas Long, who discovered Wrangel Land in 1867, and of other whalers who followed him, tended to confirm this theory, for the newly discovered land seemed to be of considerable extent. Accordingly, De Long had every reason to suppose that here he would find comfortable quarters for the winter.
He was very soon to be disillusioned, however, for before he was within a hundred miles of the land, the Jeannette was caught in the ice, and from that time onward her story bore a painful resemblance to that of the Tegetthoff, without any of its compensations. Drifted constantly westward by the ever-moving pack, now nipped till her seams almost sprang apart, now threatened with a terrible destruction by the frozen waves of ice which rolled down upon her, she was before long reduced to a most pitiable plight. Here is the description penned by her chief engineer, G. W. Melville, of an event which was of almost daily occurrence:—
“It was observed that, during the continuance of the wind, the whole body of ice moved evenly before it; but, when it subsided, the mass that had been put in motion crowded and tumbled upon the far-off floes at rest, piling tumultuously upward in a manner terrific to behold. It was in one of these oppressive intervals succeeding a gale, when the roar and crash of the distant masses could be distinctly heard, that the floe in which the Jeannette was embedded began splitting in all directions. The placid and almost level surface of ice suddenly heaved and swelled into great hills, buzzing and wheezing dolefully. Giant blocks pitched and rolled as though controlled by invisible hands; and the vast compressing bodies shrieked a shrill and horrible song that curdled the blood. On came the frozen waves, nearer and nearer. Seams ran and rattled across them with a thundering boom, while silent and awestruck, we watched their terrible progress. Sunk in an amphitheatre about five-eighths of a mile in diameter lay the ship, the bank of moving ice puffed in places to a height of 50 feet, gradually enclosing her on all sides. Preparations were made for her abandonment; but—what then? If the mighty circle continued to decrease, escape was hopeless, death inevitable. To think of clambering up the slippery sides of the rolling mass would be equal folly with an attempt to scale the falling waters of Niagara.”
Summer came on the heels of winter, but it brought no prospect of release to the wretched crew of the Jeannette. They had already drifted past the northern coast of Wrangel Land, and had found it to be nothing but an island of moderate dimensions, and there were no signs of that mythical continent upon which De Long had been pinning his hopes. The new year found them still held in the relentless grip of the pack. Here is the comment upon his situation which De Long penned in his diary:—
“People beset in the pack before always drifted somewhere to some land; but we are drifting about like a modern Flying Dutchman, never getting anywhere, but always restless and on the move. Coals are burning up, food is being consumed, the pumps are still going, and thirty-three people are wearing out their lives and souls like men doomed to imprisonment for life. If this next summer comes and goes like the last without any result, what reasonable mind can be patient in contemplation of the future?”
On May 16 a slight diversion was caused by the discovery of two islands, which they named Jeannette Island and Henriette Island. De Long started off on a sledging expedition to them, and, like many other Arctic explorers, had great trouble with his dogs, which, in accordance with the traditions of their race, refused to face the open water, and had to be dragged, sledges and all, through every lead that intersected their path. “There is no greater violence done the eternal cause of truth,” says the commander, “than in those pictures where the Eskimos are represented as calmly sitting in shoe-shaped sledges with the lashes of their long whips trailing gracefully behind, while the dogs dash in full cry and perfect unison across smooth expanses of snow. If depicted ‘true to nature,’ the scene changes its aspect considerably; it is quite as full of action, but not of progress. A pandemonium of horrors—dogs yelling, barking, snapping, and fighting; the leaders in the rear and the wheelers in the middle, all tied in a knot, and as hopelessly tangled up as a basketful of eels.”