CHAPTER I
BUILDING A POLAR SHIP
Of all the special tools that a polar explorer requires for the successful prosecution of his work, his ship stands first and preëminent. This is the tool which is to place him and his party and supplies within striking distance of his goal, the tool without which he can accomplish nothing.
The builder of a polar ship should live with his craft from the time the keel is laid till she is complete and has made her trial trips. He should see that every timber that goes into her is sound, tough, and seasoned. He should see the tests of iron for her bolts, and know that the iron is tough and homogeneous. He should see the bolts driven and upset, or the nuts set tight, as the case may be. He should direct the scarfing and the notching of the timbers in order to secure the maximum strength and binding grip. He should watch the calking and the tarring like a hawk, and see that no place is slighted, that, when it is done, he may have that delight of a seaman, a tight ship. He should pass sleepless nights going over again and again the calculations for his engines and boilers; and in checking and rechecking weights, dimensions, displacement.
In this way, by following every step of the ship’s growth, and sitting up night after night studying every detail with a view to improving and strengthening it, when the work is done, he will know every inch of his ship inside and out. Later, in the grim, protracted fight with the ice, he will feel in regard to his ship as Sullivan and Willard each felt on the eve of a great battle regarding his powerful body, that it can be depended upon absolutely. It is a wonderfully satisfactory feeling, and it counts far toward success.
A quite general idea regarding the work of a polar ship seems to be that such a ship breaks up the ice of one season, like river and harbor ice-breakers. As a matter of fact, smooth, unbroken ice of uniform thickness is rarely found in Northern voyages except in Melville Bay, or at the end of the season, when new ice is forming. The chief work of a polar ship is to push and pry and wedge its way in and out among cakes and floes ranging from three to twenty or fifty and even up to one hundred and twenty feet thick. A passage cannot be smashed through such ice, and nothing remains but to squeeze and twist and dodge through it. A hundred Yermaks (the powerful Russian ice-breaker) merged in one could accomplish nothing in such ice.
BEGINNING OF THE “ROOSEVELT”
First frame erected, ship now under construction, Bucksport, Maine, October, 1904
MIDSHIPS CROSS SECTION OF THE “ROOSEVELT”