[AUSTRIAN ARCTIC DISCOVERY.]
At a time when the attention of this country is again being specially directed to the question of Arctic exploration, it becomes interesting to take note of what other nations have recently achieved in the region of Polar discovery. It is not too much to say that it is with justice that England considers herself in the van as yet of Arctic enterprise; but we have little hesitation in affirming that the expedition the story of which is told in the two volumes under notice,[A] is worthy of ranking side by side with the most memorable of our own voyages of discovery; and when it is considered that the attention of Austria has but very recently been turned to the subject of Arctic exploration, the amount of success achieved by that nation is all the more creditable.
It deserves to be stated that the expedition of the Tegetthoff was partly due to the munificence of a private individual, the Count Wilczek, who contributed the sum of forty thousand florins towards its equipment, besides encouraging the enterprise by every means in his power. The Tegetthoff was a screw-steamer of two hundred and twenty tons burden, built expressly for this expedition, with engines of one hundred horse-power, and fitted out for a voyage of two-and-a-half years' duration. Her commander was Captain Weyprecht, and with him was associated, as colleague and as director of the land operations, the writer of these volumes, Lieutenant Payer. The crew, officers and men included, numbered only twenty-four. The ideal object of the voyage was the north-east passage; its direct and expressed aim, the exploration of the seas and lands lying to the north-east of Novaya Zemlya. Where the ship was to winter was not definitely fixed; and a return home by way of Behring's Strait was, though improbable, a possibility.
The Tegetthoff left Bremerhaven on June 13, 1872, and Tromsoe a month later. Immediately previous to the voyage of the Tegetthoff, a preliminary voyage of reconnaissance had been made in a small coasting-ship by Count Wilczek, who had found the sea between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya almost entirely open and free from ice. It was hoped, therefore, that the water would be in the same condition when the Tegetthoff crossed it, and that where a small sailing-vessel had gone so far, a fully equipped steam-ship might penetrate almost indefinitely. But to the latter vessel the Spitzbergen seas presented a wholly dissimilar aspect. The ice was first encountered in seventy-four degrees—much farther south than was expected; and from that time it never entirely left the vessel.
Off Cape Nassau the expedition was overtaken by Count Wilczek, who had followed in the Isbjörn, the small sailing-ship in which the preliminary pioneering voyage had been made, with the object of placing a depot for the Tegetthoff on the north coast of Novaya Zemlya. Very shortly after the two vessels separated, the Tegetthoff was fairly beset and hemmed in by the ice in latitude 76° 22′ N., longitude 63° 3′ E. The good ship had made her first and her last voyage, for from that icy grip she was destined never to get free.
Long and desperate were the efforts made by officers and men to release the ship. Sawing the ice and blasting with powder, both above and below the surface, alike proved fruitless. Fissures that had been made with great toil, froze again as soon as made; and when the vessel tried to steam against the ice, it was unable so much as to set the floe in motion. The Tegetthoff was now entirely at the mercy of the terrible foe by which she was beset on all sides.
It might be supposed by such as are only imperfectly acquainted with the Arctic regions, that the ship thus firmly locked in the ice would be safe at least from immediate danger. But this was very far from being the case. For some time indeed, the ice by which she was encircled remained motionless, but this condition of things was not to last. The 13th of October—a Sunday—was a day ominous for the fate of the expedition. In the morning, the ice-floe burst across immediately beneath the ship. Officers and crew rushed on deck to behold the ice heaving around them on all sides. The aft-part of the vessel was already nipped and pressed; and the rudder, which was the first to meet the shock, trembled and groaned. The crew were unable to unship it by reason of its weight, and had to be satisfied with lashing it securely. All then leaped out upon the ice, and as quickly as possible got on board whatever articles had been left lying outside the ship. Next, the fissures in the floe were hastily bound together with ice-anchors and ropes, and filled up with snow, in the hope that they might freeze over, though it was felt that at any moment a sudden heave might undo the whole work.
During all this time meanwhile, the ice was tossing and trembling from its bases, while the air reverberated with the most awful sounds, as of shrieks and howls. Mountains lifted themselves suddenly above the level surface, and the low groan that rose from the depths grew into a deep rumble, and finally increased to a roar of fury with the volume of myriad voices. Uproar and confusion ruled supreme, and destruction seemed every moment drawing nearer the ship as the ice crashed against her. Now huge blocks reared fathoms high above the vessel, forcing themselves against her hull; now masses fell down beneath her, until they began to raise her above the level of the sea, the explorers being in readiness at any moment to abandon the ship, in the event of her being crushed. The pressure approached its height at about noon, at which time the vessel was straining and groaning in every plank and spar; but the crisis had now been reached, the pressure abated, the Tegetthoff righted herself, and all immediate danger at least, was past.
But the above terrible experience indicated to the explorers what they might at any time expect. Henceforward every noise in the ice was heard by them with apprehension and fear. It was worse than living within the continual influence of earthquakes. At night, officers and men always slept with their clothes on, ready to rush on deck whenever the ice was heard beginning to groan and heave; and this state of things continued for one hundred and thirty days, the whole of that period being one of almost constant darkness.