Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

On Cook's death at Hawaii Captain Charles Clerke, of the accompanying vessel H.M.S. Discovery, took command of the expedition and carried out Cook's intention of making another effort during the following year. The ice conditions were, however, worse. The two ships found the ice block further south, and as impenetrable as before, and Clerke's highest was 70° 33´ on the American side, on the 19th of July. As it was Cook's last voyage, so it was Clerke's. He was in a bad way with consumption, and continued his work in the north, though, under the special circumstances and being in command, he could at any time have given up the obviously hopeless attempt and left for a more genial climate, in which he would at least have had a chance of longer life; but, remaining at his duty, he died at sea on the 22nd of August, and was buried at Petropaulovsk.

FUR SEALS AT SEA

Captain Beechey, in H.M.S. Blossom, passed through the strait in 1826 when sent north from the Pacific with a view of meeting with his old commander, Franklin, then on his second land journey. Beechey took the ship to Icy Cape, whence on the 17th of August he despatched the barge under the master, Thomas Elson, to survey the coast to the north-eastward as far as he could go in three weeks, there and back. Elson reached his farthest on the 25th at a spit of land jutting out several miles from the more regular coast-line, the width of the neck not exceeding a mile and a half, broadest at its extremity, with several frozen lakes on it, and a village, whose natives proved so troublesome that it was thought unsafe to land. This was Point Barrow, in 71° 23´ 31˝, longitude 156° 21´ 30˝, the northernmost land on the western half of the American continent. To the eastward curved a wide bay—named Elson Bay by Beechey—the shore-line of which joined on to the ice pack that encircled the horizon. Here he was within a hundred and sixty miles of where Franklin had turned back a week before. Though Beechey did not meet Franklin he did most useful work in these parts, for by him the whole coast was surveyed between Point Barrow and Point Rodney, to the south of Prince of Wales Cape.

Franklin was also the cause of the appearance of the next British expedition in the strait. This was in 1848, Captain Henry Kellett, in H.M.S. Herald, with Commander Thomas Moore in H.M.S. Plover, forming the western detachment of the first series of search expeditions. There were three detachments, one to follow the Erebus and Terror from the eastward, another under John Richardson to descend the Mackenzie and search the northern coast, the other coming in from the west to meet the ships should they have made the passage. On this duty the Herald and Plover were hereabouts for three seasons, the Plover wintering, the Herald going south when the navigation closed.

In October, 1826, Beechey had buried a barrel of flour for Franklin on the sandy point of Chamisso Island, ample directions for finding it being cut and painted on the rock, and to call the attention of the party to the spot the name of the Blossom was painted on the cliffs of Puffin Island. When the Herald was at Chamisso Island in 1849 Captain Kellett searched for this flour and found it. A considerable space was cleared round the cask, its chimes were freed, and, only adhering to the sand by the two lower bilge staves, it required the united strength of two boats' crews, with a parbuckle and a large spar as a lever, to free it altogether. The sand was frozen so hard that it emitted sparks with every blow of the pickaxe. The cask itself was perfectly sound and the hoops good, and out of the 336 lb. of flour which it contained, 175 lb. were as sweet and well tasted as any he had with him; so good indeed was it that Captain Kellett gave a dinner party, at which all the pies and puddings were made of this flour.

THE PARKA OF THE ALASKAN INNUITS
(THE SHORTER COAT IS THAT WORN BY THE MEN)

After the dinner party, on the 18th of July, the two vessels started for the north, being joined as soon as they stood from the anchorage by Robert Shedden in his yacht the Nancy Dawson, who at his own initiative had come up from Hong Kong to join in the search. From Wainwright Inlet Kellett sent off the boats under Lieutenant Pullen, two of which made the journey along the northern coast and up the Mackenzie, their crews thence making their way home eastwards to York Factory.

When Kellett was about to commence his observations at the inlet he drew a semicircle on the sand from water's edge to water's edge, and placed the boats' noses between its points. The natives seemed to understand the meaning of this line. Not one of them attempted to overstep it, and they squatted down and remained perfectly quiet and silent. When a stranger arrived they shouted to him, and he no sooner comprehended the directions than he crept rather than walked to the boundary, and squatted among the rest. Afterwards they danced and sang and played football with the seamen—who stood no chance with them at that game—and when they had gone off, after all this good behaviour, it was discovered that they had been picking the pockets of some of the party, one losing a handkerchief, another a glove, and Commander Moore a box of percussion caps.