Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

FRANZ JOSEF FIORD

In 1610, Poole, finding that he could not land on Bear Island owing to the ice, stood away to the north-west, reached Spitsbergen, and worked along the western side to Hakluyt Headland, where the ice barred further advance. On his way up and down the coast he gave many of the capes and bays the names they still bear, and generally did so well that on his return he was put in the place of Hudson, who had left the service two years before, and made a sort of special commissioner by the Muscovy Company "for certain years upon a stipend certain" to make further discoveries round Spitsbergen and to ascertain whether there was an open sea further northward than had already been found. In addition to searching for the open polar sea, he was to convoy the Mary Margaret, in which were six Biscayners "expert in the killing of the whale," to Bear Island, and thence to Whale Bay in Spitsbergen. In short, Poole was to start the British whaling trade, the Mary Margaret being the first British vessel to be employed in that lucrative but hazardous occupation; and she was under the command of Thomas Edge, whose name is borne by Edge's Island.

The beginning was so promising that in 1613, two years afterwards, a fleet of seven vessels went out to take part in the fishery and clear away the foreigners who had come to share in the good fortune; the company claiming the islands on the ground of their purely imaginary discovery by Willoughby, the Dutch resting their claim on the real discovery by Van Heemskerck. In this fleet as chief pilot was William Baffin—his second recorded voyage. By him, who as usual kept his eyes open, we have the first description of the Spitsbergen glaciers. He was at the time—the 29th of July—in Green Harbour in Ice Fjord. "One thing more I observed," he says, "in this harbour which I have thought good also to set down. Purposing on a time to walk towards the mountains, I, and two more of my company, ascended up a long plain hill, as we supposed it to be; but having gone a while upon it, we perceived it to be ice. Notwithstanding we proceeded higher up, about the length of half a mile, and as we went saw many deep rifts or gutters on the land of ice, which were cracked down through to the ground, or, at the least, an exceeding great depth; as we might well perceive by hearing the snow water run below, as it does oftentimes in a brook whose current is somewhat opposed with little stones. But for better satisfaction I brake down some pieces of ice with a staff I had in my hand, which in their falling made a noise on each side much like to a piece of glass thrown down the well within Dover Castle, whereby we did estimate the thickness or height of this ice to be thirty fathoms. This huge ice, in my opinion, is nothing but snow, which from time to time has for the most part been driven off the mountains; and so continuing and increasing all the time of winter (which may be counted three-quarters of the year) cannot possibly be consumed with the thaw of so short a summer, but is only a little dissolved to moisture, whereby it becomes more compact, and with the quick succeeding frost is congealed to a firm ice."

Next year he was out again in the Thomasine, one of a fleet of thirteen vessels, and in endeavouring to pass to the north-east, reached Wijde Bay, where at the point of the beach at the entrance he "set up a cross and nailed a sixpence thereon with the king's arms," probably the neatest property mark in history. Thence he went on to the entrance to Hinlopen Strait, completing the journey along the north of the main island. It was on this voyage that he endeavoured to find his longitudes by observing the moon, for Baffin was the first who attempted to take a lunar at sea.

Year by year the fishery increased, and the whale fishers multiplied as if the sea were a goldfield, the monopoly being respected until 1618, when the Dutch, who had all along prospered more than the rest, proved too strong for the English, and a compromise was arrived at by which the different harbours were allotted to the different nations for the processes necessary in the preparation of the whale products for shipment. But it was purely a summer industry. There was no colony, and it did not seem as though there would be one, for no man willing to winter in the place could be found. Vainly were rewards offered to those who would venture. In the north was the ever-present barrier of ice, more distant some years than others, but always there to come south and hold the islands in its grip when the fishery was over, and those who came early and those who stayed late saw enough of the wintry landscape to make them doubt if life were possible under such conditions.

Then the idea, not new to Englishmen, that colonies should be started by criminals, was acted upon, and the Muscovy Company procured the reprieve of a batch of prisoners under sentence of death and landed them in Spitsbergen under promise of a free pardon, a handsome reward, and full provisions and suitable clothes if they would remain there for a continuous twelve months. But, as the ship that brought them was preparing to return to London, "they conceived such a horror and inward fear in their hearts" that they besought the captain to take them back that they might be hanged rather than perish amid such desolation; and the captain "being a pitiful and a merciful gentleman, would not by force constrain them to stay," and brought them home again, when the company—who could do no less—procured them a pardon. One captain—of a different disposition—had left nine men behind him, all of whom perished miserably; and another, in 1630, left eight others, apparently through causes beyond his control, whose adventure was to form one of the most interesting episodes in Arctic story.

It was on the 15th of August in that year that the Salutation sent Edward Pellham and his seven companions ashore to kill reindeer for the ship's provisions on her voyage home. Taking with them two dogs, a snap-hance, two lances, and a tinder-box, they landed near Black Point, between Green Harbour and Bell Sound, and, "laying fourteen tall and nimble deer along," camped for the night. During the night the weather changed and brought in the ice between the shore and the ship, and in the morning the ship had gone. The boat's crew made for Green Harbour, thinking she would put in there to pick them up, but she failed to appear, being due to leave the country in three days, and after a fruitless attempt to catch her at Bell Sound, they eventually took up their quarters there on the 3rd of September.

Here was one of the so-called tents of the whale-fishers. "This," says Pellham, "which we call the tent, was a kind of house built of timber and boards very substantially, and covered with Flemish tiles, by the men of which nation it had in the time of their trading thither been built. Four-score foot long it is and in breadth fifty. The use of it was for the coopers, employed for the service of the company, to work, lodge, and live in, all the while they make casks for the putting up of the train oil." As this was too large for their comfort, they very sensibly built another within it. "Taking down another lesser tent therefore (built for the landmen hard by the other, wherein they lay whilst they made their oil), from thence we fetched our materials. That tent furnished us with one hundred and fifty deal boards, besides posts or stanchions and rafters. From three chimneys of the furnaces wherein they used to boil their oil, we brought a thousand bricks: there also found we three hogsheads of very fine lime, of which stuff we also fetched another hogshead from Bottle Cove, on the other side of the sound, some three leagues distant. Mingling this lime with the sand of the sea-shore, we made very excellent good morter for the laying of our bricks: falling to work thereon, the weather was so extreme cold as that we were fain to make two fires to keep our morter from freezing. William Fakely and myself, undertaking the masonry, began to raise a wall of one brick thickness against the inner planks of the side of the tent. Whilst we were laying of these bricks, the rest of our company were otherwise employed every one of them: some in taking them down, others in making of them clean and in bringing them in baskets into the tent. Some in making morter, and hewing of boards to build the other side withal, and two others all the while in flaying of our venison. And thus, having built the two outermost sides of the tent with bricks and morter, and our bricks now almost spent, we were enforced to build the two other sides with boards; and that in this manner. First we nailed our deal boards on one side of the post or stanchion to the thickness of one foot: and on the other side in like manner: and so filling up the hollow place with sand, it became so tight and warm as not the least breath of air could possibly annoy us. Our chimney's vent was into the greater tent, being the breadth of one deal board and four foot long. The length of this our tent was twenty foot and the breadth sixteen; the height ten; our ceiling being deal boards five or six times double, the middle of one joining so close to the shut of the other that no wind could possibly get between. As for our door, besides our making it so close as possibly it could shut; we lined it moreover with a bed that we found lying there, which came over both the opening and the shutting of it. As for windows, we made none at all, so that our light we brought in through the greater tent, by removing two or three tiles in the eaves, which light came to us through the vent of our chimney. Our next work was to set up four cabins, billeting ourselves two and two in a cabin. Our beds were the deer skins dried, which we found to be extraordinary warm, and a very comfortable kind of lodging to us in our distress."

For fuel they knocked to pieces seven old boats left ashore by the ships, storing the wood over the beams of the tent so as to make a sort of floor protecting the interior from snow driven in under the tiles, and, in addition, they broke up a number of empty casks. To make the wood last as long as possible they hit upon a device for keeping the fire in—"when we raked up our fire at night, with a good quantity of ashes and of embers, we put into the midst of it a piece of elm wood, where, after it had lain sixteen hours, we at our opening of it found great store of fire upon it, whereupon we made a common practice of it ever after: it never went out in eight months together, or thereabouts."

Upon the 12th of September a small quantity of drift ice came into the sound, on a piece of which they found two walruses asleep, when "William Fakely being ready with his harping iron, heaved it so strongly into the old one that he quite disturbed her of her rest: after which, she, receiving five or six thrusts with our lances, fell into a sounder sleep of death." The young one, refusing to leave her mother, was also killed; and a week afterwards another walrus fell a victim; but even with these the store of provisions was inadequate. To make the food last, they put themselves on an allowance of one good meal a day, except on Wednesdays and Fridays which were fasting days devoted to whale sundries—"a very loathsome meat," says Pellham, in brackets—later on, for four days in the week they fed upon "the unsavoury and mouldy fritters, and the other three we feasted it with bear and venison." "But," continues the narrative, "as if it were not enough for us to want meat, we now began to want light also; all our meals proved suppers now, for little light could we see; even the glorious sun (as if unwilling to behold our miseries) masking his lovely face from us, under the sable veil of coal-black night."But they were equal to the emergency. "At the beginning of this darksome, irksome time, we sought some means of preserving light amongst us; finding therefore a piece of sheet lead over a seam of one of the coolers, that we ripped off and made three lamps of it, which, maintaining with oil that we found in the coopers' tent, and rope-yarn serving us instead of candle-wicks, we kept them continually burning."