Fatal North
HENDERSON, BRUCE
LIFE IN FULL Fatal North BY BRUCE HENDERSON On June 29, 1871, the first US. expedition to find the North Pole set sail. Under the command of Charles Francis Hall, a self-taught Ohio businessman...
...the more quiet they lay, the warmer they stayed and the less food they could live on...
...Quite an encampment was built: a large igloo for the men, a smaller one for Tyson and meteorologist Frederick Meyer to share since they were the two senior ranking members of the party, a storage hut for the provisions, a cookhouse, and a residence for Joe and Hannah and their daughter...
...They were left with only a few sledge loads of goods that two of the Eskimos had managed to haul well back of the ship onto solid ice...
...One day in their igloo Joe, who had all along kept his rifle and pistol and had not been willing to lend them to Tyson even for hunting, gave him the handgun and ammunition...
...He found, instead, endlessly shifting pack ice...
...What then...
...It had hardly a pound of flesh on its bones—"all hair and tail," as one of the men said—but they ate what there was of it, and picked its bones clean...
...To his dismay, she appeared to be tied up to the bay ice, planning to stay...
...It was snowing at the time, and the wind was blowing so hard that one could not look or even catch a breath to the windward...
...But I must say I never was so tired in my life...
...Seals are very shy, too, and seem to know when they are being watched...
...A windswept sea was running, and before their eyes, piece after piece of their fragile island broke off into the frigid waters...
...They had not gone more than two hundred yards before a gale burst upon them, filling the air with flying snow and lowering visibility to only a few yards...
...I can only advise the men, and have no means of enforcing my authority...
...The ice they were standing on would eventually break up into pieces too small to live upon...
...We give them all we can...
...Their piece of ice was fast between heavy icebergs, which were grounded, and was therefore stationary for the time being...
...My situation is very unpleasant...
...He took account of their provisions...
...If they had to travel in a single boat again to save their lives in treacherous waters, it could be disastrous...
...Furthermore, they would haul only one boat across the floe because two boats would be difficult to take overland such a distance...
...It is natural, no doubt, that they should put confidence in one of their own blood, but they will probably find out that all is not gold that glitters before they get through this adventure...
...The children often cry with hunger...
...September came and went...
...On November 15, five dogs were shot after suffering much from hunger...
...Tyson had never seen the Eskimo hunter afraid of anything, but he was now...
...Mostly, they stayed in their huts, wrapped in skins and furs...
...These ingredients were mixed with brackish water for seasoning and warmed over lamp or fire...
...For the last year nearly they have been allowed to say, do, and take what they pleased...
...When morning came at last, Tyson surveyed their surroundings...
...In this way they were able to drag it back, and managed to do so without damaging the hull...
...some of the mounds were probably thirty feet thick with the flat parts no more than ten or fifteen feet...
...Tyson was disgusted...
...We are all very weak from having to live on such small allowance, and the entire loss of the sun makes all more or less despondent...
...Those working on the ice to save the supplies struggled until they could scarcely stand on their feet...
...they were good men, but have been spoiled on board Polaris...
...With the arrival of December, complete darkness descended upon them...
...There was much discussion about taking the boat and heading to land, which they would then follow down to the Tyson realized if they started off in the hope of reaching Greenland, the result would be the death of all of them...
...She did not lift to the unrelenting forces as much as she would have if she had been of a broader build— "flaring," as the whalers called it—which would have enabled her to rise more with the ice, reducing the pressure on her hull...
...When it cleared, they saw their floe had been driven toward land—the eastern shore of Ellesmere Island was only six miles away New ice had formed between their position and the land, however...
...Under the command of Charles Francis Hall, a self-taught Ohio businessman turned Arctic explorer and enthusiast, a crew of 33, including ten Germans and two Eskimo families, set off for glory and science aboard the USS Polaris, backed by Congress and President Grant to boost national morale...
...You're doing your best," Tyson protested...
...A pair of scales, using shot as weights, was fashioned to measure out portions so there could be no complaints of favoritism...
...By the movement of the ice, I judge we are drifting to the southward.The natives tell me that they saw two bear tracks and five seal holes, but they brought home nothing...
...Shortly after Tyson launched to pick up stragglers, other crewmen took the second boat out...
...On the morning of October 21, Joe was hunting on the ice when he saw one end of their lost boat nearly buried in snow on a nearby chunk of ice floe, from which it seemed possible to recover the vessel...
...On November 21, Joe and Hans saw bear tracks and seal holes...
...Polaris was keeping down by the land on the west shore...
...He called the rest of the men awake, advising them to go for the second boat before it was too late...
...How would they do it without ship or shelter or sufficient food to get them through the long, dark winter...
...Hans had signed on with the expedition as hunter and dog driver, and he was capable in both regards...
...So keen were the appetites of the party that the seal meat and skin was eaten uncooked, with the hair still on...
...He yelled to Buddington of the new danger and insisted everyone on the floe be taken back on board as quickly as possible, along with the two boats set on the ice earlier for emergency...
...It turned out there was no new leak, and the power pumps were holding their own...
...It had snowed during the night, but that was nothing...
...but I don't know how it will be now...
...It was too thick to get a small boat through but not yet strong enough to walk upon...
...They were now down to seven dogs, and soon those too would go from companion to entree...
...And if the first stroke is not accurate, the game is lost...
...I see the necessity of being very careful...
...He established this system and insisted on its observance or else their supplies would soon run out altogether...
...Each understood his role and was prepared to do it again the next day, and the day after...
...Startled crewmen began seizing things indiscriminately and throwing them overboard...
...As they rested, Tyson set out to ready the boat...
...Tyson turned to obey—and at that instant the floe exploded...
...Tyson could not imagine where Joe and Hans found the reserves to go forth and hunt...
...what kind of orders did buddington have the crew under...
...Since their piece of ice was shrinking constantly, he convinced the others that they should move to the bigger floe while it was so close...
...For experienced sailors to start on a boat trip with three oars and no rudder and sail was inexcusable...
...There was little change in their way of living...
...An inexperienced person would never catch one...
...He was so weak upon getting up that he could hardly stand...
...Some of the men tried in vain to reach the vessel, but the ice was breaking up too quickly...
...They did so on October 23, dragging the loaded boats over the ice by dog and manpower, then launching them for the short trip...
...A With the food rationed for nineteen people, survival seemed unlikely...
...That had been obvious when they loaded the entire party into one and found it impossible to make progress...
...Tyson got across the floe, but when he reached the water, he was surprised to see that the natives and seamen were not behind him...
...They are very hungry, sir," Hannah said...
...The vessels were their salvation, for in an emergency they could use them for both water and overland travel...
...The Eskimos had long believed that man could not repel cold well without a certain quantity of fresh meat, and that no better meat served the purpose than seal...
...Meanwhile, Hall's authority was openly challenged by the Polaris' scientific party—all Germans...
...The ship spent the first winter nestled against an iceberg—Providence Berg—in a spot Hall named Thank God Harbor...
...They were stuck in a no-man's land where, in ice closely packed and stationary, they were to remain for the next two weeks...
...Suddenly, there were loud cracking sounds, and Tyson felt the ice weakening under his feet...
...Tyson flung an oar angrily onto the ice...
...Because it was possible the ship had been lost during the night, he was determined that the group make Tyson, impatient to get the boats off and reach shore, had to wait...
...When he looked for the oars, he found only three when eight were called for...
...On the evening of October 15, pushed by a strong gale THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 61 from the northwest, ice began to press in on Polaris...
...It was far more evil: Joe and Hans would be killed first, then their wives and children would be killed— and they all would be eaten...
...Afraid for family," Joe said...
...The men cooked their own food over a fire, burning the remains of the wood stripped from the boat...
...It worked so well she made more for the other huts, although somehow the seamen could 66 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 not understand how to use the makeshift lamp...
...Tyson found Meyer to be a strange, arrogant man...
...With an oil-burning lamp, an igloo could be kept sufficiently warm...
...Tyson alone stayed awake all night, listening and watching for any new breakage...
...If we can't make the ship, we'll head for shore...
...Not like look in men's eyes," Joe said solemnly...
...At that moment the chief engineer sprang up from below: "She sprung a bad leak aft," he cried...
...From there he saw the vessel behind a low-lying island...
...We lost sight of the sun's disk three days ago...
...This time he wanted to leave behind almost everything except a few days' worth of provisions...
...The time must come, if we live to see it, when the boat will be our only means of safety...
...But when they were halfway to shore, the loose ice Tyson had seen coming south crowded on their bows get her attention, Tyson ran the colors up the boat's mast, but he received no answering signal...
...Mostly, they lay still in their bunks...
...Young ice had formed over the open water, and was already strong enough to bear weight...
...With her rising and falling motion, the vessel was constantly breaking ice around her and opening new cracks...
...more followed in the howling storm...
...The floe was covered with fresh snow...
...Tyson decided to seize the opportunity...
...It is not altogether their fault either...
...In the constant darkness, a serious disagreement arose as to which way they were drifting...
...Danish settlement of Disco, where they knew a large store of provisions had been left for the expedition...
...Hall was convinced he would find land in the seas beyond Greenland that would enable him to sledge to the Pole...
...This caused a good deal of discontent, particularly from those who had regularly been eating more than others...
...With Tyson facing a winter alone in his igloo, Joe and Hannah graciously invited him to move into their quarters, which he did...
...But here I am forced to live for the present: there is no escape...
...The men had recovered guns, pistols, ammunition, and their bags of clothes and some personal possessions...
...Fortunately, enough of this type of ice had gathered in crevasses from the snowstorms, but they still had to have a means of melting it...
...A single overloaded boat in these waters trying to circumvent drifting ice was a recipe for disaster, but Tyson was outnumbered...
...There was a great deal of murmuring by the men...
...He surveyed the floe to find the best lead so that they could launch the two small boats and get to the western shore of Ellesmere Island ten or fifteen miles away...
...Believing him, the Germans showed "the Count" new deference...
...Tyson beseeched Joe and Hans to catch seal...
...Determined to Polaris was not actively searching for the nineteen people stranded during the night on the unstable ice...
...Exercise, which creates hunger, was avoided as a matter of economy...
...Most of the stores thrown overboard and salvaged during the night were gone...
...Soon everyone was together on firm ice...
...The lamp traditionally used was made out of a soft sandstone indigenous to the land...
...They each staked out a breathing hole, and soon had bagged two seals...
...Most were the supplies previously placed upon the deck in anticipation of such a catastrophe, but they were now being flung over the railing with no thought given as to how or where they were landing...
...While he had been on the ice trying to look after the ship's stores as they were being flung overboard, the crew had been gathering their guns and other possessions in the event the ship was abandoned...
...In any case, he did not intend to discuss this issue...
...Tyson and Joe set out to do so right away...
...By successive trips across the ice, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 67 they had gathered together nearly everything that had been on the floe when they first drifted away from Polaris...
...They openly complained about their miserable circumstances, as if those conditions weren't shared by everyone...
...They were marooned on a circular piece of ice nearly a mile in diameter and about five miles in circumference...
...In the storm it was impossible to see more than a few feet...
...Tyson asked...
...Everyone now agreed that their best chance was to wait for the ice to get strong enough for them to walk to shore...
...As body weight declines, a starving person becomes sluggish and lethargic...
...The ice to which Polaris was tethered burst into fragments, and the ship violently yanked free of her ice anchors...
...With horror Tyson realized the couple's worst fear was not abandonment on the ice by the rest of the party...
...Without you they'd be dead men...
...They were of the mind that Polaris would be back soon to pick them up, so why bother doing anything...
...so they could not get through, and they had to return to the floe...
...An igloo for Hans and his family was built separately but nearby...
...But finding seal in winter 68 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 is not easy since they live principally under the ice and can be seen only when the ice cracks, or when breathing through an airhole in the ice...
...Tyson led the way across the ice to the launch site he had found, followed by the Eskimo families and then the men bringing the boat with help from the dogs...
...What then...
...Hannah sat next to him, their daughter wrapped in furs and asleep in her arms...
...It was now too dark to walk about, and even if there had been a reason to, it was too cold...
...A compass had been left in the other boat, and he did not even have his watch, which was back aboard ship...
...Since they had had nothing to eat since three o'clock the day before, they decided they must eat first...
...was held fast...
...Tyson saw that a large floe had shifted during the night and lay halfway between them and shore...
...But now there were days when Joe and Hans couldn't go onto the ice to hunt given the total want of light and heavy winds that piled snowdrifts high around the encampment...
...At some point the ice they were standing on would break up into pieces too small to live upon...
...Just over two weeks later, on Nov...
...they had sunk or floated away on pieces of broken ice...
...Yet the men whose lives he was fighting to save stood their ground defiantly, wasting precious time...
...Why are you giving me your pistol...
...Within days, he was raving about murder plots...
...After finding a site with suitable open water, he returned to the makeshift camp...
...They were without ship, shelter, or sufficient food to get them through winter...
...Work our way down to her...
...I will not live as I have lived here...
...In Tyson's view, they did not possess much self-control, courage, or endurance...
...Then they methodically began to gather up all their things, obviously unwilling to leave anything behind...
...If they had to remain on the floe, it would be April or May before they would drift far enough south where they could expect to be discovered and picked up by a commercial whaling ship...
...Water is gaining on the pumps...
...But when the food was divided into portions for nineteen people, it was obvious—unless they reached land or could catch seals to live on—that they would not survive...
...They were separated from the portion of the floe upon which they had left the other boat...
...Help protect...
...In addition to the protean ice, the 33 now had to confront 24-hour darkness, heart-stopping temperaAll around them was ice, with large bergs in sight, some grounded and others like colossal floating sentinels watching the Excerpted from Fatal North, published by NAL progress of the Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc...
...He knew he must eat for strength alone, and partook of his daily allowance, leftovers from Joe's last kill: seal, eaten raw...
...Instead, Buddington ordered Tyson to move the boats farther from the ship, apparently still concerned about having to abandon ship during the night...
...How much water is she making...
...Joe and Hans not get enough seal...
...Tyson was awakened in the morning by a cry of alarm...
...slowly drifting floe to which the ship tures and the specters of starvation and scurvy...
...What's more, the men were armed, while Tyson was not...
...They complained of being tired, hungry, and wet...
...His wife, Merkut, cooked the meat over the blubber-oil lamp in their igloo, and it was served to the hungry family at one sitting...
...Returning to the now-icebound vessel after scouting a sled route north from Greenland, Hall suddenly complained of a "foul stomach" and took ill...
...They could have caught more but for the irresponsibility of the men who frightened off many by taking long-range pot shots at the seals when they raised their heads in open waters...
...The chill was made more pervasive because they had so little heat in their systems from lack of food...
...The night was fearfully dark...
...Granted, he preferred not thinking about the contents of some of her dishes before eating them...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 71...
...They knew they might not have such a good chance again...
...Such as they were, had they been under good discipline, and left on the ice like we are, I could have saved them...
...any disorder would be ruinous...
...Standing with his frightened shipmates, Tyson offered a silent prayer: God, grant us we may have enough left to stand upon...
...He feared if they failed to reach the ship, many if not all of them would perish before winter was done...
...They refused to budge...
...They took the dogs and, when they reached the boat, harnessed them to it...
...They did not dare move about, for in the darkness they could not see the size of the floe they were riding...
...We are about eight or ten miles off shore...
...Weren't they looking for their lost shipmates...
...Assuming the currents had not changed their natural course—and he had seen nothing to indicate that they had—he knew from sailing these waters the past decade that they must be drifting south-southwest, which would put them closer to the eastern shore of Ellesmere Island and perhaps a hundred fifty miles from Greenland...
...They had been abandoned...
...By this time the men were spent...
...It could have been done safely with teamwork, for there was no sea running between the broken pieces as yet and they had not separated much...
...A few saws, tools, and lanterns had been salvaged, and they were fortunate to find themselves with nine dogs, the rest having been taken aboard ship during the storm or lost when the ice split open...
...At ten o'clock Tyson went back aboard to check on the condition of the ship...
...native hunter sometimes remains sitting over a seal hole—bundled up in skins and not moving or making a sound—for as long as forty-eight hours before getting a chance to strike...
...Reaching Polaris was their best chance of survival, he told his companions...
...He did not like what he saw...
...While the crewmen were evidently uneasy, and their talk and plans at times bold, whenever they ventured outside and faced the cold, they were glad to creep back again to their shelter and such safety and certainty that they found there...
...Without seal, they would have no fresh meat and no warm food, for they would cook with blubber oil as the natives did...
...Too late they would recognize that they were nowhere near Greenland but had the whole of ice-clogged Baffin Bay before them...
...They launched anyway...
...While the stomach is gnawing with hunger, it is almost impossible to think clearly, for any length of time, upon anything else but the matter of eating...
...Throw everything on the ice...
...Frederick Meyer, with whom Tyson had increasingly been at odds as the meteorologist assumed leadership over his fellow Germans, decided he would rather reside with his countrymen, and moved to the large igloo housing the men...
...That would make the craft as light and maneuverable in the water as possible...
...He had recently come up with a story that he was somehow related to Prussian royalty...
...He did not see anyone on deck or in the crow's nest...
...Things were said in German that he did not wait to hear translated...
...The long hours of traversing across the ice through blustering winds and near-zero visibility and waiting patiently over seal holes did not demoralize them, nor did their repeated failure to find game...
...I wish they had better fortune, for we need the fresh meat very much...
...On most days the two Eskimos went out hunting, and returned empty-handed...
...Instantly, all was mass confusion...
...Their first day hunting, Joe and Hans bagged three small seals, enough to feed a few people, but hardly more than a few morsels each for nineteen people...
...Would the men set out for Greenland, leaving Tyson and the Eskimo families to fend for themselves on the floe...
...He knew heavy ice such as the floe they were riding did not obey the winds—not as loose, floating surface ice often did...
...These structures were united by arched alleyways built of snow, with one main entrance and smaller ones branching off to individual huts...
...What kind of orders, if any, did Buddington have the crew under...
...Frederick Meyer announced his opinion that they were drifting eastward across Baffin Bay and nearing Cape York, on the western shore of Greenland...
...Then they think there would be fewer to consume the provisions, and if they moved toward the shore, there would not be the children to lug...
...Tyson was not sure who was still on the ice and who had gone back to the ship...
...too late they would recognize that they were nowhere near Greenland but had the whole of the ice-clogged Baffin Bay before them...
...They built igloos, with Joe doing most of the work because he knew how and was energetic, but with all hands assisting and carrying out his directions...
...Tyson instituted a daily allowance of eleven ounces for each adult, and half rations for the children— just enough, he reckoned, to keep body and soul together...
...One was contrived out of an old pemmican can, and Hannah cut up a piece of canvas for wicks...
...This was bad business, Tyson knew, for the boats were not designed to carry more than eight men...
...Back at camp, Tyson put up a small canvas tent...
...Under steam and sail, she was making speed and appeared to be seaworthy...
...the sail was missing, and unbelievably, there was no rudder...
...To try to save provisions, Tyson and several men dropped onto the ice...
...Buddington ordered...
...Giving the Eskimos the same amount as everyone else, Tyson secretly hoped the rationing would encourage continued determination in their seal-hunting efforts...
...Tyson was the first to spot Polaris rounding a point north of them, eight or ten miles away...
...8, 1871, he was dead...
...if they had to remain on the ice floe, it would be many months before they would drift far enough south for discovery and rescue to even be possible...
...The daily allowance was now six ounces of bread and five ounces of canned meat...
...Hans' wife, Merkut, cooked for their family over an oil lamp, and Hannah did the same for her husband, daughter, and Tyson, who found that the Eskimo woman could make a meal out of almost anything...
...We are all prisoners, Tyson, sick with rheumatism and hardly able to hold a pencil, wrote in his journal on November 19...
...But if we live to get to Disco they will have to submit, or I shall leave them to shift for themselves...
...J oe and Hans went out daily in search of seals...
...Hans and Merkut and their children, Augustina, Tobias, Succi, and their infant...
...With supplies still scattered about, Tyson went back on the ice...
...Clearly, she was not disabled...
...No more than usual," the captain replied nonchalantly...
...Also, the two Eskimo families: Joe, Hannah, and their child, Punny...
...Tyson wondered again why the men who could speak English and had done so THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 69 freely aboard Polaris were unwilling to do so now...
...Normally, it would not have mattered what opinions were entertained as to the course of the floe, except that the German seamen wanted to believe Meyer, their tacit leader, that they were nearing the coast of Greenland...
...On a cold and dark night Tyson, weak and hungry, wrote by flickering light in the igloo he shared with the Eskimos: Oct...
...There now seems no chance of reaching the land—we have drifted so far to the west...
...They want to be masters here...
...The party consisted of eighteen persons besides himself: meteorologist Frederick Meyer, English steward 62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 John Herron, cook William Jackson, and German seamen John W. C. Kruger, Frederick Jamka, William Nindemann, and Frederick Anthing, Gustavus W. Lindquist, a Swede, and Peter Johnson, a Dane, both of whom were fluent in German...
...ship by Buddington so they could be on the ice to help in the emergency, went over the side with all their belongings...
...With the return of light and game, I hope things will be better, if I can manage to keep all smooth till then...
...Her sails were furled, there was no smoke from her stack, and she was lying head to the wind...
...Tyson saw the new threat: the ice had broken into several pieces...
...From the effects of exposure and want of food, some of the men trembled as they walked, and were unable to do much around camp...
...If for no other reason than the guns they all carried, Tyson knew to choose his battles with the men carefully...
...The skin thins, becoming cold, pale, dry, and stiff, and the body's natural defenses against disease deteriorate...
...The floe was not level but full of hillocks, and also ponds or small lakes that had been formed by the melting of the snow during the short summer...
...The eight Eskimos, ordered off the They did not dare move about, for in THE DARKNESS THEY COULD NOT SEE THE SIZE OF THE FLOE THEY WERE RIDING...
...Living on such short rations meant the subject of food was constantly on one's mind, a particularly cruel effect of starvation...
...Tyson saw that this was a new concept to the Eskimos, who traditionally preferred to eat while they had food and let tomorrow take care of itself, even if they knew that they might have nothing for many days...
...Like a wandering tribe of the Far North in the dead of winter, the lives of the ice-floe party now depended on their native hunters finding seal...
...Tyson rued the fact that they had no sledges...
...To the list of wrongheaded command acts committed by Captain Sidney Buddington, this surely was the most sinister of all...
...They at last got started at nine o'clock...
...They either got the blubber all in a blaze, or else they got it smoking so badly that they were driven out of their igloo...
...Tyson alone was without his belongings or even a change of clothes...
...It will not do to touch the other boat, even if it means no fire or warm food," he said sternly...
...only the lightweight clothes he had been wearing when he stepped on deck prior to the ensuing panic: a three-year-old pair of tattered sealskin breeches, an undershirt, overshirt, cotton jumper, and a Russian cap...
...If they used the boats to haul their provisions over rough ice, there was the danger of damaging them and rendering them unseawor-thy should they be needed to escape by water...
...The seals brought in were received with much gratitude...
...i f Polaris would not come to them, they would try for her...
...May the great and good God have mercy on us, and send us seals, or I fear we must perish...
...They had no proper lamp with them on the ice, however...
...George Tyson, the assistant navigator, came out of his room on the starboard side, looked over the rail, then went to the port-side railing...
...No one had the energy to carry the boat back across the floe, so they left her where she lay...
...Buddington had panicked...
...Nothing could induce them to get going...
...Then, instead of steering toward the middle, where the ice-floe party waited anxiously, she dropped behind a nearby finger of the land...
...Tyson lay sick for several days and ate scarcely a thing for a week...
...Tyson was certain they were not heading east at all...
...For the next two days the weather was so bad they could do nothing on the ice...
...However, the Germans are organized now, Tyson wrote, and appear determined to control their destiny...
...Tyson realized if they started off in the hope of reaching Greenland, the result would be the death of all of them...
...Before he went scouting, he had roused the men from their furs and ordered them to make the boats ready for immediate departure...
...He had trusted the men to prepare the boat while he went to find a launch site, and this was the way they had done it...
...he wearily asked Buddington...
...He had on The ice to which Polaris was tethered burst into fragments, and the ship violently yanked free of her ice anchors...
...Most of the crew came topside to see what was causing the unsettling noises...
...The rest of the party slept under the boat, which was overturned to provide protection from snow and sleet...
...They milled about, speaking German, which Tyson did not understand...
...Snow and rain and fog succeeded each other, and the ice, governing all, constantly groaned...
...Although he was the only officer in the group and therefore in command, discipline had been so lax aboard ship since Captain Buddington took command that the men were accustomed to doing largely as they pleased...
...Finally, a spokesman for the Germans announced that they would take their belongings with them and as many provisions as they could carry...
...However, the first week of December a poor, thin fox wandered into camp in search of food and was shot and killed...
...When the daily allowances were handed out at the supply igloo they were taken back and prepared at three different messes...
...When he returned, the men were still inert, and in no hurry to move...
...Polaris appeared to be tied up to the bay ice, planning to stay...
...Nov...
...We must get to the far end of the floe and launch the boats," he said...
...The cold seemed to penetrate to the very marrow...
...Buddington threw up his arms and rushed on deck...
...They had drifted southwest, Tyson reckoned, although he had neither compass nor chronometer with him...
...Tyson went to locate a place to launch the boats so they would not be hauling them about uselessly...
...Still, as bad as their situation was, having the boats with them was a piece of luck...
...Hurrying below, Tyson found Captain Buddington in the galley and told him of the engineer's alarming report...
...George Tyson had a difficult time believing what he was seeing: their own way rather than wait around for a rescue that might not happen...
...Everyone's weaknesses were most felt in the flesh, on attempting to do any kind of work...
...They think the natives a burden, particularly Hans and his family, and they would gladly rid themselves of them...
...Only two remained...
...For the second time that day, he directed the men to prepare the boats...
...They also needed to keep melting freshwater ice for drinking...
...They go swaggering about with their pistols and rifles, presented to each of them after the death of Captain Hall...
...Tyson would not voice such thoughts without proof of their intentions, but he was concerned about what some of the men might be capable of doing...
...Their piece of ice, which had been the centermost and thickest part of the floe, was no more than a hundred and fifty yards across in any direction...
...Taking a spyglass, he ran to the top of a frozen hummock...
...As the ice had lifted her up, the water in the hold had been thrown over to one side with such a rush that the chief engineer mistakenly thought a severe leak had been sprung...
...The men, women, and children—exhausted from the labor and excitement, sought whatever shelter they could from the storm by wrapping themselves in musk-ox skins and lying down...
...by then the wind was blowing furiously in their faces...
...The blubber was nearly gone, and if they did not bring in some seals, the igloos would soon be in complete darkness and the party would be eating frozen food, with no means to cook or even thaw it...
...Tyson knew if Joe and Hans could hunt enough seal, they could all live through the long winter, even after their provisions were exhausted...
...Even this inadequate ration was more than they could spare from their depleting stores...
...Remaining still and keeping as warm as possible was found to be the most agreeable mode of passing the time, and best suited for the circumstances...
...And then, too, there appears to be some influence at work upon them now...
...Everyone was suffering greatly...
...The next step was making shelters...
...Scalding water would remove hair, but they did not have sufficient heat to boil such quantities of water...
...It was the worst example of naval leadership and shipboard discipline he had ever witnessed...
...He could see the ship struggling to rise to the pressure but unable to do so, then coming down hard on the ice, breaking it and riding it under her...
...As if still in a dream state, Tyson was able to see the whole of winter before them if they failed to reach Polaris...
...Once again, it was apparent they felt no obligation to follow the orders of a ship's officer...
...But the men, stupefied with fatigue and fear, were afraid...
...In the process they expended every ounce of their energy and used all of the few hours of diminishing daylight the Arctic afforded them in mid-fall...
...It was hard for some of them to reduce their intake, and a number of men became weakened...
...When they finally arrived, the men complained about having to launch the boat after the exhausting trek across the ice...
...All he could do was stand back as the men loaded the one boat...
...The ice was heavy, and the ship creaked in every timber with her valiant effort...
...His heavy seal-skin outer garments were still on hooks in his cabin...
...Tyson, built on a large frame, became so weak as his body struggled to adapt that he staggered from sheer want of strength, but he understood and accepted—as some of the men did not—the sheer necessity of rationing...
...In the crippled condition of the overloaded boat, they were soon blown back and were compelled to haul the boat back on the ice...
...And what about the women and children...
...While the darkness lasted, they had little hope of getting seals...
...Following a brief storm, thick with new snow, the weather cleared up on November 4. Tyson could see that the floe was entirely surrounded by water and drifting swiftly in the current...
...They were skinned and eaten...
...Joe was one of the best hunters to be found in all the Far North...
...Supplies were being thrown into these black holes and lost, or crushed between the ice and the ship's hull...
...The ice floe upon which they had been 64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 stranded began to drift, breaking up some of the ice that just hours earlier had kept them from reaching shore...
...Since first light, Tyson had continually scanned the horizon but seen nothing of Polaris...
...Hall was a fatherly captain, but a weak leader...
...The drifting ship disappeared in the darkness...
...Nineteen lives depended on the one remaining boat...
...Disciplined by Hall for raiding the ship's larder, Sidney Buddington, the sailing master, became openly contemptuous of both Hall and the expedition...
...weren't they looking for their lost shipmates...
...Tyson turned abruptly and departed...
...As a result, Eskimos sometimes had abundance and other times were reduced to famine...
...Now in command, Buddington, alcoholic, with little control over his crew, determined to head south as soon as possible, but once turned for home, Polaris became caught in the ice...
...After chewing on a slice of frozen meat until it became THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 65 edible, he was glad to creep into a tent he shared with several others, pull a heavy musk-ox skin over him, and get his first sleep in two days...
...We start immediately," he announced...
...most had brought their things with them before they went onto the ice...
...When Tyson learned that the men were hatching plans to break up the last boat for firewood, he ventured uninvited into their domain to speak his mind...
...However, there was one consequence he did not foresee: Before anyone noticed, Hans had taken away two of the dogs, and killed and skinned them...
...The ice was of varying thickness...
...If they were left behind without a boat, they could never get off, and would be doomed—awaiting the inevitable breakup of the ice floe underneath their feet, from which there could be no escape...
...The men, frustrated, soon began breaking up one of the boats for firewood...
...But he could not stop them, situated as he was without any authority other than what they chose to concede to him...
Vol. 34 • April 2001 • No. 3
