Fatal North (29 page)

They took the remaining seal blubber and built fires on the floe so that if a vessel approached in the night, they might be spotted. There was much hopeful talk—most of the party felt not discouraged that the steamer had passed them, but rather took it as a sign that more ships would soon be seen and that help could not be far off.

To see the prospect of rescue so near,
Tyson scrawled with a nub of a pencil so small he could barely grip it,
though it was quickly withdrawn, has set every nerve thrilling with hope.

The men were divided into two watch sections—four hours on, scanning the horizon for ships, and four hours off. The anticipation of relief kept everyone extremely wakeful.

Morning dawned fine and calm. All were on the lookout for ships, and soon one was sighted about eight miles off. They quickly launched the boat and made for her. After an hour's
pulling, they gained on her a good deal, but still the ship did not see them. In another hour, they were beset with ice and could row no farther.

They landed on a floe and hoisted their colors. Climbing onto the highest part of the ice, they mustered their rifles and pistols and all fired together, hoping to attract the ship's attention. The combined effort made a considerable report.

The steamer began to head in their direction. They were certain that the time of their deliverance had come. They shouted, involuntarily almost, but the ship was too far off yet to hear their voices.

Before long, the steamer changed course: first to the south, then north again, then west. They did not know what to think. They watched, but she did not get any nearer. She kept on all day, back and forth, as though trying to work through the ice, but unable to force her way in. Tyson thought it strange; any large sailing ship, especially a steamer, should have been able to break through the ice in its present state to reach them.

They fired several more rounds, but she came no closer, staying four or five miles off. All day they watched, making every effort within their means to attract attention. Whether the ship saw them or not they did not know, but late in the afternoon she steamed away, heading southwest.

Reluctantly, they abandoned the hope that had carried them through the day.

For a while she was lost from sight, but in the evening they saw her again farther off. While they were looking at her, though no longer with the expectation that she had seen or heard them, another steamer hove into sight. They now had two sealers near—one on each side of them—although as yet neither had made any signal. They began to count the hours before help arrived. One sealer would surely come closer, or they might be able to launch first thing in the morning and work their way toward a ship.

At five o'clock the next morning, Tyson was reclining in the
boat, resting after coming off watch, when one of his reliefs suddenly let out an excited cry.

“There's a steamer! A steamer!”

Tyson sprang up and saw a boat coming through a fog bank not more than a quarter of a mile away. He ordered the guns to be fired, after which everyone simultaneously sent up a loud shout. Quickly running the colors up the boat's mast, Tyson held them in place, fearful that the ship might not see or hear them, though she was much nearer than the others had been.

Hans spoke up excitedly. He wanted to take the kayak out to them.

“Yes, Hans!” Tyson yelled, waving him forth. “Go!”

Hans started off, paddling through the thin ice and around the thicker pieces.

Since it was very foggy, Tyson feared that they would lose sight of the ship any moment, but to his great joy and relief the steamer's bow turned toward them.

They had been spotted!

Hans kept on and paddled right up to the vessel. Singing out in his fractured English, “A-merry-con-stem-ar!” meaning to get across that they were survivors from an American steamer. He also tried to tell them where the stranded party had come from, but they did not seem to understand him.

In a few minutes, the steamer was alongside their piece of ice.

As the vessel slowed on her approach, Tyson took off his old Russian sailor's cap, which he had worn all winter, and waved it over his head. He gave them three cheers, which all of the castaways heartily joined. It was instantly returned by a hundred men who had congregated on the steamer's deck and aloft in her rigging.

She was the sealer
Tigress,
a three-masted barkentine out of Conception Bay, Newfoundland. Two of her small seal boats were lowered.

When the
Tigress
' crews stepped onto the ice, they peered curiously at the dirty pans that had been used all winter over the oil lamps. They also saw the thick soup that Hannah had been
brewing out of the blood and entrails of a small seal Hans had shot the day before. They saw enough to convince them that everyone on the ice floe was sorely in need of a proper meal, soap and water, and clean clothes. No words were required to make that plain.

They took the women and children in the seal boats, and the men tumbled into their own boat, leaving everything behind save their guns. What they left behind amounted to just a few battered, smoky tin pans and the suddenly unappealing debris of their last seal.

Soon they were alongside
Tigress.

On stepping aboard, Tyson was at once surrounded by a horde of curious sailors. He explained who they were, and from what ship.

“How long have you been on the ice?” someone asked.

“Since the fifteenth of October,” Tyson replied.

They were so astonished that they looked blank with wonder, even disbelief.

One of
Tigress'
mates, looking at him with open-eyed surprise, asked: “And was you on it night and day, sir?”

The peculiar expression and tone, along with the absurdity of the question, was too much for Tyson. He laughed from deep in his belly, filling him with an unfamiliar but glorious sensation. He laughed until his stomach ached and he could not catch his breath, at which point he saw the man who had asked the question looking at him with grave concern, as if seeking evidence of madness.

Tigress
was commanded by Captain Isaac Bartlett, who approached the party on deck and introduced himself. He invited Tyson to his cabin.

“Sir, there's another officer in our party,” Tyson said respectfully. “Mr. Meyer of the scientific department.”

Before food was served to the two hungry
Polaris
officers, the captain had questions about their party's “miraculous escape,” as he kept calling it. As for Tyson's question about the fate of
Polaris,
the captain had heard no reports.

They politely answered all their host's questions, but Tyson and Meyer were very hungry, having not eaten anything since a few bites of raw seal the previous afternoon.

Tyson saw no signs of food or tobacco, and finally asked the captain if he would give him a pipe and some tobacco.

“I don't smoke,” the captain replied.

Tyson's great disappointment showed, and the captain quickly procured both pipe and a pouch of tobacco from one of his officers.

When breakfast arrived, Tyson and Meyer stopped everything else and ate.

Codfish, potatoes, bread, butter, and hot coffee.

Never in my life did I enjoy a meal like that; plain as it was, I shall never forget that codfish and potatoes. No one, unless they have been deprived of civilized food and cooking as long as I have, can begin to imagine how good a cup of coffee with bread and butter tastes. No subsequent meal can ever eclipse this to my taste, so long habituated to raw meat, with all its uncleanly accessories. How strange it seems to lie down at night in these snug quarters, and feel that I have no more care, no responsibility. To be once more clean—what a comfort!

Two days later, the heaviest and coldest gale of the season hit, with violent winds and monstrous seas; lasting for three days. As the steamer thumped hard against the ice, turning to the westward to escape a huge swell coming from the Atlantic, Tyson and the others realized how close they had come to facing perhaps their final storm.

Could we have outlived it had we remained exposed? How we would have fared on the ice throughout this long, cold gale, I know not. It is the general opinion on board that we should have perished, being so near the ocean. But He that guided us so far was still all-powerful to save.

Tigress
rescued the nineteen
Polaris
survivors at latitude 53 degrees, 35 minutes north, off Grady Harbor, Labrador, on April 30, 1873.

Their journey on the drifting ice floe had lasted 197 days and taken them fifteen hundred miles.

IV

Inquiry and the Search

19

The Board Convenes

St. Johns, Newfoundland, May 9, 1873

The English whaling ship Walrus has just arrived, and reports that the steamer Tigress picked up on the ice at Grady Harbor, Labrador, on the 30th of April last, ten of the crew and eight of the Eskimo of the steamer Polaris, of the Arctic expedition. Captain Hall died last summer.

Tigress is hourly expected at St. Johns.

      —Telegram sent by U.S. Consul
at St. John's, Newfoundland

W
hen the first news of
Polaris
and her crew in nearly two years flashed to the world over the telegraph wires from Newfoundland, it made headlines nationwide.

Vying for space in the newspapers of the day were the indictment and upcoming trial in the criminal case of the
United States
v.
Susan B. Anthony
for “illegally voting” in the November general election, and the government's efforts to convince two hundred Kickapoo Indian warriors to give up their raiding ways and live on a reservation. There was other breaking news—in New York, the Brooklyn Bridge was under construction, and
Boss Tweed was lining his pockets with the widening of Broadway from Thirty-fourth to Fifty-ninth streets; the Ku Klux Klan was being fought down South; and the Boston Red Stockings were playing Washington in an exhibition of a new sport called baseball.

In Washington, D.C., however, the biggest story was the
Polaris
castaways, and the failure of America's grandiose design to plant her flag at the North Pole. This had been, after all, an expedition of historic proportions funded by Congress and made a priority by influential U.S. senators and representatives of the Navy Department, and even the White House.

Navy Secretary George Robeson wired the United States consul at St. Johns to “instruct Captain George Tyson to keep his party together and remain in command” of the survivors. The consul was to ensure that they were amply provided for and did not want for food, clothing, or other necessities. Robeson promised to dispatch a Navy ship to bring the rescued party directly to Washington, D.C., where a full inquiry into the matter of the Tyson party's separation from
Polaris,
and the shocking report of Captain Hall's death, was to be held without delay.

The
New York Times
reported on May 11:

The news which appeared in THE TIMES yesterday of the death of Captain Hall, the probable loss of the Polaris, and the breaking up of the American Polar expedition, add another to the long list of Arctic failures, The story of the little band rescued by the Tigress is a strange one, and needs further explanation before its statements can be fully understood. We have, however, the consolation of knowing that whatever may be the fate of Capt. Buddington and his thirteen men, who were last seen on board the leaky and drifting Polaris, eighteen people at least are alive.

Even as additional details were received daily, sufficient to convince reasonable people that the rescue could not be a fabrication,
Arctic experts were found who pronounced the story of the ice-floe survivors as “impossible” and “ridiculous.” Six months on the drifting ice pack? So ghastly were the perceived difficulties that would have had to be overcome to survive such an ordeal, some of those who knew the region best were the last to be convinced of the truth.

Prominent captains and navigators expressed their opinion that there must have been disaffection, insubordination, and even mutiny on board
Polaris
for such a large number of its crew to be left behind. Publicly, Robeson said he attached no importance to such speculation, pointing out that the ship and crew had been carefully chosen, the vessel strengthened and equipped for polar service, and furthermore, he would not have been surprised if Captain Buddington had remained with her in Arctic waters and, if the vessel was in seagoing condition, attempted with his remaining crew to return northward.

In a surprisingly callous statement, Robeson, who had been a strong supporter of Charles Francis Hall and his expedition, also told the press that “as soon as the sad news of Captain Hall's death is confirmed,” Hall's government pay of nine hundred dollars per annum, paid in monthly increments of seventy-five-dollars to his wife, Mary, would cease immediately. Robeson added that the government would “probably not” attempt to seek a return from the widow of any overpayment.