The Great White Bear (17 page)

A great leane
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white beare came sodainly stealing out, and caught one of them fast by the necke, who not knowing what it was that tooke him by the necke, cried out and said, Who is that that pulles me so by the necke? Wherewith the other, that lay not farre from him, lifted up his head to see who it was, and perceiving it to be a monstrous beare, cryed and sayd, Oh mate it is a beare! and therewith presently rose up and ran away.

The bear, at least in de Veer's telling, bit the man's head to pieces and began to suck out his blood as the rest of those ashore, approximately twenty in number, ran around in panic, some fleeing and a hardy few electing to try and save their comrade. They lowered their muskets and pikes and charged toward the bear, which, "perceiving them to come towards her, fiercely and cruelly ran at them, and gat another of them out from the companie, which she tare in peeces, wherewith all the rest ran away."

At this point a sizable complement of crew leaped into the boats and rowed furiously ashore, but not all of those already on the beach could be persuaded to attack the animal that had already slain two of their number. After all, they argued,

Our men are already dead, and we shall get the beare well enough, though wee oppose not ourselves into so open danger; if wee might save our fellowes lives, then we would make haste; but now wee neede not make such speede, but take her at an advantage, with most securitie for our selves, for we have to doe with a cruell, fierce and ravenous beast.

Ultimately, three of the men took it upon themselves to attack the bear, but even after one of them, William Geysen, shot it in the head, the bear still did not let go of its quarry—although de Veer allowed that it staggered somewhat. Finally, he writes that Geysen struck the bear in the snout with his weapon, at which point it fell down, "making a great noyse," and Geysen, showing remarkable bravery given all that had gone on before, leaped upon it and slit its throat.

Few other explorers could recount tales quite so graphic or deadly. But for those who dared to venture forth into the Arctic's frigid embrace, as if it were not enough to have to contend with the slow physical and psychological torture of the cutting wind, cold air, and relentless attentions of ice floes, there was the knowledge that, immediately upon disembarking the sanctuary of the ship that had brought them to this unforgiving circle of hell, they were at risk of surprise attack from the predator whose terrifying nature was magnified by its silent approach.

"This fierce tyrant of the dills and snows of the north unites the strength of the lion with the untamable fierceness of the hyena," reads a description in an 1835 tome with the full and informative title of
The Mariner's Chronicle: Containing Narratives of the Most Remarkable Disasters at Sea Such as Shipwrecks, Storms, Fires and Famines, Also Naval Engagements, Piratical Adventures, Incidents of Discovery, and Other Extraordinary and Interesting Occurrences.
Continued the anonymous authors:

This bear prowls continually for his prey; which consists chiefly of the smaller cecacia,
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and of seals, which, unable to contend with him, shun their fate by keeping strict watch, and plunging into the depths of the waters. With the walrus he holds dreadful and doubtful encounters; and that powerful animal, with his enormous tusks, frequently beats him off with great damage. The whale he dares not attack, but watches anxiously for the huge carcass in a dead state, which affords him a prolonged and delicious feast: he scents it at the distance of miles. All these sources of supply being precarious, he is sometimes left for weeks without food, and the fury of his hunger then becomes tremendous. At such periods, man, viewed by him always as his prey, is attacked with peculiar fierceness.

"The annals of the north are filled with accounts of the most perilous and fatal conflicts of the polar bear," the narrative continues, citing by way of example an account documented by William Scoresby, whaling captain of great repute and renowned chronicler of the Arctic.

In his classic 1820 tome,
An Account of the Arctic Regions with a History and Description of the Northern Whale Fishery,
Scoresby relates the tale of one Captain Cook of the
Archangel,
who during a 1788 voyage went ashore at Spitsbergen, accompanied by his surgeon and mate. Suddenly, a polar bear appeared as if from nowhere, leaping at Cook and seizing him between its paws. Doubtless seeing his life pass before his eyes, Cook yelled for the surgeon to fire his gun, which he did, shooting the bear in the head and killing it instantly.

Scoresby also tells a possibly apocryphal tale of an unnamed sailor who avoided death while being pursued across the sea ice, despite being unarmed. According to Scoresby, the fleeing mariner pulled off consecutively his hat, jacket, and kerchief, throwing each of them onto the ice behind him as he ran. The polar bear's curiosity apparently won out over its predatory instincts, causing it to stop and investigate each one as its would-be prey kept running until reaching the sanctuary of his ship.

The great polar explorer Roald Amundsen had already become the first to unlock the secrets of the Northwest Passage in 1906 and, five years later, the first man to reach the South Pole, when, in 1918, he set out in a ship of his own construction, the
Maud.
The plan was to sail west to east through the Northeast Passage, become frozen in the winter ice pack, and thence be carried with the drift toward the North Pole; but, having moored in the lee of an island north of Russia for the winter, Amundsen was bundled over by one of his sled dogs while descending the icy gangway from ship to shore that his crew had constructed out of snow. He fell heavily and broke his shoulder, an injury he would aggravate a month later when he was attacked by one of the island's residents.

This incident was triggered, as was the original fracture, by the exuberance of one of his dogs, in this instance a husky named Jacob which, as Amundsen stood on the shore with his arm in a sling, came screaming past him, yapping and whining, and tore up the gangway. In the darkness, Amundsen heard a heavy panting; out of the gloom, in slow but determined pursuit of the retreating canine, the panting resolved into an angry polar bear accompanied by a whimpering cub. The cub had presumably been teased or attacked by the dog, and now its mother apparently wanted revenge.

When the bear saw the human, she stopped in her tracks. Biped and quadruped sized each other up for several eternal moments. Amundsen decided to run toward the gangway, and the bear ran, too; it was, as Amundsen later described it, "a race between a healthy, furious bear and an invalid."

The invalid reached the bottom of the gangway, only to feel the bear's hot breath on his back and be flung to the ground by a powerful paw striking his bandaged shoulder. As the bear moved in for what Amundsen felt sure would be the killing blow, Jacob came to the rescue, racing back down the gangway and toward the cub. The mother wheeled around and set off after the dog, while Amundsen scrambled rapidly onto the ship. The following day, Jacob returned, frightened but otherwise no worse for the ordeal.

(Reflecting on the event sometime later, Amundsen dwelled not so much on the closeness of his escape but on the unexpected thoughts that passed through his mind in what he expected to be the final seconds of his life: "I had always heard that when a man faced the seeming certainty of death—as for a moment I did, lying at the feet of the bear—he usually had the mental experience of having all the chief incidents of his life pass before him in vivid and instant review. Nothing so serious or important occupied my thoughts as I lay expecting the death blow. On the contrary, a scene passed before my eyes which, though vivid enough, was certainly frivolous. I lay there wondering how many hairpins were swept up on the sidewalks of Regent Street in London on a Monday morning! The significance of this foolish thought at one of the most serious moments of my life I shall have to leave to a psychologist...")

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A century later, the prospect of an encounter with a polar bear is no less of an occupational hazard than ever it was for those who live in, work in, or visit the species' Arctic domain. It is why towns like Deadhorse and Barrow on Alaska's North Slope constantly advise their residents to be cautious when stopping outside and go to great efforts—through, for example, careful disposal of food waste—to prevent bears from being enticed into the community.

The advisability of such precautions was underlined in 1993, when a polar bear attacked and severely injured Donald Chaffin, a worker at a U.S. Air Force Defense Early Warning (DEW Line) site at Oliktok Point in Alaska, approximately thirty miles west of the oil installations of Prudhoe Bay. As Chaffin and a colleague watched television in the facility's living quarters, the bear appeared at the window, pressed its nose and paws against the glass, and peered inside. Chaffin, demonstrating the phlegmatic approach to wildlife typical of Alaskans, swatted on the window with a rolled-up magazine to shoo it away. Duly shooed, the bear showed up again shortly afterward, only to once more be deterred by the threat of Chaffin's periodical. On the third occasion, however, it would not be denied.

With one swift move, the bear crashed through the window; Chaffin and his colleagues leaped out of their chairs to flee, but as they fumbled with the door, the bear grabbed Chaffin from behind, throwing him to the ground and biting into his head and body. Two of Chaffin's colleagues grabbed fire extinguishers and trained them on the assailant; its focus now diverted, it dropped Chaffin and headed out into the corridor. As it struggled to gain purchase on the slick floor, the bear was shot dead by another of the workers, Alexander Polakoff.

Chaffin was rushed by helicopter to the hospital and admitted to intensive care; he survived but was permanently disfigured. He later sued the government for failing to provide safe housing, for prohibiting firearms from being kept on site (Polakoff had had to retrieve his shotgun from a hiding place in his bedroom because it was contrary to policy), and for allowing Natives to store whale meat just a few hundred yards from the living quarters. In the days leading up to Chaffin's mauling, polar bears had been spotted feeding off the meat; one of them, which had been prowling the area and peering into windows, had been shot dead just four days before the attack.

What happened to Chaffin was highly unusual. The victim was aware of the bear's proximity and the attack itself was dramatic and loud. More often, polar bears appear silently and suddenly, underlining the axiom told by Inuk guide Jimmy Memorana to researcher Ian Stirling: "If the bear is hunting, you won't see him until he comes for you."

In December 1990, Carl Stalker and his wife, Rhoda Long, eight months pregnant, left a family member's house in the northwest Alaska village of Point Lay late one night and set out on the short walk home. They rounded the corner and came face-to-face with a bear.

Long screamed. Stalker told her to run, pulled out his pocketknife, and ran the other way to lead the bear away from her.

Villagers found the bear two hours later, feasting on what remained of Stalker's carcass, and shot it dead.

In 2005, Eric Larsen and Lonnie Dupre were attempting the first-ever summer crossing of the Arctic Ocean sea ice to the North Pole, using a combination of skis and modified kayaks; they were doing so as part of a Greenpeace effort to draw attention to the impact of global warming on sea ice and hence polar bears, but the compassionate nature of their mission earned them no favors from one particularly persistent bear. Ultimately, the explorers were able to drive away the intruder with flares, but until they did, they found themselves on more than one occasion experiencing a closer encounter with the Arctic's iconic species than they had intended.

"I honestly think they were more curious in how we smelled and maybe whether they could eat us, rather than just full-on hunting us," reckons Larsen in hindsight. "But they were definitely being careful in how they approached us. That first bear we saw, that was one of the scariest experiences of my life, because it was coming straight toward me, on its belly, pushing snow in front with its nose. I had my hood up, I was working on my boat, we were both bent over, arranging gear in our boats, and Lonnie goes, 'There's a bear.' It was on my side of the boat, coming straight toward me. I was freaked. You know, the wind was blowing, it could have gotten within a foot of me quite easily. Or even closer. I was oblivious. I wasn't looking around, and even if I had just casually glanced, I probably wouldn't have seen it. It was so well blended in."

That same night, another bear—or, just as likely, the same one—returned while Dupre and Larsen were cooking in their tent.

"When the stove is going in that tent, you can't really hear much," Larsen explains. "We were chatting away and laughing, cooking, and then literally Lonnie turned the stove off and we heard a step. Then we heard the boat move; it pushed the boat into the tent."

Dupre had placed his camera bag in the boat; the two men listened as the bear picked up the bag and dropped it.

For a moment, there was silence.

Then the bear jumped on the tent.

The men leaped to their feet as best they were able; their sudden movement and their yells caused the bear to back off, and the flares did the rest. Which goes to show: polar bears can be deterred.

Since 1990, Nikita Ovsyanikov has been studying the polar bears of Wrangel Island in the Russian High Arctic; there can be few people in history who have experienced as many close encounters with polar bears, and while most of those encounters have been placid, the sheer amount of time he has spent in the animals' proximity all but dictates that at least some have been tense affairs. Even so, the researcher, who refuses to carry a firearm, has managed to preempt possible attacks with more basic weapons.

On one occasion, Ovsyanikov grew increasingly uneasy as a huge old male advanced toward him. "He showed no signs of aggression, no fear, no excitement, no emotions at all. He behaved like a giant who has noticed an insect in his path and has decided to take a closer look." When his tried and tested methods of deterrence—such as waving a shovel high above his head—failed to show any sign of halting the bear's advance, Ovsyanikov threw a rock. The missile landed on the hip of the bear, which stopped, appeared confused, and looked behind him before taking a few more steps forward. Ovsyanikov threw another rock, which struck the bear's shoulder.