Trial by Ice (26 page)

Frant cally Buddington tried another powder charge to no avail. Asr es of coal dust spread around the ship cloaked the ice like funeral bunting and aided in melting the top few inches. Resorting to ice saws, the engineers erected derricks and commenced sawing the vessel free. Close to the hull, the ice grew to fifteen feet in thickness, exceeding the ability of the saws, so the men resorted to pulleys.

Four iouble blocks of tackle rigged around the last remnants of entrapping ice broke loose this last impediment. A cheer rose from the men working the capstan as the
Polaris
slipped off the tongue of ice that had imprisoned her for so long and slid into the water. The ship »vas floating at last.

Being adrift only aggravated the ship's leaking. The steam donkey pumped all day while the crew frantically stopped whatever leaks the) could.

Anxious to sail, Buddington found that retrieving his anchors proved a lother problem. Without them the vessel could not be stopped. Both starboard and port anchors had been deployed to save the ship. Providence Berg lay on top of the starboard anchor, so it could not be raised. Reluctantly its cable was cut. The port anchor lay so deeply embedded in the ocean floor that it could not be broken fr«3e.

While they struggled with the anchors, more and more pack ice drifted in :o the mouth of the bay. Buddington watched his chance for freedom slowly slipping away with each arriving block of ice. In
desperation the captain ordered his last anchor marked with a buoy and unshackled.

Steaming out of the bay, Buddington quickly encountered a solid wall of pack ice blocking the passage. Throughout the night he steamed back and forth, searching in vain for an open lead. By morning the captain admitted defeat and returned to Thank God Harbor to hook onto his waiting port anchor.

To make matters worse, the ship rode even lower in the water than before. A hasty inspection revealed that the drain holes in the bulkheads were plugged by debris shaken loose while the ship sailed. Tons of seawater filled the forepeak, the chain lockers, and the main hold. Boring additional drain holes in the bulkheads allowed the water to gush forth. The water drained into the bilge, where the overworked steam donkey pumped it overboard, correcting that problem, but salt water had ruined even more provisions.

The rising tide provided mixed blessings for the beleaguered officer. The port anchor broke free, and the clear water surrounding the ship revealed the full extent of the damage done to the hull by the long winter's rocking. The heavy oak stem section of the keel was ripped loose and twisted to port, while a half-inch gap separated the two planks near the six-foot marking on the same side. Buddington retreated to his bunk that night to listen to the clank of the steam pumps and ponder what kept his ship from sinking outright.

Two gunshots the next morning announced the return of Kruger and Sieman with a note from Mr. Chester asking for supplies of bread. Buddington eagerly moved to absorb the two sailors back into his ship's company. Barely able to handle his newly liberated vessel with so shorthanded a crew, he denied the request and ordered the men to stay. He would sail north and pick up the rest of their party, he boldly announced, and then he would sail even farther north.

Two halfhearted attempts yielded nothing of the sort. While burning precious coal, Buddington steamed about but never cleared the harbor. Ice blocked his way, and the badly split stem discouraged any thought he might have entertained of crashing his way through the ice fields. After failing in his last attempt to break out, Buddington wrote in his journal that the low sun had blinded his
eyes and kept him from seeing far enough ahead to navigate safely. Faced wit h this bumbling, Kruger and Sieman urged Buddington to release them and walked back with his orders for Chester to return at once.

North of Cape Lupton, Chester and Tyson greeted the command with contempt. “I won't go!” Chester shouted when ordered to turn back. Every man clustered around the beached boats sensed that this vvas their last chance to press farther north. To their embarrassment none of them had ventured farther north than Captain Hall and Ebierbing had gone almost nine months before. Repeatedly well- provisioned teams of healthy men had failed to pass the mark reached by those two in a dogsled.

Tysor overheard the sailors muttering, “if the captain got a good chance, he would sail south without waiting for anyone.” Kruger aid Sieman's report confirmed the crew's assessment of their drunken commander. In disgust one man spat out that he “didn't cure” if Buddington left or not, that they had a better chance of escaping south in their whaleboat before winter arrived.

Ebierbing's arrival two days later settled the debate. Solemnly the Inuit s tepped off his sled and handed a written order to Chester. Return at once, it commanded. Chester could not disobey a written order. Boih he and Tyson knew that the crafty Buddington would have copies of that specific order safely preserved for any later hearing. Buddington's blunt command had incisively ended any further exploration by them.

With heavy hearts they turned back. Buddington would sail south as quickly as he could, they all realized. Regardless of what he boasted, he would never take the
Polaris
farther northward. No more forays north to plant the Stars and Stripes on undiscovered territory would come from their expedition, either by land or by sea.

Their mission had failed. The North Pole would remain unclaimed. The United States would add its name to that of England, France, R issia, Denmark, and every other nation that had mounted an expedition to the North Pole … and failed.

Nothiig remained but to get back alive.

They abandoned the unwieldy collapsible boat to the Arctic, leaving the winds to tear the canvas and the lemmings and voles to
gnaw the wooden struts. The remaining useful whaleboat presented another problem. The sturdy oak planking that served so well against the floating ice made the craft too heavy to drag across the broken ice fields. Loading it on a sledge would work, but Ebierbing's sled was not the heavy type built especially by the half-mad Coffin to carry sledges. Besides, the sled was gone. The half-blind Bessel snatched at his chance and rode back to the ship in the Inuit's sled basket.

They dragged the whaleboat high onto the bluffs, where the tide and the
evu
would not wreck it, and covered it with canvas. It took all hands and forty-eight hours to haul the skiff up a ravine to the safest place they could find. Caching an extra tent and boxes of provisions too heavy to carry, Meyer buried another copper cylinder nearby with their meager achievements and the record of Captain Hall's death.

Hiking the twenty miles back to the ship took two days. Worn out on arrival, Chester found Captain Buddington at his wit's end. All throughout the Fourth of July, a northeastern gale had battered the ship and driven blocks of ice against the hull. The men had spent their holiday fending off the icy battering rams with long poles.

That night the ship's company watched helplessly as an iceberg half the size of the
Polaris
cruised down on their moored vessel. Streaming directly toward the midships like a well-aimed torpedo, the icy ram would easily stave in the side. Moored powerlessly to Providence Berg, the
Polaris
had no chance to escape. Backing them, this frozen mountain would act as the anvil to the charging iceberg's hammer, ensuring greater damage to the weakened hull.

Buddington and his crew gritted their teeth, gripped the rail, and forced their watering eyes to peer into the blowing snow while they watched their destruction cruising silently closer. One hundred, seventy-five, fifty yards nearer drifted the iceberg. Men prayed and sinners repented as their white destroyer loomed overhead with cold indifference. The icy breath of the iceberg chilled their lungs, the air growing more frigid with each long second that passed.

Twenty yards from the ship, the iceberg struck the underwater beak of Providence Berg. With a grinding rumble, the iceberg turned aside and swept past the astonished men, mere feet from the
wooden railing. The submerged tongue of Providence Berg that had tortured :he ship's keel for so long had deflected the charging monster and protected the vessel.

Dodging more ice, Buddington moved his ship closer and closer to shore. Two days before Chester and Tyson returned, a thick fog had descended on the bay. Disoriented, Buddington ran the ship iground in eleven and one-half feet of water. As the tide ran out, the ship heeled over until the port-side scuppers slipped underwater. This added more water to the beleaguered bilge and necessitated burning more coal for the steam pumps. Shorthanded, Buddington could not free the ship. Fortunately the tide rose and lifted the ship enough to raise the scuppers out of the sea, but the keel remained firmly wedged into the floor of the bay. As soon as Chester and Tyson arrived, the full crew rowed the remaining anchor out into deeper water, and all hands laid on the capstan to warp the ship free. The anchor bit into the bottom ground, the men strained
2
gainst the wooden bars protruding from the capstan, and the drum slowly wrenched the ship into the deeper sea, where it refloated.

Unbe ievably the
Polaris
had dodged two disasters in close succession, but the near misses wore away at whatever resolve Buddington s :ill had to continue their mission to reach the North Pole. Nothing on earth could compel him to face those floating white mines again.

Grasping for straws, he decided the scientific portion of the expedition c ould be claimed a great success. Emil Bessel had stocked the hold lull of collected rocks, bones, and specimens preserved in those boti les of alcohol that had not been drunk. Pages of scientific readings, measurements of seawater temperature, magnetic flux, and star sightings filled dozens of notebooks that Mauch, Meyer, Bryan, an d the good doctor had kept. All that must count for something, Buddington reasoned. He hoped it would help offset their dismal failure to reach the top of the world and the death of Charles F ancis Hall.

Washington would appreciate their difficulties, he hoped. In spite of them, Hall had carried the flag higher than any white man had previously done. And there was all that new land named after President Grant, Secretary Robeson, and Senator Sumner.

Drinking heavily now, he announced to Chester and Tyson that there existed “no probability” whatsoever for them to do anything other than help him head home. Realizing how the two boat teams had robbed him of sufficient hands to man the ship, he resolved never to repeat that error. As the men rightly feared, their mission was finished.

Sadly his poorly concealed anxiety only subjected him to more of his sailors' scorn. Arising out of Buddington's patent dread of the floating ice, a growing, open contempt for him developed on the part of his crew. An incident described by Tyson highlighted this disdain.

Shortly after the boat crews returned, Tyson suggested the three watches be assigned to use the hand pumps instead of the steam donkey. Doing so would save burning their dwindling supply of coal yet provide pumping round the clock. While Buddington considered the idea, a sudden rush of fresh seawater flooded into the hold. The amount of this new leakage far exceeded the capacity of the hand pumps, so the steam pumps remained active and the idea of the men's taking turns pumping by hand was abandoned.

The suddenness of the new leak and its timing raised suspicions that someone in the engine room had deliberately opened the seacocks and flooded the bilges. Tyson suggested this idea to Budding-ton, citing that it was done “so that those in favor of hand pumping ‘should have enough of it.’ “

Showing uncharacteristic resolve, Buddington marched down to the engine room to see for himself. He arrived outside the engine room only to have the door slammed in his face. Those inside presumably Emil Schuman; the assistant engineer, Odell; and the two firemen, Campbell and Boothrefused to allow their commanding officer to enter. Adding insult to injury, they also refused to answer his orders to open the door.

Chagrined, Buddington could do nothing but return to the cockpit and hope that the new leak had indeed arisen from a deliberate act of sabotage to gain his concession. When word reached those below decks that the idea of hand pumping had been scrapped, the massive new leak miraculously ceased. This dangerous act of defiance greatly threatened the command and safety of the ship but went unpunished.

Since Charles Francis Hall's suspicious death, discipline and cohesion o the expedition had weakened and dissolved by degrees over the long winter. Now little remained of the United States North Polar expedition but an unruly, self-serving mob bent on having their own way with no regard for the consequences.

Like grains of sand silently scattered by the wind until the wall they support collapses, minuscule events, affecting both men and materiel, were conspiring to fatally hamstring the
Polaris
expedition. The chain of command had virtually vanished from the crew while irreplaceable losses went largely unappreciated.

Reckless burning of the ship's coal both onboard and in the observatory had squandered the engine's fuel so that only a few days' supply remained. Because the men were too lazy to man the hand pumps, the bunkers held barely enough coal to steam directly south to Disko. Errors and foolishness had reduced their chances of survival and left the expedition with a razor-thin margin for error. Any delay or diversion while steamingwhether from pack ice, gales, or fogwoi Id mean disaster.

The hip's starboard anchor was lost. Already events had demonstrated the fact that a single anchor could not hold the vessel in a strong gale. A lone anchor would drag through the poor holding ground made up of powdered stone known as glacial flour found in the shallow bays. The backbone of the keel was cracked and splintered beyond repair, disposing the vessel to spring ever-increasing leaks when stressed. Here was a ship destined to sink if it did not run aground first. The status of their lifeboats should have concerned all aboard.

But three of the rowed boats had been lost. Half the ship's complement c-f boats was gone. The Heggleman and one stout whale-boat lay twenty miles north, covered in canvas and abandoned. Nothing xmained of the other whaleboat but splinters drifting southward. Little was thought of this at the time, but the shortage of whaleboats would soon threaten the lives of all aboard the doomed
I olaris.