After writing that gloomy journal entry on Christmas Day, De Long was surprised when Jack Cole visited him in his cabin. Cole invited the captain and the other officers to the deckhouse for a holiday celebration. De Long later wrote that the crew played music and sang songs, “and Alexey gave us a native dance.” The captain wasn’t cheered by the performances, but he admitted that “the crew seemed to have a merry Christmas.”
De Long’s spirits improved a week later, when the crew’s New Year celebration took place under a shining moon with a blood-red halo. After a dinner of “Arctic turkey” (roasted seal), macaroni and cheese with canned tomatoes, and plum pudding, the crew staged a performance with music and storytelling. “Our men had rallied from their failure to get up one for Christmas, and seemed determined to make this entertainment good enough for both occasions,” De Long wrote.
The crew had constructed a small stage, decorated with flags. A minstrel show began, with “jokes and conundrums sandwiching in with the songs…. [Alfred] Sweetman’s songs were very good, and [Albert] Kuehne’s violin solo was fine indeed, especially when one takes into consideration the fact that a seaman’s life does not serve to render the fingers supple and delicate.”
Jack Cole drew on his Irish roots to dance a jig “with all the gravity of a judge,” and Alexey and Aneguin performed Yup’ik dances.
Jerome Collins—the Herald reporter who was not well accepted by many of the men—redeemed himself for one night by reciting a lengthy and humorous poem he’d written “in which each one of the crew was made the subject of a rhyme in turn.”
Short skits rounded out the evening. “When, the performance over,” De Long wrote, “we broke up at eleven o’clock, we all felt satisfied alike with the ship, the minstrels, ourselves, and the manner in which we had celebrated the first day of the year of our Lord 1880.”
Meteorologist Jerome Collins accomplished little on the Jeannette, but he was an energetic entertainer.
One day soon after New Year’s I was out walking with one of the Indians. Noticing the new moon he stopped, faced it and, blowing out his breath, he spoke to it, invoking success in hunting…. [Alexey] told me this particular manner of invoking good will was a secret handed down to him by his father, who got it from a very old Indian.
JANUARY 5TH, MONDAY
This morning the doctor came to me and represented that Danenhower’s case was of a very serious character, and that there was great danger of his losing the sight of his left eye. Owing to the necessity for shielding the eye from all light, it would become necessary for Mr. Danenhower to remain in his room in total darkness, and it was feared that this might affect his general health and depress his spirits. I am much distressed at the news, for Danenhower is highly prized by all of us, and by his efforts has kept us many an hour from moping. He is now shut out from all participation with what is going on, and we can do nothing but go down occasionally and sit with him in the dark and talk with him. He is cheerful enough himself, however, and, having great force of character, has made up his mind to accept the situation and fight it out patiently.
JANUARY 13TH, TUESDAY
The carpenters commenced to-day the building of two more sleds, to carry our cutters [large rowboats] in case we have to abandon the ship, which God forbid.