After ninety-six hours at sea, the whaleboat’s crew finally collapsed on a beach, unsure of where they’d landed. It was September 16. Every inch of flesh was a “sodden and spongy” mass of blisters and sores. They had no drinkable water and very little food.
“We were wet through, and so stiff as scarcely to be able to walk,” Newcomb remembered. “But we were ashore again on the big land, and that was enough.”
Melville’s last orders from De Long were to head for Cape Barkin, Siberia. If the other boats had somehow survived, they would go there, too. But as the men talked, “we speculated freely upon the fate of our companions; the general opinion being that ours was the only boat which outlived the gale.” It made more sense to try to find a village nearby.
Danenhower estimated that they were “probably in a swamp river, either twenty or forty miles south of Barkin.” At least one man believed they’d reached the Lena River. Melville wasn’t sure.
The Lena is a three-thousand-mile river that empties into the ocean on the northern coast of Siberia. Its delta region is a huge maze of rushing streams, shallow bays, and swamps. Melville believed that nomads “roamed all over the Delta.” Petermann’s chart showed many villages.
This map shows the route the crew followed after the Jeannette sank.
The men stumbled into an abandoned hut, desperate to restore circulation to their frozen hands and feet. But the warmth of a fire also brought back feeling within their bodies, and the men passed the night in agony, “as if millions of needles were piercing their limbs.”
They sailed up the river for several days, and Melville became more convinced that they were in the Lena. But nothing they saw matched what was on the charts. “Bitterly we cursed Petermann and all his works which had led us astray,” Melville wrote.
In scattered huts, the men found fish bones, reindeer antlers, and other signs that people had been there recently. They even saw human footprints, and Melville grew sure that rescue was not far off.
On September 19, a week after being separated from De Long and Chipp, the crew stopped to rest on a bleak, rocky riverbank. As they nibbled their pemmican, three canoes came into view. Each was paddled by a man.
Melville and Newcomb launched the whaleboat “to meet the strangers on equal terms.” Melville called to them in English and German, but there was no sign that they understood. Soon all were laughing as Melville tried “to open up a conversation in every modern tongue of which I had the slightest smattering.”
Two of the canoes moved away, but the youngest man paddled closer. Newcomb held out a bit of pemmican, then ate some himself to show that it wasn’t poisoned. The young man took some and ate it.
Newcomb described the Siberian men in the same manner he’d taken note of the birds and insects he studied on the ice: “In stature they were small, complexion dark and swarthy, with straight black hair,” he observed. “They had very good features, and were of comparatively happy dispositions.” The men were members of the Tungus tribe, nomadic people who lived by hunting and fishing.
The young man’s name was Tomat. He waved for the other canoes to join them, and all headed for shore. “Cushat, cushat,” said Tomat. He pointed to the fish, venison, and a goose that the others were unloading from their canoes. Cushat meant “eat.”
Melville made tea while the food cooked. He drew pictures and did his best to show the men that he needed to get to a village. His map showed that Bulun was the nearest settlement of any significant size.
“Soak, soak,” said Tomat, shaking his head for “no.” There was too much ice; the weather was too extreme. He fell to the ground and closed his eyes, pretending to be dead. Tomat knew that attempting a journey to Bulun under these conditions meant they all would “pomree”—die!
Instead, Tomat led them to a small, empty hunting camp up the river. He said he would go no farther.
Exasperated, Melville launched the whaleboat, hoping his crew could get to Bulun without a guide. But winter arrived in full force that night. By daybreak, the snowy landscape had changed so much that he “could barely distinguish” it any longer.
They had no choice but to return to the hunting camp.
When the weather cleared, Tomat guided them to a small, inhabited village, where they were stranded for several weeks by another onslaught of storms.
In early October, a convicted thief named Kusmah Eremoff came to the village. Years earlier, he’d been exiled to Siberia, a common punishment for Russian criminals. He claimed that he could make it to Bulun and alert Russian authorities that the Jeannette crew needed assistance.
Melville wrote letters to the secretary of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. minister in St. Petersburg, Russia. But he decided not to send them because he didn’t trust Eremoff.
Eremoff said he’d return in five days. Melville waited in frustration for nearly a month. The Russian exile finally returned from Bulun on October 29, full of excuses for the delay. He handed Melville a note.
Melville opened “the dirty, crumpled scrap” and read it with astonishment.
Arctic steamer Jeannette lost on the 11th June; landed on Siberia 25th September or thereabouts; want assistance to go for the Captain and Doctor and (9) other men.
WILLIAM F. C. NINDEMANN,
LOUIS P. NOROS
Seamen, U.S.N.
Reply in haste: want food and clothing.
Nindemann and Noros had been in De Long’s cutter. They were alive! Melville made immediate plans to reach them.