BRIG. GEN. FREDERICK FUNSTON
On the 29th day of March, 1894, a party of eleven Tinneh Indians and myself, after a twenty days’ snowshoe journey across the bleak tundras and mountain ranges of Northeastern Alaska, reached Herschel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, sixty miles west of the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Here, in a little cove, locked fast in the ice, were the steam whalers Balæna, Grampus, Mary D. Hume, Newport, Narwhal, Jeanette and Karluck, all of San Francisco. Some of these vessels had been out from their home port three years. The preceding October, after one of the most successful seasons in the history of Arctic whaling, all had sought shelter in the only harbor afforded by this desolate coast to lie up for the winter. The ice-packs coming down from the North had frozen in all about Herschel Island, so that as far as the eye could reach was a jumble of bergs and solid floe, but behind the island where the ships lay the salt water had frozen as level as a floor. The nine months that the whalemen were compelled to lie in idleness, while not enlivened by social gayeties, were far from monotonous. With lumber brought up from San Francisco there had been built on shore a commodious one-room house, whose most conspicuous articles of furniture were a big stove that roared day and night, a billiard table and a number of benches and chairs. This was the clubroom of the sixty or seventy officers of the fleet, and here they congregated to play billiards and whist or sit about through the long Arctic evenings, while the wind howled outside, smoking and spinning yarns of many seas, or of boyhood days at New Bedford, New London and Martha’s Vineyard. There were veterans who had whaled on every ocean, and had been in nearly every port on the globe; men who recollected well the raid of the cruiser Shenandoah when she burned the fleet on the coast of Siberia thirty years before, and who had been in the Point Barrow disaster, when nearly a score of ships were crushed in the ice floe. The sailors and firemen of the fleet did not have the privileges of this house, but contented themselves with games and amusements of their own. They had an orchestra that played long and vociferously, and there was an amateur dramatic troupe that gave entertainments during the winter. But it was on the great national game of Base Ball that officers and men most depended to break the tedium of their long imprisonment and furnish needed exercise.
A large number of bats and balls had been brought up from San Francisco by one of last summer’s arrivals, and as soon as the ships had gone into quarters seven clubs were organized and formed into a league to play for the “Arctic Whalemen’s Pennant,” which was a strip of drilling nailed to a broomhandle. One nine was composed entirely of officers, another of seamen, a third of firemen, a fourth of cooks and waiters, and so on—the seven nines constituting the “Herschel Island League.” A set of written rules provided that the series of games should begin after a month’s practice and continue throughout the winter, and that all must be played on schedule time regardless of weather. Another provision was that on the diamond all ship rank was obliterated, and a sailor could “boss” even venerable Capt. Murray without fear of reproof. No sooner had the harbor frozen over than the diamond was laid out and practice begun. Salt water ice is not quite so slippery as that from fresh water, but great care had to be used by the players.
After a season of practice, during which there was much speculation as to the merits of the various nines and no end of chaff and banter, the first game of the series was played, and in the brief twilight of an arctic December day, with the mercury 38° below zero, the “Roaring Gimlets” vanquished the “Pig-Stickers” by a score of 62 to 49. All winter, regardless of blizzards and of bitter cold, the games went on, three or four each week, until the schedule was exhausted, and by this time the rivalry was so intense that playing was continued, the clubs challenging each other indiscriminately. The provision in the bylaws that a club refusing to play on account of weather forfeited its position caused one game to be played at 47° below zero, and often during blizzards the air was so full of flying snow that the outfielders could not be seen from the home-plate. Even after the sun had disappeared for the last time and the long arctic night had begun, games were played in the few hours of twilight at midday, but were usually limited to four innings, as by 2 o’clock it would be too dark to see the ball.
All the whalemen were dressed in the Esquimau fur costume, only the face being exposed, and on their hands wore heavy fur mittens. These clumsy mittens, together with the fact that one was apt to fall on the ice unless he gave a large part of his attention to keeping his feet underneath him, made good catching practically impossible. “Muffs” were the rule, and the man who caught and held the ball received an ovation, not only from the whalers, but from the hundreds of Esquimaux who were always crowded about the rope. With the ball frozen as hard as a rock, no one was apt to repeat an experiment of catching with bare hands. One of the center fielders was a corpulent Orkney Islander, whose favorite method of stopping a hot grounder was to lie down in front of it. The Esquimaux considered him the star player of the fleet. Sliding was the only thing done to perfection, the ice offering excellent facilities for distinction in that line; and there was always a wild cheer when a runner, getting too much headway, knocked the baseman off his feet and both came down together. The scores were ridiculously large, seldom less than fifty on a side, and sometimes twice that. On the smooth ice a good hit meant a home run.
A most amusing feature of the games was the interest shown by the Esquimaux. With the fleet there were nearly a hundred of these people from Behring Strait and Point Barrow, and there were several villages in the vicinity of Herschel Island. These latter were Kogmulliks, the largest Esquimaux in existence, and the presence of the fleet had drawn them from all along the coast. Men, women and children became typical Base Ball cranks, and there was never a game without a large attendance of Esquimaux, who stood about, eyes and mouths wide open, and yelled frantically whenever there was a brilliant catch or a successful slide. At first dozens of them would break over the line and try to hold a runner until the baseman could get the ball, and it was only by vigorous cuffings that they were taught that the spectators’ duties are limited to cheering and betting. They borrowed the paraphernalia and tried a few games of their own, but rarely got beyond the first inning, usually winding up in a general melee and hairpulling. One of their umpires, who insisted on allowing a nine to bat after it had three men out in order to even up the score, was dragged off the diamond by his heels. They are naturally great gamblers and bet among themselves on the results of the whalers’ games.
A fact that impressed me very much at one of the games that I saw was that the crowd of several hundred people watching our national sport at this faraway corner of the earth, only twenty degrees from the pole, and thousands of miles from railroads or steamship lines, was more widely cosmopolitan than could have been found at any other place on the globe. From the ships were Americans, a hundred or more, men from every seafaring nationality of Europe—Chinese, Japanese and Malays from Tahiti and Hawaii. The colored brother, too, was there, a dozen of him, and several of the players were negroes. Esquimaux of all ages were everywhere, while the red men were represented by the eleven wiry fellows who had snowshoed with me from their home in the valley of the Yukon. One day I noticed that in a little group of eleven, sitting on an overturned sled watching a game, there were representatives of all the five great divisions of the human race.
There are no men on earth who are more hospitable and more thoroughly good fellows than these whalers of the Arctic Ocean, and it was hard to leave them; but we finally got away and started on the long tramp over the snowy wastes toward the Yukon. Just before we left a notice was posted in the clubhouse which, with many “whereases,” “aforesaids,” and other legal formula, recited that the “Auroras” thought they knew something about ball, and hereby challenged the “Herschels” to meet them on the diamond within three days.