. . . we were drifting1, drifting,—we knew not to what haven, in the silent, icy fastness of the North.
—ERNEST F. CHAFE, MESS ROOM BOY
Mamen spent a couple of hours each day up in the barrel, or crow’s nest, keeping watch with Bartlett. It was a chance to be of use, to bond with the captain, and to escape the confinements of his cabin.
On October 3, Mamen and Bartlett could just make out land in the distance—Point Barrow, Alaska, five or so miles away. They were drifting swiftly to the west-northwest in gale force winds—still held captive in their ice floe—and the water was nine fathoms deep.
Mamen almost never got any time alone. The men in the Cabin DeLuxe had started calling themselves the “Four-Leaved Clover,” an affectionate term, but one that, at times, implied too much togetherness, which was exactly the case. Mamen got a kick out of the good-natured Malloch, thought well of the more serious McKinlay, and, for all his irritation with the man, liked Beuchat. Still, it was close quarters. Either McKinlay was in there, reading and worrying, or Beuchat was complaining about something or other, or Malloch was singing at the top of his lungs, so loud that no one could think. But sometimes—on rare occasions—they would leave and Mamen would sneak into the cabin, hole up in his bunk, and enjoy some peace and quiet.
He spent a lot of time thinking of his friends and family back home, especially Ellen. Mostly, however, he studied. He read books by Amundsen and Nansen and some of the other explorers. The Karluk had an extensive polar library, everything from Robert Peary to Frederick Cook to Adolphus Greely—books on the Antarctic and the Arctic; reports of the steamer Corwin and the United States revenue cutter Bear; narratives of journeys to the Northwest Passage, the Bering Sea, the heart of the polar ice pack.
The Norwegian Amundsen, of course, was Mamen’s favorite, the man he wanted to become. For months now, he’d been scouring Amundsen’s books, making mental notes on the expedition he wanted to lead himself one day. He thought of almost nothing else and lay in bed at night, studying and planning. He would spend the next three or four years with the Karluk, and afterward would return home to prepare for his own expedition. He and Ellen would marry, of course, but then he would have to leave her again, to pursue his dreams of exploration. “My dearest wish2 if I get safely out of this trip,” he scrawled in his journal, “is to go home to Norway, scrape together enough money to enable me to get a small ship, and . . . sail under the beautiful Norwegian flag.”
Tonight was one of those nights Mamen always wished for, when Beuchat and Malloch and McKinlay weren’t around. But tonight he did not study. His Amundsen books sat stacked nearby, closed and momentarily forgotten. Tonight he was reading something much more pressing—the ship and ice journals of George Washington De Long, who headed for the North Pole in July 1879 and never returned. De Long’s diaries dated from 1879–1881 and were written in two volumes and eight hundred pages—not a quick read, nor an easy one, but compelling.
They had died out there—De Long and all thirteen of his men. In September of 1879, their ship the Jeannette became trapped in ice just east of Wrangel Island, an uninhabited scrap of land lying northeast of Siberia. She drifted for twenty-one months before going down, and De Long and his crew had set out across the ice toward Siberia in hopes of reaching civilization and safety, only they never made it. They died of cold and starvation before reaching land.
Years later, wreckage from their expedition was found off the coast of Greenland. De Long kept a journal to the very end, writing until the last days of his life. His final words were haunting. A man died almost daily, and De Long’s last three entries read: “October 28th, Friday3.—One hundred and thirty-eighth day. Iversen died during early morning. October 29th, Saturday.—One hundred and thirty-ninth day. Dressler died during night. October30th, Sunday.—One hundred and fortieth day. Boyd and Görtz died during night. Mr. Collins dying.”
The journal stopped after that, and one could only guess what happened to him.
Mamen was transfixed by the journals, as horrific as they were. So, too, were McKinlay, Malloch, Mackay, Murray, and Beuchat. And for one good reason. The Karluk was following the same wayward drift as the Jeannette.
Dr. Mackay and Murray were the first to observe the similarities, and they led the long, increasingly obsessive late-night discussions about the comparable journeys of the two ships. Along with Beuchat and sometimes Malloch, they gathered almost nightly to pore over De Long’s notes and charts. Whenever possible, Mamen avoided the conferences. They had a way of continuing for hours at a time, and Mamen had no patience with that. While the others were talking, he would sneak off to his bunk to get a little peace and quiet and some privacy. But secretly, when alone, he himself pored over the diaries of De Long, as worried as the others. Somehow it was easier for him to deal with the prospect of disaster on his own, by himself.
DAYS LATER, on October 7, Beuchat strode into the Cabin DeLuxe, eyes rolling, white as a ghost. “We are lost4,” he groaned, “we don’t know where we are—everything is hopeless.” And then he launched into a woeful monologue regarding Stefansson’s mishandling of the expedition and of his absence.
Mamen looked at Beuchat over the leaves of Amundsen’s book on the South Pole. The Frenchman was always so dramatic. Everyone knew he had no business being on this expedition—or any expedition for that matter. He was too weak-hearted, too squeamish, too spoiled. He wasn’t able to do a thing for himself, and nice as he was—the perfect gentleman—he worried and complained all the time. He was impressionable, too, and Dr. Mackay and Murray had obviously been working on him.
Mamen couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing. They would probably get into another argument, but he didn’t care.
McKinlay was next, wandering into the room, flustered and upset. McKinlay also avoided the late-night gatherings regarding the Jeannette, preferring, like Mamen, to study De Long in the privacy of his own bunk. McKinlay seldom vocalized his fears, but now he stood in the doorway of the Cabin DeLuxe, staring furiously at Mamen and Beuchat. “Stefansson,” he said firmly, “read De Long’s5 book about the voyage of the ‘Jeannette’ a couple of days before he left the ‘Karluk’; he saw there that most ships, 99 percent of 100, in the ice north of Bering Strait are facing certain death, and for fear of losing his life he left the ship.”
There it was, spoken aloud. The words no one dared speak. Everyone had wondered about Stefansson’s departure. All of the scientists hosted their own theories on the matter. But no one had named it until now.
There were rumors that the plans of the expedition were not what the men had been “led to believe6,” according to McKinlay, and “that someone had been acting under false pretenses.” Each day of their journey was a revelation for the men of the Karluk as they realized more clearly—and with increasing alarm—just how unprepared the expedition had been when they departed Esquimalt. Aside from the lack of proper fur clothing, there were no suitable tents or stoves, and much of the equipment was secondhand or in disrepair. Stefansson, they felt, would most certainly have to undergo an official enquiry when the expedition returned to civilization.
Stefansson surely knew the odds against the ship escaping from the ice this late in the season. He knew, as well as Bartlett, that there was no hope of breaking free until spring. If he stayed with the ship, he gave up all prospect of continuing on his great quest. But the very idea was incomprehensible. What kind of leader abandoned his men?
It was nothing Mamen hadn’t lambasted Stefansson for in his own journal. But blaming Stefansson wouldn’t help matters, nor would giving voice to suspicions that could never actually be proven. Mamen was disgusted with his comrades and their lack of restraint. Nothing good would ever come from talk like this, and it made him feel uneasy and unsettled.
“The Canadian Arctic7 Expedition will be a great fiasco, I see it now,” he wrote in his diary. “It is not only the leader of the expedition who is to blame, but most of the members. I have never seen a bigger crowd of cowards in my life, they fear both for their lives and their limbs. Why should such people go to the Arctic, they should know what they risk, and when they see danger or dangers confronting them, they blame the leader and curse him up and down.”
DR. MACKAY, for one, was planning to take charge of the situation. He and Murray, and to some extent Beuchat, did nothing to hide the fact that they were planning to abandon the ship and take themselves ashore. They charted the Jeannette’s route and compared it with the route of the Karluk. There had been no happy ending to De Long’s expedition, and the doctor and Murray did not plan to entrust their own fates to a captain in whom they had no confidence—and they had no confidence in Bartlett. While the captain’s long and celebrated reputation with Peary spoke for itself, Mackay and Murray thought much more of their own experience with Shackleton. They believed Bartlett to be simple, unimaginative, and impassive. They also felt he was showing a grave lack of concern for their situation, and it was maddening that he didn’t seem to be doing anything to get them out of the ice. They felt far superior to him intellectually and in terms of their own polar experience. If anything, that one expedition with Shackleton had given them a sense of too much power and confidence—false confidence, but confidence nonetheless. Bartlett was no leader, as far as they could see. Shackleton was a leader, and having served under him, they considered themselves leaders by association.
Mackay, Murray, and Beuchat never mentioned their plans to McKinlay, but they invited Mamen to come with them. He was enraged at the suggestion of mutiny and he let them know it. His place was with the ship and with his captain. Afterward, he sought out Bartlett and told him that “as long as8 there are provisions . . . and a deck on Karluk, I stay on board, unless I get orders to go.”
Mackay confronted Bartlett with their plans to leave the ship. Bartlett, in his typically gruff way, dismissed the doctor. He did not want to waste his time with this kind of talk. Mackay demanded that Bartlett bring the ship’s company together and lay his agenda before them. The doctor and the other scientists were unaware of Stefansson’s instructions about what they were to do while wintering in the ice and were unaware of Bartlett’s plans for getting them out of there and to safety. As far as they could see, he was doing nothing. They believed he had gotten them into the whole mess to begin with by following the open leads in the ice and steering the ship away from land. In their eyes, Bartlett was the reason they were now stuck in the ice pack, and it was his responsibility to get them out. Dr. Mackay and Murray also demanded that the captain inform them of his plan for the winter.
Bartlett, as usual, said nothing. He knew what the doctor was planning. He’d heard every word through the adjoining wall of their cabins. Mackay wanted Bartlett to hear everything, to know how disliked he was, and night after night, Bartlett had to listen to it. Generally not the most placid and even-tempered of men, the captain refrained from battle. He would not engage in a showdown with these men, would not give them the satisfaction or disrupt his ship. He had his crew to think of. He was in a precarious situation, left in charge of twenty-one men, one woman, and two children. Shouldered with a responsibility he never asked for or expected, he did not feel he could let himself respond to threats.
As far as Bartlett was concerned, there was nothing to discuss with these men, so there was no good reason to call a formal meeting. He was still hopeful that the ship would break free and, if not, that she would be prepared to last the winter held fast in the ice floe.
He did inform Mackay that anyone who required anything had only to ask for it, and if it was on the ship, the request would be taken care of. Afterwards, most of the staff felt satisfied with this, and for the time being at least, things seemed to smooth over.
Still, the worries remained, and everyone seemed suddenly aware of danger, discord, and trouble ahead, even if, for the moment, they stopped talking about it. To his journal, Mamen confided, “One stares death9 in the eyes every minute of the day. It is not only starvation but there are dangers lurking around you all the time, so you must keep the eyes wide open if you love your life.”
WHENEVER BARTLETT SAID IT WAS SAFE, Mamen strapped on his skis and led the ski patrol out onto the ice surrounding the ship. When he could, Bartlett took a skiing lesson; Malloch and the doctor were also regular students. The captain and Malloch were both enthusiastic, if still a bit clumsy. Dr. Mackay, who always insisted on doing things his own way—even on skis—excelled in running and jumping.
They were usually the only living creatures out on the ice. It was an eerie world—vast, barren, and utterly still. White sky blended into the icescape, until you couldn’t tell where one ended and one began. There was no sign of life but the ship and her men, the dogs, and the little black cat. Otherwise, the world was deafeningly silent and lifeless.
“I remember now10 how quiet the world appeared to be,” wrote Fred Maurer. “The only noises were those made by the voices of men and the howling of the dogs; our engines were silent; the ice around us gave no sign of opening up, and there day after day and night after night we lay in helpless imprisonment.”
On October 9 there was a near catastrophe when Bartlett and Mamen were out on their skis with Hadley’s dog Molly. The ice broke about fifty yards ahead of the ship, forming a large lead, which grew rapidly into a dark chasm of water. The skiers barely had a chance to leap across the water before it widened, but poor Molly wasn’t able to make the jump; and before either Bartlett or Mamen could go back for her, she was stranded on the other side.
Bartlett hurried back to the ship, hoping to seize this chance to put the Karluk back under her own power and pilot her through the passageway of water. It was the opportunity he had been searching for, ever since they had been carried away from land and leader in September. He would blast a way out of there if he had to.
There was only one problem—it was too dark. He would have to wait or risk driving her into the surrounding ice floes.
Bartlett’s hopes were high the next morning as he climbed to the barrel to get a view of the extent of the open water. But the ship was shrouded in fog and it was impossible to see anything. The water closed up and the Karluk remained frozen in.
It wasn’t the last time during the month that Bartlett was hopeful of breaking free of the ice. Time and again, a pathway opened and escape seemed promising. “We are still11 lying in the same ice floe as almost two months ago, but it has now begun to get frail; it won’t take long, I think, before it breaks,” wrote Mamen. But time and again, the hopes of the men were dashed. Karluk, it seemed, was undeniably trapped.
The ice was misleading. It was easy to feel safe when the ice was still and settled and the men were tucked safely inside the ship. Their frozen home gave them a false sense of security. The scenery, too, was unspeakably beautiful, and it was hard to believe that something so lovely could at the same time be so deadly. The sky was bright as a mirror at times, and there was only ice and snow “and a few12 openings and small water channels that shine and glitter” as far as the eye could see, observed Mamen.
The nighttime icescape was especially enchanting. Nearly every night, the sky came alive with a brilliant display of the aurora borealis. Even the jaded and cynical Mackay and Murray said the aurora—especially the vibrant colors—outshone anything they had ever witnessed in the Antarctic.
THE ICE WAS BREAKING UP. Floes shattered against floes in a terrifying inferno, causing cannonlike explosions as the ice threatened to crush the Karluk. For the first time, the men were afraid. “Opposing floes which13 had come together were being shattered one against another, piling higher & higher,” wrote McKinlay. “Huge ice-blocks larger than houses were being tossed about like pebbles! What stupendous forces must have been at work with millions of tons of ice on either side trying to make way in opposite directions! As we watched this terrifying work of Nature, we noticed that the area of contention was creeping slowly but surely towards us, & we fell to wondering, with a shudder, what would be our lot.. . . To the East, West & South, are seething masses of ice battling for supremacy, grinding, crushing, groaning, roaring ice . . ..”
A special watch was kept because of ice conditions, and the men made preparations for a hasty departure from the ship by laying out provisions and equipment on the deck. Bartlett gave strict orders not to leave the ship. He made it clear that anyone who left was taking his life in his own hands and Bartlett would not be held accountable.
For the first time, the men began to have an inkling of what they were up against. The ship, their haven for the past two months, now suddenly seemed vulnerable. “So we are14 rapidly approaching the great, open, bottomless ocean,” wrote Mamen in his journal. “It is indeed difficult to tell how long we will have a roof over our heads. If it continues this way it may be water rather than a roof, and that perhaps forever. . ..”
SOMETIME IN MID-OCTOBER, Beuchat went in search of Mamen. Fearful of their situation, his conscience troubling him, stabbed by doubts thanks to all the talk from Mackay and Murray about Bartlett’s ineptitude, Beuchat poured out his thoughts to the young topographer.
Murray and Mackay proposed to leave the ship and set out for land. They thought they could do better than the captain; they didn’t have any faith in him and believed they could reach land on their own. If they stayed with the ship much longer, they might be lost. The Antarctic experience of both men spoke for them, especially Dr. Mackay, who had been a hero there. It was easy to be swayed by such talk from such confident and highly respected men. True, Bartlett had led Peary to the Pole, but that was a different time of year, a different ship, a different region. Mackay didn’t want to wait any longer. He and Murray both felt now was the time to leave the ship and make their way to land. As far as either one could see, they were waiting for nothing. The ship was imprisoned, with no chance of being freed until spring, if she wasn’t crushed long before that. There was no hope of continuing their work and fulfilling their duties, no hope of the Karluk sailing again under her own power.
Mamen told Beuchat it was lunacy to leave the Karluk. It was the wrong time of year, for one thing, with the days growing shorter and the weather growing colder and worsening day by day. The middle of January would be more reasonable—with the sun returning—but even then Mamen didn’t believe in leaving the ship prematurely. “You must consider15,” Mamen told Beuchat, “that there are not only a few on board but 25 men all told, and if the crew sees that somebody leaves the ship, they will immediately assume that danger is threatening, and all will sneak away in the same manner! And with 29 dogs for 25 men this is no joke, and the distance is both long and full of danger.”
THE WATER GREW DEEPER as the Karluk drifted slowly but steadily northward. By October 26, they reached 1,115 fathoms. At the beginning of the month, they had stood in a depth of nine.
Mamen needed to be working for his own peace of mind, so he and Malloch and McKinlay kept an eye on the temperature, studied the drift, charted the wind and weather conditions, and made latitudinal and longitudinal observations. They also worked in teams helping the crew and the Eskimos break ice to pack all around the ship. It was Bartlett’s idea to form a cushion against the lateral pressure of the ice that trapped her. His hope was that this would keep the men warmer and well insulated while also helping the ship rise above the water so as to avoid being crushed. They cut the ice one meter round the Karluk, to help her rise, and banked her with snow blocks eighteen inches thick, reaching to the level of the poop deck.
Every day, Murray’s dredge was lowered, and every day it was raised to examine the catch of Arctic sea life. When the dredge produced no results, Murray was crushed, but when he was successful his spirits improved dramatically. After a good catch, Murray would disappear into his cramped, makeshift laboratory, where he huddled in the cold, smoking furiously, gray hair falling in his eyes as he studied the specimens under his microscope. When he couldn’t identify them, he still cataloged his findings, keeping meticulous notes in painstaking detail. Even his less educated comrades seemed to understand the significance of his work. If some of these creatures had indeed been seen by the human eye before, they were still unfamiliar. And Murray realized that he could have very well been the first to view—or, at the very least, to identify—some of these animals.
Malloch set up a theodolite on the ice so that every night when the weather was clear enough he could take sightings and keep track of the ship’s position. He was also teaching himself how to make igloos. His colleagues discovered him out on the ice one day, making a shabby and badly constructed snow house. He was cheerful and determined as ever, having decided that he should know how to make an igloo, just in case the worst happened and they were forced to leave the ship.
Kataktovik, meanwhile, was teaching Beuchat, McKinlay, and Dr. Mackay to speak the Eskimo language. Every evening for half an hour, they would gather in his quarters in the lab for their lessons.
Beuchat was a brilliant linguist, and in his opinion it was the most difficult language of all to learn. Speaking Eskimo, for instance, was so much different from actually thinking Eskimo. And even with a wide grasp of the Eskimo dialect, it was hard to communicate with native speakers because so many Eskimo words, once translated into English and then back to Eskimo, became nonsense. “Dried apples16” in English became “situk” in Eskimo, which meant “resembling an ear.” “Salvation” in English became “pulling from a hole in the ice” in Eskimo. And the Twenty-third Psalm translated rather delightfully and alarmingly into: “The Lord is my great keeper; he does not want me. He shoots me down on the beach, & pushes me into the water.”
In the evening, some of the men gathered in the saloon to play bridge and chess. Murray taught Mamen to play the latter. The young Norwegian had never played before but picked up the game quickly and began playing every night. In this temporary sanctum from the cold, the scientists and officers sat around the stove and lit their pipes and cigarettes from their treasured rations of tobacco and listened to the tunes of the phonograph. It was a cozy little retreat—a necessary one—and one all of the men came to count on in those long, bleak, darkening days.
In addition to their designated duties, the men—both staff and crew—were still hard at work sewing winter clothes. Stefansson had left them sorely ill-equipped for braving the cold, and Kiruk alone would not be able to outfit them; one woman would never be able to create an entire winter wardrobe for twenty-five people, and besides, her time was better spent making the winter boots. Under Kiruk’s keen supervision, each man was given skins, cloth, and some blanketing to make an extra pair of socks and skin shirts. The crewmen were more experienced than their scientific counterparts in the field of embroidery. “Theirs may not17 be so very beautiful but I will guarantee that they will be solid; sailors know how to sew so it will last,” observed Mamen.
At every sign of open water, Bartlett sent men out to hunt. The shortage of fresh meat aboard ship was a concern, and he knew all too well—and had seen firsthand—the devastating and sometimes fatal effects of a meat-free diet. So he sent Kuraluk and Kataktovik out looking for seal and for polar bear. The grizzled Hadley accompanied them, bound and determined to beat the “dirty Indians,” as he called them, and bring back more game. Despite the fact that he had loved and married an Eskimo woman, the old man professed that he couldn’t stand most Eskimos, made no pretense about his supposed deep-seated hatred of them, and was certainly not about to be out-hunted by a couple of them.
More often than not, the hunters came back empty-handed. Polar bears were often sighted in the distance, but the ice was usually too dangerous for the hunters to pursue them. Seals were easier to catch, but it was just as easy to lose one to the water, after they were killed. They sank like lead weights, straight to the bottom, and all the men had to show for their efforts was a waste of ammunition.
Miraculously, Hadley’s dog Molly, the one who had been stranded when the ice broke on October 9, had returned to the ship by now, having wandered back one afternoon. Even the other dogs seemed happy to see her. The dogs themselves had been living loose on the ice for a couple of weeks, fighting with each other to the point of serious injury. They had a horrible way of ganging up on one member of the team, who was usually defended by his team partner, until both were brutally attacked by the rest of the pack. Mamen dubbed them “the lions” because they were so fierce.
One of the hounds, Bob, was fatally injured in a fight. He slunk away on the ice, accompanied by Mosse, his brother, and refused to come aboard. The dogs wouldn’t let anyone near them and wouldn’t take any nourishment. Several days later, Bob and Mosse returned to the ship, and the men took them aboard and made a bed for Bob on some dry bags. Mosse stayed with him. “It is awful18 not to be able to spend a bullet on him and thus end his life quickly,” wrote Mamen, “instead of letting him lie in agony. It hurts me more than I can describe to see him lying there groaning and puffing, his body shivering incessantly.”
When Bob died, Mosse still refused to leave him. He stayed by his side the rest of the night, wailing and howling. Inside their cabins, the men were chilled by his grieving cries, which reverberated, eerie and piercing, in the dead air.
AS WINTER CLOSED IN, Bartlett ordered a new routine aboard the Karluk, with chief engineer Munro, second engineer Williamson, and firemen Maurer and Breddy working all day at drawing the fires and closing down the engine room to take the faulty engine apart and repair it once and for all: blowing down the boilers, as they called it. Munro and Williamson also installed a new tank for melting ice in the galley. Munro could be quite a diligent worker while Bartlett was watching. He said all the right things, worked with enthusiasm, and took charge of what needed to be done. As soon as Bartlett turned away, however, the work all fell to Williamson, and Munro refused to lift a finger. This was, as Mamen put it, because Munro “doesn’t know anything19; neither has he any idea of an engineer’s work.”
There was a new watch regime for the crew, who now worked only from 7:00 A.M. until 6:00 P.M., with their nights free. One man was placed on night watch until 6:00 A.M., the duty changing weekly; in exchange for the night’s work, the designated crewman had his days free. There was also a new schedule for meals because rationing was now essential. Breakfast was served at 9:30 A.M., with coffee and hardtack at noon; dinner at 4:30 P.M.; and cocoa, tea or “a mouthful of20 coffee or rather chicory,” according to Mamen, at 9:00 at night. “It is rather long between the meals,” he lamented, “but when one has got accustomed to it I believe it will be the best.” Templeman thinned the milk and held back the sugar at each feeding, in order to save his stores, and the food continued to be prepared in the usual slovenly way. Dishes were only partially washed, the stove was wiped down with a dirty cloth, and every now and then one of Templeman’s cigarette butts found its way into the soup.
The temperature was sinking steadily, dipping down to minus twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. The drift had now ceased, and the ice pack was unnervingly motionless. The Karluk was still held fast by the ice, at the mercy of the wind and the current. To make matters worse, the days were growing shorter, and soon the men were eating breakfast by lamplight at 9:00 in the morning, and lighting the lamps again by 3:00 P.M. “I suppose the21 sun will disappear entirely the first days of November,” Mamen wrote in his diary, “and when it is gone the long dark winter-night will come quickly, but so much the more welcome [the sun] will be when it returns in January . . ..”
At Bartlett’s request, Hadley and second mate Charles Barker set up shop in the fore-hold, where they built Peary sleds. The captain wanted them ready by February, when they would leave the ship and set out for land, if they had not reached it before then.
In all his years in the Arctic, Hadley had never seen anything like it. He thought it the most ridiculous contraption he had ever come across. Peary had designed the sled himself, based on the experience he’d gleaned in his eight attempts on the North Pole. It measured thirteen feet overall, with each runner measuring three inches wide and one and a half inches thick. The runners were turned up at each end, as was the stern of the sled, making steering easier. Boards of soft wood composed the bed, filled in by pieces of oak, which were fastened by sealskin lashings. The design of the sled made it more flexible than the more conventional Nome model, allowing the driver to turn it around without lifting it. The Peary sled was also more adapted to travel over the rough and uneven Arctic ice.
Mamen was usually supportive of Bartlett, but even he couldn’t understand what the captain saw in them. To him, they were cumbersome and strange and he knew they would never work. “I for my22 part think they are both too heavy and too frail, so I suppose we won’t get any satisfaction from them if they are to be used on a sleigh trip. They are only good for being photographed, Mr. Hadley says, and perhaps he is right.”
MCKINLAY WAS BEGINNING to gain confidence. In addition to his meteorological work, he had taken up carpentry, something he had never attempted in his life. He constructed a rather crude-looking but functional medicine chest for Dr. Mackay, put up shelves in the library, and built a rough wooden table for the Cabin DeLuxe. He also repaired the gasoline lamp and sewed an entire suit of clothes for himself out of material and blanketing. He couldn’t help but feel proud when he surveyed his work.
“There are some23 people who thought they could only teach school till they came on this trip,” Bartlett would shout at him, dropping an enormous bearlike paw onto McKinlay’s shoulder. “This is better than teaching school, eh, boy? Just think, you would never have discovered what a fine fellow you are till you came here.”
Bartlett was right. It was better than teaching school. Before he had signed up to join Stefansson’s Arctic expedition, McKinlay could only dream of the type of adventure he was now experiencing. Now here he was in the heart of it, living it. Granted, it wasn’t exactly the adventure he had signed up for, but it was an adventure just the same and he was grateful for the experience and excited about what the future might hold.
McKinlay was also grateful to Bartlett, who had been especially generous with McKinlay, Mamen, and Malloch, as if to reward them for not joining the mutinous ranks of Mackay, Murray, and Beuchat. Lately, the captain had been making presents of material and lambskins, as well as knives, pipes, and other odds and ends, to McKinlay and the other two, a poignant gesture that McKinlay knew was Bartlett’s way of reaching out. “I sense that24 he is feeling desperately lonely & conscious that part of the staff indulges in much criticism,” McKinlay observed. “At any rate, he is much freer in his relations with Mamen, Malloch & myself; he either knows, or feels, that we refuse to join in the criticism & indeed are prepared to back up whatever he plans.”
McKinlay felt for Bartlett and sympathized. He thought that the doctor and his two colleagues were behaving reprehensibly, and he was ashamed to be associated with them in any capacity. He was glad that they left him alone and knew that they did so because his loyalty to Bartlett was clear. He was resolved to stand by the captain and the ship until the end, whatever end that might be.
He just wished there was more he could do for Bartlett than offer his loyalty. He couldn’t reach out to that formidable man, and he couldn’t make the captain confide in him. Bartlett always kept up a robust, solid front, but lately his face was showing the strain and anxiety he was feeling. McKinlay found himself missing the captain’s sharp tongue, hearty smile, and “free & easy25, devil-may-care manner.”
“I wish to26 God, McKinlay, I had your even temper,” Bartlett told him one day, his usually steady voice uneven.
It was all he said on the matter. But it was all he needed to say. If McKinlay had hosted any doubts about how Bartlett was feeling, those few words painted a clear picture.
THEY HAD LEFT ESQUIMALT four months ago. Daylight was further diminishing and the Karluk, still encased in the grip of the ice floe, was drifting steadily northward, sometimes twenty miles a day, sometimes more. By the time she passed Point Barrow, there were only five hours of sunlight each day.
Everyone was feeling the strain. Tempers were short, nerves were worn, and the daily tasks became more difficult to perform. Malloch, normally so cheerful, “the most good-natured27 chap in the world,” according to Mamen, had a tendency to lose control. It came out at odd times—a fierce flash of temper—followed by a return of good spirits.
McKinlay was in the Cabin DeLuxe one afternoon, absorbed in tearing down one of the beds to make more room. He was lost in thought, completely unaware of Malloch, who came into the cabin and stood watching him. McKinlay’s back was to the geologist, so it was without warning that Wee Mac was, as Mamen described it, suddenly “encircled by the28 big bear’s arms; to get loose was out of the question and the big bulky fellow went shear berserk on this little innocent man, but when his temper cooled down, he let go his hold and slunk shamefacedly away.”
It was a bizarre incident and left McKinlay understandably shaken and Malloch understandably embarrassed. The next day, when the cabin had been rearranged and the extra beds cleared out, the once again sunny Malloch was overjoyed at the change, as if he had thought of it himself. He was contrite, though, over his brutal treatment of McKinlay and crept around sheepishly, removing himself to his bed, embroidering the strips of fabric onto his old trousers. “We may see29 him early and late with the needle in his hand,” wrote Mamen, “singing, a comical figure, naturally good-natured and amiable, but when he gets mad one has to look out for him. It is best to keep at a respectable distance.”
While Malloch was becoming prone to violent shows of temper, Dr. Mackay retired to his cabin and began spending most of his days in bed, subsisting on regular doses of strychnine—several a week—to brace himself up. The drug was a tonic, a stimulant, which he had been taking for a while to boost his spirits and his energy, but now he was increasing the dosage. The doses were very large and after he had taken one, he was so weak that he had to stay in bed most of the next day. As days passed, he looked worse—pale and drawn, with dark circles shadowing his eyes and an unusual listlessness about him—until his colleagues worried openly about his well-being. His usual vivacity had disappeared except for fleeting, lightning-quick flashes when he couldn’t resist tormenting his favorite target, second engineer Williamson. “For my part30,” said Mamen, “I believe that he has not long to live, all the strychnine he takes ruins him completely.”
Even McKinlay sometimes sank into melancholy. Some days he would sit, book in hand, pipe in mouth, and think about home. His colleagues would catch him, staring into space, and tell him “What’s the use?” It was true. There was no use in thinking of his loved ones while he was so far away. Inevitably then, his thoughts would turn to the work that had brought him to the Arctic, and the disturbing fact that, thus far, his choice to leave friends and family was unjustified. They had no leader now, and, even though he tried to stay busy, there was no real work to be done. So what, then, was he doing here?
Mamen confessed his fears only to his journal. He did not confide in anyone, did not burden his friends with his thoughts or worries, did not reveal his own apprehensions. In typical fashion, he tried to remain optimistic. They must take life as it comes. They must be patient. They must trust. Where there is life, there is hope. He believed this above all else, yet he struggled to retain his faith. “Our large ice31 floe is getting frailer and frailer day after day,” he wrote in his journal. “Well, I hope it will be so frail that it will break so we can get out of here. I am now perfectly convinced that we will stay in the ice for a year. Who knows what next year will bring, whether it will be success or death and destruction for all. Yes, when and where this will end is hard to tell. It will probably be a miserable existence for most of us, and the end will be death . . . but perhaps it is the greatest benefit that can befall a starved, frozen, and worn-to-death man. No, this is too much. Fresh courage!”
THE FATE OF THE KARLUK seemed out of anyone’s hands and now they had to wait just as the men of the Jeannette had had to wait. As shrewd and experienced as Bartlett was, there was little he could do. De Long himself had also known—perhaps better than anyone—the extreme helplessness of the situation. “No human power32 can keep the ice still, and no human ingenuity can prevent damage when it begins to grind and break up,” De Long wrote. “Held fast in a vise we cannot get away, so we have to trust in God and remain by the ship. If we are thrown out on the ice we must try to get to Siberia, if we can drag ourselves and food over the two hundred and fifty miles intervening; sleds are handy, dogs ready, provisions on deck, knapsacks packed, arms at hand, records encased. What more can we do? When trouble comes we hope to be able to deal with it, and survive it!”
Helpless and unable to do anything for themselves, the staff and crew of the Canadian Arctic Expedition focused their mounting frustration and anger on their absent leader. The men of the Karluk gave up hope of seeing him again that year—if ever—and speculated about his whereabouts. Stefansson, they all now realized, had never intended to come back. Perhaps he was at Point Barrow or Herschel Island with the other two expedition ships. Perhaps he was already on his way to wintering in Victoria Land with the Southern Party.
Members of the scientific staff still tried to voice their disgust in private and not in front of the crew. “I suppose there33 is nobody on board who is sorry for his absence,” Mamen wrote in his diary. “I for my part feel sorry for him, if I were in his position under such conditions I believe that I would spend a bullet on myself. He will, I should think, lose his good name and reputation and only be laughed at by the newspapers, yes by each and everybody, poor man, but so it goes when one cannot take care of one’s own interests.”
Bartlett couldn’t give in to criticizing Stefansson, and he didn’t have time to waste on lamenting their situation. He left that to the scientists. Although officially in charge of them, he had little control over their avid late-nightdeliberations regarding the Jeannette or Dr. Mackay’s plans for mutiny. He focused instead on keeping his crew busy and maintaining his composure.
ON OCTOBER 30, Mamen was lying in his bunk, again studying De Long’s diaries, when night watchman Ned Golightly raced into the cabin. Seaman Golightly was usually a quiet boy, calm and reserved, but now he was agitated and breathless. He and the men in the fo’c’sle had heard a loud report at 7:00 P.M. They examined the area around the ship but saw nothing, no sign of where the sound came from. After that, all was quiet. Then, an hour later, Golightly heard the most terrifying noise. It was the ice cracking within ten yards of the ship, surrounding her on all sides, pushing up and raftering, splintering into thin, jagged ribbons, threatening to squeeze Karluk like a vise and puncture her vulnerable walls.
Beuchat immediately fell to pieces, scared out of his wits. Mamen assured him that they were safe for the moment and ordered him to get hold of himself. Beuchat calmed somewhat and together he and Mamen raced up and out into the darkness, the bitter, bone-chilling cold, a fierce wind—a blizzard.
It was Sandy who first thought to go after the gear, which was stowed nearby on the ice. Mamen pitched in, and soon all hands were ordered to bring the gear back aboard. The cracks in the ice grew larger as they worked. All about them, the ice was grinding and pressing the ship, as the storm swelled in the darkness. After the supplies were stowed, they went after the dogs, which were reluctant to cross the open water to the ship. The huskies didn’t mind ice and cold; they were used to sleeping burrowed in the snow, in the middle of blizzards, if need be. But they hated water. Every time, they refused to cross it. Now as the dark, glassy chasms opened in the ice, the dogs stood their ground and refused to move, or when the men came at them, they ran away, skittering across the ice, away from the open water and the ship.
There wasn’t a restful eye in the house that sleepless night. Everyone—scientists, crewmen, Eskimos—suddenly realized quite fully the danger of their situation. It was a reality that Bartlett had been facing from the moment they became trapped in the ice. Karluk had survived this time, but would she be so lucky the next? They could no longer push aside the prospect of doom and tragedy. It wasn’t a matter of if anymore, but when.
The ship’s engine was still out of commission, and Munro, Williamson, Maurer, and Breddy faced at least another three or four days of repairs, which left the Karluk vulnerable and without power should another catastrophe arise. “By that time34,” Mamen remarked dryly, “we will probably be at the bottom of the sea. If not we ourselves, at least our dear home ‘Karluk’ with all our comfort and belongings, and with that the Canadian Arctic Expedition with Mr. Stefansson as Commander would be stranded. But we must hope for the best and be prepared for the worst and we shall see that everything will go well.”
ON THE LAST DAY of October, the blizzard raged all day, a furious gale from the northeast that rocked the ship with a violent hand. The ice had fused again late the night before, and the Karluk was once more held fast by the pack. The men were bone-weary, aching, and red-eyed from lack of sleep, but everyone was at his post, ready for the worst.
“Oh my, how35 it blows now,” wrote Mamen. “The rigging is swinging to and fro, the masts shake so we feel it now and then, the courage is sinking in most of them, all are prepared for a catastrophe. Well, such is life in the north, it is a gamble, not with money, but with what is more valuable than gold, it is human life one plays with. The strong and hardy ones most often come out of the game with happy results, while the poor and frail individuals may pay with their lives.”
They were, as Beuchat observed, the lost and headless expedition.
And so they looked toward November and waited.