January 1914

We must all¹ do what we can to save our lives.

—BJARNE MAMEN, ASSISTANT TOPOGRAPHER

Early in the morning of January 2, somewhere in the distance, there was a strumming sound, like a banjo, faint, yet very distinct. It was a thrum-thrum-thrum, at times quite musical, and then there was a loud noise followed by silence.

It was between 3:30 and 4:00 A.M., but McKinlay and Mamen were now wide awake in the Cabin DeLuxe. McKinlay raised himself on one elbow and pressed his ear to the ship’s side, listening intently. He couldn’t imagine what the sound could be.

Thrum-thrum-thrum. It repeated the same pattern as before, the notes crisp and musical. Then a loud noise. Then silence.

Finally, as the Four-Leaved Clover lay in their bunks and listened, there was a thunderous boom—so strong that the door to the cabin shook.

And then they knew. It was the ice. In the distance, the ice was churning and stirring, splitting into pieces and thrusting up out of the water in great, jagged, diamondlike arcs. The floes of ice vied for position, some of them breaking free, and others violently pushing their neighbors beneath the water. For now the activity seemed to be at a safe distance. The ice immediately surrounding the ship was stationary, but the ice outside this field was in motion, forcing the pack in the direction of Wrangel Island.

McKinlay lay awake until 6:00 that morning, fascinated by the “extreme delicacy of² the note which such a fearsome condition of things could produce.” Mamen, too, was unable to sleep, and lay in his bunk waiting for the ice to hit the sides of the ship. There were a few light bumps—enough to wake most everyone on board—but that was all. At one point, the mast swayed and creaked so violently that Mamen was certain it would snap in two.

As McKinlay climbed out of bed at 8:30 A.M., the thrumming continued. Up on the deck, he stood in the noon twilight and couldn’t see a thing. The sky was too dark and the “crushing and raftering” ice was too far away. “God grant it³ comes no nearer to us,” he prayed.

In the darkness, they weren’t able to see the peaks of Wrangel Island, but they assumed, by the depth of the water, that they were about thirty miles from land. It was a comforting thought as the thrumming continued ominously in the endless night.

AT 6:30 A.M. ON JANUARY 3, they were awakened this time to a thump-thumping, which grew into the beating of a kettle drum, and afterward the low throbbing of a bass drum. And then it became a cannonade as the cracking of the ice grew closer and more urgent. Without interruption, the noise grew and seemed to creep ever closer to the ship.

The Karluk was drifting southerly at a rapid pace, her speed increasing with the wind. That night, however, Murray’s dredge showed that they were again drifting off to the west. As they began to move and as the noise of the crashing ice grew stronger, the anxiety aboard ship intensified. The rumbling of the ice was relentless and often violent. Cracks opened around the ship, more of them all the time, until the horizon resembled a gigantic cobweb of threads and lines. “Cracks and again⁴ cracks all around us,” wrote Mamen, “they get bigger and more numerous as the time goes by. Well, perhaps one of them will be our grave.”

Wrangel Island remained shrouded and invisible so that the men couldn’t be sure exactly where it was. Snow fell in the evening, making it frightfully cold and impossible for anyone to see anything at all. The wind was so blistering, the men couldn’t keep their eyes open.

They worked in haste, making preparations to leave the ship if necessary. Fred Maurer’s twenty-first birthday passed unnoticed as the sailors packed milk into thin canvas covers; Williamson forged cooking tins and packed tea; and Hadley continued work on the third Peary sleigh, even though he still thought it a useless contraption. They fashioned one-gallon tins for kerosene so that it would be easier to carry should they have to leave the ship and set out by sled. They made tea boilers out of gasoline tins and trimmed down the pickaxes to weigh less than three pounds by heating them in the portable forge in the engine room and beating them down. If they were to live on the ice and travel by sled, the less weight they carried, the easier it would be on them down the trail.

Crew and staff worked at their seal and bear skins and clothing, still trying to get their boots and clothes into shape. It was a long process and not an easy one to accomplish in haste. First, the skins had to be scraped with a metal scraper, then heated and cooked until they made a crackling sound when folded. Afterward, the skin side was scraped and washed again to make it soft. It was a thankless and tedious job; the skins were so flimsy and dry that they could barely stand up to the vigorous scraping.

Because rationing was now essential, coffee, tea, and cocoa were watered down until they were unrecognizable, the milk was about 99 percent water, and most of the food was served only half cooked. Sugar and butter were used sparingly and, thanks to Bartlett’s orders, seal meat was now being served at every meal in an attempt at preventing scurvy. The men’s stomachs were at last adjusting to this unappetizing fare, but they often thought longingly of their Christmas and New Year’s feasts.

The constant roaring of the ice did nothing to calm the nerves of Mackay, Beuchat, and Murray. They wandered about the ship, the fear of death on their faces, much to the amusement of their colleagues. While everyone was under great strain and stress, working as hard and fast as possible to prepare for the worst, many of them followed Bartlett’s lead and did their best to remain cheerful, if only for the sake of appearances. But Mackay, Beuchat, and Murray no longer cared about appearances. They were scared to death and certain they were all going to die.

First Beuchat went to the captain, asking for a sleeping bag. Murray was right on his heels with the same request. Their tails weren’t exactly between their legs, but they were as close to being cowed as anyone had ever seen them. Dr. Mackay had consistently insulted anyone who went to the captain for provisions or supplies, and, since his shipmates were outfitted with furs, he refused to ask for anything himself. Instead, he made cutting remarks to the others and took pride in staying on his own. He hadn’t spoken to the captain for weeks, but finally—driven by a chilling, morbid fear—he swallowed his pride and put aside his ill feeling; he, too, went to Bartlett to request a sleeping bag.

Mackay worked diligently making a sled harness and other assorted items he planned to take with him when he left the ship. It was clear to all now that he, Murray, and Beuchat fully intended to make good on their word. They now had everything in order for going ashore and they were ready to leave the ship.

Murray cornered Mamen and warned him to prepare, reminding him that they could all be turned out into the night at any moment and forced to head to Wrangel Island. Mamen regarded Murray with disdain and pity. But he was already prepared. He had organized everything in his knapsack—clothing, affidavits and other valuables, tobacco, and the rest of his cherished personal items—so that the only thing he had to do, when the time came, was to grab his bag and go. But he didn’t say this to the venerable oceanographer. Instead, he looked at Murray and said simply, “That time, that⁵ sorrow.”

Murray stared back at him, his gaze penetrating and questioning, and then muttered something under his breath, which Mamen couldn’t make out. But Mamen didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, Murray and Dr. Mackay and Beuchat had made their beds, and he had nothing else to say to them. As he remarked later, “It is no⁶ use talking sense to crazy people. I am sure of one thing, none of these three will reach land if left to their own resources.”

One thing was clear—either the Karluk was nearing the crushing ice field, or it was nearing her. In his bones, Mamen predicted trouble. He could feel a storm coming, just as he had predicted it before from his aches and pains. “I suppose this⁷ storm may have serious consequences for us if it lasts long,” he wrote, “but we have to take it as it comes. It will be worse if we have to take to the ice, I don’t know how we are going to manage it, so many together and, besides, such a crowd, for there are many on board who won’t stand a week’s hard work . . ..”

Captain Bartlett and Mamen had a long discussion about their situation, and both agreed that everything would be manageable as long as the wind was moderate. Still, they would prepare themselves, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.

“Look out for⁸ next Saturday,” Bartlett told his men gravely. “The chances are that we will get a bad one on January 10th.” He did not want to alarm them, but he didn’t want to mislead them either. He needed them to be ready and prepared for what he knew was coming.

THE STARS SHONE the morning of January 5, and the moon glowed in its last quarter. It was bitterly cold when Mamen went out to check the thermometer: minus twenty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. There was no wind, though, so he didn’t feel the chill. It wasn’t long before the sky grew overcast, the fog rolled in, the barometer dropped, snow began to fall, and the wind began to blow again; soon they were in the heart of another gale. The snow fell in thick sheets, and then, once on the ground, drifted into great piles. A heavy mist draped the air, clearing only briefly at night, just long enough for Malloch to make his observations.

Late in the night of January 7, the wind shifted and the Karluk began drifting rapidly westward. The ice had crashed and creaked all night long, growing ever closer to the ship. But around 2:00 in the morning, the noise suddenly stopped. Everyone waited, listening, expecting it to start up again. But there was nothing. The men breathed a little easier and began to relax for the first time in several days. Perhaps they would be all right after all.

SOON AFTER STEFANSSON’S departure, the captain had moved into his quarters. It was here that McKinlay sometimes spent hours a day engaged in deep conversation with the skipper. Bartlett welcomed visitors, no matter what the purpose of the visit, and seemed to appreciate having someone with whom he could talk. McKinlay and Mamen were, in his words, two souls after his own heart, and in their company he found both intellectual and emotional companionship. The magnetician and the assistant topographer were young, but each possessed a wisdom well beyond his years. Bartlett trusted them both implicitly.

The latest book the captain had given McKinlay to read was The Inside of the Cup by Winston Churchill. Bartlett’s library was endless and wildly eclectic. One never knew what one was going to find in there, buried beneath the favored classics and stories of sea adventures. One night, among the expected nautical and maritime volumes, McKinlay noticed a slender text called A Book About Roses by Reynolds Hole. It was an odd sight, for no one would ever have connected Bartlett with the flower.

McKinlay himself was passionate about roses. They talked about flowers that night and McKinlay was filled with longing for the sight of one of the gardens back home. Bartlett, it seemed, was a prodigious grower of roses when he was back in Newfoundland. He had a deep love for them, and he had a gift for cultivation.

There were no illustrations in A Book About Roses, just prose interspersed with poetic lines and stanzas: “He who would⁹ have beautiful Roses in his garden must have beautiful Roses in his heart.”

Roses in the Arctic. It was, indeed, an odd topic of conversation, considering they were as far from a garden as they could get. But it was a reminder of life and of hope in the midst of all that ice, and it helped remove them—however temporarily—from this dead white world where nothing grew and where they themselves were the only signs of life.

During their talk, McKinlay gazed at the captain and saw him clearly for the first time. He looked tired, neither gruff nor profane, neither scolding nor blustering. No matter how brave and encouraging he seemed in the light of day, at the end of it all he was just a man who craved company and missed his roses.

AFTERWARD, MCKINLAY went up to the deck. There was a full moon that night, making the dark world a little brighter than usual. Knowing he would not be able to sleep for a while, McKinlay decided to go for a walk. The moon lit the ice like a torch, casting shadows over the ice fields and mountains. The frozen world took on a luminous, almost translucent quality. The gale force winds of their recent blizzard had swept clean the great pillars of ice that littered the landscape. Now they glowed like giant emeralds, diamonds, sapphires. The ice statues, sculpted into graceful, breathtaking shapes, shone and glittered. The ice-ground beneath his feet was brilliant and alive, with myriad shades of white, blue, and green.

Rising out of it all sat the Karluk, covered in snow and ice crystals, an eerie sight. There was a faint auroral arch in the sky above her and a beautiful corona of vivid reds and blues. That evening the lights were especially brilliant, and McKinlay watched them in awe. At times like this, he felt nothing could go wrong in the world; there seemed to be no danger, no doom hovering on the far horizon. There were only reds and blues, arcs of radiant, graceful light sweeping across the sky.

It was as if McKinlay were the only soul alive, yet, he had the resounding feeling that he was not alone. Something filled him with a wondrous peace. It was not the first time he had felt that way on this journey. Now as he stood there savoring the feeling, he was filled with exultation. He wanted to memorize the moment so that, whatever lay ahead, he would never forget how he felt at that instant. All too quickly, it passed, but he was left feeling warmed and at peace. At last, he knew he could sleep.

AT DAYBREAK ON JANUARY 9, disaster seemed inevitable. They worked in a panic. Ammunition was laid out—one thousand rounds of Mannlicher, one thousand rounds of 30-30, and one thousand rounds of .22 shot or shotgun. Tea was divided up in twelve tins of 1200 tablets, which would hold them for 120 days. Mamen spent the morning doing what he hated most on earth—washing his clothing. But it had to be done because his clothes were filthy.

A ferocious wind had blown all night, but by morning only a light breeze remained. The Karluk, at least, was not drifting too rapidly now because of the proximity to land. “If we only¹⁰ could get about 100 miles farther north, the drift would be considerably stronger westward,” Mamen wrote. “We must wait and hope for it.” If their course would change northwestward, they might reach the mainland of Siberia and be freed.

At 9:30 A.M., Sandy again reported land in sight, although no one else—no matter how they strained their eyes—could see it. They figured it must be Wrangel Island, and the thought was a comforting one.

After the wind blew itself out and the weather cleared, Mamen couldn’t resist taking a ski trip. He headed onto the ice alone, happy to be back on skis once again. Mamen always felt more at home on skis than on his own two feet. He loved the wind in his face as he glided across the frozen surface, turning this way and that, and jumping when he could. He embraced any excuse to jump, launching himself off an icy slope or hill and sailing into the air, the earth spinning below him. He was good at it, a champion back home in Norway. Now he stood still and didn’t move his legs, using his arms instead to push himself along. He traveled fast and hard across the ice, filled with a sense of freedom and speed as he left the ship behind.

Suddenly, he was aware of the ice cracking and grinding. It creaked terribly beneath his feet and he found himself surrounded by trembling, shivering ice. The sound it made was bone-chilling. It was the same thrum-thrum-thrum, the same beating drum, the same cannonade, but even louder now and more urgent—an entire chorus, uniting in a great, deafening crescendo.

Back on board the ship, Mamen opened his diary and wrote “We may expect¹¹ disturbances . . . any moment now, for it is full moon tomorrow, and according to our own observations as well as those of DeLong, the disturbances always come with the full moon, we have to wait and see what the morrow offers . . ..”

ON JANUARY 10, between 4:45 and 5:00 A.M., the inhabitants of the Karluk awoke to a sound like gunfire. The noise jarred Bartlett, McKinlay, Mamen, and almost everyone else from sleep. Distant, at first, it grew louder. Then it sounded like drums, and then thunder. Suddenly, there was a harsh, grating noise, and the Karluk shuddered violently.

It took just seconds for Mamen and McKinlay to leap from their bunks and rush up to the deck. Bartlett and Hadley and a few others were there already, and it was then that Mamen realized he had forgotten to put his clothes on. He slept naked, so there he stood, in the shivering cold, without a stitch of clothing. Bartlett immediately sent him back to get dressed.

In the dark Cabin DeLuxe, Mamen pulled on some clothes, lit the lamp, and awakened Beuchat and Malloch. It was not an easy job to rouse Malloch because he was extremely hard of hearing and probably would have managed to sleep through everything. Mamen shook him awake and they joined everyone else above.

Seaman John Brady had been the night watchman that night, and he had already ventured onto the ice to investigate when Bartlett arrived on the scene. He met the sailor on the ice gangway and Brady gave his report. There was a small crack in the ice at the stern of the ship. Bartlett followed him to the spot and saw that the crack ran in a jagged line in a northwesterly direction for two hundred yards or so.

The wind was now blowing strongly from the north. The ice continued its deafening symphony, until McKinlay covered his ears and thought he would go crazy from the noise alone. Soon the crack in the ice along the starboard side gaped open all around. And then the ship began rising to starboard, shaken and pushed by the ice. Before, the Karluk’s deck had stood two inches above the ice, but now, as the men watched helplessly, the ship rose six inches above, and then seven, eight, nine, ten, until her deck stood a foot higher than the gangway. By now she was listing badly to port, heeling at twenty degrees, then at twenty-five.

“The ship was¹² now entirely free on the starboard side but still frozen fast in her ice-cradle on the port side,” Bartlett wrote; “her head was pointed southwest. On account of the way in which the ice had split the ship was held in a kind of pocket; the wind . . . increased to a gale, with blinding snowdrift, and the sheet of ice on the starboard side began to move astern, only a little at a time. The ship felt no pressure, only slight shocks, and her hull was still untouched. . ..”

It was clear to the captain, however, that the Karluk would soon be crushed. He immediately ordered his men to remove all the blocks of snow they had placed on her deck and around the outer walls of the cabin. For three hours, they all worked, side by side without speaking. The captain hauled snow just as his men did.

“It was hard¹³ to see what was going on around us,” wrote Bartlett, “for the sky was overcast and the darkness was the kind which, as the time-honored phrase goes, you could cut with a knife, while the stinging snowdrift . . . under the impetus of the screaming gale, added to the uncertainty as to what was about to happen from moment to moment.”

The ice was grinding, churning, like an explosion of thunderclouds overhead, and it engulfed them. All at once, the Karluk gave an enormous shudder and seemed to settle. The men waited helplessly, not knowing what to expect—rushing water, the flooding of the decks, an abrupt descent into the ocean. Instead, all was silent and still. The sudden hush was as deafening and intimidating as the noise. The ship didn’t move. The ice was calm. The night was quiet.

The ice had cracked along the port side and the ship righted itself. The Karluk, it seemed, had outlasted the Arctic. But for how long? They had been spared for now, but it was clear their reprieve was temporary. The men retired, on edge, to their cabins, and waited for the worst to come.

“I think we¹⁴ should probably look out for this evening at the turn of the tide,” said Bartlett quietly. He then turned and walked away, leaving his men to themselves.

The racket resumed and continued throughout breakfast. Afterward, the ice opened dramatically both at the bow and at the stern. Mamen remarked: “Then it was¹⁵ quite clear to me that our dear old Karluk was through with her voyages.”

To guard against fire, they extinguished all the stoves and lamps aboard ship, except for the stove in the galley. They also fastened the stoves to the floor to keep them from toppling over with the dramatic listing of the ship. Then the men set to work preparing to leave their home, using hurricane lanterns to find their way around.

Bartlett had made them take every possible precaution to lessen the impact of the loss of the Karluk. Their only critical shortage was adequate clothing to withstand an Arctic winter on the ice. They had plenty of untanned skins, but no stock of completed garments. Because of the poor outfitting of the expedition, they weren’t even close to being equipped to survive in the frozen world that awaited them outside the ship.

They spent the rest of the day sewing frantically. McKinlay sat on the edge of his bunk, working on a pair of sheepskin socks. Kiruk worked at three times the speed of the rest of them and her older daughter, Helen, helped her. As they sewed, the ice thrummed ominously.

Finally, around 6:45 P.M., there was a horrific blast, right outside McKinlay’s bunk on the port side. It sounded like an explosion.

Bartlett raced to the engine room and found Munro already there. As they held up their lanterns, they could see the water pouring in. They struggled with the pump, which had been destroyed by a shard of ice that jutted through the opening, piercing the planking and timbers of the engine room, ripping off the pump fixtures. The port side was crushed amidships, the water crashing in and the holds filling foot by foot. As Bartlett had feared, the ice astern had collapsed, caving and crumbling around the ship with a violent force, and the sheet of crushing ice along the starboard side had smashed against the ship, damaging her beyond repair.

The Karluk was beginning to move forward, ahead six yards, and then back again. The stern swung to port and the bow swung to starboard while the ship herself listed to port.

Bartlett gave the orders: “On the poop¹⁶, clear the pemmican and all emergency stores.” The men went to work, heaving their remaining provisions—tents, stoves, skins, paraffin, chocolate—from the deck onto the ice on the starboard side, since the ice on the port side had been crushed to powder.

By this time, the water was rising rapidly in the engine room. Now all they could do was save themselves and whatever provisions they could rescue.

Bartlett then gave the orders they had dreaded hearing and he had dreaded having to give: “All hands abandon¹⁷ ship.” He sent Kiruk and her two little girls to the box house that had been built on the ice to start the fire in the stove, and Templeman was ordered to remain in the galley so that the men could have hot food and coffee. The captain then doled out a shot of alcohol to everyone, to help bolster them for the ordeal.

The men were surprisingly calm, even the ones new to sea travel, which was just about all of them. They all moved methodically and swiftly, as if abandoning a ship was something they were used to doing on a daily basis. Because of the unrelenting weather, they could barely see their own noses, much less the emergency stores and equipment they were moving off the ship and onto the ice. Ship, ice, ocean—they couldn’t tell what they were stepping on. Too often the loosened ice would up-end and they had to hopscotch to avoid being tossed into the water.

Dr. Mackay was the unlucky one, plunging through the ice, right up to his neck. He didn’t seem to realize what had happened or what he was doing because after Sandy pulled him out, he walked about, up and down the ice, with his wet clothes freezing on his body. He had been in a fighting mood all evening, at one point threatening Mamen, who quickly and angrily put him in his place.

But during that most crucial moment of abandoning ship, Mackay was a tornado. The problem, they quickly discovered, was that somehow Mackay had gotten hold of extra alcohol and was completely and utterly drunk.

Bartlett forced the doctor to his cabin afterward, and gave him some more whiskey and offered him some dry clothes. Mackay took the whiskey, but refused the clothes. He was too stubborn and angry, but his shipmates won out, and managed to hold him down and change every stitch of his wet clothing.

For hours, everyone but Mackay, Murray, and Beuchat—who refused to do anything but move their own belongings—transferred boxes of eggs, bacon, butter, and other goods, and finally the precious drums of coal oil. After all the essentials were on the ice, the men returned to the doomed Karluk and salvaged all the extra items they had time for, including a camera belonging to Stefansson, which he had left aboard.

By 9:30 P.M., everything they could move was on the ice. To their alarm, however, they couldn’t find the little black kitten, who had hidden herself away when the commotion started. They searched the ship throughout, but she was nowhere to be seen. She had been their good luck mascot, their pet, but now there was nothing to be done. As much as they hated to, they would have to leave her behind.

Because a wide lead had opened in the ice on the port side where their camp of supplies had been stored, there was a great deal of delicate maneuvering to be done. They had to heave everything to starboard, then try to bridge with the sled the moat surrounding their stores. The frightened dogs were stranded on the other side of the open water, and one by one the men had to fetch them and throw them across the chasm.

As soon as the lead came together at certain points, the men sledged the stores to the place on the ice where Bartlett had cached the other provisions months ago. As they worked, the men were so focused that they were, as McKinlay noted, “too busy to¹⁸ be conscious of the danger & the discomfort, for in the pitch darkness & the constantly moving ice, every step was fraught with risk.”

By 10:45 P.M., eleven feet of water filled the ship’s engine room. Scientists and crew continued working, however, helping themselves to hot coffee in the galley when they needed it. This helped warm their frozen hands and bones, and they greatly appreciated it. A gale had blown up from the north by now, and the snow was beginning to blow wildly. The temperature was between minus twenty-six and minus twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit, and the men were soon wet through from snow and perspiration, in a completely miserable state.

Nevertheless, they kept working. Just after midnight, the blue Canadian ensign was hoisted and run down again, and then hoisted once more and left. A ship should go down with her flag flying, said Bartlett.

By 1:00 A.M., the men of the Karluk had done all they could do. Although half of the provisions remained on board, Bartlett finally put a stop to their work, with a quiet, “That is enough¹⁹ boys.”

The Karluk was now listing at thirty-five degrees to port, and the water already covered the engine and the cylinders in the engine room. Thus far, the ice imploding around the ship had kept her from sinking, but now she was visibly settling down at the stern.

Earlier in the day, Kuraluk and Kataktovik had built two houses on the ice, one out of snow, and the other out of snow and boxes, renovating the old dog hospital and installing a stove in one of the shelters. There were fresh boards on the floor and a fire laid ready in the stove. It was to these sanctuaries that the men now turned, weary and frozen. McKinlay, Mamen, Dr. Mackay, Murray, Beuchat, Clam, Golightly, Chafe, and the Eskimos were assigned to the box house, and Munro, Williamson, Breddy, Maurer, Brady, Templeman, Sandy, Barker, Malloch, and Hadley took the snow house, which they would share with the captain. Crew and staff were no longer separated by forward and aft, and would need to learn to live together.

Mackay, Murray, and Beuchat had turned in long ago. As their exhausted colleagues wandered into the shelter, the three scientists refused to move or make room, and the rest of the men were left to do the best they could with what was left.

“One cannot speak²⁰ too strongly of the conduct of Murray, Mackay & Beuchat,” wrote McKinlay. “After hauling a sled with nothing but their own personal belongings—they would allow nothing else on it—they retired to the house & made no attempt to help us in the work but staked out their claim to about one third of the place.” The cramped quarters and the intense cold, along with the barking of the dog Nellie and her new batch of puppies, helped to make sleep “a hopeless job,” according to McKinlay.

When Mamen turned in at 4:00 A.M., the Karluk was still floating. He had no idea if she would still be there when he opened his eyes again. But she had not given up yet, and after everyone was safely tucked away into the snow houses, Bartlett returned to the ship. Munro and Hadley stayed with him for a while, but then Munro left, and at some point the captain told Hadley to go on and join the others. He wanted to be alone with his ship during her final hours.

The captain went below deck, sat in front of the stove and wound up the Victrola, which he had moved into the galley. One by one, he ran through the collection of records they had on board. He quickly disposed of the jazz and ragtime albums in the pile, tossing them immediately onto the fire without a listen. He never had liked the stuff.

As the boat creaked and groaned around him, he sat listening to music he loved, tossing each record into the fire after the last note was finished. He drank tea and coffee and ate when he was hungry, and he got up now and then to stroll the deck and check the position of the ship. All the while, he listened to the antiphonal sounds of the groaning ship and the encroaching water below, and the classical music (mostly Chopin and Brahms) coming from the mouth of the Victrola.

By 5:00 A.M., water was over the gratings in the engine room, just five or six feet below the main deck. Maurer had gone to bed on the ice that night, bone weary, but wide awake. He prayed the ship would be there when he opened his eyes again, and that he would be able to find the black kitten.

In the box house, McKinlay wrote in his journal and tried, along with Clam and the other sailors, to dry out wet clothing. When the men awoke, the Karluk was still afloat but lying much deeper, with the port side of her deck flooded with water.

That morning, the kitten was found aboard ship, finally wandering out from her hiding place. Fred Maurer asked Bartlett for permission to take her off and bring her along with them, and the captain agreed. Everyone loved the little black and white cat Nigeraurak, but fireman Maurer was especially fond of her. When she first came aboard ship, they had kept her in the forecastle. But after a while, she made her way aft and Hadley had taught her tricks. Now she was lifted into loving arms and placed on a bed of skins in a basket in the box house, where she made herself at home.

The first thing McKinlay did when he awoke was to check on Bartlett and the Karluk. Bartlett strode up and down the ship for a while as his men watched him. “I am sure²¹ that he feels the end of the Karluk very keenly . . .” noted McKinlay. Bartlett went below again and wound the Victrola, listening to more music.

Out on the ice, the men rummaged through the various boxes that lay in wild, unorganized piles in the snow and found some stale bread, cheese, frozen milk, and tins of preserved meat, which they ate cold for breakfast. In the other house, McKinlay discovered, they had found some cigars and were enjoying a much-needed smoke. Bartlett had not allowed any tobacco to be taken off the ship, because it was just one more unnecessary thing to weigh them down, but the cigars had been saved. Having a leisurely smoke seemed an odd thing to do at such a time, but McKinlay joined in, grateful for the pleasant distraction.

Going out later in the afternoon, McKinlay saw that the port side of the Karluk was now underwater, and Bartlett was still pacing the main deck on the starboard side. At 2:00 P.M., they took a sounding, which showed the depth at thirty-eight fathoms, and McKinlay took the temperature with a sling thermometer; it read minus seventeen degrees Fahrenheit.

On the gramophone, Mary Garden was singing an aria from Aida when the ship began to settle, and soon the lower decks were awash. The Karluk groaned, and then fell silent, as if resigned to her fate. Bartlett stood up, placed Chopin’s “Funeral March” on the Victrola, wound it one last time, and listened to the first beautiful notes.

As the water splashed its way across the upper deck and began to sweep down through the hatch, the captain raced up top and lowered the flag to half-mast. Then he climbed onto her rail and stood there, moving with the ship as she dipped into a header. He held on to her, clutching the smooth wood, running his hands along it, as if to soothe her. The men had come back, summoned by the thundering of the wood and the ice, and a shout: “She’s going²².” As they stood there watching, no one spoke.

They probably thought he was going down with the ship, their irascible old captain, so stubborn and strange. He had deplored her Arctic seaworthiness when he first saw her, but he did not want to lose her. She was all they had out there, and she had done the best she could. Finally, the rail dipped until the Karluk was level with the ice, and Bartlett left his ship.

The bow slipped under and the bowsprit broke then, but she still remained afloat. Then, between 3:15 and 3:30 P.M., they watched her settle slowly by the head, sinking with a grating noise until she was brought up by the bowsprit to meet the ice again. Bartlett stood there on the ice with his crew and watched as she went down by the head. They could still hear the music echoing from the galley.

She sank foot by foot, a slight puff of steam showing that the water had risen over the galley fire. Soon they saw the barrel on the foremast, and then the stern rose. The Karluk seemed to straighten with great dignity as the stern sank lower. She disappeared rapidly and gracefully after that, her flag fluttering to the last.

On January 11, 1914, at 4:00 P.M., the Karluk went under into thirty-eight fathoms of water. The only remaining signs of her existence were the two umiaks, a whaleboat, and other gear from the deck floating in the water above her grave.

It was the first shipwreck most of them had ever witnessed. It wasn’t anything Hadley hadn’t seen before, but he was as respectful as the others in those last moments. Mamen and McKinlay, meanwhile, stood together in silence while the tight-lipped sailor Clam revealed nothing. Malloch, his usual affability and good-humored obliviousness faded, was now exceedingly nervous and white. And Chafe, the mess room boy, was overwhelmed by the great loss he felt as the Karluk disappeared. “As we watched²³ her settle and sink beneath the sea, a feeling of intense loneliness came over us, but we gave the old ship three hearty cheers as she disappeared. All the water visible was that in which the ship sank.”

As Maurer held on to the black cat, he observed quietly, “Our home was²⁴ gone.”

All were sickened and saddened by the sight of the Arctic water closing over the Karluk. “She was a²⁵ good sea-boat, as we had proved,” wrote McKinlay, “but that she was quite unsuited for her present purpose was proved by the fact that she failed at the first time of asking. She was gone & we realised that we were at the parting of the ways. Should we win through, we will never forget this day.”

As her mast slipped beneath the sea, Bartlett, visibly moved, pushed back his hood and bowed his head. It was always a tragedy when a ship sank, especially one that had been your home for months. And yet he was amazed at how the death of this ship affected him. He had, after all, condemned her from the start. Yet now he could feel the tears welling up as he imagined the Karluk in her lonely descent to the ocean floor.

“Good-bye, old girl,”²⁶ he said.

AFTERWARD, THERE WAS ONLY CHAOS. The dogs were wild and fighting, and the men were panicked. Any sense of peace to which they had clung had just drifted to the bottom of the ocean.

Bartlett sifted through the items salvaged from the ship—piles of objects, flung slipshod onto the ice. They had only pulled the essentials from the ship, no personal souvenirs or frivolous items unnecessary to survival or that would take up too much room on the sled.

Still, a few of the men had managed to walk away with one or two treasured possessions. Chafe saved the camera that was given to him by a friend before leaving Victoria, as well as the binoculars he won as first prize for shooting at the long ranges when he was sixteen. “That, and a²⁷ few medals, were the only things I had saved from the wreck out of forty-seven athletic and sixteen shooting prizes which I had with me on board . . ..”

Bartlett, too, saved the thing that meant the most to him—his copy of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Now, in the midst of the madness, he knew where his book was, but he could not find his boots.

“Where in hell²⁸ are my boots?” Bartlett yelled, but no one paid attention to him. “Where in hell are my boots?” He just kept yelling at the top of his voice. He wanted those boots. It was cold. His feet were damp and half-frozen. His toes ached with the chill.

He didn’t know how many times he had yelled that same phrase over and over before he felt a hand on his arm. He shook it off angrily and whirled around in the flying snow. It was Kiruk.

“I fix Captain’s boots,” she said.

She held them up and he grabbed them out of her hand. Then he noticed that her lips were bleeding.

Bartlett roared, “Somebody hit you?”

“No.”

“You fell down?”

“No.”

“Well, what in the devil is the matter with your face?”

She didn’t even flinch at his yelling.

“I chew Captain’s boots.”

Then he got it. At the risk of her own life, she had made a dash for his cabin as the ship was going down, just to save his spare boots, something he didn’t even think of at the time, too busy playing records and reflecting on the music.

Bartlett knew the boots must have been wet and in bad shape, which is why she had, in the Eskimo way, chewed the thick leather into a pliable state and filled the soles with grass. Between the snow and the freezing temperature and the tough hide of the boots, she had split her lips in twenty places. But she had saved his feet.

Later, the men turned into their houses and sewed and sewed until every bone ached, “preparing for our²⁹ fight,” said McKinlay, “which has become a tougher proposition than ever.” They made hot chocolate, drinking it out of two mugs, which they passed around between them because it was all they had. They were stunned by the ship’s demise, still in a state of shock, barely able to digest what had happened in the past thirty-six hours.

One thing was clear to some of them, though. “Mr. Stefansson is³⁰ to blame for everything,” said Mamen. “It is a scandal to bring such a poor ship up in the Arctic, and we could hold both Stefansson and the Canadian government responsible for this; it is terrible to jeopardize so many human lives.”

That night, they huddled together in their snow and box houses and slept the sleep of total exhaustion.

It was true, as Mamen wrote, that they “had now only³¹ ourselves to rely upon. It is up to everybody to do his utmost so that the outcome may be a happy one, but there are a few here who will be the cause of considerable trouble.”

MCKINLAY STILL COULD NOT SLEEP more than a few hours. They were lost in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, adrift in the middle of the Arctic night. There was nothing beneath their feet but ice. For the first time in his life, McKinlay knew utter terror, and even though he was surrounded by twenty-four other people who were in the same exact situation, he knew what it was to be completely alone. For once, it struck him how far away from everyone else they were. There was a great, busy, important world spinning below them, far, far away. People were safe and happy and sitting with their families and sleeping in warm beds.

Where was he? What had he agreed to? What would happen to him and the others now? McKinlay had stood there with his colleagues—this strange clan with whom he had little in common, excepting their situation—and stared at the void in the ice where the ship used to be. If the cold had not bitten into his skin, reminding him venomously that he was alive and not dreaming, he might have had to pinch himself.

This could not be happening. It wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to William Laird McKinlay, schoolmaster, or to any people he knew. It was the most sobering moment of his life and one he would never forget.

“This has made³² a man of you,” the captain had told him earlier that night, or that morning, he couldn’t be sure which anymore. And McKinlay believed he was right. The Arctic was making him a man, and he was doing a man’s work. He just prayed to God that he would not fail.

And there, in the great Arctic darkness, he could swear he still heard the strains of Chopin, very faint and whispering, an echo. He could hear the notes, clear, precise, and mournful, a final, distant wail.

Somewhere, thirty-eight fathoms below their feet, perhaps that Victrola was still playing.

By morning, the lead in the ice had frozen over completely. The last trace of the Karluk and her descent into the sea was gone. One would never know that she had ever been there at all. One would never know that there had been a lead of water wide enough to pull her down. As far as the eye could see, there was only ice. Ice everywhere. Ice and darkness.

THEY NAMED IT SHIPWRECK CAMP, that particular area of floating ice pack, marked by latitude 73 degrees north and longitude 178 degrees west. They set about making the most of it, willing themselves to forget that it was shifting, fragile ice instead of solid earth, and trying to make the place seem as much like a home as possible. As Maurer remarked, “The ice that³³ held us in its grip and destroyed our ship was now the only means of safety—precarious as it might be.”

January 12, their first day living on the ice, was raw and overcast, the temperature hovering steadily at minus twenty-six degrees Fahrenheit. The water’s depth was thirty-eight fathoms, and somewhere, in the vast blackness beneath them, lay the Karluk.

She had gone down at exactly the point where De Long’s Jeannette had been frozen in just before she began her westward drift to Henrietta Island, where she was eventually crushed by the opening and closing of the ice—just like the Karluk.

By law, Bartlett was still in command of these men, and Kiruk, Helen, and Mugpi, even without a ship. “But I was³⁴ in command of a shipwrecked party. Had we been on a desert island things might have been brighter. But to be out there on the ever-shifting ice pack, far from land, and faced with the coldest months of the winter night, I could not look ahead without some uneasiness.”

McKinlay was awakened at 8:00 A.M. by Seaman Morris yelling “Coffee!”³⁵ The men stumbled from their makeshift beds and grabbed their mugs, which, by now, were coated with a layer of old cocoa, butter, and tea. They scrambled for food because most of the supplies still had not yet been uncovered, and then all hands were summoned onto the ice. Everyone, except for Dr. Mackay, Murray, and Beuchat, turned out, fatigued and spent from the past two days. Their colleagues, Bartlett included, knew it was hopeless to rouse the trio, so they were allowed to remain in bed all day long.

The rest of the party did their best to sort through the provisions salvaged from the ship. They dug through the furs, skins, and blanketing, piling them all together. They found the pemmican intended for the dogs and put it aside. They found their own pemmican and laid it in another pile. The oil and the oil tins were separated into a stack. The rifles and ammunition were placed in another. So it went, time-consuming and tiring. The men were already exhausted from the exertion of the past two days, a bone-weary fatigue that none of them could shake.

Each of the “living shacks” had a stove at the center. The snow igloo was fifteen feet long and twelve feet wide and had a canvas roof supported by rafters. The box house was twenty-five feet long and eighteen feet wide. The bed platforms were raised and built out from the walls on three sides of the stove. In the box house, Chafe and Clam smuggled out the small stove and replaced it with the former engine room stove, which was much bigger and made their little quarters almost too warm.

Attached to the box house was a room built of boxes and snow, serving as the galley, and another adjoining room for the Eskimos. Then they pitched a tent that would work as a storehouse for their woolen clothing and as much gear as it would hold. Their wool clothes would be useless on the trail because they were neither warm enough nor light enough, but they worked just fine for now and allowed the men to conserve their precious animal skin clothing for later. McKinlay was the only one allowed in the storehouse besides Bartlett, since the skipper had appointed him in charge of the supplies and gear.

By 3:30 P.M. it was too dark to work, so everyone retired to their respective snow houses and continued sewing. They also had their first real meal since leaving the ship—boiled bacon, pea soup, and rice. They ate their soup that night from their tea cups. Templeman had made the broth in the same water he’d boiled the bacon in, and it “tasted as sweet³⁶ as the finest concoction of the finest of luxury hotels,” according to McKinlay. Their cups were dirty, as were their plates, which were encrusted with old remnants of eggs, shells, bacon, grease, and matches, none of which could be rinsed or scraped off as they were frozen to the surface. McKinlay remarked, “We have reached³⁷ the stage when the dirt on our dishes acts as seasoning; there is no health hazard, since germs cannot exist in our temperatures!” After they devoured the soup, they filled their dirty cups with rice and ate it with their hands. Add hardtack—or biscuits—bacon, and coffee, and they felt like they’d had a feast fit for kings.

Over the next several days, the castaways adjusted to life on the ice. Wrangel Island could now be seen plainly, much to their great relief, approximately thirty to thirty-five miles away to the southwest, although their charts showed they were eighty miles to the north of Wrangel Island and two hundred miles from the coast of Siberia. The sight of land was inexplicably cheering to the members of this lost company. They had been afraid that they had drifted too far east due to the winds, but now there was the island, much clearer than before.

Even with Wrangel Island looming up in the distance, there was no serious plan yet of abandoning Shipwreck Camp and starting for the island. The days were still too dark, and there was too much to be sorted out yet. On January 14, Bartlett spoke with both McKinlay and Mamen about moving the party to the eastern part of Wrangel Island, which should be easier to reach, due to its lower-lying shore. Bartlett was also interested in making the trek to Siberia, although the condition of his men worried him. Many were weak and suffering from frostbite or injury, and he knew this endangered their chances of making such a long journey. Siberia, to his estimation, was approximately 250 miles away over the ice pack, and he doubted whether some of the men would live to finish the journey.

“I sincerely hope³⁸ that we will stay here until the beginning of February,” wrote Mamen. “The days will then be longer and we can drive with our dogs about 12 hours a day. Yes, I hope that with the help of God everything will come out all right but, if not, that we may have a quiet and peaceful death, without too much pain and agony.”

During the twilight hours, the men worked to put their camp in order. It was difficult to locate everything, and some items, such as a missing box of ammunition, were never found. Many things were retrieved from the wreckage of the ship—articles from the deck that were thrown to the ice as the Karluk sank. McKinlay and Sandy walked through this graveyard of cast-off provisions and tried to take stock—the whaleboat, two kayaks, two umiaks, tins of biscuits, the ice tank, an enormous coal oil tank, a box of Horlick’s Malted Milk, a meteorological instrument case.

Mamen and McKinlay labored over the dysfunctional Primus stoves until they were covered with soot and dirt. The small stoves, or lamps, were used for cooking and for warmth, and there were ten altogether, although three were broken beyond repair, which left only seven stoves that could be relied upon.

The days were growing lighter, which brought hope and relief, but they were still, essentially, living in darkness. Bartlett was anxious about many things but his main concern was that everyone get their clothing in order as soon as possible. There was no time now for idling; they must have their clothes ready or they would suffer on the trail. They would be unable to sew once they started for land. Realizing this, everyone worked as fast as he could, even Malloch, who was notorious for spending weeks mending one garment.

As the days passed, the staff, crew, and officers began to think of Kiruk as a mother figure. They had underestimated her worth aboard ship and had never taken the time to get to know her as they should. Now they found a strength and warmth in her that they needed, and from then on she was known as “Auntie.”

Auntie was busy making clothes for her family, as well as doing all the cutting for the rest of the company with a piece of circular flat steel with a sharp edge. “She used it³⁹ with great speed and efficiency, and without any patterns or guides of any kind,” Chafe said. “She would cut out socks and other things that would surprise you. I don’t think you could find a quarter of an inch difference in any part of twenty pairs.. . .” Fur clothing was heavy enough so that it had to be sewn by hand, but there was other stitching that could be done on the two sewing machines they had saved from the ship. These were used by Auntie and Munro, who was a skilled tailor in his own right.

There were only six sleeping bags for the entire company and not enough skins to make more. Besides this, sleeping bags would be much too heavy to take on the trail. Bartlett ordered that each man make a smaller version—a foot bag, which would cover the feet and reach just up to the knees. For these, he cut up his coonskin coat and divided the pieces among the men.

In addition, they would each need to have four pairs of deerskin or sheepskin stockings and three pairs of deerskin boots. The skins were softened first by scraping them with a piece of iron. This was called breaking the vellum, and sometimes Eskimo women did this by chewing it as Auntie had done.

In the midst of it all, they still found time for games of chess and cards and a concert in the evenings now and then. On rare occasions, they also held dances. With a decided lack of female partners, the men were a strange sight as they twirled each other around the ice. The strangest of all was Bartlett, who once spun his partner so fiercely that they tipped over the stove.

The men, in general, were in surprisingly good humor. If they didn’t feel like smiling or looking on the bright side of things, they forced themselves to for the greater good of the company. It was everyone’s wish to maintain this sense of optimism, because they knew that, as McKinlay noted, “thus, & only⁴⁰ thus, can we win through.”

The only exceptions, naturally, were Dr. Mackay, Murray, and Beuchat. Except for getting out of their beds to watch the ship go down, they had been sleeping ever since, waking up only to eat. At night, they kept everyone else awake with their discussions and complaints. “They grumble if⁴¹ the stove goes low,” wrote McKinlay; “they grumble about the cold coffee; they grumble & grumble but never venture a helping hand. If trouble comes, theirs will be the responsibility, & God help them for everybody is strained to breaking point with their conduct.”

Dr. Mackay frequently unleashed a torrent of verbal ammunition on McKinlay and Mamen, accusing them of being in too tight with the captain. As far as the doctor was concerned, the two young scientists showed great disloyalty by allying themselves with Bartlett instead of their own colleagues. He blamed them for spoiling his chances of getting the captain to take him seriously and listen to his arguments, since McKinlay and Mamen were always there to choose the other side, thus dividing the scientific staff.

Beuchat, in particular, was broken down. He was nervous, edgy, his eyes filled with alarm. Beuchat’s already weak heart couldn’t stand the strain, and he complained constantly of fever and exhaustion, babbling about the future as if he wouldn’t live to see many more days. This kind of behavior made Mamen furious and spurred him to vow: “I have decided⁴² to fight for my life as much as I can, one cannot take his fellow-men into consideration, it surely sounds awful to civilized ears, but it is the only right thing here in the Arctic.”

THE TEMPERATURE DIPPED to minus thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit and the castaways drifted southerly on the ice pack. They continued their shipboard routines, as best they could. They ate at the same times, and lights were out at 10:00 P.M. They maintained records of the wind and weather, the soundings, and the temperature. At night, two men took turns at watch, one in each snow house. They were in charge of keeping the fires going, and at 6:00 in the morning, one of them would call Templeman so that he could start breakfast.

The galley provided great and much-needed cheer to everyone, and Templeman, under the circumstances, turned out good meals from the sheet-iron stove. Breakfast brought fried bacon, eggs, hardtack, and coffee, and dinner was bacon, seal stew, and tea.

Bartlett’s evenings were spent with the Eskimos in their igloo, so that his men could have a break from him and relax a bit. It was tough to live with your captain under such conditions in such close quarters, and Bartlett knew they would need some time out from under his presence.

While the men were sleeping one night, a dog fight left one dog dead. It was the bobtail Mosse, who just a month earlier had refused to leave the side of his injured brother until he died. Nobody heard the sounds of fighting, and in the morning they discovered the blood-soaked area and Mosse’s stiff carcass.

It was a great loss to the men, since there were now only twenty-four dogs remaining, including Hadley’s pet Molly, and each one was indispensable if they were to make it to land. “Wouldn’t we give⁴³ a great deal for those twelve dogs taken by Stefansson—the pick of the bunch,” McKinlay lamented.

On the evening of January 16, Bartlett invited McKinlay to join him in the Eskimos’ igloo to talk about their plans and prospects. The men would ultimately be divided into six teams of four men, and these Bartlett would lead to the Siberian mainland, via Wrangel Island. Bartlett chose McKinlay and Mamen to be in his party on the trail, along with Kataktovik, because, as he said, they were men after his own heart. They would build igloos along the way, instead of using tents, and they would pack as many provisions onto the sleds as the dogs could handle—fifty days’ food for the men and thirty-five days’ for the dogs, which were being fed every few days now instead of every day. After the dog food ran out, they would be forced to shoot the weaker animals to feed the others. They were fond of the creatures and it wasn’t a pleasant thought; but they knew it had to be done to preserve life, both for the stronger dogs and for themselves.

Once setting foot on Siberian soil, they would skirt the shore to North Cape, and then follow the shore to Saint Lawrence Bay, with the option of cutting down through Koliuchin Bay instead. Providing they made it past hostile Eskimo settlements (of which there were rumored to be many), the stronger members of the party would then trek on to find communication so that they could notify the proper authorities while the rest of the party would remain in Saint Lawrence Bay. All told, they would have to travel hundreds of miles.

“Now look here⁴⁴, boy,” Bartlett said to McKinlay, laying his hand on the smaller man’s shoulders, “we are up against it. The Peary trip is going to look like a picnic alongside this, but we are going to see it through.”

“You bet your life,” McKinlay replied, trying to sound as convincing as possible, yet wondering all the time if they would.

While they were busy with the preparations, McKinlay and Mamen took the captain aside and told him of an idea of their own. What if he sent a scouting party to Wrangel Island, ahead of everyone else? What if this party could take a load of food and supplies and then remain on the island until the others got there, so that they could explore and learn the lay of the land and report on what kind of game there was, and on ice conditions, before bringing everyone ashore?

The idea had occurred to Bartlett before, and now he thought it over again. When the three of them reconvened, he told them that he had decided to go through with it. It made good, practical sense—the men had been living for so long on the ship, and as a result were not yet hardened to the cold. Nor were they in the best physical shape, and no one except Hadley and the Eskimos had any experience in traveling over the Arctic ice, a rotten journey made even worse by poor light and freezing temperatures. For so many reasons, it made sense to send a few handpicked men before moving the entire party.

Three sleds could be taken, each one led by six dogs and loaded with 400 pounds of provisions. Bartlett wanted to send his ablest men to lead the party, which meant Mamen and McKinlay. But he didn’t want them both to be gone at once. He needed one of them to remain with him because they were the only two he trusted.

It fell to Mamen, the stronger and heartier of the two, to lead the scouting party, taking with him Kuraluk and Kataktovik. First mate Sandy Anderson, second mate Barker, Seaman Ned Golightly, and geologist Malloch were designated members of the shore party, who would remain on Wrangel Island and set up camp while Mamen and the Eskimos returned with two empty sleds. McKinlay, meanwhile, would remain in camp to assist the captain, issuing material and looking after various matters.

When Mamen returned, he would, if at all possible, go back to the island with another party while the rest of the group awaited the return of the sun at Shipwreck Camp. When they had enough daylight, they would then join the others, relaying supplies to the island in small teams. This way, they could get enough provisions ashore to last until the birds returned to Wrangel in the spring, and they could also establish a shore camp where the men could rest and dry their foot gear before returning to Shipwreck Camp for more supplies. Bartlett envisioned snow igloos erected along the way, to serve as permanent relay stations.

“We may thus⁴⁵ be able to take most of the food & clothing we have here to the island,” wrote McKinlay excitedly, “so that we will have something to fall back on, should we need it, when making for the mainland. The announcement of this plan created a great deal of excitement & everyone seemed to welcome it.”

Everyone, that is, but Dr. Mackay. The doctor listened with a scowl on his face as Bartlett gave orders in front of the assembled company. It is an easy guess that Mackay would have liked to have been a part of that shore party, so rabid was he to break free from the rest and start for land. This was the worst news he could have. They were finally starting for the island, but not with him. For so long, he had been planning this very journey, and now, at last, the captain was doing what, in Mackay’s mind, he should have done months ago. But Mackay was forced to remain behind.

Upon hearing the captain’s orders, Mackay completely snapped. He had had enough of the Canadian Arctic Expedition and of Bartlett and his indecisiveness and weak-kneed leadership. He’d had enough of his self-righteous colleagues and the crude and insufferable crewmen. As far as he was concerned, this was the point of no return.

JANUARY 18 BROUGHT WILD, blinding snow, and a fierce gale. Shivering against the cold, Hadley, Mamen, and Sandy loaded the three designated scouting party sleds with biscuits, pemmican, sugar, tents, Primus stoves, alcohol, and various other provisions.

Those who weren’t loading the sleds and preparing their equipment set out on the ice with picks and axes to break a trail for the scouting party. The going was fine for the first three miles, until they ran up against an enormous pressure ridge, stretching fifteen to twenty feet in the air. They did their best to clear it, and then returned to camp, feeling satisfied with a day’s work. Unfortunately, the snow, the wind, and the drifts took over, and by nighttime all traces of the trail had been destroyed.

With the ferocity of the snowstorm, Bartlett decided that the scouting party would not be able to leave, as planned, the following day. Even if the weather cleared, he would not let his men depart until he could see Wrangel Island distinctly and discern if there was any change in their position or in the condition of the ice pack. If he was not satisfied on all these accounts, the trip would have to be postponed until the weather cooperated.

The sweeping snow and stinging winds were relentless and brutal. It was one thing to suffer through a blizzard inside the walls of a ship, another altogether to be sitting on the ice, unprotected and vulnerable. They were now experiencing an entirely new level of cold, and getting their first taste of living out in the elements. To make matters worse, the ice pack continued to shift and crack, much to the horror of these men who were relying upon its fickle surface as the only thing separating them from the frigid depths of the Arctic Ocean. “All the time⁴⁶, we could hear the booming sound of the immense ice floes grinding against each other,” Chafe wrote, “or the sharper crash of an opening lead. Then all would hurry out in the darkness to see whether a lead had opened near our Camp.”

They awoke the next day to find the wind blowing from all directions; but they could see the land rising up out of the snow, and its bearing didn’t seem to be drastically different. Cheered by this vision, everyone—excluding Dr. Mackay, Murray, and Beuchat—hastily worked at completing the preparations so that the team could start out the next day, as soon as the light allowed.

Finally, the sleds and equipment were ready, with thirty days’ provisions for Sandy’s land party, and ten days’ for Mamen and the Eskimos. The trail was broken again by the same team that had gone out the day before, and now all that was left was for the group leaving to pack their personal clothing.

After supper, Bartlett summoned Mamen and McKinlay to the stove tent, where he outlined his instructions to Mamen. He was to command the party until land was reached, at which point Sandy would take charge of the shore party. He was to land supplies on the island and unload. Then, as long as he deemed it safe, he was to leave Sandy’s party to drag the supplies ashore. He should return at once, not stopping to sleep on the island, leaving one sled and bringing back two, along with all the dogs. And last, Mamen was to return to camp if he came to open water and thought there was a risk of losing his supplies.

They spread the charts of the island out before them and estimated that it should take Mamen three days to reach land. By the end of the week, a fire would be lit at Shipwreck Camp to guide Mamen and the Eskimos back in.

McKinlay took night watchman’s duties that night so that he could make two copies of the Admiralty Chart of Wrangel Island, one for Mamen and one for Sandy. He worked until 3:00 A.M., a thankless job because he had no way of spreading out the chart but had to work cramped in one position.

There was just one more thing to be dealt with. Malloch was worrying about going. Ever since he received the news that he would be joining the scouting party, he had been anxious and preoccupied. It was too great a risk. His clothes weren’t ready yet, but even more than that, he was petrified about going on the trip. His attitude surprised Bartlett and the rest of the staff. Malloch was physically one of the strongest men in the company, and by far the most reckless. He had always been wild and careless when it came to his own health and well-being, and he had a way of laughing everything off when it became too serious. But ever since the ship went down his colleagues had seen a change in him.

Malloch went to the captain not once, but twice, expressing his concern, and even though Bartlett had tried to reassure him, his mind was still uneasy. He asked and then demanded to be replaced. So it was that at 10:00 P.M., on January 19, Seaman John Brady was informed he would be going instead.

IT WAS, AS MCKINLAY described it, a dirty-looking night. The wind had not let up and the snow swept through camp with the venom of a great, white beast. Everyone was to be called at 4:00 that morning, but Bartlett took one look outside and changed his mind. The wind howled and shrieked, and it was savagely raw and cold. The trip was postponed once more.

“It gets on⁴⁷ the nerves to wait and wait under these circumstances,” Mamen wrote in his diary. “All depends on these trips to the island.. . . I hope they will be successful, it is my highest desire these days.”

Miraculously, by January 21 the breeze had lightened, the snowdrift had mellowed, and the sky had cleared. Bartlett took a good, long look, studying the distant island, the ice pack, the elements, with a weathered, seasoned gaze. And then finally, he gave the word—they were cleared to go.

As Mamen set out to lead his first small expedition of sorts, he reminded himself of all those who were counting on him. It was an enormous responsibility for a twenty-two-year-old, and the first serious challenge of his young life. He thought of his family back home and about Ellen and, most of all, he thought about the journey ahead. If Mamen was good at anything it was bolstering himself up and finding courage in daunting situations. Time and again, he had discovered deep within himself the ability to rise up and fight when all looked bleak. But still, he was riddled with doubt, and overwhelmed by the trust Bartlett was placing in him. “One must take⁴⁸ chances and risk something to win,” he wrote, ”and win we must.. . . With God’s help we will get successfully through with it.”

MAMEN WAS LESS THAN HAPPY with their first day’s work on the trail. He went to bed that night in their crudely and hastily constructed snow house feeling restless and unsatisfied. He was being hard on himself, unnecessarily. The changeable weather hadn’t helped, and neither had the ice conditions. Now he listened to the wind screaming outside and prayed for better luck and an improvement in the weather.

Mamen wanted desperately to prove himself, not only to the captain, but to everyone else as well. He would go out there and lead that party, and it would all be wonderful experience for the expedition he planned to lead someday. He was certain tomorrow would be better. But still . . . a weight remained. All were waiting for him to lead them and then return for the others. And now the wind was howling as he had never heard it howl before, and he couldn’t see anything in the thick, falling snow.

After breakfast that morning at Shipwreck Camp, they had dug out the snow-covered sleds, and after Bartlett had presented official written instructions to both Mamen and Sandy, the scouting party had departed, Mamen leading the way on skis. Everyone but the captain, Hadley, Murray, Beuchat, Auntie, and the little girls accompanied them for the first four or five miles, making a good, fast start. The dogs were fresh and energetic, but the ice proved rough. The sleds were repeatedly drawn to a standstill by pressure ridges and snowdrifts, and fresh cracks in the ice were troublesome but crossable.

By noon, the extra men turned back to Shipwreck Camp, bidding Mamen’s party “au revoir⁴⁹” and “good luck.” There was great excitement, everyone full of hope for the future. At last, the moment they had been preparing for had arrived—the men were finally on their way.

Now on their own, Mamen led his party onward, and not long afterward the snow began to blow so that they could not see more than fifty or sixty yards in front of them. It was disastrous because just as suddenly the smooth ice grew rough and uneven, shattering their hopes of a good day’s travel.

They headed southwest, relying on the compass at times because the snow was so blinding. Just seven miles from Shipwreck Camp, they came to the first opening in the ice. The ice was thin and the lead wide enough so that they were forced to unload the sleds and drag them across empty so they would be light enough to make it. Then they transferred all of the provisions by hand.

Discouraged, they made camp not too long afterward on a large floe of old ice, building a snow house with a tent for a roof because they were too tired to construct a proper one. Sandy had forgotten to pack the tent poles that Bartlett and McKinlay had set out, they had lost a bottle of alcohol along the way, and the end of one of the rifle butts had somehow broken. Other than that, they were still in good shape. Even though Bartlett had instructed Mamen that the dogs should be fed only once every second day, Mamen went ahead and gave them some pemmican anyway because they were worn out and he wanted them to be fresh for tomorrow.

The wind was so vicious that night that it blew the roof off their snow house three times. Each time, they would chase it down and replace it, finally piling it with Mamen’s skis and ski poles, ropes, an Eskimo walking stick, some rifles, a piece of canvas, and a sleigh cover, to give it extra support.

When morning came, Mamen nearly decided to stay in camp and wait for the storm to abate; but gradually the wind began to die down and they set out once more. Huge ridges of ice awaited them on the trail, however—some as high as twenty feet—and these they climbed, pulling the dogs and sleds up and over them. It was an unbearable job and they wore themselves out in the process.

Because of the fog, they hadn’t laid eyes on Wrangel Island since leaving Shipwreck Camp, which worried Mamen. Still, he remained hopeful. Surely they would see the mountain peaks again as soon as the weather cleared.

They pressed on until noon on the twenty-second, when they came to an open crack in the ice that stretched far and wide. There was no way of getting across it. The ice surrounding the open water was shaky and thin. They retreated a quarter of a mile and made camp on a large patch of old ice. The total day’s progress was seven miles, and they were in worse condition than the day before. Their tent had ripped in two places and most of the party had frozen noses and hands. Earlier in the day, Mamen took a spill into the water up to the middle of his thighs. The water was deadly cold, and he was shivering and blue, dripping wet, his clothes beginning to freeze on his body. But he would not allow the party to stop for him to change clothes; they had to keep going. He paid for his decision with a frozen nose and middle finger, and two frozen feet, the left one particularly bad.

When at last they took shelter in their new snow house, Mamen was sleepless. He lay in his makeshift bed, uneasy and in pain. He was worried about the fact that they were still unable to see Wrangel Island. And he was worried about Kuraluk. The Eskimo was making him a nervous wreck because of his anxiety about leaving his family behind. Kuraluk was very protective of Auntie and his daughters. This was the first time he had been separated from them on this journey, and the first time he had left them alone with those strangers from the ship. Bartlett, he trusted, but the others worried him. He wanted to get back as soon as possible. He would have no rest until he saw his family again.

Mamen also worried about his own frostbitten feet, which gave him so much pain that he could not rest. He got up twice to rub them with snow in an attempt to get the circulation back, not realizing that this was the worst thing he could have done. He should have warmed them against the body heat of one of his comrades instead.

“Oh, what a⁵⁰ road we have,” Mamen wrote in his diary on that sleepless night. “It is more than difficult and will take longer time than expected.”

The following day brought better results, though the high pressure ridges still troubled them and Wrangel Island remained shrouded in fog. The men were in better spirits all around, their outlook improved by eleven miles progress and more accommodating weather. With a little luck, thought Mamen, they would reach Wrangel Island tomorrow.

THEY SET OUT THE NEXT MORNING in snow flurries and a steady, driving wind, which kept up throughout the day. The sky was dark and clouded, and Wrangel Island was still nowhere to be seen. Mamen drove them onward, and they crossed several small openings in the ice, which gave them considerable trouble. The worst came just past noon when they reached a wide, sprawling lead, too wide to cross with the dogs and the loaded sleds.

Mamen and Sandy and the others unharnessed the dogs and threw them across the chasm, dragging the sleds over behind. It was Mamen’s bad luck to be caught in the middle of a dog fight, which erupted as he was helping the dogs across to his side of the water. Throwing himself into the middle of the pack in an effort to separate the fighters, he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his right knee. He buckled, but still managed to push the dogs apart, and then was able to assess the damage. The pain was intense, and he had no idea what he had done. As far as he could tell in his hasty examination, it was either the kneecap or the ligament, but he could not assess the extent of the damage. It was a familiar feeling—the same knee he had injured just weeks ago.

With Mamen virtually crippled, the men were forced to set up camp. Mamen sent Kataktovik out to find a good place, and then the young leader was lashed to Sandy’s sled for the drive there. As Mamen was bumped and jostled over the rough ice, his knee shot lightning bolts of pain through his entire body.

They built their snow house, lit the Primus stoves, and ate a quick dinner. Afterward, Sandy and Brady tried to help Mamen with his leg. They pulled it and massaged it, but nothing seemed to help. After just nine miles progress for the day, Mamen was forced into bed, his last thoughts being ones of hope and prayer that his leg might improve during the night and be good enough to walk on in the morning. Otherwise, he would be of no use to his men, only a hindrance, and he would slow them down.

What had he gotten himself into? “I have not⁵¹ yet seen worse luck,” he wrote, “I cannot but say that I am much worried both about ourselves and our comrades in the camp. I don’t know how to manage everything now. It is worse for the people left behind out on the ice. If the leg is not all right tomorrow, we must do all we can to reach land and then send Anderson and the two Eskimos back, to return now would be folly.”

As the temperature dipped to minus forty degrees Fahrenheit, the men endured another sleepless night. They couldn’t risk tents or sleeping bags because the ice might shift or break and they had to be unencumbered. Instead, they bedded down on the ice and huddled closely for warmth. Their clothes were wet through from the snow and their own sweat and their exertions over the open leads—the slips, the accidental falls, the dips into the freezing water. It was impossible to dry their clothes, which meant the men were forced to walk up and down periodically throughout the night to keep their blood circulating and maintain feeling in their bodies. They walked even when they couldn’t feel their limbs. Sandy seemed to have it the worst. His legs were frozen, and he sat up all night rubbing them vigorously.

They were up at 5:00 A.M. and on their way by 8:30, part of the provisions from Sandy’s sled loaded onto Mamen’s and Kuraluk’s sleds so that Mamen could ride. For the first time since leaving Shipwreck Camp, they spotted Wrangel Island, and they let this spur them on and give them the strength they needed to continue.

There was one other factor that helped them onward: the sun. The great orb had disappeared on November 14 of the previous year, and they could now see it lifting its burning head over the earth. It barely cleared the horizon, but their spirits soared.

They traveled twelve miles that day and were in sight of land. Surely they couldn’t have much farther to go. That night’s entry in Mamen’s diary was proof of his renewed optimism: “We came closer⁵² and closer to the island, it is now quite distinct. The mountains rise sombrely [sic], and we can also see the lowland to the west dimly. I hope that we may reach the island tomorrow; it will be a joy both to us and to the others, the sooner we will be back.”

Over the next two days, they only traveled an average of nine miles total, however. The uneven ice and loose snow made the going next to impossible. There were increasing numbers of open leads, and Mamen and his team were forced to approach Wrangel Island in zigzag fashion instead of a straight line.

Mamen was still lashed to the sled, unable to straighten his knee or put any weight on it. He felt like the most dreadful burden. If there was anything Mamen hated, it was to be a hindrance. It made him feel weak and angry and frustrated, and yet there was nothing he could do.

There was no rest for the travelers as the nighttime temperature hovered at minus forty degrees Fahrenheit, and they continued to pace the ice, trying to keep warm. All of their clothes were soaking wet, and even the woolen blankets were more like wet dish rags than protective covering. They could not escape the wind and the cold, and “we shiver and⁵³ freeze more than we have done before,” observed Mamen.

They were, at least, coming steadily closer to the island, although Mamen now suspected that the distance from Shipwreck Camp to Wrangel was much greater than he and Bartlett and McKinlay had originally guessed.

January 28 was no better. They were running into more and more open water, and were forced to zigzag more dramatically toward the island. It was maddening to see the land so near, yet not be able to reach it. By noon, they were forced to sit out the rest of the day beside an enormous lead, which they could only hope would freeze over so they could continue. Otherwise, they had no idea how they would get around it.

Making camp was almost impossible because there was no snow to build their igloo. Somehow, after expending a lot of time and energy, they managed a rather crude structure, only to discover that one of their two Primus stoves was no longer working.

They had covered just four miles and their clothes were “wetter and wetter⁵⁴ day by day,” wrote Mamen. “I don’t know how it will go if we don’t reach land soon, I don’t think the boys can manage it this way much longer and then they have also considerable trouble with me.” His leg had not improved at all, but they were so close to the island now—could practically feel the earth beneath their feet—that Mamen insisted they go on.

At the end of the day, they were a discouraged lot and even Mamen was having trouble rallying. He knew Bartlett and the others were already expecting them back at Shipwreck Camp, but he refused to return until they had reached the island. “I have suffered⁵⁵ these days more than people might believe,” he said, “both from pain in the leg and from the cold, more than I have done in all my life, but my spirits are still high and I look upon the future with bright eyes, however dark it may appear to be.”

BACK AT SHIPWRECK CAMP, McKinlay lay in layers of damp clothing on one of the mattresses they’d saved from the ship. He had learned much in the past week from living on the ice. He now knew it was important to remove one’s boots before sleeping and to leave them standing because they would freeze during the night. If you left them standing, at least you could fit your feet into them the next day. They tended to get out of shape if you lay them down. Likewise, it was important to remove any clothing that was wet and next to the skin. Most of their clothing was wet by the end of the day, due to snow or ice or water or sweat.

McKinlay’s standard outfit now consisted of a singlet, a shirt, overalls, two pairs of underpants, a pair of trousers, mukluks, and reindeer socks. He had also taken to sewing sealskin soles into his socks, with detachable deerskin soles on top of these, at Bartlett’s suggestion. The idea was that at the end of the day, he could slip the detachable soles out and let them dry on his chest while he was sleeping. So far, it seemed a brilliant idea.

Each of the two snow houses had a stove in the center of it, and they placed the mattresses surrounding this; but the temperature had dipped to forty degrees below zero, and they soon forgot what it ever was to be warm.

ON JANUARY 25, the sun had appeared over the horizon for the first time in seventy-one days. It was the fourth time Bartlett had seen the sun return in the Arctic, but it was the one which gave him the greatest satisfaction, since so much depended on their having a good amount of daylight. They could also see Wrangel Island for the first time since Mamen had left, situated much farther away than it had been previously. They knew then that they must still be drifting at a greater rate than they had reckoned.

To celebrate the return of the sun, the men had feasted on oysters. Bartlett had found two tins of them in the galley while he was waiting for the ship to go down and had tossed them overboard onto the ice where they broke and scattered. That night, they all went out into the drifting snow and dug for oysters, which Templeman cooked up into a soup.

Afterward, they gathered around the big stove in the box house and enjoyed an impromptu concert, each man reciting something from memory—“Casey at the Bat,” or “Lasca”—while Munro offered some of his favorite Robbie Burns’s poems. Then they all sang together such popular favorites as “Sweet Afton,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “Loch Lomond,” and “Red Wing.”

Auntie sang hymns in her rich, strong voice, and then Helen and Mugpi sang nursery songs. The children helped the men take their minds off their own troubles. It was always easier when there was someone smaller and more vulnerable to worry about, and the children were becoming increasingly important to them. When the little girls sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” their mother joined in. It was a memorable moment and, as McKinlay noted, one of the most cheerful times they had had for a long while.

On the twenty-eighth, the day they expected Mamen and the Eskimos to return, Chafe and Clam had reported smooth ice on the trail, stretching across the horizon. There was no open water in sight, which was splendid news. Mess room boy Chafe and seaman Clam, eager to stretch their legs and gain more experience in ice travel, had been out almost every day on the trail and, for the most part, had reported fine ice conditions. The darkness was abating and Mamen now had about eight hours of decent light each day for travel. What, then, was keeping them?

McKinlay knew by the offshore wind that there was a strong probability of Mamen running into open water. There was also a prominent water sky visible to the south, which further backed up the prediction. And as if to prove him right, Chafe and Dr. Mackay returned one day after a hike to report several leads of water, some over a hundred yards wide, a mile or so to the south of them.

Over the next several days, Chafe and Clam went out together regularly, marking the trail every two or three miles with flags. Both young men felt more confident in their abilities now, and it felt good to be useful. They also carried supplies (mostly food and oil) on these short treks, to cache along the trail at spots one, two, three, and four days’ travel from camp. Each time, they reported the ice conditions as fine and much improved.

Clam’s ear had become badly nipped by the cold, blistering and swelling to twice its normal size. True to his name, he said nothing and did not complain. They were all becoming quickly accustomed to frostbite, although some of them were less careful than others. Malloch was the worst. Now that he had been released from the scouting party, his characteristic affability had returned to a certain degree, and with it his usual thoughtlessness. One day the geologist strode about the camp in a pair of bearskin breeches with his trousers rolled up because his legs were too warm. There were three inches of bare leg showing between the top of his boots and the bottom of his pants. “You are going⁵⁶ to freeze your legs, Malloch,” Hadley told him, “if you don’t wrap them up.”

But Malloch laughed it off, saying that was the way Bartlett had said they dressed in Greenland. Hadley just shook his head, once again amazed by the ignorance of all these Arctic greenhorns, and said, “Go to it, old man.”

The result was a nasty nip on the leg, which laid Malloch up for several days.

They had postponed setting up the flare to guide Mamen home until the twenty-ninth. That morning, Chafe, Clam, Breddy, and Hadley set out by sled for the first camp made by Mamen’s party on the trail. They found it seven miles from Shipwreck Camp and placed a flag there to help lead Mamen home. During the day, a huge bonfire was built out of a whaleboat, thirteen sacks of coal, a couple of cases of engine oil, and ten tins of gasoline. This created an enormous, winding smoke pillar, which billowed into the sky, easily seen at least fifteen miles away. Dusk closed in at 3:00 P.M., at which point they rolled a cask of alcohol down the trail and stood it up on one end before setting it ablaze. They also burned the canoe and three cases of gasoline. The flames were still raging as they lay down to sleep. As Hadley noted, it was a wonder they didn’t blow themselves to eternity. “I reminded the⁵⁷ Captain of how he had burnt all the hair off his face last winter when he put a package of Eastman’s flash papers in the cabin stoves, and I advised him to look out that nothing worse happened.”

When Mamen had not arrived by the morning of the thirtieth, Clam, Chafe, and Maurer followed the trail again, this time going as far as the second camp, just four miles beyond the first. They could not understand this slow progress and could not find any sign of open water or anything else that might have slowed Mamen’s party down.

One thing was clear, though—they now knew that, for whatever reason, it was too early to expect Mamen’s return.

Despite their worry, life continued. The men kept on with their sewing, huddled close over candlelight, since most of their lamps were broken. The dim light was hard on the eyes, as well as depressing. They also mended the holes in their snow houses where the walls had melted away from the heat of the stoves. While the members of the other house took the roof off and rebuilt their walls, the occupants of McKinlay’s house were not so eager to go to work. Thanks to Dr. Mackay, Murray, and Beuchat, there was a decided lack of communal spirit, and as a result each man looked after his own corner of the room, propping up the roof and walls as best he could.

The only activity that seemed to interest Mackay and Beuchat was to practice hauling a sled loaded with pemmican cases. These tins of pemmican were about fourteen inches long, five inches wide, and three inches thick. Each tin held six pounds and was marked so that one knew how to take out a pound exactly, which was the standard daily ration for a man in the Arctic, along with tea and a pound of biscuit. The men would open a tin on one side and empty the contents, and then they would open the other side and flatten the tin into a sheet. Bartlett had learned from Peary to mark trails with these flattened pemmican tins. When displayed against an ice ridge, the red or blue sheets of tin were visible for as many as two miles against all of that whiteness. They could be used as an indication of open water or a dangerous fault, or simply to mark the trail. Bartlett had instructed Mamen to mark his own trail this way.

The captain had made it perfectly clear that he had no intention of manhauling anything on the trip to Wrangel Island, yet Mackay and Beuchat were diligently practicing up and down, back and forth. McKinlay watched his comrades warily, trying to ignore the gnawing worry and suspicion in the pit of his stomach.

Bartlett had presented his men with a rough outline of his plans. Following Mamen’s return, he would send four sleds with eleven men and all the dogs to the island. When the entire party got to shore, eight of them would remain there (providing there was game enough to sustain them) while the rest of the party crossed the Bering Strait and made for Saint Lawrence Bay to wire for help. If there was no game on the island, they would all go to Siberia.

After months of complaining and plotting and talking about setting out on their own, Dr. Mackay and Murray took Bartlett aside on the morning of January 31 and told him what he had expected to hear long ago—they were leaving. As far as they were concerned, it was much too risky to remain any longer on the ice. They had no desire to wait for Bartlett to lead the team to Wrangel, and then to risk getting left behind on the island while he chose someone else to accompany him on the trek to Siberia. They had to know that after their harsh treatment of him, their chances of being picked to go were almost nonexistent.

Although the news of their departure didn’t come as a shock to Bartlett—or to anyone else who had been made to endure their grumbling—it was still hard to believe that the three of them were finally making good on their threats. And it was hard to grasp fully the impact of what they were proposing. It meant, after all, the first complete division of the party. To give it its real name, mutiny.

They presented Bartlett with a list of requested supplies—fifty days’ worth—and told him of their plan to reach the island and then, possibly, to continue on to the Siberian coast. Otherwise, they would remain on the island and wait to be picked up by any ships that might arrive there that summer. Beuchat would go with them, which was no surprise, but so would sailor Stanley Morris, which came as a shock to everyone.

There had never been any word about Morris joining them, but he rather sheepishly approached his captain and requested permission to go. Bartlett gave it grudgingly, more willing to let Mackay and the others go than he was to let this decent, sweet-tempered young man leave his own company. While Bartlett was now responsible for the scientists, they were still Stefansson’s men. Stefansson had hired them, and they were working for him. But the sailors, stokers, stewards, and officers were Bartlett’s, and young Morris was one of the most promising members of the crew.

Morris was also very persuasive and eager, not to mention blindly trusting and completely awed by the Antarctic reputation of Dr. Mackay and Murray. True, they had mastered the rugged Antarctic plateau, but the sea ice of the Arctic was completely different. Continually cracking, splitting, shifting, and moving, the surface of the sea ice was rough and uneven, with magnificent hills and ridges piling up from the pressure. Ever changing, forever in motion, the Arctic pack was unpredictable and could easily turn deadly.

Stanley Morris had wanted to be an explorer since childhood, ever since he was old enough to understand that he was named for the great Henry Morton Stanley, who was sent to find Dr. Livingstone in the wilds of Ujiji, Africa. Now he was in the presence of two bona fide and proven polar heroes, Dr. Mackay and Murray. For some time, he had known something about their plans to leave the ship. He believed in their experience and their authoritative boasting. He also looked up to them as fellow Brits who shared familiar attitudes and methods, while Bartlett was more American in his way of thinking. Morris suddenly saw Dr. Mackay and Murray as men of action while the captain, for some reason, was choosing to wait. Land was visible, after all, and now they were beginning to drift away from it. Better to leave with these brilliant scientists who had proven themselves at the bottom of the world with Shackleton, than to stay here a moment longer on the ice.

Bartlett put up no fight with Mackay over leaving, knowing he would not be able to dissuade him, but he tried to change Morris’s mind. The boy would not listen, though. The captain had to resign himself then and told himself that at least Morris could be of use to Mackay and the others because he was so much younger and very handy. Consequently, Morris was granted permission to leave with the scientists.

Bartlett asked that Mackay put his request into writing, stating that they were leaving the main party of their own free will, thus relieving him of all responsibility. After he received their letter, he would issue them fifty days’ supplies of provisions and equipment. The captain then passed their request on to McKinlay, because he was in charge of the stores. He also offered Mackay’s party their proportional share of dogs, as soon as Mamen returned with them, but Mackay declined the offer. They would haul the sled themselves.

There was one last thing. Mackay told Bartlett that if he and the others decided to remain on Wrangel Island and wait for a ship, they would then “throw themselves on⁵⁸ the main party for additional support.” A bold statement, considering all they had put everyone through and the now very decisive rift they were forcing upon the party.

Bartlett would have none of it. As soon as he distributed the requested provisions, and as soon as he saw them on their way out of Shipwreck Camp, his responsibility for them was over. That also went for Seaman Morris, who likely had no idea what he was getting into. As hard as it would be for Morris, should Dr. Mackay’s party end up on Wrangel Island, their fifty days’ supply gone, he would not be able to come to the captain for help. If he chose to leave now, Bartlett’s responsibility for Morris was over as well.

It was difficult to tell what kind of impact Mackay’s departure would have on the rest of the men. In some ways, it would be a relief to be rid of them, but in other ways, it felt like the beginning of the end. It was true that the Karluk’s company as a whole had not always been united in spirit or friendship, but how could anything good come out of such a final and irreparable division?

Somehow it all would have seemed easier to deal with if Mamen would only return. The last day of the month, ten days gone, and still no sign of him.

And then Malloch made a strange and unnerving remark to the captain. His usually sunny face was grave as he told Bartlett that he did not expect to see Mamen again. When asked why, Malloch merely said that if Mamen had managed to reach the shore, he didn’t think he was ever coming back.

They brushed it off, but Bartlett, McKinlay, and the rest of the members of Shipwreck Camp were nagged by worry. “We are at⁵⁹ a loss to account for this lack of progress,” wrote McKinlay, “as the going seemed smooth, & there were no signs of their having been held up by open water. The only explanation we can think of is that they overslept after the exertions of the first day & had only a very short spell of daylight on the second day.”

Bartlett put on a positive face for his men and speculated that Mamen and Sandy probably reached land on the thirtieth, and therefore he would not expect Mamen back for a couple of days. Give them until February 2 or 3, and no doubt they would be stumbling, worn and weary, back into camp.

They fanned the flames of the alcohol flare and vowed to keep some sort of fire burning until Mamen and the Eskimos were safely home.

ON JANUARY 29, Mamen, Sandy, and the other members of their party stood rooted in place, not believing their eyes. Mamen had gone over it again and again in his mind, but he still could not figure out what had gone wrong or where they had gotten off track.

They had traveled well that morning, but the afternoon had brought rough new ice, piled into looming ridges and hills, the jagged, slippery surfaces of which must be crossed somehow. They made twelve miles in spite of it all. But then, suddenly, Mamen knew something was wrong. There was the island—but not the island. The mountain peaks weren’t where they should have been, and the island was much smaller than they had expected. This piece of land, indeed, seemed barely more than a slab of rock jutting out of the ice and water. There were no trees. There was no expanse of land. There was only a sheer, ragged mountain peak.

“I have come⁶⁰ to the conclusion,” Mamen wrote in his diary on January 29, “that it is not Wrangel Island that we are coming to, but Herald Island. It is a shock to us and to all in the camp.. . .”

It was clearly Herald Island. They were close enough to see that now. Herald Island, without any flat coastal stretch on the southeast side, was comprised of only mountainous ridges and cliffs. It was thirty-eight miles from Wrangel Island and, according to the Pilot Book, just four miles long.

From what Mamen knew of the place, Herald Island wasn’t fit for any living creature. It was harsh, desolate, and lifeless, and virtually inaccessible. But even a useless, barren scrap of earth seemed better than a block of ice. And in Mamen’s condition, and with Golightly’s frozen feet, he knew they had little chance of making Wrangel.

It wasn’t clear to them what went wrong—whether they had mischarted it to begin with, whether the island they had seen from Shipwreck Camp was actually Herald instead, or whether they somehow got off course in the fog and the snow and the zigzagging across the ice.

Whatever had happened, Mamen and Sandy, Barker, Brady, Golightly, Kuraluk, and Kataktovik were stunned. Unable to go on, they set up camp for the night, but the ice crashed and creaked around them so that no one could sleep. Then, at 10:30 P.M., the ice cracked violently outside their snow house and Sandy, Barker, and the two sailors, frightened out of their minds, raced outside, carrying their belongings, loading them onto the sleds, ready to start away immediately.

Without warning, the ice began to crush. Packs crashed into packs, grating, churning, threatening to smash Mamen and the others flat. The great ice shelves vomited out of the water suddenly, their edges jagged and razor-sharp, crashing on top of nearby floes with resounding explosions. The men could have been crushed at any moment. The dogs barked and howled, terrified. One of the sleds turned over, tumbling half their supplies into the water. The men held on to each other and tried to make their way to a safer plateau, but they were surrounded by the grinding ice and water.

Suddenly, the ice broke up and they were separated from each other, floating on individual shards while the chasms of water widened between them. Even the Eskimos were afraid, shouting to Mamen in Inuit. But somehow they all drifted back together, only to find that now a wide, open field of water lay between them and the island. Mamen didn’t know how they’d make it across, short of swimming. There was ice again, closer to land, but it was rougher and looser. The leads of water were wider there. Sometimes there was no ice at all.

The ice quieted suddenly then, and they regained a shaky sense of calm. Sandy and the crewmen set up a tent for Mamen, who rested his lame knee while the other men walked up and down the remainder of the night to ward off the chill. They kept the good stove going and filled themselves with hot tea to keep warm.

They started out again in the morning, south to west, climbing over the immense pressure ridges with their loaded sleds. It was no easy task, but suddenly these ice mountains were springing up everywhere across the horizon; they had no choice but to pick their way up and across them. “It is remarkable⁶¹ that our sleighs stand it,” remarked Mamen.

In the afternoon, they ran into thirty feet of open water and were forced to stop after traveling only three and a half miles. Discouraged and exhausted, they once again set up camp as the ice continued to groan and shift around them.

After another sleepless and uneasy night, they awoke on January 31 to see the ice opening up and drifting away from land. The leads of water were growing and they were forced to move camp nearby to a large ice floe, where they felt they would be safer. With the day stretching before them, Mamen tried out his legs for the first time since he had hurt himself. Although he was still suffering and couldn’t yet straighten his knee, he made a brave effort to “hop along the⁶² best I can, and hope it will get better.”

He also came to a decision. It was time to head back to Shipwreck Camp. He would leave Sandy and the boys as close to Herald Island as he could, and then he and the Eskimos would return as planned, taking with them provisions for fifteen days: three boxes of Hudson’s Bay pemmican, 200 biscuits, 150 pounds of dog pemmican, tea, sugar, a Primus stove, an ice pick, the two sleds, a gallon of gasoline, and all of the dogs.

Sandy, then, would be left with 6 boxes of Hudson’s Bay pemmican, 300 pounds of Underwood pemmican, 100 pounds of dog pemmican, 70 pounds of biscuits, 15 pounds of sugar, 12 boxes of milk, tea, 1 stove, 7 gallons of gasoline, 15 candles, 3½ dozen boxes of matches, and 1 sled.

It is unclear why Mamen chose that moment to leave them. He knew the poor ice conditions; he knew the state of Herald Island. He could have ordered them all back to camp with him, to let Bartlett know of the grave mistake in the identity of the island. He could have stayed to see them through to land, such as it was. But perhaps he knew his knee would only continue to hold them back, and perhaps he felt they could do better without him.

Whatever his reasons, he made the decision. The next day was February 1, and Mamen would be on his way back home with Kuraluk and Kataktovik and all of the dogs, leaving first officer Sandy Anderson, second mate Charles Barker, and sailors John Brady and Ned Golightly to find their own way across the open water to Herald Island.

It would be a perilous journey under the best of circustances, but none of these young men had been trained in polar survival. And none of them had any experience with Artic ice travel, aside from that of the past ten days.