Melville’s whaleboat came closest to disaster. At one point, wrote Danenhower, “a heavy green sea swept over the whole port side and filled her to the thwarts; she staggered and commenced to settle, but every man with a baler in hand quickly relieved her, and she floated again. I was never frightened before in a boat, but it was a most dangerous and terrible situation. Had another sea boarded us not a man of our party would have been saved.”
On September 8—eighty-eight days since the sinking of the Jeannette—De Long encountered a solitary floe bobbing sluggishly in the Laptev Sea. Hailing the other two boats, he decided to make for it. “I had pity on the wet and exhausted creatures around me,” De Long wrote. They hauled up on the small plate of ice and camped. They were, said Melville, “perhaps the most miserable looking collection of mortals that ever crowded shivering together in a heap.” Melville was so addled by the cold that he burst into song just to revive his “drowned and frozen wits.” Said Ambler: “I have been so stiff & numb from cramp & cold that at times, except for my brain working, I should not know of my very existence.” Yet the doctor was in awe of the men for how stoically they accepted their sufferings. “Everybody is probably in as bad a condition as myself, if not worse,” Ambler wrote, “but they all stand it without complaint.”
Their position was just south of the 75th parallel, a little more than a hundred miles northeast of Siberian shores. They pitched their tents and peeled off their frozen outer garments. Snoozer curled up on the ice beside the men, who mashed their hunks of pemmican and sipped tea that had been boiled on the alcohol stoves. Scarcely uttering a word, they crawled into their sealskin bags and, as Melville put it, “slept the sleep of the just.”
33 · SEAS HIGH AND SPITEFUL
The eight starving hunters formed a skirmish line across the narrow neck of land. With each man clutching a rifle or a shotgun, they marched in unison toward the south. They had spotted a doe and her fawn, and now they were sweeping down the length of this soggy sandbar—“on the warpath,” said De Long—confident that they would eventually meet their prey.
Earlier on the morning of September 10, De Long and his men had paused here, on the blustery shores of Semyonovsky Island, a hundred miles northeast of the Siberian coast. De Long had unloaded the hunters on the island’s north end and arranged to meet them a few hours later on the south. Their days of island hopping were nearly over—Semyonovsky would be their last stop, the final scrap of land in the New Siberian archipelago, before they would plunge into the wide-open sea to start their dangerous dash for the Siberian mainland.
It was charitable to call Semyonovsky an island. Only a few miles long and an eighth of a mile wide, it was a lonely, low-lying spit of mud half-submerged in the Laptev Sea, with no sign of human presence. The island was eroding so fast that Dr. Ambler predicted that this “mere strip of earth” would “probably disappear in the course of a few years and be only a chain of islets.” (He was right: Over the next fifty years, Semyonovsky would steadily wash away, and by the early 1960s, it would disappear; today it is a submerged sandbar primarily known for posing a hazard to ships.) De Long was astonished by the extent of the erosion. “The southern end of this island is worn away almost to a knife-edge,” he wrote. “Large masses … lie prostrate on the beach [and] there are huge cracks where other land-slides will occur.”
Semyonovsky (sometimes spelled Semenovsky) Island was discovered in 1770 by a Russian merchant who followed the tracks of migrating reindeer that led from the Siberian coast across the pack. The doe and fawn De Long’s men were now hunting were probably distant descendants of those migrating herds. The men surmised that the mother reindeer had birthed her fawn too late in the season to cross the ice bridge to the mainland, so the two had gotten stranded here for the summer.
The hunters found the two reindeer and fired several times. Though the fawn got away, the doe staggered and was finally felled by an expert shot from Noros. The men dragged her carcass to the edge of a mud cliff and hurled it onto the beach. De Long ordered the boats unloaded, the animal butchered, a bonfire lit, and a meal prepared at once. The meat was roasted, and within an hour, everything had been consumed but the bones and antlers—which they would save for a soup. Even Snoozer got to feast. “The deer dressed about one hundred and twenty pounds,” Melville wrote, “and we had each a clear pound of sweet venison, washed down by a quart of tea—a royal gorge, indeed.”
One of the men had found a swampy pond from which to drink. Though the water contained no salt, it was, said Melville, “discolored and unpleasant to the taste, savoring of the bog from which it was taken, and being filled with animalculae and red grubs.” But the men were so pleased with the roaring fire and the afterglow of their venison feast, they didn’t care. Said Melville: “When we at last turned in, the wet sleeping-bags troubled us but little, for now we enjoyed the delightful and almost forgotten sensation of being replete and distended with palatable food, a delicious frame of body and mind enhanced by the pleasing prospect of a jolly good soup on the morrow.”
They soon dozed off to a long and contented night’s sleep. “Our lesser discomforts,” De Long wrote, “seemed to fade away before the warmth and security which Semenovski Island afforded.”
THE NEXT DAY, September 11, the fawn was spotted at the edge of camp, no doubt looking for its mother. Alexey and a few other hunters took off in pursuit and chased it clear to the other end of the island but were unable to secure it. In the mud hills, the hunters saw the tracks of a large predator—probably a wolf, possibly a bear—and guessed that the fawn had met its fate.
The rest occupied themselves with other errands. Ambler meandered off on a geological foray, finding what he thought was a fossilized mastodon tooth, and Newcomb went on a long stroll in search of birds. Others fanned out over the island, looking in vain for any sign that a rescue party had ever set foot on Semyonovsky in search of the lost Jeannette. But most of the men spent the day repairing the boats and getting ready for the challenges of the coming sail. It was a calm, foggy day, the temperature hovering in the low thirties. De Long planned to leave Semyonovsky the following morning. There was much agitated discussion about how the boats would fare over several consecutive days cast in huge seas. They had already been tested enough for De Long to know that the three vessels performed very differently from one another.
De Long’s boat, the first cutter, was probably the most stable, but he would be carrying the most men—fourteen, all told—and the largest allotment of provisions, in addition to all the expedition’s logs, papers, and scientific specimens. Snoozer would ride with De Long as well. De Long’s cutter was twenty feet, four inches from her bow to her transom stern, with a breadth of six feet at her widest point. Like the other boats, she was clinker-built—which meant that the wooden planks of her hull overlapped in the fashion of a clapboard house. She was fastened with copper, pulled six oars, and had a heavy oaken keel. Though the first cutter was slow—“a dull sailor,” thought Melville—she was “an excellent sea-boat [that] stood up splendidly to her work.”
Melville’s craft was a whaleboat, a design slightly different from that of a cutter. Sharply pointed at both ends, she was made for the strenuous action and quick maneuvering required for harpooning whales. At twenty-four feet, four inches, the whaleboat was the longest of the three, and also the fastest when under full sail. Danenhower recalled that the master boatbuilder at Mare Island had told him “she was one of the best fastened boats that he had ever seen, and our experience proved it, for the racket she stood on the journey over the ice was almost incredible.” The whaleboat needed constant mending, it seemed, but she was solid in the bones, and Melville felt sure she would hold.
The biggest worry was Chipp’s boat, the second cutter. It had already been well demonstrated that she was the slowest in De Long’s little fleet. By far the smallest of the three (she was only sixteen feet, three inches from stem to stern), the second cutter was soundly built, but had trouble in heavy seas
. De Long sought to compensate for her weaknesses by having the other two boats take on far more than their share of the aggregate load; the second cutter would carry only eight passengers.
Despite the smaller cutter’s shortcomings, some of the men favored her for the simple reason that she was the least battered of all the craft. During the long haul over the ice, Chipp’s short vessel had rested comfortably, with no overhang, in the cradle of its sled, and so had taken very little abuse. In addition, Chipp’s roster boasted some of the finest and most experienced sailors in the expedition—including Dunbar, Sweetman, and Chipp himself. If anyone could see her through peril, these men could.
Nonetheless, De Long brooded about the second cutter, and Chipp, too, began to express reservations. Wrote Melville: “Chipp, for the first time, complained about his boat. Until then she had been the favorite, and indeed was considered sound and efficient.” Danenhower, who thought the second cutter was “a very bad sea boat,” picked up on Chipp’s apprehensions. Though he could hardly see, he and Chipp went out to hunt for grouse that afternoon, and the navigator found that although Chipp “was in better health than usual and was cheerful,” he was “not altogether satisfied with the outlook.”
On this day, a Sunday, De Long’s mood was reflective and guardedly celebratory. He spent a good bit of time reading from his Bible. It was, he noted, the “ninety-first day since the ship was crushed and ourselves thrown out on the ice.” After all their hardships, after more than five hundred miles of excruciating ice travel (thousands of miles, if one counted all the backtracking), they had nearly reached the Russian mainland—without losing a single man. Dunbar’s heart ailments worried De Long, as did Danenhower’s eye, but otherwise, as a lot, they were in remarkably good health. As long as the weather held up, they would leave in the morning.
Sanguine and satisfied with his preparations, De Long wrote a record of their landing on the island and had it buried in the cliff beneath a twenty-foot pole that was dug deeply into the mud.
Semenovski Island, Arctic Ocean
Sunday, September 11, 1881
This record of our arrival at and proposed departure from this island is left here in case of any search being made for us before we can place ourselves in communication with home. The Jeannette, after drifting two winters in the pack ice, was crushed and sunk … in latitude N. 77 degrees 15 minutes, and longitude E. 155 degrees, and the thirty-three persons composing her officers and crew succeeded in reaching this island yesterday afternoon, intending to proceed to-morrow morning toward the mouth of the Lena River in our three boats. We are all well, have no scurvy, and hope with God’s aid to reach the settlements on the Lena during the coming week. We have yet about seven days’ provisions.
George W. De Long,
Commanding, U.S. Arctic Expedition.
THEY ROSE AT five the next morning, breakfasted at six, and cast off at seven-thirty. The weather seemed auspicious—seas calm and ice-free, a strong breeze from the northeast, the temperature a mild thirty-one degrees. De Long instructed Melville and Chipp to stay close to him—“within hail,” as he put it. Through the morning, they did just that, forming a trim single file and making good progress, covering more than sixteen miles without incident. At one point, Melville signaled that he was having trouble, and the three boats paused alongside a small floe. Melville’s whaleboat had apparently thunked against a large piece of submerged ice, which had bashed in a section of her starboard bilge. But it proved a small problem for the ever-resourceful Melville, who was soon able to patch the wound.
At around noon, they stopped at an ice cake for a light lunch of tea and pemmican. Morale was high—“every one jolly,” wrote Melville, “in the hope that with our present breeze, should it not grow too heavy, we might be able to reach [Siberia] after one night at sea.” While the men filled the boats with snow for drinking water, De Long, Melville, and Chipp paced up and down the floe, conferring with one another about sailing strategies and how they would possibly keep their boats close, given the behavioral differences of the three craft, if the winds picked up.
De Long wanted them to make every effort to sail together. They would be aiming for the delta of the Lena River, specifically for a place marked on the maps as Cape Barkin. The three officers stood together on the ice, poring over a Petermann map of the area. De Long told Melville and Chipp that Cape Barkin was “eighty or ninety miles off, southwest true.” From Cape Barkin, De Long said, they would proceed inland, following the river until they came to one of the native settlements. According to his charts and notes, there were numerous such villages all over the delta, and they should have no problem making contact with the inhabitants. They would be safe, he assured them, “as there are plenty of natives there, winter and summer.”
But if they should get separated while out on the sea, each boat crew was to fend for itself. They were not to concern themselves with the survival of any other boat until they had secured their own safety. The ultimate goal was to reunite at a larger Lena River village marked on the map as Bulun, which looked to be about one hundred miles upstream from the coast. “Don’t wait for me,” De Long said, “but get a pilot from the natives, and proceed up the river to a place of safety as quick as you can. Be sure that you and your parties are all right before you trouble yourselves about any one else.”
Right now, De Long was concentrating on the immediate sea journey ahead—and a worrisome new turn in the conditions. As he gazed over the ocean, he could see that the breeze had freshened and the seas were building. Weather seemed to be moving in. When he checked his instruments, De Long noticed that the barometric pressure had dropped. If they were to reach Siberia ahead of a storm, they had to make haste.
So the three officers bid farewell and wished each other the best of luck. Then they cast off into seas that had already become, according to Danenhower, “high and spiteful.” De Long called out a reminder to stay within hail. Then the three boats cut through the swells, heading southwest.
THE ORDER OF the boats was supposed to be De Long, then Melville, then Chipp.
De Long wanted the formation to look something like a mother goose leading her two goslings, but the thickening weather soon scuttled the plan. Staying within hail proved impossible—staying even within sight was a challenge. Though De Long led off under full sail, her heavy freight caused the cutter to ride so low in the water that the waves broke continuously over the gunwales, slowing her down and thoroughly drenching her fourteen human occupants, most of whom found themselves bailing without stop. (Snoozer, cringing on the floor, soon resembled a wet rat.) Ambler, who was in De Long’s boat, complained of “taking seas over our stern and quarter … we shipped one sea that nearly swamped us.”
Chipp’s boat, as predicted, trailed well behind the others, sometimes so far that she nearly slipped from sight. The little craft appeared to be stricken. Every time De Long looked back, Chipp, Dunbar, and the six others in her crew seemed to be struggling in a confusion of flapping sails and laborious maneuvers. As the seas grew throughout the afternoon, Chipp’s boat would drop entirely from De Long’s view each time she plunged through the trough of a wave. De Long could not imagine how Chipp could survive much more punishment.
Melville’s whaleboat, meanwhile, was proving so swift that he had difficulty maintaining his designated position astern of the captain’s cutter. Melville tried reefing his sail, and still he kept gaining. As the winds and seas intensified, he found that the attempts to slow his boat were dangerous. The swells, running faster than she was, repeatedly crashed over her stern, nearly overwhelming Melville and the ten other men in his boat.
By early evening, the sea had become fantastically huge. This was now a full-on gale, De Long realized, and it seemed to be growing stronger by the minute. The men in De Long’s boat, though holding on for dear life, were faring better than Melville’s crew. As wave after wave pummeled the whaleboat, Melville finally signaled to De Long and, pulling up close for a moment, yelled to
him, “I must run or else I will swamp!” De Long seemed to wave him on, and Melville shook out his sails. Suddenly, he lurched forward and sprinted far out ahead. De Long could tell that Melville was still having trouble, but at least he was making good speed.
But when De Long looked back, he could see no trace of the second cutter. It had vanished. De Long knew in his heart that Chipp was doomed. Some of De Long’s men, studying the horizon, thought they caught a momentary glimpse of a capsized boat surging on the crest of a distant wave, but it had grown so dark, they couldn’t be sure. De Long knew he could not go back for his friend; in a gale like this, turning around would mean nearly certain death—and besides, there was not room in his boat for a single extra man, so any rescue was out of the question. If Chipp’s cutter had capsized, he and his men would have only a few minutes. The temperature of the water was no more than thirty degrees.
Now, turning to scour the seas ahead, De Long saw nothing of Melville. He, too, had vanished. It was hard to make out anything through the foam and spray and sleet, but from the top of each wave, the men in De Long’s boat scanned the gray horizon and could not find a trace. As darkness fell over the Laptev Sea and the storm howled on, De Long and his crew of thirteen men knew they were on their own.
My dear Papa: How are you? I am taking music lessons and I go to school here.… I will send you my examination papers. I am trying very hard to surprise you when you get back.…