Fatal North (19 page)

On October 14, Tyson had a nightmare in which the ship
was crushed against a mighty berg and the crew scrambled to save themselves. He awakened sweaty and shaking, with haunting images of being shipwrecked and stranded on the Arctic ice.

The next evening, pushed by a strong gale from the northwest, ice began to press in on
Polaris.
She did not lift to the unrelenting forces as much as she would have if she had been of a broader build—“flaring,” as the whalers called it—which would have enabled her to rise more with the ice, reducing the pressure on her hull.

Tyson came out of his room on the starboard side, looked over the rail, then went to the port-side railing. He could see the ship struggling to rise to the pressure but unable to do so, then coming down hard on the ice, breaking it and riding it under her. The ice was heavy, and the ship creaked in every timber with her valiant effort.

Most of the crew came topside to see what was causing the unsettling noises.

At that moment the chief engineer sprang up from below. “She sprung a bad leak aft,” Schuman cried. “Water is gaining on the pumps!”

Hurrying below, Tyson found Buddington in the galley and told him of the engineer's alarming report. Buddington threw up his arms and rushed on deck.

“Throw everything on the ice!” Buddington ordered.

Instantly, all was mass confusion. Startled crewmen began seizing things indiscriminately and throwing them overboard: barrels of flour and rice, forty-five-pound cans of pemmican, boxes of preserved meat, five or six tons of coal. Most were the supplies previously placed upon the deck in anticipation of such a catastrophe, but they were now being flung over the railing with no thought given as to how or where they were landing.

With her rising and falling motion, the vessel was constantly breaking ice around her and opening new cracks. Supplies were being thrown into these black holes and lost, while other supplies were crushed between the ice and the ship's hull.

To try to save provisions, Tyson and several men dropped
onto the ice; more followed in a new howling storm. The Eskimos, ordered off the ship by Buddington so they could be on the ice to help in the emergency, went over the side with all their belongings.

Tyson tried to get the crewmen still throwing stores overboard to stop until the supplies already endangered were out of the way, but was unsuccessful. Even as they worked on the ice, supplies were being tossed overboard, and most sank or ran under the ship and were lost.

The night was fearfully dark and stormy on the ice. It was impossible to see more than a few feet. The work was slow and hard going, and those working on the ice struggled until they could scarcely stand on their feet.

At ten o'clock Tyson went back aboard to check on the condition of the ship.

“How much water is she making?” he wearily asked Buddington.

“No more than usual,” the captain replied nonchalantiy.

It turned out there was no new leak, and the power pumps were holding their own. As the ice had lifted her up, the water in the hold had been thrown over to one side with such a rush that Schuman mistakenly thought a severe leak had been sprung.

While Tyson was disappointed with the chief engineer, an experienced and competent officer, he was utterly disgusted with the way Buddington had panicked and given life to such an emotionally charged and disorganized state. It was the worst example of naval leadership and shipboard discipline he had ever witnessed. What would have happened in a true emergency? he pondered. How many lives would have been needlessly lost?

As there were still supplies scattered about, Tyson went back on the ice. Unbelievably, some men were continuing to fling stores over the railing. From the ice, Tyson ordered them to stop.

Suddenly, there were loud cracking sounds, and Tyson felt the ice weakening under his feet. He yelled to Buddington of the new danger and insisted everyone on the floe be taken back on board as quickly as possible, along with the two boats.

Instead, Buddington ordered Tyson to move the boats farther from the ship, apparently still concerned about having to abandon ship during the night.

Tyson turned to obey—and at that instant the floe exploded.

The ice
Polaris
was tethered to burst into fragments, and the ship violendy yanked free of her ice anchors. Some of the men tried in vain to reach the vessel, but the ice was breaking up too quickly. The drifting ship disappeared in the darkness.

It was snowing at the time, and the wind was blowing so hard that one could not look or even catch a breath to the windward. Tyson was not sure who was still on the ice and who had gone back to the ship.

Screams cut through the night; some men were floating away on small pieces of ice. Tyson hurried to launch one of the small boats, and noticed nearby a bundle of musk-ox skins stretched across a rapidly widening crack. He quickly pulled the bundle toward him, and to his astonishment he saw Hans' three youngest children rolled up in the skins, sound asleep. In another moment they would have been lost.

Shortly after Tyson launched to pick up stragglers, other crewmen took the second boat out. Soon everyone was together on firm ice.

They did not dare move about, for in the darkness they could not see the size of the floe they were riding. The men, women, and children—exhausted from the labor and excitement, sought whatever shelter they could from the storm by wrapping themselves in musk-ox skins and lying down.

Tyson alone stayed awake all night, listening and watching for any new ice breakage. All day he had been unable to shake his nightmare, and now, in the dark, in the midst of a ferocious storm, it had come terribly true.

When morning came at last, Tyson surveyed their surroundings. He could now see what had caused the immense pressure on the ship. Heavy icebergs had pressed upon and broken the floe to which the ship had been fastened. They were marooned
on nearly a circular piece of ice a mile in diameter and about five miles in circumference. Their piece of ice was fast between heavy icebergs, which were grounded, and was therefore stationary for the time being. The floe was not level but full of hillocks, and also ponds or small lakes that had been formed by the melting of the snow during the short summer. The ice was of varying thickness; some of the mounds were probably thirty feet thick with the flat parts no more than ten or fifteen feet. The floe was covered with fresh snow.

By the light of day Tyson saw that his party consisted of eighteen persons besides himself: nine crewmen, all foreign nationals except for one; four adult Eskimos, and five children, ages twelve years to two months old.

The ice-floe party consisted of meteorologist Frederick Meyer, English steward John Herron, cook William Jackson, and German seamen John W. C. Kruger, Frederick Jamka, William Nindemann, and Frederick Anthing, Gustavus W. Lindquist, a Swede, and Peter Johnson, a Dane, both of whom were fluent in German. Also, the two Eskimo families: Joe, Hannah, and their child, Punny; Hans and Merkut and their children, Augustina, Tobias, Succi, and their infant.

Most of the stores thrown overboard and salvaged during the night were gone; they had sunk or floated away on pieces of broken ice. They were left with only a few sledge loads of goods that Joe and Hannah had managed to haul well back of the ship onto solid ice. A few saws, tools, and lanterns had been salvaged, and they were fortunate to find themselves with nine dogs, the rest having been taken aboard ship during the storm or lost when the ice split open.

The men had recovered guns, pistols, ammunition, and their bags of clothes and some personal possessions; most had brought their things with them before they went onto the ice. Tyson alone was without his belongings or even a change of clothes. He had on only the lightweight clothes he had been wearing when he stepped on deck prior to the ensuing panic: a three-year-old pair of tattered sealskin breeches, an undershirt,
overshirt, cotton jumper, and a Russian cap. His heavy seal-skin outer garments were still on hooks in his cabin.

The gale blew itself out, and by midday it was almost calm. Every heart was filled with the same longing: when would
Polaris
come to their rescue?

Since that morning's first rays of light, Tyson had continually scanned the horizon but seen nothing of the vessel. The most logical explanation for the ship not coming for them was that she had been lost during the night. Because that was possible, he was determined that the group make their own way rather than wait around for a rescue that might not happen.

He surveyed the floe to find the best lead so that they could launch the two small boats and get to the western shore of Ellesmere Island ten or fifteen miles away. On its coast, he thought they might find what was left of the ship and any survivors. Failing that, they might meet up with local Eskimos who could assist them in procuring food and shelter during the winter. Before he went scouting, he had roused the men from their furs—many had been covered during the night by snow—and ordered them to make the boats ready for immediate departure.

When he returned, the men were still inert, and in no hurry to move. They were of the mind that
Polaris
would be back soon to pick them up, so why bother doing anything? They complained of being tired, hungry, and wet. Since they had had nothing to eat since three o'clock the day before, they decided they must eat first. Nothing could induce them to get going.

Tyson, impatient to get the boats off and reach shore, had to wait. Although he was the only officer in the group and therefore in command, discipline had been so lax aboard ship since Hall's death that the men were accustomed to doing largely as they pleased. He might have taken one of the boats himself, but he knew that if
Polaris
did not come and pick them up, they could not all fit into the remaining boat. Those left behind would certainly perish. So he waited.

Not satisfied to eat what was at hand, some men even set about cooking. They made a fire out of wood scraps from
broken boxes. They had nothing to cook with but some flat tin pans, in which they fried slices of canned meat, and also tried to prepare coffee, although it proved undrinkable. Some men then insisted on changing clothes.

Tyson kept his eye on conditions in the sound. The wind had started blowing out of the northeast and was bringing loose ice down fast. Though he feared they were rapidly losing their opportunity to get ashore, he was determined to try anyway.

They at last got started at nine o'clock, carrying their supplies and nineteen lost souls.

When they were halfway to shore, the loose ice Tyson had seen coming south crowded on their bows so they could not get through, and they had to return to the floe.

Tyson was the first to spot
Polaris
rounding a point north of them, eight or ten miles away. Under steam and sail, she was making speed and appeared to be seaworthy.

There was great rejoicing, for all thought that rescue was at hand. Though the pieces of loose ice had stopped them that morning in the small boats, it was not thick enough to keep
Polaris
from coming and taking them aboard.

Determined to get her attention, Tyson ran the colors up the boat's mast, but he received no answering signal.

Polaris
was keeping down by the land on the west shore. Then, instead of steering toward the middle, where the ice-floe party waited anxiously, she dropped behind a nearby finger of the land. Tyson wasn't sure what to make of this development; he did not feel right about the ship not coming for them. Clearly, she was not disabled.

Taking a spyglass, he ran to the top of a frozen hummock. From there he saw the vessel behind a low-lying island. Her sails were furled, there was no smoke from her stack, and she was lying head to the wind. To his dismay, she appeared to be tied up to the bay ice, planning to stay. He did not see anyone on deck or in the crow's nest.

Surely, Tyson reasoned, the dark signal flag and crowd of humans against the stark white backdrop could have been seen
at twice the distance if someone aboard ship had only looked their way. Weren't they
looking
for their lost shipmates? What kind of orders, if any, did Buddington have the crew under? To the list of wrongheaded command acts committed by Captain Sidney Buddington, this surely was the most sinister of all.

George Tyson had a difficult time believing what he was seeing:
Polaris
was not actively searching for the nineteen people stranded during the night on the unstable ice.

They had been abandoned!

12

Encampment on the Ice

I
f
Polaris
would not come to them, they would try for her.

The ice floe upon which they had been stranded began to drift, breaking up some of the ice that just hours earlier had kept them from reaching shore.

Tyson decided to seize the opportunity. He knew how astonishingly quick young ice could form, and he had also seen how suddenly a gale could come up and close the ice, making it impassable. They could be frozen in at any moment.

“We must get to the far end of the floe and launch the boats,” he said. Reaching
Polaris
was their best chance of survival, he told his companions. “If we can't make the ship, we'll head for shore. Work our way down to her.”

For the second time that day, he directed the men to prepare the boats. This time he wanted to leave behind almost everything except a few days' worth of provisions. That would make the craft as light and maneuverable in the water as possible.

Tyson went to locate a place to launch the boats so they would not be hauling them about uselessly. He was very tired and had eaten nothing but hardtack and a cup of seal-blood
soup Hannah had given him. But the opportunity to get off the floe and to shore renewed his strength.

After finding a site with suitable open water, he returned to the makeshift camp. “We start immediately,” he announced.