Adventurers of the Far North Part 4

The expedition was well equipped for scientific research, but its main object was the discovery of the North-West Pa.s.sage. We have already seen what this phrase had come to mean. It had now no reference to the uses of commerce. The question was purely one of geography. The ocean lying north of America was known to be largely occupied by a vast archipelago, between which were open sounds and seas, filled for the greater part of the year with huge packs of ice. In the Arctic winter all was frozen into an unending plain of snow, broken by distorted hummocks of ice, and here and there showing the frowning rocks of a mountainous country swept clean by the Arctic blast. In the winter deep night and intense cold settled on the scene. But in the short Arctic summer the ice-pack moved away from the sh.o.r.es. Lanes of water extended here and there, and sometimes, by the good fortune of a gale, a great sheet of open sea with blue tossing waves gladdened the heart of the {115} sailor. Through this region somewhere a water-way must exist from east to west. The currents of the sea and the drift-wood that they carried proved it beyond a doubt. Exploration had almost proved it also. s.h.i.+ps and boats had made their way from Bering Strait to the Coppermine. North of this they had gone from Baffin Bay through Lancaster Sound and on westward to a great sea called Melville Sound, a body of water larger than the Irish Sea. The two lines east and west overlapped widely. All that was needed now was to find a channel north and south to connect the two. This done, the North-West Pa.s.sage, the will-o'-the-wisp of three hundred and fifty years, had been found.

A glance at the map will make clear the instructions given to Sir John Franklin. He was to go into the Arctic by way of Baffin Bay, and to proceed westward along the parallel of 74 15' north lat.i.tude, which would take him through the already familiar waters of Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait, leading into Melville Sound. This line he was to follow as far as Cape Walker in longitude 98, from which point it was known that waters were to be found leading southward. Beyond this position Franklin was left to his own {116} discretion, his instructions being merely to penetrate to the southward and westward in a course as direct to Bering Strait as the position of the land and the condition of the ice should allow.

The _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ sailed from England on June 19, 1845.

The officers and sailors who manned their decks were the very pick of the Royal Navy and the merchant service, men inured to the perils of the northern ocean, and trained in the fine discipline of the service.

Captain Crozier of the _Terror_ was second in command. He had been with Ross in the Antarctic. Commander Fitzjames, Lieutenants Fairholme, Gore and others were tried and trained men. The s.h.i.+ps were so heavily laden with coal and supplies that they lay deep in the water. Every inch of stowage had been used, and even the decks were filled up with casks. A transport sailed with them across the Atlantic carrying further supplies. Thus laden they made their way to the Whale Fish Islands, near Disco, on the west coast of Greenland. Here the transport unloaded its stores and set sail for England. It carried with it five men of Franklin's company, leaving one hundred and twenty-nine in the ill-fated expedition.

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The s.h.i.+ps put out from the coast of Greenland on, or about, July 12, 1845, to make their way across Baffin Bay to Lancaster Sound, a distance of two hundred and twenty miles. In these waters are found the great floes of ice which Davis had first seen, called by Arctic explorers the 'middle ice.' The _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ spent a fortnight in attempting to make the pa.s.sage across, and here they were seen for the last time at sea. A whaling s.h.i.+p, the _Prince of Wales_, sighted the two vessels on July 26. A party of Franklin's officers rowed over to the s.h.i.+p and carried an invitation to the master to dine with Sir John on the next day. But the boat had hardly returned when a fine breeze sprang up, and with a clear sea ahead the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ were put on their course to the west without even taking time to forward letters to England.

Thus the two s.h.i.+ps vanished into the Arctic ice, never to be seen of Englishmen again. The summer of 1845 pa.s.sed; no news came: the winter came and pa.s.sed away; the spring and summer of 1846, and still no message. England, absorbed in political struggles at home--the Corn Law Repeal and the vexed question of Ireland--had still no anxiety over Franklin. No message could have come except {118} by the chance of a whaling s.h.i.+p or in some roundabout way through the territories of the Hudson's Bay Company, after all but a slender chance. The summer of 1846 came and went and then another winter, and now with the opening of the new year, 1847, the first expression of apprehension began to be heard. It was remembered how deeply laden the s.h.i.+ps had been. The fear arose that perhaps they had foundered with all hands in the open waters of Baffin Bay, leaving no trace behind. Even the naval men began to shake their heads. Captain Sir John Ross wrote to the Admiralty to express his fear that Franklin's s.h.i.+ps had been frozen in in such a way that their return was impossible. The Admiralty took advice. The question was gravely discussed with the leading Arctic seamen of the day. It was decided that until two years had elapsed from the time of departure (May 1845 to May 1847) no measures need be taken for the relief of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_. The date came and pa.s.sed. Anxiety was deepening. The Admiralty decided to act.

Great stores of pemmican, some eight tons, together with suitable boats and experienced crews, were sent in June 1847 to Hudson Bay, ready for an expedition along the northern coast. A s.h.i.+p {119} was sent with supplies to meet Franklin in Bering Strait, and two more vessels were strengthened and equipped to be ready to follow on the track of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ in 1848. As this last year advanced and winter pa.s.sed into summer, a shudder of apprehension was felt throughout the nation. It was felt now that some great disaster had happened, or even now was happening. It was known that Franklin's expedition had carried food for at best three years: the three years had come and gone. Franklin's men, if anywhere alive, must be suffering all the horrors of starvation in the frozen fastness of the Arctic.

We may imagine the awful pictures that rose up before the imagination of the friends and relatives, the wives and children, of the one hundred and twenty-nine gallant men who had vanished in the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_--visions of s.h.i.+ps torn and riven by the heaving ice, of men foodless and shelterless in the driving snow, looking out vainly from the bleak sh.o.r.es of some rocky coast for the help that never came--awful pictures indeed, yet none more awful than the grim reality.

A generous frenzy seized upon the nation. The cry went up from the heart of the people that Franklin must be found; he and his men {120} must be rescued--they would not speak of them as dead. s.h.i.+ps must be sent out with all the equipment that science could devise and the wealth of a generous nation could supply. s.h.i.+ps were sent out. Year after year s.h.i.+ps fought their way from Baffin Bay to the islands of the north. s.h.i.+ps sailed round the distant Horn and through the Pacific to Bering Strait. Down the Mackenzie and the great rivers of the north, the canoes of the voyageurs danced in the rapids and were paddled swiftly over the wider stretches of moving water. Over the frozen snow the sledges toiled against the storm. And still no word of Franklin, till all the weary outline of the frozen coast was traced in their wanderings: till twenty-one thousand miles of Arctic sea and sh.o.r.e had been tracked out. Thus the great epic of the search for Franklin ran slowly to its close. With each year the hope that was ever deferred made the heart sick. Anxiety deepened into dread, and even dread gave way to the cruel certainty of despair. Not till twelve years had pa.s.sed was the search laid aside: not until, little by little, the evidence was found that told all that we know of the fate of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_.

First in the field was Richardson, the gallant {121} friend and comrade of Franklin's former journeys. He would not believe that Franklin had failed. He knew too well the temper of the man. Franklin had been instructed to strike southward from the Arctic seas to the American coast. On that coast he would be found. Thither went Sir John Richardson, taking with him a man of like metal to himself, one John Rae, a Hudson's Bay man, fas.h.i.+oned in the north. Down the Mackenzie they went and then eastward along the coast searching for traces of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_. For two years they searched, tracing their way from the Mackenzie to the Coppermine. But no vestige of Franklin did they find. The queen's s.h.i.+ps were searching too. Sir James Ross, with the _Enterprise_ and the _Investigator_, went into Lancaster Sound. The _Plover_ and the _Herald_ went to Bering Strait. The _North Star_ went in at Wolstenholme Sound. The _Resolute_, the _a.s.sistance_, the _Sophia_--a very flock of admiralty s.h.i.+ps--spread their white wings for the Arctic seas. The Hudson's Bay Company sent Sir John Ross, a tried explorer, in the yacht _Felix_. Lady Franklin, the sorrow-stricken wife of the lost commander, sent out Captain Forsyth in the _Prince Albert_. One Robert Spedden sailed his private yacht, the {122} _Nancy Dawson_, in through Bering Strait; and Henry Grinnell of New York (be his name honoured), sent out two expeditions at his own charge. By water and overland there went out, between 1847 and 1851, no less than twenty-one expeditions searching for the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_.

Thus pa.s.sed six years from the time when Franklin sailed out of the Thames, and still no trace, no vestige had been found to tell the story of his fate. Then at last news came, the first news of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ since they were sighted by the whaling s.h.i.+p in 1845.

The news in a way was neither good nor bad. But it showed that at least the melancholy forebodings of those who said that the heavily laden s.h.i.+ps must have foundered before they reached the Arctic were entirely mistaken. Captain Penny, master of the _Lady Franklin_, had sailed under Admiralty orders in 1850, and had followed on the course laid down in Franklin's instructions. He returned in 1851, bringing news that on Beechey Island, a little island lying on the north side of Barrow Strait, he had found the winter quarters that must have been occupied by the expedition in 1845-46, the first winter after its departure. There were the remains of a large storehouse, {123} a workshop and an observatory; a blacksmith's forge was found, with many coal bags and cinders lying about, and odds and ends of all sorts, easily identified as coming from the lost s.h.i.+ps. Most ominous of all was the discovery of over six hundred empty cans that had held preserved meat, the main reliance of the expedition. These were found regularly piled in little mounds. The number of them was far greater than Franklin's men would have consumed during the first winter, and, to make the conclusion still clearer, the preparation was of a brand of which the Admiralty since 1845 had been compelled to destroy great quant.i.ties, owing to its having turned putrid in the tins. It was plain that the food supply of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ must have been seriously depleted, and the dangers of starvation have set in long before three years were completed.

Three graves were found on Beechey Island with head-boards marking the names and ages of three men of the crew who had died in the winter.

Near a cape of the island was a cairn built of stone. It was evidently intended to hold the records of the expedition. Yet, strange to say, neither in the cairn nor anywhere about it was a single doc.u.ment to be found.

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The greatest excitement now prevailed. Hope ran high that at least some survivors of the men of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ might be found, even if the s.h.i.+ps themselves had been lost. The Admiralty redoubled its efforts. Already Captains Collinson and M'Clure had been sent out (in 1850) to sail round the Horn, and were on their way into the Arctic region via Bering Strait. To these were now added a squadron under Captain Sir Edward Belcher consisting of the _a.s.sistance_ with a steam tender named the _Pioneer_, the _Resolute_ with its tender the _Intrepid_, and the _North Star_. Stations were to be made at Beechey Island and at two other points in the region now indicated as the scene of Sir John Franklin's operations. From these sledge and boat parties were to be sent out in all directions. At the same time Lady Franklin dispatched the _Albert_ under Captain Kennedy and Lieutenant Bellot, an officer of the French navy who had given his services to the cause.

Once again hope was doomed to disappointment. The story of the expeditions was an almost unbroken record of disaster. Captain M'Clure, in the _Investigator_, separated from his consort, and vanished into the northern ice; for three years nothing was heard of his vessel. {125} The gallant Bellot, attempting to carry dispatches over the ice, sealed his devotion with his life. Belcher's s.h.i.+ps the _a.s.sistance_ and the _Resolute_, with their two tenders, froze fast in the ice. Despite the earnest protests of some of his officers, Belcher abandoned them, and, in the end, was able to return home. The Admiralty had to face the loss of four good s.h.i.+ps with large quant.i.ties of stores. It had been better perhaps had they remained lost. One of the abandoned s.h.i.+ps, the _Resolute_, its hatches battened down, floated out of the ice, and was found by an American whaler, masterless, tossing in the open waters of Baffin Bay. Belcher may have been right in abandoning his s.h.i.+ps to save the crews, but his judgment and even his courage were severely questioned, and unhappy bitterness was introduced where hitherto there had been nothing but the record of splendid endeavour and mutual help. The only bright spot was seen in the achievement of Captain, afterwards Sir Robert, M'Clure, who reappeared with his crew safe and sound after four winters in the Arctic. He had made his way in the _Investigator_ (1850 to 1853) from Bering Strait to within sight of Melville Sound. He had spent three winters in the ice, the last two years in one and the same spot, {126} fast frozen, to all appearances, for ever. With supplies dangerously low and his crew weakened by exposure and privation, M'Clure reluctantly left his s.h.i.+p. He and his men fortunately reached the s.h.i.+ps of Sir Edward Belcher, having thus actually made the North-West Pa.s.sage.

The disasters of 1853-54 cast a deeper gloom than ever over the search for Franklin. Moreover, the rising clouds in the East and presently the outbreak of the Crimean War prevented further efforts. s.h.i.+ps and men were needed elsewhere than in the northern seas. It began to look as if failure was now final, and that nothing more could be done.

Following naval precedent, a court-martial had been held to investigate the action of Captain Sir Edward Belcher. 'The solemn silence,' wrote Captain M'Clure afterwards, 'with which the venerable president of the court returned Captain Belcher his sword, with a bare acquittal, best conveyed the painful feelings which wrung the hearts of all professional men upon that occasion; and all felt that there was no hope of the mystery of Franklin's fate being cleared up in our time except by some unexpected miracle.'

The unexpected happened. Strangely enough, {127} it was just at this juncture that a letter sent by Dr John Rae from the Hudson Bay country brought to England the first authentic news of the fate of Franklin's men. Rae had been sent overland from the north-west sh.o.r.es of Hudson Bay to the coast of the Arctic at the point where the Back or Great Fish river runs in a wide estuary to the sea. He had wintered on the isthmus (now called after him) which separates Regent's Inlet from Repulse Bay, and in the spring of 1854 had gone westward with sledges towards the mouth of the Back. On his way he fell in with Eskimos, who told him that several years before a party of about forty white men had been seen hauling a boat and sledges over the ice. This was on the west side of the island called King William's Land. None of the men, so the savages said, could speak to them in their own language; but they made signs to show that they had lost their s.h.i.+ps, and that they were trying to make their way to where deer could be found. All the men looked thin, and the Eskimos thought they had very little food.

They had bought some seal's flesh from the savages. They hauled their sledges and the boat along with drag-ropes, at which all were tugging except one very tall big man, who seemed to be a chief and {128} walked by himself. Later on in the same season, so the Eskimos said, they had found the bodies of a lot of men lying on the ice, and had seen some graves and five dead bodies on an island at the mouth of a river. Some of the bodies were lying in tents. The big boat had been turned over as if to make a shelter, and under it were dead men. One that lay on the island was the body of the chief; he had a telescope strapped over his shoulders, and his gun lay underneath him. The savages told Dr Rae that they thought that the last survivors of the white men must have been feeding on the dead bodies, as some of these were hacked and mutilated and there was flesh in the kettles. There were signs that some of the party might have escaped; for on the ground there were fresh bones and feathers of geese, showing that the men were still alive when the wild fowl came north, which would be about the end of May. There was a quant.i.ty of gunpowder and ammunition lying around, and the Eskimos thought that they had heard shots in the neighbourhood, though they had seen no living men, but only the corpses on the ice. A great number of relics--telescopes, guns, compa.s.ses, spoons, forks, and so on--were gathered by the natives, and of these Dr Rae {129} forwarded a large quant.i.ty to England. They left no doubt as to the ident.i.ty of the unfortunate victims. There was a small silver plate engraved 'Sir John Franklin, K.C.B.', and a spoon with a crest and the initials F.R.M.C. (those of Captain Crozier), and a great number of articles easily recognized as coming from the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_.

One may well imagine the intense interest which Dr Rae's discoveries aroused in England. Rae had been unable, it is true, to make his way to the actual scene of the disaster as described by the Eskimos, but it was now felt that at last certain tidings had been received of the death of Franklin and his men. Dr Rae and his party received the ten thousand pounds which the government had offered to whosoever should bring correct news of the fate of the expedition.

In all except a few hearts hope was now abandoned. It was felt that all were dead. Anxious though the government was to obtain further details of the tragedy, it was not thought proper at such a national crisis as the Crimean War to dispatch more s.h.i.+ps to the Arctic.

Something, however, was done. A chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, named Anderson, was sent overland in 1855 to explore {130} the mouth of the Back river. He found in and around Montreal Island, at the mouth of the river, numerous relics of the disaster. A large quant.i.ty of chips and shavings seemed to indicate the place where the savages had broken up the boat. But no doc.u.ments or papers were found nor any bodies of the dead. Anderson had no interpreter, and could only communicate by signs with the savages whom he found alone on the island. But he gathered from them that the white men had all died for want of food.

For two years nothing more was done. Then, as the war cloud pa.s.sed away, the unsolved mystery began again to demand solution. Some faint hope too struggled to life. It was argued that perhaps some of the white men were still alive. The imagination conjured up a ghastly picture of a few survivors, still alive when, with the coming of the wild fowl, life and warmth returned. With what horror must they have turned their backs upon the hideous scene of their sufferings, leaving the dead as they lay, and preferring to leave unwritten the chronicle of an experience too awful to relate. There, penned in between the barren grounds and the sea, they might have somehow continued to live: there they might still be found.

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It was through the personal efforts of Lady Franklin, who devoted thereto the last remnant of her fortune, that the final expedition was sent out in 1857. The yacht _Fox_ was commanded by Captain M'Clintock.

He had already spent many years in the Arctic. Touched by the poignant grief of Lady Franklin, he gave his service gratuitously in a last effort to trace the fate of the missing men. Other officers gave their services and even money to the search. The little _Fox_ sailed in 1857, to search the waters between Beechey Island and the mouth of the Back. When she returned to England two years later she brought back with her the first, and the last, direct information ever received from the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_. In a cairn on the west coast of King William's Island was found a doc.u.ment placed there from Franklin's s.h.i.+ps. It was dated May 28, 1847 (two years after the s.h.i.+ps left England). It read: 'H.M. s.h.i.+ps _Erebus_ and _Terror_ wintered in the ice lat. 70 5' N. long., 98 23' west, having wintered in 1845-46 at Beechey Island after having ascended Wellington Channel to Lat. 77 and returned by the west side of Cornwallis Island. Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition. All well.'

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This showed that Franklin had, as already gathered, explored the channels west and north from Lancaster Sound, and finding no way through had wintered on Beechey Island (1845-46). Striking south from there his s.h.i.+ps had been caught in the open ice-pack, where they had pa.s.sed their second winter. At the time of writing, Franklin must have been looking eagerly forward to their coming liberation and the prosecution of their discoveries towards the American coast.

But the doc.u.ment did not end there. It had evidently been placed in the cairn in May of 1847; a year later the cairn had been reopened and to the doc.u.ment a note had been appended, written in fine writing round the edge of the original. The torn edge of the paper leaves part of the date missing. It runs '... 848. H.M. s.h.i.+ps _Erebus_ and _Terror_ were deserted on the 22 of April, 5 leagues NNW. of this ... been beset since 12th Sept. 1846. The officers and crews consisting of 105 souls under the command ... tain F. R. M. Crozier landed here in Lat. 69 37'

42" Long. 98 41'.'

No words could convey better than these simple lines the full horror of the disaster: two winters frozen in the ice-pack till the {133} lack of food and the imminence of starvation compelled the officers and men to leave the s.h.i.+ps long before the summer season and try to make their way over ice and snow to the south! And Franklin? The other edge of the paper contained in the same writing a note that ran: 'Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June 1847 and the total loss by death to the expedition has been to date 9 officers and 14 men. F. R. M. Crozier, Captain and Senior Officer. James Fitzjames, Captain H.M.S.

_Erebus_.' At one corner of the paper are the final words that, taken along with the stories of the Eskimos, explained the last chapter of the tragedy--'and start to-morrow 26th for Back's Fish River.'

M'Clintock did all that could be done. He and his party traced out the coast on both sides of King William's Island, and, having reached the mouth of the Back river, he traced the course of Crozier and his peris.h.i.+ng companions step by step backwards over the scene of the disaster. The Eskimos whom he met told him of the freezing in of the two great s.h.i.+ps: how the white men had abandoned them and walked over the ice: how one s.h.i.+p had been crushed in the ice a few months later and had gone down: and how the other s.h.i.+p {134} had lain a wreck for years and years beside the coast of King William's Island. One aged woman who had visited the scene told M'Clintock's party that there had been on the wrecked s.h.i.+p the dead body of a tall man with long teeth and large bones.

The searchers themselves found more direct testimony still. A few miles south of Cape Herschel lay the skeleton of one of Franklin's men, outstretched on the ground, just as he had fallen on the fatal march, the head pointing towards the Back river. At another point there was found a boat with two corpses in it, the one lying in the stern carefully covered as if by the act of his surviving comrade, the other lying in the bow, two loaded muskets standing upright beside the body.

A great number of relics that marked the path of Crozier's men were found along the sh.o.r.e of King William's Island. In one place a plundered cairn was discovered. But, strangely enough, no doc.u.ment or writing to tell anything of the fate of the survivors after they started on their last march. That all perished by the way there can be little doubt. But it is altogether probable that before the final catastrophe overtook them they had endeavoured to place somewhere a record of their achievements and their {135} sufferings. Such a record may still lie buried among the stones of the desolate region where they died, and it may well be that some day the chance discovery of an explorer will bring it to light. But it can tell us little more than we already know by inference of the tragic but inspiring disaster that overwhelmed the men of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_.

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CHAPTER VI

EPILOGUE. THE CONQUEST OF THE POLE

It is no part of the present narrative to follow in detail the explorations and discoveries made in the polar seas in recent times.

After the great episode of the loss of Franklin, and the search for his s.h.i.+ps, public interest in the North-West Pa.s.sage may be said to have ended. The journey made by Sir Robert M'Clure and his men, after abandoning their s.h.i.+p, had proved that such a water-way existed, but the knowledge of the northern regions acquired in the attempt to find the survivors of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ made it clear that the pa.s.sage was valueless, not merely for commerce, but even for the uses of exploration. For the time being a strong reaction set in, and popular opinion condemned any further expenditure of life and money in the frozen regions of the Arctic. But, although the sensational aspect of northern discovery had thus largely disappeared, a new incentive {137} began to make itself increasingly felt; the progress of physical science, the rapid advance in the knowledge of electricity and magnetism, and the rise of the science of biology were profoundly altering the whole outlook of the existing generation towards the globe that they inhabited. The sea itself, like everything else, became an object of scientific study. Its currents and its temperature, its relation to the land ma.s.ses which surrounded it, acquired a new importance in the light of geological and physical research. The polar waters offered a fruitful field for the new investigations. In place of the adventurous explorers of Frobisher's day, searching for fabled empires and golden cities, there appeared in the seas of the north the inquisitive man of science, eagerly examining the phenomena of sea and sky, to add to the stock of human knowledge. Very naturally there grew up under such conditions an increasing desire to reach the Pole itself, and to test whether the theoretical conclusions of the astronomer were borne out by the actual observations of one standing upon the apex of the spinning earth. The attempt to reach the Pole became henceforth the great preoccupation of Arctic discovery. From this time on the story of what has been done in {138} the northern seas belongs not to Canada but to the world at large. The voyages of such men as Frobisher, Davis and Hudson, and the journeys of men like Hearne and Mackenzie led to the opening up of this vast country and belong to Canadian history. But in recent Arctic discovery the point of interest had never been found in the lands about the northern seas, but only in the Arctic ocean itself and in the effort to penetrate farther and farther north. Little by little this effort was rewarded. A series of intrepid explorers forced their way onward until at last the Pole itself was reached and the frozen North had yielded up its hollow mystery.

The struggle to reach the Pole was the form in which Arctic exploration came to life again after the paralysing effect of the Franklin tragedy.

Some of the Franklin relief expeditions had reached very high lat.i.tudes, and, shortly after the great tragedy, the exploring s.h.i.+ps of Dr Kane and Dr Hayes, and the _Polaris_ under Captain Hall, had all pa.s.sed the eightieth parallel and been within less than ten degrees of the Pole. The idea grew that there might be an open polar sea, navigable at times to the very apex of the world. In 1875 the _Alert_ and the _Discovery_, two s.h.i.+ps of the British Navy, {139} were sent out with the express purpose of reaching the North Pole. They sailed up the narrow waters that separate Greenland from the large islands lying west of it. The _Alert_ wintered as far north as lat.i.tude 82 24'. A sledge party that was sent out under Captain Markham went as far as lat.i.tude 83 20', and the expedition returned with the proud distinction of having carried its flag northward beyond all previous explorations. But other nations were not to lag behind. An American expedition (1881) under Lieutenant Greeley, carried on the exploration of the extreme north of Greenland and of the interior of Grinnell Land that lies west of it. Two of Greeley's men, Lieutenant Lockwood and a companion, followed the Greenland coast northward in a sledge and pa.s.sed Markham's lat.i.tude, reaching 83 24' north, which remained for many years as the highest point attained. Greeley's expedition became the subject of a tragedy almost comparable to the great Franklin disaster. The vessels sent with supplies failed to reach their destination. For four years Greeley and his men remained in the Arctic regions. Of the twenty-three men in the party only six were found alive when Captain Schley of the United States Navy at last brought relief.

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After the Greeley expedition the fight towards the Pole was carried on by a series of gallant explorers, none of whom, strange to narrate, were British. Commander R. E. Peary, of the United States Navy, came prominently before the world as an Arctic navigator in the last decade of the nineteenth century. In 1892 he crossed northern Greenland in the extreme lat.i.tude of 81 37', a feat of the highest order.

Still more striking was the work of Dr Fridtjof Nansen, which attracted the attention of the whole world. Nansen had devoted profound study to the question of the northern drift of the polar waters. It had often been observed that drift-wood and wreckage seemed, in many places, to float towards the Pole. Trees that fall in the Siberian forests and float down the great rivers to the northern sea are frequently found washed up on the sh.o.r.es of Greenland, having apparently pa.s.sed over the Pole itself. A strong current flows northward through Bering Strait, and it is a matter of record that an American vessel, the _Jeanette_, which stuck fast in the ice near Wrangel Land in 1879, drifted slowly northward with the ice for two years, and made its way in this fas.h.i.+on some four hundred miles towards the {141} Pole. Dr Nansen formed the bold design of carrying a s.h.i.+p under steam into one of the currents of the Far North, allowing it to freeze in, and then trusting to the polar drift to do the rest. The adventures of Nansen and his men in this enterprise are so well known as scarcely to need recital. A stout wooden vessel of four hundred tons, the _Fram_ (or the _Forwards_), was specially constructed to withstand the grip of the polar ice. In 1893 she sailed from Norway and made her way by the Kara Sea to the New Siberian Islands. In October, the _Fram_ froze into the ice and there she remained for three years, drifting slowly forwards in the heart of the vast ma.s.s. Her rudder and propeller were uns.h.i.+pped and taken inboard, her engine was taken to pieces and packed away, while on her deck a windmill was erected to generate electric power. In this situation, snugly on board their stout s.h.i.+p, Nansen and his crew settled down into the unbroken night of the Arctic winter. The ice that surrounded them was twelve feet thick, and escape from it, even had they desired it, would have been impossible. They watched eagerly the direction of their drift, worked out by observation of the stars.

For the first few weeks, propelled by northern winds, the _Fram_ moved southwards. Then {142} slowly the northern current began to make itself felt, but during the whole of this first winter the _Fram_ only moved a few miles onward towards her goal. All the next summer the s.h.i.+p remained fast frozen and drifted about two hundred miles. With her rate of progress and direction, Nansen reckoned that she would reach, not the Pole, but Spitzbergen, and would take four and a half years more to do it. All through the next winter the _Fram_ moved slowly northwards and westwards. In the spring of 1895 she was still about five hundred miles from the Pole, and her present path would miss it by about three hundred and fifty miles. Nansen resolved upon an enterprise unparalleled in hardihood. He resolved to take with him a single companion, to leave the _Fram_ and to walk over the ice to the Pole, and thence as best he might to make his way, not back to his s.h.i.+p again (for that was impossible), but to the nearest known land. The whole distance to be covered was almost a thousand miles. Dr Nansen and Lieutenant Johansen left the _Fram_ on March 13, 1895, to make this attempt. They failed in their enterprise. To struggle towards the Pole over the pack-ice, at times reared in rough hillocks and at times split with lanes of open water, proved {143} a feat beyond the power of man. Nansen and his companion got as far as lat.i.tude 86 13', a long way north of all previous records. By sheer pluck and endurance they managed to make their way southward again. They spent the winter on an Arctic island in a hut of stone and snow, and in June of the next year (1896) at last reached Franz Joseph Land, where they fell in with a British expedition. They reached Norway in time to hear the welcome news that the _Fram_, after a third winter in the ice, had drifted into open sea again and had just come safely into port.

Equally glorious, but profoundly tragic, was the splendid attempt of Professor Andree to reach the Pole in a balloon, which followed on the heels of Nansen's enterprise. Andree, who was a professor in the Technical School at Stockholm, had been for some years interested in the rising science of aerial navigation. He judged that by this means a way might be found to the Pole where all else failed. By the generous aid of the king of Sweden, Baron d.i.c.kson and others, he had a balloon constructed in Paris which represented the very latest progress towards the mastery of the air, in the days before the aeroplane and the light-weight motor had opened a new chapter in {144} history.

Andree's balloon was made of 3360 pieces of silk sewn together with three miles of seams. It contained 158,000 cubic feet of hydrogen; it carried beneath it a huge wicker basket that served as a sort of house for Andree and his companions, and to the netting of this were lashed provisions, sledges, frame boats, and other appliances to meet the needs of the explorers if their balloon was wrecked on the northern ice. There was no means of propulsion, but three heavy guide ropes, trailing on the ground, afforded a feeble and uncertain control. The whole reliance of Andree was placed, consciously and with full knowledge of the consequences, on the possibility that a strong and favouring wind might carry him across the Pole. The balloon was taken on s.h.i.+pboard to Spitzbergen and there inflated in a tall shed built for the purpose. Andree was accompanied by two companions, Strindberg and Fraenkel. On July 11, 1897, the balloon was cast loose, and, with a southerly wind and bright sky, it was seen to vanish towards the north.

It is known, from a message sent by a pigeon, that two days later all was well and the balloon still moving towards its goal. Since then no message or token has ever been found to tell us the fate of the three brave men, and {145} the names of Andree and his companions are added to the long list of those who have given their lives for the advancement of human knowledge.

With the opening of the present century the progress of polar exploration was rapid. Peary continued his explorations towards the north of Greenland, and, in 1906, by reaching lat.i.tude 87 6', he wrested from Nansen the coveted record of Farthest North. At the same time Captain Sverdrup (the commander of the _Fram_), the Duke of the Abruzzi and many others were carrying out scientific expeditions in polar waters. The voyage made in 1904 by Captain Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian, later on to be world-famous as the discoverer of the South Pole, is of especial interest, for he succeeded in carrying his little s.h.i.+p from the Atlantic to the Pacific by way of Bering Strait--the only vessel that has ever actually made the North-West Pa.s.sage. But the great prize fell to Captain Peary. On September 6, 1909, the world thrilled with the announcement that Peary had reached the Pole. His s.h.i.+p, the _Roosevelt_, had sailed in the summer of 1908. Peary wintered at Etah in the north of Greenland, and in the ensuing year, accompanied by Captain Bartlett with five white men and {146} seventeen Eskimos, he set out to reach the Pole by sledge. By arrangement, Peary's companions accompanied him a certain distance carrying supplies, and then turned back in successive parties. The final dash for the Pole was made by the commander himself, accompanied only by a negro servant and four Eskimos. On April 6, 1909, they reached the Pole and hoisted there the flag of the United States. To make doubly certain of their discovery, Peary and his men went some ten miles beyond the Pole, and eight miles in a lateral direction. They saw nothing but ice about them, and no indication of the neighbourhood of any land.

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