Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack - From the History of the First U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin

Elisha Kent Kane, Horace Kephart

• Publisher: Read & Co. History
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781528719537
• eBook ISBN: 9781528792585
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

In 1845, British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin (1786–1847) embarked on his third and final expedition into the Canadian Arctic to force the Northwest Passage. After two years with no word, a £20,000 reward was offered to anyone who could find the expedition, leading to many rescue attempts. Two such attempts were undertaken by Elisha Kent Kane (1820–1857), American explorer and United States Navy medical officer. Despite contracting scurvy and suffering greatly during his 1853 attempt, he continued on and went further north than any other explorer had managed. Kane was eventually forced to relinquish the icebound brig "Advance" on May 20, 1855 and spent the next 83 days marching to Upernavik carrying the invalids—losing but one man on the perilous journey. "Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack" contains Kane's personal account of his courageous but ill-fated rescue mission, detailing the perilous conditions they had to endure and how they were able to survive against all odds in the Arctic wasteland. Highly recommended for those with an interest in Arctic exploration and history in general. Read & Co. History is republishing this classic memoir now in a brand new edition complete with an introductory biography by John Knox Laughton.

ADRIFT IN THE
ARCTIC ICE PACK

CHAPTER I

"August 19. The wind continued freshening, the aneroid falling two tenths in the night. About eight I was called by our master, with the news that a couple of vessels were following in our wake. We were shortening sail for our consort; and by half past twelve, the larger stranger, the Lady Franklin, came up along side of us. A cordial greeting, such as those only know who have been pelted for weeks in the solitudes of Arctic ice—and we learned that this was Captain Penny’s squadron, bound on the same pursuit as ourselves. A hurried interchange of news followed. The ice in Melville Bay had bothered both parties alike; Commodore Austin, with his steamer tenders, was three days ago at Carey’s Islands, a group nearly as high as 77° north latitude; the North Star, the missing provision transport of last summer, was safe somewhere in Lancaster Sound, probably at Leopold Island. For the rest, God speed!

“As she slowly forged ahead, there came over the rough sea that good old English hurrah, which we inherit on our side the water. ‘Three cheers, hearty, with a will!’ indicating as much of brotherhood as sympathy. ‘Stand aloft, boys!’ and we gave back the greeting. One cheer more of acknowledgment on each side, and the sister flags separated, each on its errand of mercy.

“8 P.M. The breeze has freshened to a gale. Fogs have closed round us, and we are driving ahead again, with look-outs on every side. We have no observation; but by estimate we must have got into Lancaster Sound.

“The sea is short and excessive. Every thing on deck, even anchors and quarter-boats, have ‘fetched away,’ and the little cabin is half afloat. The Rescue is staggering under heavy sail astern of us. We are making six or seven knots an hour. Murdaugh ahead, looking out for ice and rocks; De Haven conning the ship.

“All at once a high mountain shore rises before us, and a couple of isolated rocks show themselves, not more than a quarter of a mile ahead, white with breakers. Both vessels are laid to.”

The storm reminded me of a Mexican “norther.” It was not till the afternoon of the next day that we were able to resume our track, under a double-reefed top-sail, stay-sail, and spencer. We were, of course, without observation still, and could only reckon that we had passed the Cunningham Mountains and Cape Warrender.

About three o’clock in the morning of the 21st, another sail was reported ahead, a top-sail schooner, towing after her what appeared to be a launch, decked over.

“When I reached the deck, we were nearly up to her, for we had shaken out our reefs, and were driving before the wind, shipping seas at every roll. The little schooner was under a single close-reefed top-sail, and seemed fluttering over the waves like a crippled bird. Presently an old fellow, with a cloak tossed over his night gear, appeared in the lee gangway, and saluted with a voice that rose above the winds.

“It was the Felix, commanded by that practical Arctic veteran, Sir John Ross. I shall never forget the heartiness with which the hailing officer sang out, in the midst of our dialogue, ‘You and I are ahead of them all’ It was so indeed. Austin, with two vessels, was at Pond’s Bay; Penny was somewhere in the gale; and others of Austin’s squadron were exploring the north side of the Sound. The Felix and the Advance were on the lead.

“Before we separated, Sir John Ross came on deck, and stood at the side of his officer. He was a square-built man, apparently very little stricken in years, and well able to bear his part in the toils and hazards of life. He has been wounded in four several engagements—twice desperately—and is scarred from head to foot. He has conducted two Polar expeditions already, and performed in one of them the unparalleled feat of wintering four years in Arctic snows. And here he is again, in a flimsy cockle-shell, after contributing his purse and his influence, embarked himself in the crusade of search for a lost comrade. We met him off Admiralty Inlet, just about the spot at which he was picked up seventeen years before."

Soon after midnight, the land became visible on the north side of the Sound. We had passed Cape Charles Yorke and Cape Crawfurd, and were fanning along sluggishly with all the sail we could crowd for Port Leopold.

It was the next day, however, before we came in sight of the island, and it was nearly spent when we found ourselves slowly approaching Whaler Point, the seat of the harbor. Our way had been remarkably clear of ice for some days, and we were vexed to find, therefore, that a firm and rugged barrier extended along the western shore of the inlet, and apparently across the entrance we were seeking.

It was a great relief to us to see, at half past six in the evening, a top-sail schooner working toward us through the ice. She boarded us at ten, and proved to be Lady Franklin’s own search-vessel, the Prince Albert.

This was a very pleasant meeting. Captain Forsyth, who commanded the Albert, and Mr. Snow, who acted as a sort of adjutant under him, were very agreeable gentlemen. They spent some hours with us, which Mr. Snow has remembered kindly in the journal he has published since his return to England. Their little vessel was much less perfectly fitted than ours to encounter the perils of the ice; but in one respect at least their expedition resembled our own. They had to rough it: to use a Western phrase, they had no fancy fixings—nothing but what a hasty outfit and a limited purse could supply. They were now bound for Cape Rennell, after which they proposed making a sledge excursion over the lower Boothian and Cockburne lands.

The North Star, they told us, had been caught by the ice last season in the neighborhood of our own first imprisonment, off the Devil’s Thumb. After a perilous drift, she had succeeded in entering Wolstenholme Sound, whence, after a tedious winter, she had only recently arrived at Port Bowen.

They followed in our wake the next day as we pushed through many streams of ice across the strait. We sighted the shore about five miles to the west of Cape Hurd very closely; a miserable wilderness, rising in terraces of broken-down limestone, arranged between the hills like a vast theatre.

On the 25th, still beating through the ice off Radstock Bay, we discovered on Cape Riley two cairns, one of them, the most conspicuous, with a flag-staff and ball. A couple of hours after, we were near enough to land. The cape itself is a low projecting tongue of limestone, but at a short distance behind it the cliff rises to the height of some eight hundred feet. We found a tin canister within the larger cairn, containing the information that Captain Ommanney had been there two days before us, with the Assistance and Intrepid, belonging to Captain Austin’s squadron, and had discovered traces of an encampment, and other indications "that some party belonging to her Britannic majesty’s service had been detained at this spot." Similar traces, it was added, had been found also on Beechy Island, a projection on the channel side some ten miles from Cape Riley.

Our consort, the Rescue, as we afterward learned, had shared in this discovery, though the British commander’s inscription in the cairn, as well as his official reports, might lead perhaps to a different conclusion. Captain Griffin, in fact, landed with Captain Ommanney, and the traces were registered while the two officers were in company.

I inspected these different traces very carefully, and noted what I observed at the moment. The appearances which connect them with the story of Sir John Franklin have been described by others; but there may still be interest in a description of them made while they were under my eye. I transcribe it word for word from my journal.

“On a tongue of fossiliferous limestone, fronting toward the west on a little indentation of the water, and shielded from the north by the precipitous cliffs, are five distinct remnants of habitation.

“Nearest the cliffs, four circular mounds or heapings-up of the crumbled limestone, aided by larger stones placed at the outer edge, as if to protect the leash of a tent. Two larger stones, with an interval of two feet, fronting the west, mark the places of entrance.

“Several large square stones, so arranged as to serve probably for a fire-place. These have been tumbled over by parties before us.

“More distant from the cliffs, yet in line with the four already described, is a larger inclosure; the door facing south, and looking toward the strait: this so-called door is simply an entrance made of large stones placed one above the other. The inclosure itself triangular; its northern side about eighteen inches high, built up of flat stones. Some bird bones and one rib of a seal were found exactly in the centre of this triangle, as if a party had sat round it eating; and the top of a preserved-meat case, much rusted, was found in the same place. I picked up a piece of canvas or duck on the cliff side, well worn by the weather: the sailors recognized it at once as the gore of a pair of trowsers.

“A fifth circle is discernible nearer the cliffs, which may have belonged to the same party. It was less perfect than the others, and seemed of an older date.

“On the beach, some twenty or thirty yards from the triangular inclosure, were several pieces of pine wood about four inches long, painted green, and white, and black, and, in one instance, puttied; evidently parts of a boat, and apparently collected as kindling wood.”

The indications were meagre, but the conclusion they led to was irresistible. They could not be the work of Esquimaux: the whole character of them contradicted it: and the only European who could have visited Cape Riley was Parry, twenty-eight years before; and we knew from his journal that he had not encamped here. Then, again, Ommanney’s discovery of like vestiges on Beechy Island, just on the track of a party moving in either direction between it and the channel: all these speak of a land party from Franklin’s squadron.

Our commander resolved to press onward along the eastern shore of Wellington Channel. We were under weigh in the early morning of the 26th, and working along with our consort toward Beechy—I drop the “Island,” for it is more strictly a peninsula or a promontory of limestone, as high and abrupt as that at Cape Riley, connected with what we call the main by a low isthmus. Still ...

Table of contents

• SIR JOHN FRANKLIN
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER I
• CHAPTER II
• CHAPTER III
• CHAPTER IV
• CHAPTER V
• CHAPTER VI
• CHAPTER VII
• CHAPTER VIII
• CHAPTER IX
• CHAPTER X
• CHAPTER XI
• CHAPTER XII
• CHAPTER XIII
• CHAPTER XIV
• CHAPTER XV
• CHAPTER XVI
• CHAPTER XVII
• CHAPTER XVIII
• CHAPTER XIX
• CHAPTER XX
• CHAPTER XXI
• CHAPTER XXII
• CHAPTER XXIII
• CHAPTER XXIV