Stranded In Ice

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

“The Overlook” appears every Wednesday at tomclavin.substack.com. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting. (Check out previous columns while you're at it.)  Likes, comments, and shares help with author discoverability on Substack.com, and all support is appreciated. And don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!

          [This week I am “lending” my space to the wonderful writer Buddy Levy so that you can read an excerpt from his book being published this week by St. Martin’s Press: Empire of Ice and Stone. In August 1913, the 129-foot brigantine Karluk, flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, became icebound in Prudhoe Bay, northern Alaska. For the next five months it drifted west-northwest across the Arctic Ocean into the Chukchi Sea, above northern Siberia.]

At 5:00 a.m. on January 10, a violent shudder rumbled through the ship, followed by crashing ice and the terrible grating sound of ice against wood. Men, some only half-clothed, raced about, some to the engine room, some to the deck. McKinlay sprinted topside and found Bartlett, Hadley, and Breddy—who’d been night watchman—already there, shielding their eyes against a howling wind to assess the damage. They could just discern, at the stern of the ship, that the ice had fractured, splitting the dredge-house in two. The ice appeared to be shearing all sides of the ship, and the Karluk was rising on the starboard side, listing to port about twenty-five degrees. The deck, which before had been just a few inches above the gangway, was now more than a foot higher.

Hoping to perhaps raise the ship above the ice pressure, Captain Bartlett ordered men to begin throwing all the ice blocks, used as insulation, from the deck and skylights and the outer walls. They shoveled and tossed in shifts, working hour after hour heaving the heavy blocks, while Bartlett sent Kataktovik and Kuraluk and Chafe down onto the ice to release the dogs from the box house and prepare it as living quarters, lining the ice floor with boards and filling the stove so it could be quickly lit.

Working in teams as in a fire drill, all hands toiled through the day, ferrying everything they could from the ship down to the box house and large igloo on the big floe, next to the crates and barrels and cans already piled there. Men collided with one another in the dim light and blinding snow, but there was no panic. Bartlett ordered all lamps and stoves put out, except the galley stove. The last thing they needed was a ship fire on top of everything else. Auntie and Helen worked furiously, sewing skin clothes.

All day long everyone pitched in, unburdening the Karluk of everything heavy and that might be of use: tools and the remaining pemmican and packages of paraffin. Tents and bundles of skins and heavy coils of line. Boxes from the galley: dried milk and vegetables, butter and bacon and eggs. All heaved overboard. Once that was done, they turned to their cabins to pack personal effects, while outside the ice churned and ground with the sound of thunder. And all day long, as Bartlett put it, “the poor old Karluk struggled in the death grip of the pack.” But the strength of the pack ultimately proved too great. At seven o’clock, a burst like a cannon blast shook the ship, and Bartlett raced with Munro toward the engine room. The captain and engineer held a lantern and squinted down into the hold. A great jagged fang of ice had pierced through the hull on the port side, tearing timbers to shreds and destroying the pump. Water rushed in, filling the hold at a frightening speed.

Bartlett went back on deck and shouted, “All hands abandon ship!”

Bartlett sent Auntie and her girls to the box house to start the fire and told Templeman to stay in the galley and serve hot coffee and food as long as possible. Bartlett produced a shot of whiskey for everyone who wanted one, as a bracer against the coming ordeal. The abandonment, while slow and orderly, was a dangerous affair. Outside it was dark, with winds raging at fifty miles per hour and the temperature at −30ºF. The shearing ice tore open leads of water ten feet wide, and they had to portage sled loads of everything thrown overboard around these icy depths. Stranded dogs were hurled across the leads, yelping in fear.

During these trials, Dr. Mackay plunged through into the water up to his neck. By great fortune, Sandy was right there next to him, so the first mate hauled Dr. Mackay out, then watched the doctor stumble around aimlessly, his clothes freezing immediately. Sandy and McKinlay managed to get Dr. Mackay back on board and took him to Bartlett’s cabin as he alternately raged and babbled for them to leave him alone. As they tore off his frozen clothing and dressed him in dry woolens, they smelled liquor on his breath and realized he was reeling drunk, having availed himself of too much of the whiskey Bartlett had offered.

By 11:00 p.m., the engine room was submerged in eleven feet of water. The Karluk remained afloat only because it was being pressured on both sides, held there by giant jaws of ice. Nearly everyone had been working through the night, taking breaks only to warm themselves with hot coffee in the galley. Now all that remained was for everyone to gather the last of their personal belongings and leave the ship for the box house and igloo, where sleeping assignments had been made: in the box house would be all the Eskimos as well as McKinlay, Mamen, Dr. Mackay, Murray, Beuchat, Clam, Golightly, and Chafe; the igloo or snow house Bartlett would share with Munro, Williamson, Breddy, Hadley, Templeman, Maurer, John Brady, Sandy, Barker, Malloch, and Hadley. Captain Bartlett congratulated everyone for their efforts, and at midnight had the Canadian Blue Ensign “hoisted for the last time” to the main topmast. At two in the morning, he ordered everyone to turn in to their respective dwellings on the ice to try to get some sleep, or at least some rest.

Bartlett stayed aboard the ship. He’d packed his personal effects, logbooks and journals, and coveted Rubáiyát long before, and now he went from his cabin to the galley, where he stoked a huge fire. Men periodically came to visit him during the night. McKinlay had been too wet and cold to sleep, so he went aboard and found Bartlett there in the galley with Hadley, the gramophone blaring as loud as it could go. Bartlett had all 150 records stacked in a pile, and he’d put on a record, play it through, then lift it and toss it into the galley fire and put on another. He did this over and over, one record after the next. After every dozen records or so, the captain walked to the starboard deck and checked the ship’s position. He eyed the surroundings, scouting a safe and speedy exit route.

By five o’clock in the morning, the water in the engine room had crested the gratings and was just five feet below the main deck. When he returned to the galley, he found Hadley searching frantically for little Nigeraurak, the black kitten. Hadley had successfully moved Molly and her newborn puppies over to the ice shelters, but no one had seen the kitten in all the commotion during the night. At last they heard her mewing from a hiding place aft, and Hadley managed to catch her and take her out to the box house, placing her in a basket lined with furs and skins.

Throughout the day, Bartlett remained on the Karluk, playing records. Over in the ice houses, everyone was trying to stay warm, dry out clothes, and eat as much as they could get their hands on. They were having something of a feast. “Rummaging among the boxes,” wrote McKinlay, “we broke out a tin of ox tongue, tins of roast beef and mutton, several tins of salmon . . .salt pork, cheese, and about a half-dozen old loaves.” They stuffed themselves until they could eat no more, then lay back on their sleeping bags, smoking cigars. In the afternoon, they took a sounding and found the bottom at thirty-eight fathoms.

At quarter past three, Bartlett felt a lurch beneath his feet and a shudder as the ship settled with a groan. Water cascaded over the decks and ran down the hatches, and Bartlett knew it was finally time. He reached for a record—Chopin’s “Funeral March”—placed it on the Victrola, and wound it full, closing his eyes as the first notes rose above the surge of rushing water. Then he left the galley and went to the railing, holding on tight as the ship was sinking.

“She’s going!” he yelled out, and one by one the seamen and crewmen and scientists came from the igloo and snow house and stood on the ice. They came as close as they could, watching Bartlett standing there alone. Then, with the notes of “Funeral March” carried by the Arctic winds, accompanied by the percussive sounds of ship timbers buckling and snapping, Bartlett waited until the rail was just even with the ice and he stepped off his ship.

Everyone stood speechless. They watched as the ship lowered slowly on an even keel. A puff of steam burst upward as water poured in and doused the galley fire. With grace and dignity, the Karluk continued downward until only the crow’s nest was visible above water, and at last, the Canadian Blue Ensign, flapping in the Arctic wind, submerged into the water and was gone.

***

From Empire of Ice and Stone by Buddy Levy. Copyright © 2022 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group. To learn more about the author and Empire of Ice and Stone, please visit buddylevy.com.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including the just-published The Last Hill, with Bob Drury. To purchase a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.