1
The Lady Franklin Bay Expeditionary Force
July 9, 1881—Labrador Basin, North Atlantic Ocean
Lt. A. W. Greely, commander of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, rode at the bow of the two-hundred-foot-long steamship Proteus, his vision fixed on the northern horizon. He wore a double-breasted, boiled-wool peacoat with thick fur at the collar and cuffs. He and his crew were bound for the top of the world, to one of the last regions yet unmarked on global maps. As the inlet narrowed near the strait of Belle Isle, they passed great protruding shapes of ice rising from the sea. Some resembled immense white-blue anvils, and some looked like the wind-scoured sandstone towers he’d seen in the American Southwest. Most of the icebergs1 he could not describe, or compare to phenomena he had ever witnessed before in nature. He observed them and everything else, squinting through his oval spectacles at the breathtaking expanse, trying to visualize what lay ahead. The combination of ice, rock, and water appeared to have some vague kind of course he might plot his way through. As the Proteus plowed into the wind-chopped Labrador Sea, massive slabs of glacial ice cleaved off the shore and crashed into the sea, spewing freezing brine over the gunwales and frosting his sharp narrow face and pointed black beard.
His heart raced with anticipation, but his mind was much burdened. Less than a week earlier, on July 2, at the Baltimore and Potomac Rail Station in Washington, D.C., President James A. Garfield had been shot twice at point-blank range—once in the shoulder and once in the back, the second shot lodging near his pancreas—and now, with family and physicians huddled around him, he fought for his life at the White House. Greely’s heart was heavy at this news, with the uncertainty of how another presidential assassination—should Garfield not recover—would rock the Republic. And he already missed his young family, his wife of just three years, Henrietta, and their two infant daughters, Antoinette and Adola. But the call of adventure—and possibly international fame—had lured him toward the Arctic on a voyage of exploration and discovery that would last at least two years, should all go as planned. However, Greely was savvy enough to know that Arctic journeys never went as planned. He had spent years studying the history of Arctic exploration and the quest for the Northwest Passage, and he understood the dangers and stark realities: He steered toward a harsh, ice-bound labyrinth where crew losses of 50 percent or more were the norm. But Greely had some hard bark on him, a war-earned toughness coupled with an uncanny sense of the thing to do now, and he hoped his men had it too. They’d better: A. W. Greely would allow no disorder. This was sovereign. He’d started following orders when he was seventeen, then nicknamed “Dolph” by his friends. He’d been weaned on discipline. Now he was the one giving the orders, and he demanded a strict, unwavering adherence to them, and to discipline generally.
Poor weather and northwesterly gales slammed into the Proteus, slowing progress, but within a week they’d steamed into the Davis Strait, where they encountered their first pack ice.
Greely was fascinated and awed by the ice, noting in his journal that
the greater part of the ice ranged from three to five feet above the water, and was deeply grooved at the water’s edge, evidently by the action of the waves. Above and below the surface of the sea projected long tongue-like edges.… The most delicate tints of blue mingled quickly and indistinguishably into those of rare light green, to be succeeded later as the water receded from the floe’s side by shades of blueish white.
They passed more bergs, some jutting fifteen feet from the water, the ice rising in giant hummocks and pinnacles. Greely contemplated the threefold mission at hand: First, he was to set up the northernmost of a chain of a dozen research stations around the Arctic, to simultaneously collect magnetic, astronomical, and meteorological data. This was part of a revolutionary scientific mission named the International Polar Year (two years, really)—a global effort to record data at the farthest reaches of the world to better understand the earth’s climate. Second, Greely would search for and hopefully rescue the men of the lost USS Jeannette, which had vanished two years earlier during an attempted voyage to the North Pole. Greely had known Lt. Cdr. George W. De Long, the expedition’s leader, very well. He would try his best to find him. Third—though definitely not last—Greely secretly intended to reach the North Pole; or, should he fall short, to attain Farthest North, an explorer’s holy grail of the highest northern latitude, which had been held by the British for three hundred years.
At thirty-seven, tall, sinewy, and strong, Greely had earned his current command through two decades of army service, surviving some of the bloodiest battles in the nation’s history. At Antietam in 1862, as part of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment, Greely took a bullet to the face that fractured his jaw, knocked out several teeth, and left him unconscious as his regiment retreated. When he came to, a Confederate soldier stood over him and tried to capture him, but Greely fought his way to safety, though he was struck in the thigh by another musket ball during his escape. As Greely received treatment and then recovered in a field hospital cot, he witnessed a macabre sight: Piled up high against the side of the house were the amputated arms and legs of soldiers, both Union and Confederate, stacked like cordwood. The Union lost 12,410 men that day, the most of any single day in the Civil War.
From then on, Greely wore a full beard to cover the scars from his wound, and as well to hide the reminder of the atrocities he’d witnessed.
He’d worked his way up the army ranks since he was an enlisted teen, eventually being posted out West to construct telegraph lines throughout the hostile Indian frontier. During this duty, through careful observation, he’d become an expert in telegraphy, electricity, and meteorology. Eventually, through his leadership skills and his abilities, he’d convinced the Signal Corps and the highest brass of the U.S. Army—as well as Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln’s son, who signed his orders)—that he had the “stuff.” He would lead this mission, formally named the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition in honor of Lady Jane Franklin. Her husband, the legendary Sir John Franklin (and his crew of 129), had vanished seeking the Northwest Passage in 1845. Lady Franklin sponsored numerous expeditions to find him.
But everyone knew the current voyage was in fact the Greely Expedition, and A. W. Greely was in charge.
The Proteus—christened and launched new in 1874 out of Dundee, Scotland—was a 467-ton, iron-prowed steamer designed for the sealing trade. It was built to last a half century or longer if well maintained. The ship was commanded by Capt. Richard Pike, one of the most experienced ice navigators in Newfoundland. Pike coursed northward with unusual speed for the season, clipping through the normally ice-choked waters of the Davis Strait. Cutting through dense fog and wave chop, the sturdy steamship made land at the windswept western shores of Greenland at Godhavn (now Qeqertarsuaq), Disko Island. Through lifting fog, Greely and his men saw mountains rising up from the sea some three thousand feet, and along a secure, landlocked harbor and tranquil cove sat a native settlement under Danish control. As the Proteus anchored, Greely heard a cannon fire a salute signaling their arrival, and soon afterward Sophus Krarup-Smith, the Danish royal inspector of North Greenland, came aboard.
Inspector Krarup-Smith had been about to depart for his annual assessment of Upernavik to the north, but out of courtesy he delayed leaving to host Greely and his men and to offer any provisions, intelligence, and assistance that the expedition required. Krarup-Smith welcomed the men into his home, which was surprisingly elaborate given its remoteness: There was a grand piano, a small billiard table, “a well-filled book-case, carpets, pictures, and many other evidences of civilization and even elegance.” Krarup-Smith and his wife served Greely and two of his lieutenants—Kislingbury and Lockwood—an elaborate welcome dinner that included fresh salmon, larded eider ducks, and delicate Arctic ptarmigan, all served with excellent European wines. They also sampled seal meat, which some of the men found unpalatable because of its coarse, dark, and oily appearance. Greely relished it as juicy and tender, “with a slight sweetish taste.”
They remained in Godhavn for five days. Greely observed that the Inuit houses were built of stone and turf, lined with wood, so low that he could hardly stand up inside. He was impressed by their ingenuity in using stretched seal intestines for windows. Greely scouted the area, characterizing it as “all mountains and sea,” the cliffs thrusting a few thousand feet straight up from the water. Though he found breaks in the cliffs that gave way to low, sloping valleys and brooks lined with vegetation, mostly he was awed by the region’s “grandeur and desolation.”
Copyright © 2019 by Buddy Levy