WHILE we were in Etah, Dr. Koelz, the expedition’s naturalist, decided that he would like to travel a few miles up the Greenland shore to collect specimens. As he needed someone to help him row the dory and run the outboard motor which he intended to use, I volunteered to go with him. This arrangement being approved by the Commander, we cast off from the ship at about ten o’clock on the night of August 15th. With us journeyed two Eskimos, Panikpa and Kanga, who wished to reach the Eskimo settlement of Anoritok which is just beyond Refuge Harbor, the Commander’s headquarters in 1923-24.
We made our way down Etah Fiord in the calm of the Arctic night, with scarcely a breath of wind ruffling the surface of the water. Soon we were off Sunrise Point where Hayes and his men used to walk from their ship to observe the sunrise after the long, five-month, winter night.
We now emerged from the shelter of the cliffs. As we did so we were hit by a savage squall. It was too late to retreat into the fiord as turning about was a maneuver fraught with danger. All we could do was to plug ahead off the lee shore under the shelter of an iceberg and then square away for the north. This I did and in a few moments we were clear of the berg and then away we went before wind and sea. A very steep, choppy sea, probably fourteen or fifteen feet high, was running in from the southward. Under ordinary conditions a sea of that height would not be cause for any great concern, but these waves had nearly vertical faces and the crests were breaking continually. The only thing to do was to keep the dory running off before the sea as she would be capsized or swamped if she turned broadside on for even the briefest interval. I held the tiller stick in both hands and kept our little vessel’s head pointing straight to leeward in spite of incessant attempts on the part of the waves to “broach her to.”
The Eskimos were quite frightened when they saw those big seas. Old Panikpa kept waving for us to go closer to the shore. But even one glance at that unbroken line of jagged rocks and leaping surf convinced both Koelz and myself that it would be suicidal to attempt a landing on that stretch of shore-line.
All went well for about ten minutes. Then as I glanced aft over my shoulder I saw a tremendous comber seemingly hang directly over my head. I thought to myself that if we ever came out of that one with the boat still floating we would be lucky. The water mounted higher and higher on the stern as the dory’s tail cocked skyward until it was just level with the top of the coaming. Then with a swish the crest of the wave came crashing down over the counter. The engine was drenched and immediately stopped. I was soaked through and through and there were several inches of water in the boat. We started to swing broadside on, in the trough of the sea. One more wave would have finished us for good, and with a dead engine this was all too probable, in fact inevitable if the boat should swing enough to present her side to the sea. I yelled to Koelz to grab the oars and keep her off side before it until I got the engine going. Koelz with great presence of mind fitted the thole pins and soon had the oars shipped. In a few seconds we were again slowly moving along on our course, owing to skillful handling by the Doctor. In a few moments the engine was in running order and we were bowling along as merrily as before.
In a short time we were in calm water in the channel between Littleton Island and the mainland. It was named by Inglefield, the first man to penetrate upper Smith Sound. In the channel between the island and the mainland lies the wreck of the old Polaris which broke the world’s record for farthest north, in 1871. On this island, Sir Allen Young, in the Pandora, left mail for the British North Polar Expedition. On the first Greely Relief Expedition of 1882, Beebe deposited a cache of provisions there. It has always received prominent mention in all Arctic journals dealing with this region, and Dr. Koelz and I were interested in seeing it at close quarters.
The wind was still blowing with great force, so hard in fact that I shut down the motor and rigged a sail with a tarpaulin and an oar, which made the boat go even faster than it did with the motor. In a few moments we were through the channel and bound up the coast for Cape Hatherton. For several hours we continued under sail until at last we were pretty close to the Cape. We then cut in for the shore and made our way through loose ice to the beach. We landed at five o’clock in the morning after a rather exciting voyage, to say the least.
Sleep now appeared about the most desirable sensation possible for human beings to experience and rolling our blankets on the hard ground we went to it. We slept for what seemed years, but we awakened eventually. Now the question was whether it was morning, afternoon or night. The never-setting midnight sun gave but little clew to the time, and our watches had stopped! The time went on and soon we did not know what day it was. This was an awful fix, as we would not know when the days we had planned to remain in this vicinity had elapsed. But we did not let the time question bother us, and we started to accomplish the tasks we had set ourselves.
Our primary object was to collect as many bird and fish specimens as possible, which we set about to do immediately. But another wish which we entertained, though it was subordinate to the first, was to make as high a latitude on the Greenland coast as our meager equipment and time, spared from our real objective, would warrant. With this goal in mind we set forth on what we considered to be our second day out from the ship. The gas which we had saved by sailing rendered a considerable trip under engine power practicable. Thus we set forth from our camp with all the gasolene we had, beyond a surplus to enable us to buck a storm if we had to on the way back to the ship from the camp. In an hour or so we were around Cape Hatherton and bound on up the coast. There was not much pack ice in sight except far to the westward, and the iceblink gave promise of more to the northward. A breeze from that direction also hindered our advance, but by noon we were off the mouth of Refuge Harbor. Here we were on the edge of Kane Sea, and we could see the glittering Polar pack slowly drifting southward. We crossed the entrance to the harbor in a few moments, and I hove away to round Cairn Point. At this juncture Koelz espied several large floes moving in towards the entrance of the harbor. Beyond them there were wide levels of half a mile or so between the scattered pans of the pack.
I was hoping that my companion might express a wish to go on to the most northern Eskimo village in the world—Anoritok, some five miles beyond Refuge Harbor, where some of the Smith Sound natives happened to be living. Possibly we might have done this had it not been for running ice off Cairn Point which Koelz considered a bit dangerous. Reluctantly we gave up the idea and headed back for Refuge Harbor. There the ice had not broken out as it usually does, and if the Bowdoin had been there she might have had great difficulty in reaching the open water beyond.
After a leisurely lunch we started back to our camp and arrived there some time in the evening, probably as the sun was bearing pretty well north. The next two days we spent in collecting specimens, and then Koo-e-tig-e-to arrived with a letter from the Commander requesting us to return to the ship, as he would have to start south in a short while and wanted us there in plenty of time. So once again our little boat put to sea; this time bound south—away from the glorious land of the midnight sun and the glittering ice fields. Our stay in the Arctic fairyland had been all too short. I realized with sorrow that in a few days we would be bound for civilization and the pleasant days in Etah and north of there would be but a memory.
On the way to Etah we stopped at Polaris beach where the crew of the Polaris wintered after the wreck of their ship. There we found some old pieces of iron belonging to that ship. We also stopped for a few moments on Littleton Island. But in a short time we had left the island and Cape Ohlsen astern. Cape Ohlsen recalls the name of one of Kane’s men who died close by. We were thankful that the bones of none of our men lay bleaching on this inhospitable coast. Thus we started onward filled with memories, until with a start I found we were off Sunrise Point. In a few moments we were in Etah and aboard the ship after a most enjoyable trip up the coast. We learned that it was August the 20th, thus we had been away five days.