In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides

Author:Hampton Sides [Sides, Hampton]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-385-53538-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

AROUND MIDNIGHT ON June 11, something momentous did happen. While most of the men slept away the bright polar night, the ice opened with a ragged crack, and the Jeannette slipped into the water. It sounded to Danenhower as though “she were sliding down hill or off the launching ways.” Once the Jeannette settled, she righted herself and bobbed gently in the frigid water.

After almost two years, the ship was … floating. It was a strange sensation. All of the men rose from their bunks, threw on clothing, and streamed onto the deck to take in the moment.

Not only was the Jeannette floating, she was holding firm. Melville and De Long studied the ship inside and out. In the hold, the leaks were negligible. The ice-locked lagoon in which she floated was dead calm and crystal clear, affording a view of the hull they had not enjoyed since she’d been in the shipyard in California. After they’d scoured every visible inch, the captain’s spirits soared: She seemed structurally sound. There was, De Long said, “no injury whatever to the after body,” and he now saw “no difficulty in keeping the ship afloat and navigating her.” All those months at Mare Island spent reinforcing the hull had apparently paid off; the Jeannette had withstood nearly two years vise-gripped by the ice.

The men cheered their good fortune. The ship, as Danenhower put it, had finally been “released from her icy fetters” and “floated calmly on the surface of the beautiful blue water … a small pool in which she could bathe her sides.” There were nasty-looking floes swirling nearby, but for now the Jeannette seemed safe.

The ship looked so idyllic basking in her little pond that around three o’clock the next day, June 12, De Long asked Melville to break out his camera and make a portrait of the fair ship. Happy to oblige, Melville shambled onto the ice with a tripod and other photographic equipment. While he fussed with the camera, Bartlett and Aneguin came in from a hunt, dragging a fresh seal, which left a smear of blood on the pack.

The ice was quiet, Melville said, and the ship looked “strikingly picturesque” as she dipped and bobbed in the bright sun. Melville ducked his head under the drape and took the last photograph that would ever be made of the USS Jeannette.

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