Race to the Polar Sea by Ken McGoogan

Author:Ken McGoogan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catapult

Early in May, after an absence of six months, snowbirds returned to the encircling bay, restoring hope and optimism. The increasing daylight melted the snow from the sides of the Advance and freed the rigging of ice. Kane saw these changes as “pledges of renewed life, the olive branch of this dreary waste; we feel the spring in all our pulses.” Soon he would be rhapsodizing: men were gleaning fresh water from the rocks, icebergs were running with streamlets, and the base of the ice belt was overflowing with water pools—”Winter is gone!”

Kane sent McGary south to Lifeboat Cove to check on the hidden row-boat, the cache of provisions, and, above all, the state of the ice. Traveling by dogsled along the ice belt, McGary accomplished the 100-mile round trip in four days. He reported the site undisturbed, but observed that the pack ice remained intact thirty miles beyond Littleton Island. To Carl Petersen, the immigrant Greenlander, this boded ill.

Kane remained optimistic. When he thought of Sir John Franklin and wondered whether any of his crew might yet survive, he remained convinced that everything depended on locality. Anticipating the “friendly Arctic” arguments of twentieth-century explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Kane insisted that animals could be successfully hunted within twenty-five miles of just about any point in the far north.

If he had been compelled to address the question of Franklin’s survival four months before, while engulfed by darkness and disease, he would have turned toward the black hills and the frozen sea and responded despondently. Even so, he had never accepted the “the complete catastrophe, the destruction of all Franklin’s crews.” And now, with the return of spring, he pictured the men broken into detachments, “and my mind fixes itself on one little group of some thirty, who have found the spot of some tidal eddy, and under the teachings of an Esquimaux or perhaps one of their own Greenland whalers, have set bravely to work, and trapped the fox, speared the bear, and killed the seal and walrus and whale. I think of them ever with hope. I sicken not to be able to reach them.”

As May wore on, bringing with it the anniversary of his departure from New York, Kane felt increasingly driven to find both the lost expedition and the Open Polar Sea. After a year in the Arctic, he had yet to venture beyond Humboldt Glacier, or even to reach the western shore of the basin (Ellesmere Island). At the very least, he needed to determine whether any channel led north or west out of this great bay. With seven dogs remaining, and many of his men still sick, he decided to change his approach: relying on the remaining dogs, he would send out smaller parties.

To lead the first he chose the young doctor, Isaac Hayes. Among those able to travel, only Hayes could use the geodesic instruments to take reliable observations. On May 20, in bright afternoon sunshine, Kane sent Hayes to the northwest with Godfrey, the expedition’s best dogsled driver.

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