CHAPTER IIISUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT

Thedetail of equipping a polar expedition is like the detail of equipping an army for foreign service, with, however, this difference. After the expedition has cast loose from civilization there is no chance to rectify mistakes or omissions. No rush wires or cables can be sent back to ship this or that article by next train or steamer. The little ship which bears the hopes of a polar expedition must contain in its restricted space everything to supply all the needs of its people for two or three years in a region where nothing can be obtained but meat, and even that only by those who possess the “know how.” Even when the needs are reduced to almost primeval simplicity, the multiplicity of essential things is great.

As an illustration of how an article, though so common that, like breathing, we are unaware of it, may be overlooked, it is said that a great polar expedition costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and fitted out under the supervision of committees of scientists and polar experts, discovered,when it reached its winter quarters, that there was no salt on board except that in the salt pork and beef.

Supplies for a polar expedition comprise primarily equipment and provisions. The latter subdivides again into provisions for ship and headquarters and provisions for sledge-work.

The former are essentially normal, comprising standard commercial supplies, the principal thing being to have the best, and the specialness lies largely in the packing. The latter number only four items, pemmican, compressed tea, condensed milk, hard tack; but they are special in every detail of make and packing, with the exception of the condensed milk.

Here are a few of the items and figures on the list of supplies for one of my last expeditions, flour, 16,000 pounds; coffee, 1000 pounds; tea, 800 pounds; sugar, 10,000 pounds; kerosene, 3500 gallons; bacon, 7000 pounds; biscuit, 10,000 pounds; condensed milk, 100 cases; pemmican, 30,000 pounds; dried fish, 3000 pounds.

To illustrate how normal was our bill of fare on theRooseveltin winter quarters, here is our weekly menu for the winter of 1908–09 (the north pole voyage):

Monday. Breakfast: cereal, beans and brown bread, butter, coffee. Dinner: liver and bacon, macaroni and cheese, bread and butter, tea.

Tuesday. Breakfast: oatmeal, ham and eggs,bread and butter, coffee. Dinner: corned beef and creamed peas, duff, tea.

Wednesday. Breakfast: choice of two kinds of cereal, fish, forward (that is, for the sailors), sausage, aft (for the members of the expedition), bread and butter, coffee. Dinner: steak and tomatoes, bread and butter, tea.

Thursday. Breakfast: cereal, ham and eggs, bread and butter, coffee. Dinner: corned beef and peas, duff, tea.

Friday. Breakfast: choice of cereal, fish, Hamburger on starboard (our own) table, bread and butter, coffee. Dinner: pea soup, fish, cranberry pie, bread and butter, tea.

Saturday. Breakfast: cereal, meat stew, bread and butter, coffee. Dinner: steak and tomatoes, bread and butter, tea.

Sunday. Breakfast: cereal, “brooze” (Newfoundland hard biscuit softened and boiled with salt codfish), bread and butter, coffee. Dinner: salmon trout, fruit, chocolate.

In addition to the large quantities of the bedrock staple provisions, there is a long list of odd and often amusing supplies that would never be thought of except by those who had already had polar experience. Yet for the mere problem of existence in those regions, to the experienced one the essentials are few, rifle and ammunition, matches, knife, hatchet, needles.

In my work another special class of suppliescame in, that is, articles for my Eskimos; tools, weapons, implements, etc., for pay and gifts.

Many details so numerous as to be almost impossible to remember develop in connection with polar supplies as the result of experience in various expeditions. The packing of all provisions is of the utmost importance. The first requisite is that everything must be in water-tight packages, as an insurance against damage or deterioration if the expedition is a long one, and particularly as a safeguard against damage and spoiling in case of injury to the ship or in emergency transportation in boats or across the ice under conditions which may mean the repeated immersion of the supplies in sea-water.

Another fundamental essential is that all provisions must be in packages not to exceed a certain maximum weight, which can be readily handled by one man in loading or unloading a ship or boats or sledges, particularly in an emergency, where rapid work is essential.

My standard net weight for every package of all provisions which were not particularly ship provisions was fifty pounds. The water-tight tins and the light box or crate outside of the tin made the gross weight of packages from sixty-two or sixty-three to a maximum of seventy-five pounds. Packages of this size can be easily picked up and passed up from the hold of a ship by one man, or can be tossed over the rail to theice in case of the crushing of the ship, and they are easily and rapidly handled by one man in stowing in a boat or in taking out of a boat.

Another detail of packing provisions which, as far as I know, was unique and peculiar to my expeditions, was making the depth and width of all boxes containing provisions the same, and letting the length vary in accordance with the specific gravity of the particular item of supplies. To illustrate: All boxes of oatmeal, corn-meal, rice, tea, coffee, sugar, etc., were about twelve inches wide by ten inches deep, and of a length that would just contain fifty pounds of the particular article. Of course a sugar box would be shorter than an oatmeal or corn-meal box, and a corn-meal box would be shorter than a box of tea.

The reason for this standardizing of two dimensions of the boxes was to fit them to be utilized for constructing houses, being laid up like blocks of granite, and breaking joints in the same way. By this method the supplies landed from the ship at headquarters could easily be formed into two or three comfortable houses for shelter of the members of the expedition in case the ship should be crushed or burned.

WHALE MEAT FOR DOG FOOD

These houses were built by forming four walls of the boxes of supplies, with the tops of the boxes inside; then putting boards or sails across the top, and banking the whole structure in with snow. When supplies of any kind were required,the cover of a box in the wall of the house would be removed from the inside, the tin containing the supplies removed, the empty box then becoming a sort of shelf or locker for other articles, if needed. The main point, however, was that all the supplies could be used, and the house still remain intact.

This method was also valuable wherever large caches of supplies were made at particular points, as the supplies formed at once a strong, comfortable, and rapidly constructed shelter for the use of parties traveling that route and camping at the cache.

Another special point was the marking of all special supplies, such as tea, coffee, sugar, milk, ship’s biscuit, which might be called the emergency supplies, on every side with a dash of paint in such a way that any one, whether able to read or write or not (or an Eskimo), if able to see one side of a box, would know at once its contents. This method of marking was the result of the experiences of some expeditions previous to mine in which much time was lost hunting for and endeavoring to identify supplies.

This method also worked for instant efficiency in case of emergency, as a man could seize a case of sugar or coffee to throw over the ship’s side or out of a crushed boat without any false motions.

All these points were worked out rather carefully, and in my opinion are so valuable that theynever should be omitted in preparing the supplies of a polar expedition.

Material for equipment of my expeditions (lumber for sledges, webbing for dog harnesses, furs for clothing, tin for making utensils, etc.) was always taken in bulk and in the rough, partly for economy in space, partly for economy in cost, and largely to give occupation to members of the party during the long winter night in making the finished articles.

It can readily be seen that in stowing the ship for the northern voyage, oak and hickory boards for sledges would stow much more compactly than the sledge itself, and be less subject to injury. So, too, with sheets of tin as compared with utensils made from the tin. With furs the same, for made up into clothing they would require double the space taken up by bales.

This method as regards sledge material is particularly valuable during the upward voyage, when, as happened much of the time, the ship was sometimes delayed by the heavy character of the ice, and would have to lie motionless, with banked fires, several days in one place. At such times sledge material was brought on deck, and crew and Eskimos set to work in the best of light, in comfortable temperatures, to make and assemble the sledges. In this way every one was kept occupied and interested instead of loafing and fretting at the delay, and the sledges, as completed,were in readiness for instant use as soon as we reached winter quarters for the ship. And they were also valuable for an emergency, in the event of the loss of the ship, to transport provisions over the ice to the shore.

The stowing of supplies on board the ship was done in accordance with a plan worked out almost as carefully as would be the builders’ plans of the blocks in a granite building, so that every item could be located, and the essential supplies and items of equipment for an emergency—tea, coffee, sugar, ship’s biscuit, oil, guns, rifles, ammunition, hatchets, fur clothing—were on top and instantly accessible. When navigating in ice, tea, coffee, sugar, ship’s biscuit, and oil were stowed in continuous lines on deck and just inside the bulwarks of the ship throughout the waist, quarter-deck, and on both deck-houses in such a way that one active man could throw a ton of provisions out on the ice in a few minutes. This was in addition to having the whale-boats, as they hung at the davits, stowed and fitted with rifles, shot-guns, ammunition, hatchets, oil-stoves, matches in waterproof packages, together with several days’ rations of tea, coffee, sugar, milk, ship’s biscuit, and oil.

This was in rather striking contrast to an earlier American expedition, where, it is stated in the official report, nearly the entire cargo had to be overhauled in order to get at some particular item—guns and ammunition, if I remember aright.Such experiences as this are striking examples and illustrations of what my friend Stefansson has described very effectively in an article entitled “Incompetence as a Literary Asset in Arctic Matters.”

In two particular items of supplies my expeditions have been an antithesis of other expeditions. In the case of one item in its absence, in the case of the other in its great abundance. These two items were meat and flour. As a result of my plan from my earliest expedition to depend upon the country itself for my fresh meat supply, I have never carried any of this in the ship’s stores. On the other hand, having been most fortunate in my later expeditions, when I had my own ship, in having a steward (Charles Percy) who was a blue-ribboner in making bread and cooking meat, I have carried large quantities of flour. Some idea of the amount of this can be obtained by the fact that in my last north polar expedition, during the eleven months that theRooseveltwas lying at Cape Sheridan, Percy baked some 18,000 pounds of bread.

The members of an Arctic party that have fresh meat and fresh bread regularly can never have scurvy, regardless of whether they see a vegetable or a fruit or lime juice from one year’s end to another. My work, extending over a period of twenty-three years, during which no symptoms of scurvy ever developed, has shown conclusivelythat white men can remain in the highest latitudes for a period of years with complete immunity from the dreaded scourge.

LABRADOR WHALING STEAMER

OFF FOR WHALES—LABRADOR COAST

When it came to the matter of sledge-supplies, even greater care in packing was applied. Pemmican for the dogs was put up in tins just as long as the width of my sledges, so that in a standard sledge-load of dog pemmican the tins formed a continuous flooring to the sledge. The pemmican for the men was put up in tins that were creased in such a way that the block of pemmican, when removed from the tin, was lightly scored in a way that marked it off into one pound cakes, and whoever had the distribution of the pemmican ration at a camp had only to insert a hunting-knife or saw-knife or edge of a hatchet into these marks, and with a blow or two separate the pemmican at once into standard rations.

All these refinements and details may seem amusing to those who have read the accounts of some polar expeditions where such supplies as ship’s biscuit or flour or the like were carried in bags, with no protection from moisture or water, and where contact with the sharp edges of ice or the sledge could easily punch a hole through a bag, with a consequent loss of some of the provisions before the mishap was noted.

Some of the same expeditions would get out their scales at each camp and carefully weigh out the various amounts of each item of the rations.

On my polar expeditions my ship’s biscuit were all made rectangular in form and sixteen to the pound, so that the matter of adjusting the size of a ration of biscuit was simply the matter of counting a certain number. If it was a full ration,—that is, a pound per man per day,—then the number of biscuit was sixteen. If it was half-ration, eight; a quarter ration, four.

These things may seem trivial to some readers, but every movement and operation which can be eliminated and every minute that can be saved under the trying accompaniments of cold, wind, hunger, and fatigue, which are inevitable in polar travel, make for the conservation of the energy, vitality, and morale of the members of the party.

My last two expeditions carried no food experiments, no wonderful preparations, no condensed products of astonishing powers. I had been through all this in earlier expeditions, and had tried preparation after preparation, only to find them of no value on the serious northern sledge-journey, which was the object and climax of each expedition. For that journey only the four tried articles, pemmican, tea, condensed milk, and hard tack, are necessary, and I could not change or better them for another expedition. On various expeditions I made and tried out several food mixtures, but discarded them all after trial.

In obtaining many of the special items of materials a great deal of time was spent searching through the stores in various places for the particular thing needed.

To obtain a particular size and shape of aluminum dish all in one piece, for a detail of my special alcohol field-stove, I have gone over the entire aluminum stock of New York’s great department stores, and then through the catalogues of all the manufacturers, till I found what I wanted or something that could be made to meet my requirements.

Another thing that I recall was steel sledge-shoes. It would seem a simple thing to find in any place that dealt in steel, strips of the metal two inches wide, one-eighth of an inch thick, and fifteen feet long, yet it took me two expeditions to find just what I wanted. The steel for my purpose must be soft enough so that I could drill it in the field, yet hard enough so that the constant use would not too quickly wear it through. Then the edges of the steel must be sharp, like the edges of a skate, so that the sledges would not slew heavily sidewise, with almost certain injury, and so they could be tilted on the edge of one runner, like a skater doing the outer edge, without losing grip on the ice. This is a favorite device of expert Eskimo sledge-drivers in difficult situations. All bar steel in the market had rounded edges, and nottill my last expedition, when I found a cold-sheared steel with edges as sharp as a skate, did I get just the sledge-shoe that I needed.

Then there were the screws for attaching the shoes. The constant pounding to which sledge-shoes are subjected in traversing rough sea-ice soon jars off the heads of any screw that I could find in the market. After a long search I found a tough wire nail of the right diameter, which, by cutting to the necessary length, gave me what I wanted.

As a matter not of conscientious scruples, but of judgment and taste, I am neither a drinker nor a smoker, and I have always selected men for my parties who used neither tobacco nor spirits. Liquor should have no place in a polar ration either for camp or field. Yet on special occasions, as on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthdays, nothing gives more zest or helps to lift the day out of the even monotony of the days on each side than a glass of grog or light wine.

The liquor supply of my expeditions has always included brandy and whisky and a little wine. Neither was ever a part of the regular ration, and yet no party was ever sent out without brandy or whisky in its equipment. Brandy or whisky is a medicine as much as salts or calomel, and should be regarded and utilized as such despite the shrieks of fanatics.

DUNHAM SNOW SHOESThe center pair of shoes, five feet long, one foot wide, with raised toe and ski curve in middle, is the best shoe made

DUNHAM SNOW SHOES

The center pair of shoes, five feet long, one foot wide, with raised toe and ski curve in middle, is the best shoe made

ITEMS OF SLEDGE RATIONSLeft to right: Compressed tea, condensed milk, pemmican, oil, alcohol, dog pemmican, and ship biscuit

ITEMS OF SLEDGE RATIONS

Left to right: Compressed tea, condensed milk, pemmican, oil, alcohol, dog pemmican, and ship biscuit

If it were possible to obtain strong hot tea orcoffee instantly on a sledge-journey in extreme low temperatures, there would be little use for spirits. But when every drop of water must be melted from ice at temperatures of minus sixty degrees or lower, and then raised to the boiling point, it takes time. And when a member of the party has seriously injured himself or has fallen in the icy water, something is needed on the instant to brace his system and keep him from too serious a reaction until a snow igloo can be built to shelter him.

Tobacco is equally or more objectionable in polar work. It affects the wind endurance of a man, particularly in low temperatures, adds an extra and entirely unnecessary article to the outfit, vitiates the atmosphere of tent or igloo, and, when the supply gives out, renders the user a nuisance to himself and those about him.

Of all the items which go to make up the list of supplies for a polar expedition, the one which ranks first in importance is pemmican. It is also the one which starts the most instant interrogation from the average person. I usually find that the character of this absolutely indispensable food is most quickly grasped if I describe it as a dry mince-meat.

Pemmican is understood to be of Indian origin, originally made of the meat and fat of the buffalo, and its name, from the Cree language, means ground meat and grease. It is said that in thedays when buffalo herds were numerous the Indians and half-breeds made large quantities of pemmican in the autumn hunting, cutting the buffalo meat in long, thin strips, which were dried in the sun and wind, then, mixed with buffalo fat, were pounded into a mass.

Too much cannot be said of the importance of pemmican to a polar expedition. It is an absolute sine qua non. Without it a sledge-party cannot compact its supplies within a limit of weight to make a serious polar journey successful. Perhaps I should modify that by saying to make a north polar journey possible, as the conditions in the north are such as to make a successful journey in that region a severer test of refinement in methods and supplies and equipment than anywhere else. With pemmican, the most serious sledge-journey can be undertaken and carried to a successful issue in the absence of all other foods.

Of all foods that I am acquainted with, pemmican is the only one that, under appropriate conditions, a man can eat twice a day for three hundred and sixty-five days in a year and have the last mouthful taste as good as the first. And it is the most satisfying food I know. I recall innumerable marches in bitter temperatures when men and dogs had been worked to the limit and I reached the place for camp feeling as if I could eat my weight of anything. When the pemmican ration was dealt out, and I saw my little half-pound lump,about as large as the bottom third of an ordinary drinking-glass, I have often felt a sullen rage that life should contain such situations. By the time I had finished the last morsel I would not have walked round the completed igloo for anything or everything that the St. Regis, the Blackstone, or the Palace Hotel could have put before me.

Even the Eskimo dogs were at times obliged to yield to the filling qualities of pemmican, and anything that will stay the appetite of a healthy Eskimo dog must possess some body. I recall an instance where my powerful king dog discovered a tin of pemmican that had had a hole punched in it in some way. The maddening smell of the luscious beef fat through the hole spurred him to drive his iron jaws through the tin until he had ripped it like a can-opener and reached the contents. Had the tin contained ordinary meat, the twelve pounds would have been merely an appetizer for him; but when I found him later, he had voluntarily quit, with only a portion of the pemmican eaten. And—though this may not be believed by others who have had experience with Eskimo dogs—he would eat nothing more that day.

Pemmican is theonlyfood for dogs on a serious polar sledge journey; and there is nothing as good as walrus meat to keep dogs in good condition during the autumn and winter at headquarters previous to the sledge journey. I found aspecial brand of bacon which I obtained in hundred-pound cases one of the best substitutes for the walrus meat.

On my last expedition as an insurance against lack of time or poor luck in walrus hunting, I took on board several tons of whale meat in bulk at one of the Labrador whaling stations.

Future polar explorers may find this whale meat a convenient and economical source of supply for their winter dog food.

The whale meat should be packed at the station in tins containing fifty to one hundred pounds each. These tins should be filled with fresh sweet meat from whales just killed, and each tin should be filled solid under the constant supervision of a representative of the expedition.

In my various expeditions I have naturally had some experiences with pemmican. In my first two journeys my pemmican supply was part of the pemmican made for the Greely relief expedition. A large amount of pemmican was made for this party; but as the few survivors of the unfortunate Greely expedition were rescued at Cape Sabine and brought home in a few weeks, virtually none of it was used. On the return of the rescue party this pemmican was bought in at auction by a dealer in such supplies, and my outfit was obtained from him. This pemmican was more satisfactory than any I have ever had since. Nine-tenths of it was just as good as when made, andthe fact that occasional tins of it were bad was no drawback and caused me no loss, as such tins were accepted by the dogs at their face value.

The one objection to this pemmican, in the extreme refinement of space and weight demanded for the sledge-journey across the central polar ocean, was that it was put up in round tins.

When this supply was exhausted, I had some pemmican made for me; but it was not entirely satisfactory, and on a still later expedition I was persuaded to purchase some so-called pemmican of a foreign make. This, after I had sailed and it was too late to remedy the error, I found to be largely composed of pea-flour. While nourishing and more or less satisfactory to the men of the party, it was of essentially no value whatever for the dogs, and the work of the expedition was just cut in half by the impossibility of keeping the dogs in first-class condition to do hard work.

Later on I was consoled to a certain extent for this mistake on learning that a foreign expedition, in having its pemmican prepared, had very carefully extracted all fat from the preparation, with the consequent loss of heat-producing qualities, which was quickly discovered in the field under the stress of serious work.

In my last expeditions my pemmican was made specially by American firms, and specially packed for my particular requirements. Its composition, as ordered, was as follows: two-thirds lean beef,dried until friable, then ground fine, and mixed with one-third beef fat, a little sugar, and a few raisins. Of course no one but the makers knew how much cat, dog, mule, and horse meat masqueraded in the pemmican under the guise of beef; but it all went, and in the case of the dog pemmican, of course, it made no difference. In my 1905–06 expedition the makers, however, in a business-like and perhaps legitimate effort to make the meat go as far as possible, made liberal use of bone meal in the dog pemmican. The effect of this upon the dogs was exactly like feeding a boiler with coal fifty per cent. of which is slate and dirt, and the work obtained from them was just about in proportion to the work that would be obtained from boilers in these circumstances.

In my last expedition a more careful inspection and insistence on edible substances in the dog pemmican remedied this trouble. A portion of the pemmican, however, contained an ingredient which was not at all in the original specifications, and which I should strongly advise against in the pemmican of future expeditions, that is, broken glass. Fortunately, none of my party experienced any ill effects from this, owing to the fact that we still retained the civilized habit of chewing our food, and detected the presence of the glass before it was swallowed. A number of sudden and unaccountable deaths of my dogs, however, we attributed directly to this cause.

Pemmican made of the materials and in the proportions required by my specifications is, in my opinion, as nearly perfect for the purpose for which it is intended as it is possible to make it. I do not believe that it can be improved upon, and I feel that experiments or changes in it are likely to be dangerous to the success of an expedition.

As an illustration of this a subsequent expedition, feeling that the pemmican would be improved in taste by the addition of some seasoning, ordered the addition of salt to the other ingredients, and as a result when it was used continuously in the field the Eskimo dogs, unaccustomed to salt in any form whatever, sickened and some of them died.

Next to insistent, minute, personal attention to the building of his ship the Polar explorer should give his personal, constant, and insistent attention to the making of his pemmican, and should know that every batch of it packed for him is made of the proper material in the proper proportion and in accordance with his specifications.

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