CHAPTER XI
THE SINKING OF THEKARLUK
During the night of New Year’s Day we could hear, when we were below, a rumbling noise not unlike that which one often hears singing along the telegraph wires on a country road. The sound was inaudible from the deck. It was clear that there was tremendous pressure somewhere, though there were no visible indications of it in the vicinity of the ship. We were practically stationary. Apparently the great field of ice in which we had been zigzagging for so many months had finally brought up on the shore of Wrangell Island and was comparatively at rest, while the running ice outside this great field was still in active motion and tended to force the ice constantly in the direction of the island.
On Saturday, with a fresh north wind, in spite of which ship and ice still remained stationary, the rumbling noise could again be heard in the interior of the ship.
On Sunday the fourth there was an increasing easterly wind which sent us slowly westward. Evidently we could make no movement towards thesouth on account of the pressure but when the wind blew us towards the west and north we could go along without undue danger. The football game was played as planned on this day until the second engineer strained a muscle in his leg kicking the ball along the ice, and the game had to stop.
The easterly gale continued for several days, sometimes with hard snowstorms, sometimes with clearer skies. The barometer was low; the temperature rose to sixteen degrees above zero. I had the engineers at work making tins of one-gallon capacity to hold kerosene for our sledges if we should have to use them. All of our oil was in five-gallon tins which were unhandy for sledging use. They also made tea-boilers out of gasoline tins, to be used with the Primus stoves; these held about a gallon of tea and were very handy. I had five with me on my subsequent sledge trip. Besides these jobs the engineers trimmed down our pickaxes so that they would weigh not over two-and-a-half or three pounds. They put them in the portable forge in the engine-room, heated the iron and beat it down, and put on the steel tips afterwards. These pickaxes were regulation miners’ picks.
On the seventh and eighth the variable weather continued with occasional twilight of considerable intensity; the low barometer and high thermometerstill prevailed. Our observations on the seventh, the last we were to take on shipboard, gave us our position as Lat. 72.11 N., Long. 174.36 W. The temperature dropped on the ninth; the sky, which was clear in the morning, became overcast by afternoon and the wind shifted from southeast to southwest. We were getting nearer the land and the ice was raftering in places with the pressure, so that I felt sure that something was going to happen before long. We continued our preparations for putting emergency supplies in condition to be handled quickly, putting tea tablets in tins made by the engineers, and twenty-two calibre cartridges in similar tins. Mannlicher cartridges we put up in packages of thin canvas, fifty to a package.
At five o’clock on the morning of the tenth I was awakened by a loud report like a rifle-shot. Then there came a tremor all through the ship. I was soon on deck. The watchman, who for that night was Brady, had already been overboard on the ice and I met him coming up the ice gangway to tell me what he had found. There was a small crack right at the stem of the ship, he said. I went there with him at once and found that the crack ran irregularly but in general northwesterly for about two hundred yards. At first it was very slight, although it was a clean and unmistakable break; in the course of half an hour, however, itgrew to a foot in width and as the day wore on widened still more until it was two feet wide on an average.
By 10A. M.there was a narrow lane of water off both bow and stern. The ship was now entirely free on the starboard side but still frozen fast in her ice-cradle on the port side; her head was pointed southwest. On account of the way in which the ice had split the ship was held in a kind of pocket; the wind, which was light and from the north in the earlier part of the day, hauled to the northwest towards afternoon and increased to a gale, with blinding snowdrift, and the sheet of ice on the starboard side began to move astern, only a little at a time. The ship felt no pressure, only slight shocks, and her hull was still untouched, for the open ends of the pocket fended off the moving ice, especially at the stern. It was clear to me, however, that as soon as the moving ice should grind or break off the points of these natural fenders there was a strong probability that the moving ice-sheet would draw nearer to the starboard side of the ship and, not unlike the jaws of a nut-cracker, squeeze her against the sheet in which she was frozen on the port side, particularly as the wind was attaining a velocity of forty-five miles an hour.
Everything indicated, therefore, that the timewas near at hand when we should have to leave the ship. We must have things ready. I gave orders to get the snow off the deck and the skylights and the outer walls of the cabin, to lighten her. Some of the men were sent over to the box-house to remove the few dogs that were still tethered there and set them free on the ice, and to get the house ready in case we had to move in to it. They cleaned it up, put fresh boards on the floor and laid a fire in the stove, ready for lighting.
The men worked with good spirit and seemed unperturbed. I sent them about their daily tasks, as usual, so far as possible, and the preparation of the box-house was in the nature of an emergency drill. For if the points of the ice should continue unbroken the ship would still be saved; we had seen plenty of cracks before in our drift that had remained open some time and then closed up again, though of course no previous break had come so near the ship. It was hard to see what was going on around us for the sky was overcast and the darkness was the kind which, as the time-honored phrase goes, you could cut with a knife, while the stinging snowdrift, whirling and eddying through the air, under the impetus of the screaming gale, added to the uncertainty as to what was about to happen from moment to moment.
At about half past seven in the evening Ichanced to be standing near the engine-room door. The lamps were lighted. The labors of the day were over and now, after dinner, the men were playing cards or reading or sewing, as usual. All at once I heard a splitting, crashing sound below. I went down into the engine-room and found the chief engineer there. We could hear water rushing into the hold and by lantern-light could see it pouring in at different places for a distance of ten feet along the port side. As I had feared, the ice astern had broken or worn off and the sheet moving along the starboard side had swung in against the ship, heeling her over three or four feet to port; a point of ice on the port side had pierced the planking and timbers of the engine-room for ten feet or more, ripping off all the pump fixtures and putting the pump out of commission. It was obvious that it would be useless to attempt to rig a temporary pump; the break was beyond repair.
I went on deck again and gave the order, “All hands abandon ship.” We had all the fires except that in the galley extinguished at once and all the lamps, using hurricane lanterns to see our way around. There was no confusion. The men worked with a will, putting the emergency supplies overboard on the ice, some ten thousand pounds of pemmican, furs, clothing, rifles and cartridges. The Eskimo woman, with her children, I sent to thebox-house to start the fire in the stove and keep the place warm. The steward was kept in the galley so that the men could have coffee and hot food.
By 10.45P. M.there was eleven feet of water in the engine-room. At this stage the pressure of the ice on both sides kept the ship from going down. We were less than an hour getting the supplies off the ship on to the ice; we could have saved everything on board but no attempt was made to save luxuries or souvenirs or personal belongings above the essentials, for it did not seem advisable to burden the sledges on our prospective journey over the ice with loads of material that would have to occupy space needed for indispensables.
When I was satisfied with the amount of supplies on the ice I started the men sledging the stuff over to the big floe. Here, as I have said, in addition to the box-house, we had a large snow igloo which had been completed some time before. It had been smashed in by the wind, but the men now repaired it and made it ready for occupancy. They did a good job with their evening’s work and I told them so, and said that they could turn in at the box-house and igloo and go to sleep whenever they got their sledging done. At half-past two in the morning they were ready and turned in; to the box-house were assigned McKinlay, Mamen, Beuchat,Murray, Dr. Mackay, Williams, King, Chafe, Kataktovick and Kerdrillo and his family, and to the snow igloo Munro, Williamson, Breddy, Hadley, Templeman, Maurer, Brady, Anderson, Barker, Malloch and myself.
After every one else had left the ship I remained on board to await the end. For a time the chief engineer and Hadley stayed with me. There was a big fire in the galley and we moved the Victrola in there to while away the time. After the first sharp crash and the closing in of the ice the pressure was not heavy and all through the morning of the eleventh and well into the afternoon, the ship remained in about the same position as when she was first struck. No more water was coming in; the ice was holding her up. I would play a few records—we had a hundred and fifty or so altogether—and then I would go outside and walk around the deck, watching for any change in the ship’s position. It cleared off towards noon and there was a little twilight but the snow was still blowing. As I played the records I threw them into the stove. At last I found Chopin’sFuneral March, played it over and laid it aside. I ate when I was hungry and had plenty of coffee and tea. My companions had gone over to the floe and turned in early in the morning. It was quite comfortable in the galley, for I could keep the firegoing with coal from the galley locker. At times I would take a look into the engine-room, being careful not to get too far from an exit; the water was nearly up to the deck.
At 3.15P. M.the ice opened and the ship began to get lower in the water. Then the ice closed up again for a while and supported her by the bowsprit and both quarters. About half past three she began to settle in earnest and as the minutes went by the decks were nearly a-wash. Putting Chopin’sFuneral Marchon the Victrola, I started the machine and when the water came running along the deck and poured down the hatches, I stood up on the rail and as she took a header with the rail level with the ice I stepped off. It was at 4P. M.on January 11, 1914, with the blue Canadian Government ensign at her main-topmast-head, blowing out straight and cutting the water as it disappeared, and the Victrola in the galley sending out the strains of Chopin’sFuneral March, that theKarluksank, going down by the head in thirty-eight fathoms of water. As she took the final plunge, I bared my head and said, “Adios, Karluk!” It was light enough to see and the rest of the party came out of the camp to watch the end. As she went down the yards lodged on the ice and broke off; in such a narrow lane of water did she disappear.It is always a tragic moment when a ship sinks, the ship that has been your home for months; it is not unlike losing some good and faithful friend. Twice before I had been shipwrecked, on both occasions on the southern coast of Newfoundland, so the sensation was not altogether new to me, but it was none the less poignant. Yet I could feel no despair in our present situation, for we had comfortable quarters on a floe which was practically indestructible and plenty of food and fuel, so that with patience, perseverance, courage and good fortune we should be able to win our way back to safety in due time.