Chapter II: The Northern Quest

The desire to find both the North-East and the North-West Passages has at various times and in all sorts of ships attracted the sailors of Northern Europe towards the Arctic Seas, but with long lulls. Thus, after the times of Hudson and Fotherby there ensued an interval until the zeal for Polar discovery was kindled in the reign of George III. Papers were read before the Royal Society, and eventually two vessels of the Royal Navy, _Racehorse_ and _Carcass_, were despatched, the young Horatio Nelson serving in the latter. Hitherto all these northern expeditions had been fitted out by merchants with a desire to find either a passage and trade route for their goods, or areas suitable for capturing whales. But this Georgian enterprise was the first effort which had the pursuit of science as its sole object. Starting out in 1773, it was away only from May to September, but the resultant information was hardly such as to enthuse the desire for discovery, and those northern regions again fell into oblivion until there came into notice a man named Scoresby.

William Scoresby was born in 1789 at Whitby, that historic port which at one time harboured a fleet of whalers, and also those famous Geordie brigs which used to fetch the coal from Newcastle to London. Cook, the great explorer, was apprenticed to one of these Whitby colliers over forty years before Scoresby saw the light, and from this Yorkshire haven some of the finest English sailors set forth in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Now Scoresby’s career is a most interesting one, for he was a product of a severe school of seamanship; he was made to rough it on board from an early age, he became one of the greatest whaling captains in history, a distinguished explorer, and was given that unique distinction of being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, publishing some valuable matter dealing with the practical side of whaling and the scientific study of the Arctic regions.

He was only eleven when he made his first Greenland voyage, he was but seventeen when he made the nearest approach to the North Pole that had ever been fully authenticated, being at that time mate of his father’s Greenland whaler. It was the information which Scoresby and others of this industry accumulated that provided the necessary data for the great explorers of the nineteenth century: we can never be too grateful to those pioneer whalers who risked their lives and ships among the ice in uncharted seas. Sailing, towing, boring, warping, they opened up a track with the object of pursuing the whale: but each voyage brought back more and more intelligence concerning winds and tides and ice-barriers. Scoresby used to land at Spitzbergen and elsewhere, climbing summits, making observations, studying the bird life and doing many things quite outside the sphere of mere whaling. After he became of age he continued to make these Greenland voyages annually, but the most important of his discoveries were made in the year 1822 when he sailed in the 321-ton ship _Baffin_, with a crew of fifty. He left Liverpool on March 27th bent on whaling, but never an opportunity was missed of adding to scientific knowledge, and after passing the eightieth degree a month later, he reached the main northern ice. The first whale was caught on May 6th, but soon his ship became involved in the floating ice and only with difficulty was she extricated.

Now these waters had been fished for many generations and were therefore becoming unproductive, so the only satisfactory results were to be obtained on the eastern shores of Greenland. Along here Scoresby penetrated to parts that had never been explored, and after naming these bays and forelands and peninsulas, he went further east in search of his whales. It was during one of these attempts that a harpooner had just got his weapon into the whale when the latter started off with such speed that the line was jerked out of its lead and the boat nearly swamped. The harpooner, a real expert, tried to catch hold of the line and replace it in its proper position, when he got caught by a sudden turn, dragged overboard and drowned.

Several more whales were taken, and after further exploration, being surrounded by icebergs, Scoresby altered course, and on August 15th had the good luck to sight and strike five whales, of which three were taken. This completed his cargo and the _Baffin_ returned home after a voyage that was successful both financially and scientifically. And to that knowledge which Scoresby brought home, other venturers added in subsequent years. But Scoresby was just one of a long line of seamen who had been attracted by the magnetic north. The opening up of the waters in these high latitudes, even if there was neither a north-east nor a north-west passage for the English merchants’ goods, set going a new industry whose profits had not even been suspected. It had been really a lucky find whilst searching for a route to India north-about. The news spread, and thus there had come English, Dutch, French and Spanish ships by the early seventeenth century, with the inevitable jealousies too. Each nationality tried to elbow the others out of these valuable waters, and occasionally there was an actual encounter. It would be difficult to support the claim of the seventeenth-century English whalers as “lords of the northern seas,” and we can well understand how much foreign nations resented this exclusive claim.

The Dutch Whaling Company even sent out seven stout, well-armed ships, and in 1618 there came a crisis when an English whaler was captured and sailed off to Amsterdam. However, the Dutch Government deemed it prudent to restore this vessel, her cargo and crew: but those who had made the capture were also rewarded. And finally, since there was room for all, since there were just as big whales in those northern seas as ever came out, it was decided to divide up the areas in the neighbourhood of Spitzbergen among the various national whaling fleets, in order that the industry might flourish peaceably. The Dutch especially found in this activity a great source of wealth, and it is largely due to their diligence and resource that whaling progressed. Some of their methods and actual words (for example “flensing”) are in use to this day. This applies especially to the operations employed in getting the oil from the whale after capture.

English and Scottish fishermen of all kinds have, especially since the sixteenth century, learnt much of their art from the Dutch: even their very vessels for years were unquestionably influenced by the fishermen the other side of the North Sea. Let us, then, not forget the debt we owe to Holland in regard to our present subject. The difficulty was as follows. Having arrived in Spitzbergen waters, those ships were of such small tonnage that after harpooning two or three big whales, the vessel was full up. Therefore the Dutch evolved the practice of extracting the oil and bones, in fact concentrating all the valuable products into such a space that not three but numerous whales could be used. It was for this purpose that they installed ashore boilers and tanks, coolers and all necessary apparatus of a factory. The whales had only to be killed, brought ashore, and then the produce was compressed out of them.

Here the dead mammals were “flensed,” that is to say, cleared of blubber and bone. Here, in these isolated latitudes, collected during the summer months quite a village population from Holland. Here were furnaces and stores and everyone hard at work, and the bay full of whaling ships. Such, indeed, was the activity that in 1697 there were no fewer than one hundred and eighty-eight of these vessels, having on board the extracts of nearly two thousand whales. But as has happened over and over again in the history of whaling, all this excessive fishing had the result of frightening the mammals so that the latter forsook the neighbourhood and migrated from Spitzbergen to near that great bank of ice in the Greenland Sea. It was this which caused Spitzbergen to lose its flourishing existence. To bring the captured whales two thousand miles across such an ocean was impracticable: so, as the whale would not come to the furnaces, the furnaces had to be brought across to Greenland together with all the rest of the plant. Thus, as we have seen in Scoresby’s voyaging, the vessels had to skirt the frozen icefields--and even anchor to this barrier--in order to capture the elusive mammoth of the sea.

So it was that by the end of the seventeenth century Spitzbergen, which had been discovered by Barentsz only a hundred years previously, had become practically denuded of whales. But in addition to the other nations mentioned, the Russians also showed an interest in this means of wealth. It was in the year 1743 that, in spite of this diminished condition which had been reached, a vessel was sent out from Archangel whaling to Spitzbergen with a crew of fourteen hands, and had got within a couple of miles of the eastern side when suddenly their ship became surrounded by ice. The position became critical, and then four of them resolved to make for the shore leaping from one ice floe to the other. On land they found a ruined hut that had once been used by former whalers, and next day they were about to inform their shipmates when to their horror it was seen that the ship had disappeared. A heavy gale had dispersed ship and ice floes. Nor was she ever seen again.

Now these four men, left to their own resources, lived on that island for the next six years and three months. They had neither clock nor watch, nor navigational instrument, but they made a cross-staff and were able to take an altitude of the sun when it was visible. They succeeded in keeping such good reckoning of time that after all those months they were not more than four days out. On that craggy island, where there was not so much as a tiny tree, nor a blade of grass, three of the four men lived and survived. They had a gun and shot wild deer until their ammunition gave out. They then made themselves pikes out of some pieces of iron which they found, and thus killed an aggressive Polar bear whose flesh fed them, whose skin clothed them, from whose entrails the string was made to complete a bow which had been fashioned from a bit of wreckage that came ashore. Thus armed, they were able to fill their pantry with reindeer meat. One of the men did not die till the end of six years, and the three survivors then became despondent and wondered how long it would be before they would be eaten up by the bears.

But then a marvellous thing happened on August 15, 1749; for to their utter amazement a ship was seen to seaward. These three men now set to work, lighted fires on the hills, hoisted a flag-staff with a reindeer’s skin as flag, and thus attracted the ship, which came to anchor. Now the arrival of this vessel was miraculous, for she had encountered head winds, been unable to make her destination, and therefore altered course to East Spitzbergen just opposite to where these men happened to be. Then, after placing on board her reindeer fat, hides, fox skins, their bow, arrows, spears and lances made with their own hands, they were brought back to Archangel after having been long since given up for lost.

It so happened, when this vessel came in, that the wife of one of these three survivors was standing by the water. Suddenly she recognized her long-bewailed spouse, and unable to wait till the ship was secured to the pier, the woman threw herself forward to embrace him, fell into the water, and was saved only with difficulty.

Who was the very first ever to catch a whale in northern waters it would be impossible to say. The Vikings, who colonized Greenland and afterwards withdrew, certainly hunted these mammals. In the early part of the eighteenth century the Esquimaux used to go whaling in their canoes, whose frames were made of wood or whalebone, covered over with the skin of seals except for a hole large enough to receive the steersman. Thus decked, these little craft used to go out with primitive harpoons pointed with teeth of walrus. To the barb was attached a thong, at the extremity of which was a bladder which served as a buoy. All that the hunter had to do was to get up to the whale, hurl this simple harpoon into him and then leave the whale to tear about in his agony till he bled to death. The bladder-buoy indicated his position, and the creature was then towed ashore to be stripped, and thus there were food and light for another long winter’s season.