Читать книгу True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World - A. W. Greely - Страница 10

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"Huddled on deck, one-half that hardy crew

Lie shrunk and withered in the biting sky,

With filmy stare and lips of livid hue,

And sapless limbs that stiffen as they lie;

While the dire pest-scourge of the frozen zone

Rots through the vein and gnaws the knotted bone."

—Bulwer.

For more than three centuries England made frequent and fruitless attempts by sea and by land to discover the northwest passage, and in 1818 the British Parliament offered a reward of twenty thousand pounds sterling for its passage by explorers. Although it is now known that the ill-fated expedition under Sir John Franklin first discovered the passage in 1846–7, the first persons to make the journey over a new and more northerly route, between 1849 and 1853, were the crew of her Majesty's ship Investigator, commanded by Captain Robert Le Mesurier M'Clure, R.N.

It is a curious and notable fact that the making of the passage was, as one may say, a matter of luck or of accident. There occurred in connection with this journey a series of adventures that had marvellous results, not only in the saving of the lives of the crew of the Investigator, but also in raising them to the pinnacle of fame and some of them to a state of fortune. M'Clure's ship was not sent forth on a voyage of geographic exploration, but on a mission of mercy for the discovery and relief of the Franklin arctic squadron which had been missing since 1845. The Pacific searching squadron for this purpose, commanded by Captain Robert Collinson, R.N., consisted of the two ships Enterprise and Investigator, which parted company in Magellan Strait under orders to meet at Cape Lisburne, Bering Strait. Captain M'Clure arrived first, and after a very brief delay pushed on without waiting for his commander. The two ships never met again.

Discovering Banks Land, which the Eskimo called "The Land of the White Bear," M'Clure followed Prince of Wales Strait to its northern entrance, where he anchored his ship to a floe and wintered in the open pack in default of a harbor. Retracing his course to the south the following summer, he circumnavigated Banks Land under marvellous ice conditions of great danger, escaping as by miracle, the Investigator being so near the sheer, precipitous crags of the west coast that her yards could touch the cliffs, while to the seaward she was cradled in crashing, uprearing floes which close to her bows were higher than the foreyard. After reaching Banks Strait the ship grounded one night and M'Clure unfortunately decided to winter there, in Mercy Bay, where she was frozen in and abandoned two years later.

This sketch sets forth the desperate extremities to which M'Clure and his crew were reduced, and describes the timely heroism of Lieutenant Bedford Pim R.N., in making the sledge journey which wrought such marvellous changes in the fate and fortunes of the ice-imprisoned men.