Читать книгу New lands within the Arctic circle - Julius Payer - Страница 10

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1. Every Arctic expedition should be guided by the experience of its predecessors, both in its plan and its equipment; and hence we have often to deplore the negligence of almost all Polar navigators in failing to inform those who follow them of what they actually saw, of their modes of procedure, or of the mistakes which they committed. It will not, therefore, be labour thrown away, if we state our own experience and record our own observations for the guidance of others, in order to show, with the utmost possible clearness, what future explorers have before them, and how best to meet it.

2. Undivided command in an expedition is the first of all rules; but if there be any division of command in a subordinate expedition by sea or land, the duties and rights of its commander must be clearly and exactly defined. In recent times the command of a Polar expedition has sometimes been conferred not on a seaman, but on a man of science, as in the cases of Kane, Hayes, Nordenskjöld, and Torell. Where the investigation of questions connected with Natural History is the aim and object, this precedent is admissible, but it should never be observed where the commander has an important part to fulfil as a navigator. The command of an expedition has never been conferred on a man of science by the English government. In the very commencement, indeed, of Polar discovery, an English expedition was placed under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby, who was not bred a sailor, but down to the seventeenth century, even in their naval campaigns, such men were appointed to naval commands. The Dutch expeditions of the sixteenth century generally adopted a destructive division of command, under supercargoes and pilots, representing the mercantile and nautical elements: confusion and discord were the inevitable consequences.

3. Next to the selection of a commander, the selection of the crew demands the greatest care. This ought to be made some time before the expedition starts, in order that those unfit for the service may be discovered, and their places supplied by others; this cautious mode of procedure, and not a preference for any particular nationality, will secure the most effective crew. Although seamanlike qualities do not belong in the same degree to every nation, time and pains only are needed to secure a picked crew for a North-Pole expedition from almost any nation. Endurance of cold is not the only test of effectiveness, although this is a very common assumption; but a sense of duty, perseverance, and resolution are the virtues of a seaman. Habit soon teaches men to conquer cold, and inexorable necessity often hardens weaklings into heroes for Arctic discovery. A certain degree of intelligence is of high importance in the crew. In many cases resolution in the midst of dangers depends on their capacity to observe and think, even on their possessing certain branches of knowledge. The greater part of the crew of the Tegetthoff had these advantages. But men who, in a heavily-laded sledge, leave the old and take to recently-formed ice, without noticing the difference—who observe a frost-bitten foot several hours after the mischief has been done—who lose their cartridges, know nothing of their rifle, and little more of their compass, or who pass on without observing the configurations of the land, possess an indifference indeed, but of a kind very dangerous to themselves and to the whole party, though they may despise death as much as Achilles is said to have done.

4. An intelligent crew, from their greater feeling of independence, is, however, more difficult to command than an ignorant one. Devotion and blind confidence are more rarely found in an educated crew; their amenability to discipline is dependent on the good example, the kindness and unalterable calmness of those who may command them. The law of a Polar expedition is obedience, and its basis morality. Punishments are in such situations a miserable and depressing means for the preservation of order, and then employment, especially in a private undertaking, will tend rather to loosen than to maintain the bonds of discipline. If Parry, in 1820, caused corporal punishments to be inflicted, this proves the greater facility with which discipline is maintained on board of a man-of-war, but not its appropriateness generally. Coercion and threats produce no effect; and hence the folly of attempting to secure success by sending out again those who returned without having achieved anything, which was done last century by the authorities of St. Petersburg with every unsuccessful enterprise on the Arctic coasts of Siberia. The regulation that the most meritorious among the crew shall be specially rewarded, after the return of the expedition, provides for the recognition of merit, without exciting ill feeling in the less worthy. For the officers scientific success may be a perfect reward of their toils, but for the crew the reward should consist of more material advantages. Money, indeed, seems a feeble motive of action to men destined to withstand for years the inclemency of Arctic winters, and uncertain whether they shall ever return; but, notwithstanding, it is the only form by which men without sympathy for the aims of science can be gained for the attainment of such objects. The crews of Sir John Ross received for a martyrdom of four years passed in the ice about £100 a head; in the second German expedition from eight to twelve thalers were the monthly pay of each sailor. The pay of the sledgers in the Tegetthoff was, however, nearly four times as much; in some sledge journeys it amounted to 3,000 gulden a man.

5. Contrary to what might be expected, the re-employment of those who have served before is not to be recommended as a rule. The very best only should be re-enlisted. The others are too much disposed to place their experience on a level with that of their commanders; and in all cases, where their opinions differ from those of their officers, they damage by a kind of passive opposition the fundamental law of an expedition—obedience. Those who enter the Arctic regions for the first time are wont to receive the orders of an experienced commander with an attention as unquestioning as it is respectful. Married men also should be excluded, as they were by Barentz in his second (1596) expedition.

6. Some of the crew should be good shots, good pedestrians and mountaineers, but all must be of the same nationality, and in perfect health. The least symptom of rheumatism, of diseases of the lungs and the eyes, and of certain chronic maladies only too common among seamen, unfit them for the endurance of the Polar climate, and especially for sledge expeditions. Those who are addicted to drink are peculiarly liable to the scurvy.

7. The medical man of an expedition, besides professional skill and experience, must possess the most imperturbable patience, for to many of his patients he is not less a physician of the mind than of the body. He should convince himself of the sanitary condition of the crew before the expedition starts, although it may have been previously investigated by medical authorities and declared satisfactory.

8. Since an expedition, in addition to its scientific functions, should take up the illustration of Nature at the Pole, the employment of a photographer, but still better of an artist, is very desirable, for the former is too much confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the ship in his operations.

9. The records of Arctic adventure in former days tell us of equipments strangely incompatible with the object pursued. Their commercial purpose constrained them to fill the hold with bales of silk, instead of provisions for years; but the letters of recommendation which were given to the explorers of the North-East passage for the Saracen princes on the route to Chatai seem peculiarly ludicrous. Some justification may be discovered for Owczyn taking a priest with him on his Siberian expedition (1734), but hardly for his wanting fifty-seven men in a vessel only seventy feet long, and arming it with eight falconets. The employment of a drummer, twelve privates and a corporal, on Gmelin’s scientific Siberian expedition, is still more unintelligible; more so than Davis’s band of music, which was intended to charm the feelings of the Eskimos and dispose them to peaceful proceedings, his predecessor Frobisher having had the saddest experience of their barbarism. Other expeditions by the too plentiful distribution of knives and hatchets among the Eskimos placed them in a position seriously to threaten the white man, and even at the present day the so-called “Wilden-kiste” often contains articles little calculated to inspire the natives with a high opinion of our moral superiority.

10. In fitting out a Polar expedition, all respect should be paid to the principle of bestowing on those who are for a time banished, the greatest possible amount of comfort. The proportions of a ship, and the space at its disposal, narrow the limits available for this end; and since the return to the employment, as at the first, of small vessels, even these limits have been considerably diminished.

11. The following table shows that the employment of small vessels was the principle at first followed, although the English undertakings even of this present century never thoroughly adopted the example of a Fotherby, a Baffin, and a Ross:—

The Expeditions of	Tonnage of the Ships.	Provisioned for	Crew.
	A.D.
Willoughby	1553	120	90	160		18 months
Frobisher	1576	25	25	10
”	1577	180	30	30		Mostly for one year only.
Pett Jackman	1580	40	20			15
Davis	1585	50	35			42
”	2nd expedn.	10	50	53	120
Weymouth	1604	70	60
Knight	1606	40
Hudson	1607					10
”	1608					15
James Poole	1609	70				15
Hudson	1610	55
Smith	1610	50
James Poole	1611	50
Fotherby	1615	20
Baffin	1616	58
Fox	1631	80				18 months	20
James	1631	70				18 ”
Wood	1676					16 ”	19
Moor	1746	180	140
Ross	1818	385	252
Parry	1819	375	180			2½ years
Lütke	1821	200					45
Hayes	1860	133				1½ ”	15
Koldewey	1869	180	200			2 ”	29

12. The inspection of this table shows that it was the practice of the sixteenth century to send out fleets of ships of a very small size, that in the seventeenth one small ship was commissioned, and that the employment of two vessels has been the rule since; and this would have been still more evident, if the various Franklin expeditions had been included in the above table. In 1829 Sir John Ross started with a ship drawing eighteen feet, but changed afterwards to one drawing eight feet; and from eight to twelve feet is now the recognised draught in Polar ships. Large vessels require a numerous crew, and if they have not been built exclusively for the purpose of Polar exploration, their small economy of space prevents their being fitted out for more than two years and a half. In 1819 Parry’s ship, the large Fury, had, with a draught of eighteen feet, provisions for only two and a half years, whereas the Victory (1829) of Ross with only seven feet draught had on board, besides stores for the same period, a steam-engine and coals for a thousand hours’ steaming. The Russian Novaya Zemlya navigators of this century have adopted vessels of a size which must be destructive of all comfort and convenience. These vessels are thirty or forty feet long, with a draught of five or six feet, and a crew of nine or ten men. But Arctic ships must have a crew above the ordinary strength and be provided with steam-power; so that, allowing for the necessary space for the quarters of the crew, for the engines and the coalbunkers, little room will be left for the stowage of stores. But this little should be reserved for well-chosen provisions stowed away so as to avoid all empty spaces, and secure the greatest amount of resistance to lateral pressure. The weakest parts of a ship are always the spaces left for air in the quarters of the men. A crew, which is exposed to threatening dangers from the ice, will never regret the strengthening of these void spaces by heavy horizontal tie-beams, removable when the ship is in the winter harbour, and so adjusted as not to impede communication. The mere suspension of heavy beams against the hull of a ship does not always answer the purpose of protection, since the pressure of the ice frequently drives away these protecting timbers. The practice, however, is not absolutely to be rejected.

13. The daily allowance of solid food for the effectives in an Arctic expedition amounts to about two pounds, and in sledge expeditions to 2¾ pounds, of which half a pound is bread and one pound preserved meat. Besides the usual provisions, large supplies of preserved vegetables, of cocoa, of extract of meat, of rice, of preserved peas, of dried farinaceous food (such as macaroni), are very desirable. Salted meat is to be avoided as much as possible. The luxury of fresh bread twice a week instead of the hard ship’s biscuit is an essential means of promoting health, and the want of yeast for its preparation may be supplied by “baking powder.” Once a day a ration of lemon-juice should be served out as a preservative against scurvy, and anti-scorbutic victuals should be laid in abundantly. Plenty of tea and tobacco is indispensable; the want of these is painfully felt, especially by the sailors. Cases have actually occurred, where crews have ground the wooden blocks of the rigging to powder, to serve as tea, and have used the hoops of casks for tobacco.

14. The moderate enjoyment of spirituous liquors is much to be recommended, as their influence on health and sociality is of great importance. The preservation, however, of a sufficient stock of wine, especially in winter, is a matter of much difficulty, since most kinds freeze at 21° F. or 14° F. As long as the ship is afloat, as it generally is when winters are passed in the ice, it is advisable to preserve the supply of wine at the bottom of the hold, and to place all other things most liable to be frozen in layers above it. But if a ship be nearly or entirely out of water, it is advisable to keep the wine, and other indispensable liquids, in the empty spaces of the cabin, under the cabin table, near the stove, below the berths, and under the sky-light after it has been closed for the winter. Only absolute want of space justifies the preparation of chemical wine,[13] since the volume of its constituent parts without water is only a fifth of real wine; and under all circumstances chemical wine is but a miserable shift, and the beer (even the spruce beer of Sir John Ross) which the English used to manufacture on board ship from the essence of malt and hops is far preferable. The rum and cognac, especially for sledge expeditions, in order to save weight should contain the greatest possible amount of alcohol, for its dilution before use is a matter of no difficulty.

15. During the winter, residence in the ship itself is preferable to living in log-houses, because the ship can be more easily heated and suffers less from the accumulation of ice. But since a ship in the Arctic Sea ceases for ten months of the year to be a ship and becomes in fact a house, this should be kept in view when she is being fitted out.

16. The place where the men live is always in the fore-part of the ship, but their berths should be changed in a certain rotation, because of the inequality of the condensation. It is not advisable to place the kitchen in the quarters of the crew in order to diminish the consumption of coals, because an accumulation of moisture is thereby increased. The officers and savans occupy a common messroom in the after-part of the ship, and sleep in little cabins ranged round it. The power to withdraw occasionally from the presence of those who must be together for years is an important element of harmony. Sir John Ross and his officers in 1833, even in the miserable hut built on the Fury coast, did not occupy the common messroom heated by a stove, but preferred separate cabins, the temperature of which seldom rose above the freezing point, and in which they had to suffer much from the accumulation of ice. All the living rooms should be provided with waterproof carpets. Their heating by means of the common stoves is objectionable, because of the unequal distribution of warmth. An even temperature is best maintained by the use of the Meidinger “Fullofen,” which has the further advantage of consuming only a small quantity of coals. Hot-air flues are, perhaps, preferable even to these, because they better prevent the freezing of the moisture in the cabins, and indeed in every part of the ship.

17. An Arctic ship should be provided with an iron-plated washing and drying closet, without which the washing of linen would be restricted to the few weeks of summer weather. This closet may also be used as a bath-room, an important means of promoting health. The lighting of the living rooms by petroleum sufficiently answers all purposes; in the cabins, however, stearine candles are to be preferred either to it or any other oil. The construction of the lamps used in making observations in the open air during the long Arctic darkness is a matter of the greatest importance. Those used in the second German North-Pole Expedition were of peculiar excellence, and never failed in their difficult service. Massive lamps, with glass globes protected with wire, and burning petroleum in preference to common oil, should be used on deck, and as they are employed for so many purposes and exposed to so many risks, a plentiful supply of them should be provided. In the huts on the deck, built over the hatchways, train-oil may be used with advantage, if the lamps are so constructed that the flame may heat the reservoir containing the oil.

18. So long as the crew remains on board the ship, their clothing, even in the severest winter, needs but little attention. Thick close-fitting woollen under-garments, knitted woollen gloves, outer-garments of strong cloth, are in all cases sufficient on deck, and in all those parts of the ship which are kept at a certain temperature. Leather boots lined with fur were long considered an indispensable requisite for Polar expeditions, but they have not maintained their character, as they are very heavy, become unpliable in frost, and soon quite useless through its action and the wearing off of the fur.

19. Before the departure of the expedition, all the instruments should be thoroughly cleansed from oil by a practical optician, and the fire-arms should undergo a like operation at the hands of the gunmaker, and their barrels should be browned to protect them better from rust. The ammunition, powder and matches to blast the ice, alcohol and petroleum, should be stowed in the after-part of the ship, and the two latter should be reached only through a closely-fitting pump. A very ample supply of alcohol, flannel, buffalo-skins, strong cloth, water-proof canvas, felt, leather, reindeer shoes, snow boots, shovels, cramp irons, poles, &c., articles which are too often overlooked, should be taken, both from their usefulness on board ship and also on land expeditions.

20. The costs of Polar expeditions have relatively rather diminished than increased. The expenses of Willoughby’s expedition 300 years ago amounted to the sum—quite enormous for that day—of £6,000; Moor’s (1746) cost £10,000; while Back’s difficult but successful undertaking to explore the great Fish-river (1833–1835), only £5,000. The Siberian expedition of Middendorf (1844)—costing only 13,300 rubles (£1,717)—was a matchless example of extraordinary achievements with little expenditure. The costs of the various Franklin Expeditions from 1848 to 1854 amounted, according to the statement of the English Admiralty, to twenty million francs (£833,333); those of the second German North-Pole Expedition to 120,000 thalers (£11,000), and the expenses of our own Austrian-Hungarian North Pole Expedition to 220,000 gulden (£18,333).