The Impossible Rescue Read online

  The second man chosen for the expedition was the Bear’s surgeon, Dr. Samuel Call. Like Jarvis, Call was also a veteran of the Arctic. His first experiences there had come when he was only twenty-two, when he had served as a doctor at an Alaskan trading post, a position that often required him to make long trips between villages in challenging weather conditions. During an earlier Revenue Cutter Service assignment, Call had accompanied Dr. Sheldon Jackson, the man most responsible for introducing reindeer into Alaska, when Jackson had brought the very first deer herd out of Siberia.

  Dr. Samuel Call (shown posing between two other Revenue Cutter Service members) served as more than the Overland Relief Expedition’s physician. He was also the rescue party’s self-appointed cook and took many photographs of the mission once it got under way.

  Given his acknowledged medical skills, Samuel Call could have pursued a much more lucrative career in far more comfortable surroundings. But from the time he had become a doctor, he had chosen to bring comfort and aid to people living in the most remote and challenging environment imaginable and where adequate medical attention was rarely found. As he had discovered, such service brought its own special kind of reward.

  Call’s selection for the expedition was especially important, since there were bound to be injuries and other medical problems that needed to be attended to during the long, hazardous overland journey. There was no question also that if the rescue party was somehow able to reach the stranded whalers, many of them would be in need of medical attention.

  Although none of his fellow officers aboard the Bear was aware of it, Call had another reason for participating in the mission. At a time when photography was still less than fifty years old, he had developed a passion for taking pictures. He could compile a visual record of what was bound to be a unique, though certainly harrowing, adventure.

  The third member of the Overland Relief Expedition was a newcomer to the Bear. Second Lieutenant Ellsworth Bertholf had his own special reason for eagerly anticipating what lay ahead. He was looking for redemption. Unlike Jarvis or Call, whose careers had already been marked by accomplishment, Bertholf had been in and out of trouble. He had inherited both a yearning for adventure and a love of the military from his father, who at age eighteen had run away from home to seek gold in California and had then seen spirited action in the Civil War. Bertholf’s greatest love, however, was the sea. He had grown up near the Hackensack River in New Jersey and had spent much time gazing in wonderment at its waters. Later his biographer, C. Douglas Kroll, would write, “as a boy . . . he found the broad Hackensack River an expanse of unlimited wonders, and knowing that it flowed down to . . . the sea, he loved it because it typified his own young ambitions — to finally reach the ocean.” Bertholf himself would later write that “the spirit which first takes a boy to sea, follows him straight through life.”

  He was ambitious, and he was highly intelligent. When he was only sixteen, he was admitted to the United States Naval Academy. His career as a naval officer seemed assured. But Bertholf was also highly undisciplined and had problems dealing with authority. And he loved to play pranks. At the Academy he found himself near the top of his class — both in his marks and in the demerits he received, particularly for having stood at an upper-story window where he had dumped water on people passing below. Then he got into more serious trouble. During a cruise aboard the Academy’s training vessel, he and two others were found guilty of having “hazed” younger cadets by forcing them to stand on their heads for a period of time. Bertholf and his fellow pranksters were dismissed from the Academy.

  In what he would regard as the low point of his life, Bertholf returned home in disgrace. But he had learned his lesson. Determined to put his wayward behavior behind him, he applied to and was accepted by the Revenue Cutter Service officers’ training school. And this time he took advantage of his opportunity, finishing at the top of his class in both marks and behavior.

  Bertholf was thrilled to have been assigned to the Bear, the ship that had become legendary for its adventures patrolling Arctic waters. And now, in being chosen to take part in the rescue effort, he was given the chance of a lifetime, the chance to become what he always really wanted to be — a true hero.

  Left to right: Second Lieutenant Ellsworth Bertholf, Dr. Samuel Call, First Lieutenant David Jarvis. Despite their very different personalities, the three men were well matched to attempt a mission upon which the lives of some three hundred men depended.

  There was another man aboard the Bear selected to take part as well. He was a Russian known only as Koltchoff. He was not expected to trek all the way to Point Barrow. But because of his reputation as an excellent handler of the type of native dogs that would be used to pull the expedition’s sleds, Tuttle felt he would be helpful to the others during the early stages of their journey.

  If the mission was to have any chance of success at all, it had to leave as quickly as possible. Beginning on November 11, 1897, the Bear was loaded with supplies and with dogs and sleds for overland travel. Lieutenant Bertholf best described this Herculean effort: “It is extremely doubtful,” he would write, “if ever an expedition was fitted out for an absence of a year in that part of the globe in such an incredibly short time — only eighteen days.”

  On November 27, 1897, the Bear set out on its perilous voyage. Given the challenges that he knew he would be facing, Captain Tuttle could only hope that the blinding snowstorm that greeted their departure was not an omen of far worse things to come. The ship’s officers and men hoped so, too. Less than a month ago, they had been looking forward to a well-deserved, lengthy rest after returning from what was always arduous Arctic duty. Now, after so short a time, they were on their way back to the icy waters. And this time even those who had made several voyages aboard the Bear hardly recognized their ship. Never before had it been filled with so many provisions. Even some of the coal bunkers were overflowing with the expedition’s supplies. The ordinarily open deck was crowded with barrels of salted meat. And then there were the dogs, constantly yapping and howling. Whenever the energetic, playful animals were let out of their cages for exercise, they seemed to be underfoot everywhere an officer or crew member turned.

  Ten days into the voyage, the Bear reached Dutch Harbor, in the Aleutian Islands, off the Alaskan mainland. There, while the ship took on coal, Jarvis was able to purchase additional sled dogs for the first leg of his overland journey.

  On December 7, 1897, the Bear left Dutch Harbor and made it as far as St. Lawrence Island before those aboard started to see significant drift ice. Captain Tuttle decided to turn around and head south again.

  After spending an amazingly short time preparing for so long and arduous a journey, the men of the Bear and the Overland Relief Expedition, complete with a number of sled dogs, set out on their mission. All were fully aware that because of the mounting ice, every moment lost meant landing the rescue party farther away from where the whalers were stranded.

  The temperature had begun dropping as soon as they neared the Aleutians, and soon after they left Dutch Harbor, small ice floes had begun to form. At this point, however, Tuttle was unconcerned. He was determined to bring Jarvis, Call, and Bertholf as far north as possible. And he had great confidence in his ship.

  Built in Scotland in 1874, the Bear was specially constructed to work in heavy ice. Its keel, ribs, and hull planking were constructed of six-inch-thick oak and fastened together by heavy iron. Heavy beams and braces crisscrossed the interior of the hull. Tuttle had no doubt that he was skippering as strong a vessel as any that had ever sailed or steamed in Arctic waters.

  Before its days were over, the Bear, the greatest ship in the Revenue Cutter Service fleet, would become legendary for its accomplishments in the frozen North.

  By December 13, the captain and his officers were beginning to believe that they would be able to find a safe landing spot relatively close to where both reindeer stations were located. “On the morning of the 13th we passed St. Lawr
ence Island,” Bertholf would later write, “and having seen little or no ice, we began to hope to be able to make a landing somewhere on the south side of the Cape Prince of Wales peninsula. In the afternoon, however, . . . considerable drift ice began to make its appearance.”

  Now Tuttle was concerned. “Knowing” he wrote, “that as soon as the wind died out the sea would go down and the [drift] ice would form into a solid mass which it would be impossible to get through, . . . I went . . . full speed [south].” It was a wise decision to turn around. As the Bear steamed past Cape Prince of Wales, all aboard were astounded to see that the ice between the ship and the cape had turned solid all the way to the beach. As a disappointed Bertholf would write, “At the time we were . . . close to the mainland, and it seemed too bad we could not land there, as it would save about seven hundred miles of travel on land. However, there was no help for it, and we headed for Cape Vancouver.”

  This cape was a good two hundred nautical miles to the south, and fortunately when the Bear approached it, there was open water all the way to the shore. A small village came into sight. Almost as soon as Tuttle dropped his anchor, Jarvis and his party rowed ashore to find out if he could land the expedition’s dogs, sleds, and supplies there. “The beach at that place, at the base of a range of mountains, was narrow and strewn with a great number of rocks and bowlders, and as the snow was quite deep and soft it would have been difficult to pack our outfit over this road to the village,” Jarvis wrote. “The shore was free from ice, however, and a . . . Russian trader, with several natives, having come from the village in their [kayaks] to meet us . . . [transported] the outfit to the village by water. This they did by lashing their [kayaks] together in pairs, like catamarans, and they were able to take the entire load in one trip, while we followed along the beach on foot, reaching the village just before dark.

  “The village [whose name we learned was Tununak] was formerly the site of a Catholic mission, but that had been abandoned, and at that time the population consisted of the [Russian] trader, Alexis Kalenin, his wife and family, together with some thirty natives. . . . Having reached the village, we were taken into Alexis’s house with that open-hearted hospitality which is universal among the natives of Alaska. The [kayaks] arriving a little later, the natives carried everything up to the store, when we discovered that some of [our] flour and hard bread had been wet by the sea and was unfit for use.”

  Alexis Kalenin’s house at Tununak. Built of sturdy logs, it would be one of the most substantial dwellings that Jarvis, Call, and Bertholf would encounter in their entire adventure.

  The Overland Relief Expedition had not planned to start its adventure at a place that none of them had ever heard of. But it was a most fortuitous development. Kalenin not only agreed to sell Jarvis more dogs and even three sleds that were much better than the ones Jarvis had brought with him but also offered to guide the rescue party on the first leg of its journey, the difficult trek across the Yukon Delta to the trading village of St. Michael.

  As for the Bear, even this far south, it was now being struck by solid chunks of ice. Having sent all of the expedition’s gear ashore, Tuttle knew that it was time to leave, time to put into a safe harbor to wait out the winter. But he could not help but fear for the men he had put ashore. He was not the only one filled with doubt. As the Bear departed, Bertholf stood on the beach, watching it fade into the distance. “We stood on the shore . . . ” Bertholf would write, “wondering whether we should ever see our friends again.”

  Members of the Overland Relief Expedition, fully aware of how much they would depend on their dogs and their sleds, prepare to leave Tununak on what they knew would be at least a 1,700-mile journey.

  Now safely onshore, Jarvis, Call, Bertholf, and Koltchoff set to preparing for the initial leg of their journey. First, they had to load provisions, shelter, and the most important equipment of all, the unique Alaskan sleds.

  “The Alaskan sleds,” Bertholf would write, “are built of wood as light as is consistent with strength, and lashed together with hide ropes, so that the whole frame-work will give readily and not be easily broken by the constant rough usage to which they are subjected. The sled is from nine to ten feet long, and eighteen or twenty inches wide, with the runners one foot deep, shod with walrus ivory or strips of bone fashioned out of jaw-bone of the whale. The rails or sides are about eighteen inches high, and at the rear end of the sled are handles coming up high enough for a man to push and guide it without bending very much. There is a cover made of light [material] which is spread in the bottom of the sled, and large enough so that after the articles have been packed on snugly it hauls up over the load and the ends overlap on top. The load is then lashed the whole length of the sled with hide thongs. By this arrangement [the] sled will stand considerable shaking . . . without spilling the load.”

  With space upon the sleds at a premium, each item packed aboard was carefully chosen, all with the awareness that many nights would be spent camped out in a wild, barren wilderness. “Our camp-gear,” Bertholf would write, “consisted of a wall-tent, stove and pipe, two frying-pans, two camp kettles, two tea-kettles, an axe, two rifles and one shot-gun, with ammunition, and in addition each man was provided with a knife, fork, spoon, tin plate, and cup. The tent was made of light cotton [material], ten feet long, eight feet wide, and seven feet high. . . . The stove was a simple sheet-iron box, twenty-two by fourteen inches, and twelve inches deep. The pipe was fitted in lengths which telescoped into each other, and were short enough to go inside the stove, so as to take up as little room as possible on the sled.

  “Our provisions consisted of tea, sugar, beans, bacon, pork, flour, and hard bread. The beans and pork had been cooked before starting, and only required to be warmed over at meals, and . . . were thus ready to be eaten in case we were obligated to camp where no wood was to be had. Our clothing was made principally of dog-skin, and besides not being warm, was bulky and heavy, and thus added greatly to the fatigue of travelling.”

  Before dawn on December 18, two days after stepping ashore, Jarvis led Bertholf, Call, Koltchoff, Kalenin, four sleds, and forty-one dogs out of Tununak toward the trading village of St. Michael.

  Before starting out, Kalenin had told Jarvis that the first part of the trek to St. Michael would be relatively quick and easy, since they would be able to travel over the normally smooth ice that lined the shore of Nelson Island. But the Russian was dead wrong. The same storm that had brought the floating ice that had forced the Bear to beat a hasty retreat had actually blown the ice around Nelson Island away. With the shore route now much too rocky to travel over, Kalenin was forced to guide the party inland.

  “The first day,” Bertholf would later write, “we had to cross a range of mountains apparently some 1500 or 2000 feet in height, and in some places the rise was so steep that it required three or four of us to help the dogs pull each sled up. By the time we reached the summit we began to think how delightful our journey was to be if our trail led us over many such mountains, since we had some 1600 miles to go and this was only the first day. The sight before us was not very encouraging, for we beheld a mountain, higher and steeper than we had just ascended, with a deep valley between.”

  One of the greatest obstacles the Overland Relief Expedition would face would be the rugged ranges of mountains that were part of the always-challenging Arctic landscape, treacherous barriers that the rescue party would encounter on the very first day of their overland journey.

  Making their way up the mountainous slopes with the heavy sleds was a rude introduction to the uncertainties of what awaited them. And they soon discovered that making their way down these slopes was just as difficult a challenge. The first time they tried to descend, the sleds picked up speed on the slick, snow-packed terrain and threatened to run completely away from them, which would have injured or even killed the dogs that were pulling them. An alarmed Jarvis made the first of what would be many on-the-spot decisions he would be forced to make in the long m
onths ahead. Each time they headed down a slope, he had the dogs unharnessed and had chains wrapped around the sleds’ runners. Then he and the rest of the party climbed aboard the sleds, giving them what he hoped would be sufficient weight to slow them down. Nonetheless, the sleds, with wide-eyed men aboard, went barreling down the mountain with barking dogs racing behind them, trying desperately to catch up. This must have been quite a sight in the frozen wilderness.

  Fortunately, the mountains encountered on the first day were the only ones that stood between them and St. Michael. Their route flattened out across the Yukon River Delta, a seemingly endless stretch of frozen wasteland, much of which was iced-over swamps. As their pace picked up, the three Cutter Service officers became amazed at the way their native guides knew which way to go. “There was no visible trail,” Bertholf later wrote. “We crossed and sometimes followed numbers of small streams, and the guide did not seem to take much account of our small pocket-compasses. There did not seem to be any marks by which to tell the general direction, for the country was level, and there was nothing to be seen in any direction but snow, with a few clumps of brush here and there.”

  The extraordinary skill of the guides was not the only thing that surprised Bertholf this early in the mission. He had read many books and had seen drawings and photographs depicting life in the Arctic. He quickly learned, however, that many of them had painted a false picture. “I have seen many pictures of the manner in which the Eskimos travel,” Bertholf would write, “and the man is generally seated comfortably on the sled cracking the whip, and the dogs are going at a smart gallop; but we soon found that picture to be a delusion and a snare. Journeying in the Arctic regions consists mostly in pushing behind the sled, for the poor little animals frequently have to be helped over the rough places. . . . Where there is no beaten trail . . . the dogs have nothing to guide them, and one man is obliged to run ahead. . . . Natives who travel from village to village are so accustomed to this mode of travel that they can keep it up all day without showing signs of fatigue.”