Part 13 (1/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[13] The Fire Alarm is the invention of Dr. William F.

Channing:

”A wizard of such dreaded fame, That when in Salamanca's cave, Him listed his magic wand to wave, The bells would ring in Notre Dame.”

[14] I am proud to say that such suggestions have had so much weight, that in 1868 the alarm strikes the number of the box which first telegraphs danger, six-four, six-four, &c., six being the district number, and four the box number in that district.

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE RESOLUTE.

[I had some opportunities, which no other writer for the press had, I believe, of examining the Resolute on her return from that weird voyage which is the most remarkable in the history of the navies of the world. And, as I know of no other printed record of the whole of that voyage than this, which was published in the Boston Daily Advertiser of June 11, 1856, I reprint it here. Readers should remember that the English government abandoned all claim on the vessel; that the American government then bought her off the salvors, refitted her completely, and sent her to England as a present to the Queen. The Queen visited the s.h.i.+p, and accepted the present in person. The Resolute has never since been to sea. I do not load the page with authorities; but I studied the original reports of the Arctic expeditions carefully in preparing the paper, and I believe it to be accurate throughout.

The voyage from New London to England, when she was thus returned, is strictly her last voyage. But when this article was printed its name was correct.]

It was in early spring in 1852, early on the morning of the 21st of April, that the stout English discovery s.h.i.+p Resolute, manned by a large crew, commanded by a most manly man, Henry Kellett, left her moorings in the great river Thames, a little below the old town of London, was taken in tow by a fussy steam-tug, and proudly started as one of a fine English squadron in the great search of the nations for the lost Sir John Franklin. It was late in the year 1855, on the 24th of December, that the same s.h.i.+p, weatherworn, scantily rigged, without her lighter masts, all in the trim of a vessel which has had a hard fight with wind, water, ice, and time, made the light-house of _New_ London,--waited for day and came round to anchor in the other river Thames, of _New_ England. Not one man of the English crew was on board. The gallant Captain Kellett was not there; but in his place an American master, who had shown, in his way, equal gallantry. The sixty or seventy men with whom she sailed were all in their homes more than a year ago. The eleven men with whom she returned had had to double parts, and to work hard to make good the places of the sixty. And between the day when the Englishmen left her, and the day the Americans found her, she had spent fifteen months and more alone. She was girt in by the ice of the Arctic seas. No man knows where she went, what narrow scapes she pa.s.sed through, how low her thermometers marked cold;--it is a bit of her history which was never written. Nor what befell her little tender, the ”Intrepid,” which was left in her neighborhood, ”ready for occupation,”

just as she was left. No man will ever tell of the nip that proved too much for her,--of the opening of her seams, and her disappearance beneath the ice. But here is the hardy Resolute, which, on the 15th of May, 1854, her brave commander left, as he was ordered, ”ready for occupation,”--which the brave Captain Buddington found September 10, 1855, more than a thousand miles from there, and p.r.o.nounced still ”ready for occupation”;--and of what can be known of her history from Old London to New London, from Old England's Thames to New England's Thames, we will try to tell the story; as it is written in the letters of her old officers and told by the lips of her new rescuers.

For Arctic work, if s.h.i.+ps are to go into every nook and lane of ice that will yield at all to wind and steam, they must be as nearly indestructible as man can make them. For Arctic work, therefore, and for discovery work, s.h.i.+ps built of the _teak_ wood of Malabar and Java are considered most precisely fitted. s.h.i.+ps built of teak are said to be wholly indestructible by time. To this we owe the fact, which now becomes part of a strange coincidence, that one of the old Captain Cook's s.h.i.+ps which went round the world with him has been, till within a few years, a whaling among the American whalers, revisiting, as a familiar thing, the sh.o.r.es which she was first to discover. The English admiralty, eager to fit out for Arctic service a s.h.i.+p of the best build they could find, bought the two teak-built s.h.i.+ps Baboo and Ptarmigan in 1850,--sent them to their own dock-yards to be refitted, and the Baboo became the a.s.sistance,--the Ptarmigan became the Resolute, of their squadrons of Arctic discovery.

Does the reader know that in the desolation of the Arctic sh.o.r.es the Ptarmigan is the bird most often found? It is the Arctic grouse or partridge,[15] and often have the ptarmigans of Melville Island furnished sport and even dinners to the hungry officers of the ”Resolute,” wholly unconscious that she had ever been their G.o.d-child, and had thrown off their name only to take that which she now wears.

Early in May, 1850, just at the time we now know that brave Sir John Franklin and the remnant of his crew were dying of starvation at the mouth of Back's River, the ”Resolute” sailed first for the Arctic seas, the flag-s.h.i.+p of Commodore Austin, with whose little squadron our own De Haven and his men had such pleasant intercourse near Beechey Island. In the course of that expedition she wintered off Cornwallis Island,--and in autumn of the next year returned to England.

Whenever a squadron or a man or an army returns to England, unless in the extreme and exceptional case of complete victory over obstacle invincible, there is always dissatisfaction. This is the English way.

And so there was dissatisfaction when Captain Austin returned with his s.h.i.+ps and men. There was also still a lingering hope that some trace of Franklin might yet be found, perhaps some of his party. Yet more, there were two of the searching s.h.i.+ps which had entered the Polar seas from Behring's Straits on the west, the ”Enterprise” and ”Investigator,”

which might need relief before they came through or returned. Arctic search became a pa.s.sion by this time, and at once a new squadron was fitted out to take the seas in the spring of 1852. This squadron consisted of the ”a.s.sistance” and ”Resolute” again, which had been refitted since their return, of the ”Intrepid” and ”Pioneer,” two steams.h.i.+ps used as tenders to the ”a.s.sistance” and ”Resolute”

respectively, and of the ”North Star,” which had also been in those regions, and now went as a stores.h.i.+p to the rest of the squadron. To the command of the whole Sir Edward Belcher was appointed, an officer who had served in some of the earlier Arctic expeditions. Officers and men volunteered in full numbers for the service, and these five vessels therefore carried out a body of men who brought more experience of the Northern seas together than any expedition which had ever visited them.

Of these, Captain Henry Kellett had command of the ”Resolute,” and was second in seniority to Sir Edward Belcher, who made the ”a.s.sistance” the flag-s.h.i.+p. It shows what sort of man he was, to say that for more than ten years he spent only part of one in England, and was the rest of the time in an antipodean hemisphere or a hyperborean zone. Before brave Sir John Franklin sailed, Captain Kellett was in the Pacific. Just as he was to return home, he was ordered into the Arctic seas to search for Sir John. Three years successively, in his s.h.i.+p the ”Herald,” he pa.s.sed inside Behring's Straits, and far into the Arctic Ocean. He discovered ”Herald Island,” the farthest land known there. He was one of the last men to see McClure in the ”Investigator” before she entered the Polar seas from the northwest. He sent three of his men on board that s.h.i.+p to meet them all again, as will be seen, in strange surroundings. After more than seven years of this Pacific and Arctic life, he returned to England, in May or June, 1851, and in the next winter volunteered to try the eastern approach to the same Arctic seas in our s.h.i.+p, the ”Resolute.” Some of his old officers sailed with him.

We know nothing of Captain Kellett but what his own letters, despatches, and instructions show, as they are now printed in enormous parliamentary blue-books, and what the despatches and letters of his officers and of his commander show. But these papers present the picture of a vigorous, hearty man, kind to his crew and a great favorite with them, brave in whatever trial, always considerate, generous to his officers, reposing confidence in their integrity; a man, in short, of whom the world will be apt to hear more. His commander, Sir Edward Belcher, tried by the same standard, appears a brave and ready man, apt to talk of himself, not very considerate of his inferiors, confident in his own opinion; in short, a man with whom one would not care to spend three Arctic winters.

With him, as we trace the ”Resolute's” fortunes, we shall have much to do. Of Captain Kellett we shall see something all along till the day when he sadly left her, as bidden by Sir Edward Belcher, ”ready for occupation.”

With such a captain, and with sixty-odd men, the ”Resolute” cast off her moorings in the gray of the morning on the 21st of April, 1852, to go in search of Sir John Franklin. The brave Sir John had died two years before, but no one knew that, nor whispered it. The river steam-tug ”Monkey” took her in tow, other steamers took the ”a.s.sistance” and the ”North Star”; the ”Intrepid” and ”Pioneer” got up their own steam, and to the cheers of the little company gathered at Greenhithe to see them off, they went down the Thames. At the Nore, the steams.h.i.+p ”Desperate”

took the ”Resolute” in charge, Sir Edward Belcher made the signal ”Orkneys” as the place of rendezvous, and in four days she was there, in Stromness outer harbor. Here there was a little s.h.i.+fting of provisions and coal-bags, those of the men who could get on sh.o.r.e squandered their spending-money, and then, on the 28th of April, she and hers bade good by to British soil. And, though they have welcomed it again long since, she has not seen it from then till now.

The ”Desperate” steamer took her in tow, she sent her own tow-lines to the ”North Star,” and for three days in this procession of so wild and weird a name, they three forged on westward toward Greenland,--a train which would have startled any old Viking had he fallen in with it, with a fresh gale blowing all the time and ”a nasty sea.” On the fourth day all the tow-lines broke or were cast off however, Neptune and the winds claimed their own, and the ”Resolute” tried her own resources. The towing steamers were sent home in a few days more, and the squadron left to itself.

We have too much to tell in this short article to be able to dwell on the details of her visits to the hospitable Danes of Greenland, or of her pa.s.sage through the ice of Baffin's Bay. But here is one incident, which, as the event has proved, is part of a singular coincidence. On the 6th of July all the squadron, tangled in the ice, joined a fleet of whalers beset in it, by a temporary opening between the gigantic ma.s.ses.

Caught at the head of a bight in the ice, with the ”a.s.sistance” and the ”Pioneer,” the ”Resolute” was, for the emergency, docked there, and, by the ice closing behind her, was, for a while, detained. Meanwhile the rest of the fleet, whalers and discovery s.h.i.+ps, pa.s.sed on by a little lane of water, the American whaler ”McLellan” leading. This ”McLellan”

was one of the s.h.i.+ps of the spirited New London merchants, Messrs.

Perkins & Smith, another of whose vessels has now found the ”Resolute”

and befriended her in her need in those seas. The ”McLellan” was their pioneer vessel there.