On the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Jeannette Monument at the United States Naval Academy,
Annapolis, Maryland, October 30, 1890.
We have come here to-day to pay the final tribute to a little band of officers and seamen of the Navy, who, nine years ago, gave up their lives, in a toilsome and difficult enterprise, an arduous labor of exploration and scientific research. It is a date well chosen, for it is the anniversary of the day upon which closed the record of their undertaking. They entered on their task with no certain prospects of success, sure only of the perils and difficulties they were to encounter, and looking for no reward save that which comes from the consciousness of duty done. Their expedition made its contribution to our knowledge of the lands within the Arctic Circle, but, like so many others that had gone before it, failed of its great and ultimate purpose. But this same expedition, failure though it was in its attempt to penetrate to the Pole, or even to gain a latitude beyond its predecessors, yet, in its bright example of sustained endeavor, of lofty steadfastness of purpose, of dangers met unflinchingly and hardships borne without complaining, was crowned with a success far surpassing the triumphs of scientific discovery, and worthy of all that we can do to commemorate and celebrate it here.
The expedition of the Jeannette was a new experiment in Arctic navigation. Of the three main gateways to the Pole, only that whose opening was at Behring Strait had been as yet untried. Many were the attempts which had left their record of suffering and disaster on the shores to the northward of Baffin's Bay. The passage by the North Atlantic had its ardent advocates, and exploration here had reached far north, but had stopped at Franz Josef Land. The pathway leading north from Behring Strait, if pathway there might be, was unexplored. Herald Island was known, and beyond it glimpses had been obtained of Wrangel Land, but whether this half-seen country was a mere dot upon the frozen ocean, or another Greenland stretching in a wide expanse which reached the proportions of a continent, was hardly guessed at. Towards Behring Strait flowed the warm current of Japan, and its influence might perhaps reach beyond the parting of the continents, making a navigable highway through the ice-pack that filled the great spaces around the Pole.
To solve this problem, to penetrate if possible by this conjectured entrance to the farthest north, was the object of the voyage of the Jeannette. The enterprise was set on foot by the public spirit of James Gordon Bennett, and sustained and carried out solely by his generous liberality. It was Bennett who gave the vessel in which the new venture was to be made, and who selected the man that was to make it. The leader, Lieutenant George De Long, was a volunteer for the service; indeed, had it not been for his burning eagerness to make the trial, it might, perhaps, never have been made. Already he had served his apprenticeship in Arctic navigation, when, in an open steam-launch, the Little Juniata, he made his way across Melville Bay to Cape York in search of the fugitive crew of the Polaris. It needed but one interview to convince Bennett that he had found the leader for his enterprise—a man in whom were united the skill of a practiced seaman, the trained experience of an ice-navigator, the self-reliance, the ready resource, the capacity for organization and discipline of an accomplished naval officer, and the impetuous faith and zeal of an explorer.
The project of an Arctic expedition, now become a settled purpose, was followed up by its promoter with his untiring energy, seconded by the professional judgment of its future commander. After long search, the Pandora, a ship already tested in Arctic voyages, was selected for the work, purchased, and renamed the Jeannette. She came to San Francisco and was taken to the navy yard, the Secretary having been empowered by Congress to assume charge of the ship for the projected expedition. Under De Long's direction she was fitted out with stores supplied by Bennett's liberal hand, and strengthened to enable her the better to withstand the rude shocks of navigation in the Arctic seas. Her officers and crew, chosen with care and judgment, were gradually assembled; and certainly no ship was ever sent on the perilous work of Arctic exploration with a company braver, more earnest, or more ready in bearing and enduring all things, than that which the Jeannette bore away from San Francisco, buoyant with hope, with a confidence born of a high courage and the strength of disinterested purpose, and eager to win success, however great the dangers of the struggle.
It was on the 9th of July, 1879, that the ship sailed out through the Golden Gate of the Pacific, and two months later that she entered the frozen gate of the Arctic, from which she was destined never to escape. Striking, on the 6th of September, a lead in the ice-pack that offered what seemed a fair promise, the Jeannette was soon beset, fast in the ice, imprisoned beyond all possibility of deliverance by any effort that she or her people could make. Here she was to remain, frozen in, helplessly drifting with the pack, for twenty-two wearisome months. Of these the first fifteen were hardly months of drift; the movements of a year covered the space of a scant hundred miles. The zigzag course of the ice-floe in which the ship lay cradled was hither and thither by slow, short drifts—here a little and there a little, a step to-day in advance, a step to-morrow on the one hand or the other, a step the third day back to the point of starting. In November of 1880 observations showed the ship to be in the same spot where she had been recorded in the previous April. "Thus it goes," said De Long in his journal, "east one day, west the next, north one week, south the next. When will this come to an end?" One day's fair steaming in open water would have covered all the explorations of fifteen months of aimless drift.
Do you realize, my friends, what must have been the strain upon De Long and his companions, thrown in upon themselves during that long imprisonment, filling nearly the space of two whole years? Day by day as he rose and looked about him at the dull prospect, outlined only by those frozen shapes which grew monotonous even in their incessant change, struggling against the overwhelming sense of failure, powerless against forces which no human will could master, what cruel discouragements must he have suffered! Month after month rolled by, autumn became winter, winter gave place to spring, spring to summer, and so on through a second autumn and a second winter—a summer and winter, a spring and autumn of the calendar, marked only by the long gloom of the Arctic night and the unbroken, ice-reflected glare of the Arctic sunlight.
"Thus with the year
Seasons return ; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn.
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose.
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;"—
nought to be seen hour after hour but the wide expanse of the eternal pack, stretching away in dreary sameness to the fog-bound horizon; no change or prospect of a change; no compensations even of half-attained success, or satisfying gleams of hope that the ice-drift was bearing the ship one step onward in her course.
How do they bear themselves, these men, who sailed from home full of high hopes and eager aspirations, now that their hopes are crushed and confidence has yielded to the expectation of defeat? Read the record in De Long's journal, where every day's events are faithfully transcribed,—events so trifling that their magnified importance shows only by heightened contrast the dullness of this dull round of daily existence,—and see how courage and self-devotion can uplift the mind, even in the darkest hours. It is a narrative touching in its manly simplicity and unconscious pathos. "There can be no greater wear and tear," says De Long, in his frank, artless way, "on a man's mind and patience than this life in the pack. The absolute monotony; the unchanging round of hours; the awakening to the same things and the same conditions that one saw just before losing one's self in sleep; the same faces; the same dogs; the same ice; the same conviction that to-morrow will be exactly the same as to-day, if not more disagreeable; the absolute impotence to do anything, to go anywhere, or to change one's situation an iota; the realization that food is being consumed and fuel burned with no valuable result, beyond sustaining life; the knowledge that nothing has been accomplished thus far to save this expedition from being denominated an utter failure; all these things crowd in with irresistible force upon my reasoning powers each night, as I sit down to reflect upon the events of the day; and but for some still, small voice within me that tells me this can hardly be the ending of all my labor and zeal, I should be tempted to despair."
All this while the crew are kept at work, busily following the day's routine, and by exercise and occupation keeping away disease and discontent. Their leader never wearies in his task. He guides their occupations, watches their health, sustains their manful spirit. Observations are taken and records kept; investigation and experiment, narrow as is the field of research, are followed up; the daily work of the ship, conformed to naval regulation and tradition, pursues its course. Each Sunday the Captain reads the service, and once a month, the Articles of War. To-day it is a bear hunt, to-morrow the killing of a seal or gull—trivial incidents, but all that breaks the monotony of life, except when the grinding and tearing of the floes pressing upon the ship serves as the muttered menace of catastrophe that any day may bring. Once at least, during the first winter, the ship narrowly escapes destruction, and all is put in readiness for a retreat upon the ice; but these alarms pass by, and for a twelvemonth all is quiet.
The officers and crew are worthy of their commander. In that long imprisonment in the ice-pack, and throughout the five hundred miles of the retreat, each and every one stands out, shining with the light of his own serene courage, his own unwavering endurance. To their virtues the Captain's journal bears sincere and willing testimony. First of all come his two right-hand men, the executive officer and the engineer, of whom he writes: "Aided by Chipp and Melville, whose superiors the navy cannot show, with their untiring energy, splendid judgment, and fertility of device, I am confident of doing all that man can do to carry the expedition to a successful termination." Chipp is the model executive officer; calm and earnest, reserved, always with work to do, and always doing it quietly, steadily, and surely. "He says but little," writes the Captain, "but I know where he is, and how reliable and true." Not less reliable and true are the other officers: Danenhower, the navigator, struck down by an affliction that robbed him even of the poor consolations that might be drawn from that barren life, but bearing his confinement with heroic fortitude and patience; Melville, whom his commander finds "more of a treasure every day, always self helpful and reliant, a tower of strength in himself"; and last of all, Ambler, the good physician, cheerful and kindly, caring wisely and watchfully for the health of his companions, and brightening their spirits by the gentle influence of his sunny temper. Collins, the meteorologist, and Newcomb, the naturalist, pursue faithfully their vocations, observing, collecting, recording, under the unaccustomed burden of naval routine and discipline. In the next rank come Dunbar, the ice pilot, grave and serious, whose experience proves a help at all emergencies; Sweetman, the carpenter, untiring, ingenious, a sure and constant reliance; and Jack Cole, the rugged boatswain, whose reason finally succumbed to hardships which his stalwart frame repelled. Equally devoted and capable are the crew, at their head Nindemann, easily foremost, whose energy and self-devotion win from the Captain the highest praise, and for whom, as well as for Sweetman, he asks a medal of honor. For each and all the others, down through the list, to the two Alaskan Indians and the Chinese cook and steward, there is naught to be said but praise; their courage, their patience, their helpfulness and willing obedience, the cheerful front with which they face misfortune, the steadfast resolution that bears them past disaster. "Another crew, perhaps," said one of their officers, "may be found to do as well, but better—never."
With the approach of the second winter the drift of the pack took on a uniform direction, and, gradually gathering force, bore the ship slowly to the northwest, traversing during the next six months ten times the space covered in the year gone by. Here was relief at last in progress, no matter whither; and in May the eyes of the ship's company were gladdened by the first welcome sight of land. They called it Jeannette Island. It was a desolate rock in the Arctic, nothing more—grim and unapproachable; but it was at least one point that raised itself aloft, breaking the outlines of the sea of ice, and marking the first result, small though it was, of all the efforts of the explorers. Presently another land opened out beyond it, Henrietta Island, a second barren rock surmounted by its broad ice-cap. This last Melville was sent out to explore, his party moving by boat and sledges over the loose, broken pack. They reached the land and took possession in the name of the United States; for no human eye had ever before this day looked upon the island, or, if it had, no record had been made of its discovery.
It was now early in June, and De Long's hopes of release began to rise; but they were destined to be rudely shattered. Release was coming, but not as he would wish. The ice-field cradling the Jeannette, now drifting swiftly past the islands, still heading to the northwest, came in collision with other fields, and then began a second battle of the ice-floes, such as had nearly sunk the ship the year before. Driven by the winds and currents this way and that, the huge masses crashed together, and in a moment were rent asunder, piling up vast broken ridges here, and there sinking and disappearing. Hour after hour the crushing and tearing, the upheavals of shapeless floe bergs, continued with a deafening uproar, and the ice around the ship was hurled about in tumultuous confusion. The pack splitting apart, suddenly opens lanes in all directions, and these as suddenly close when the floe bergs, propelled by resistless, unseen forces, are dashed upon each other. Each moment the ship seems on the verge of destruction. For a few hours she escapes, but presently a lane opens where she lies, and for an instant she is again afloat. It is but for an instant. The floes that have been torn apart have only recoiled, as it would seem, for one final spring; and returning, they crush the vessel like grain between the upper and the nether millstone. They hold her fast just long enough for the crew to take refuge on the ice with boats and sleds and stores; and then separating, they leave her, a crushed and shattered craft, to plunge into the depths below.
And now, with the sinking of the Jeannette, comes the most marvelous chapter in this strange history. Thirty-three men, with a pack of dogs, three boats, five sleds, and sixty days' provisions, cast upon the drifting pack, started forth to reach the land, five hundred miles away. Never was there such a retreat as this. The nearest point on the Siberian coast was the Lena Delta. Between it and them lay three or four islands, the New Siberian group; but except for these, only a moving pack, and a stretch, how great or little none could say, of open water.
No time was lost. De Long, still strong in his steadfast faith, supported loyally by officers and men, organized his band, assigned to each his duties and his post, and after a few days' careful preparation, setting his face southwards, began the weary march. Each day the pioneers laid out the route, and sleds and boats were drawn over the ice to the determined point. The work was work with sleds and ice, but not the sleds and ice of a boy's winter sport. There was no child's play in clambering over these distorted hummocks, dragging up and down the great whale-boat and the cutters, and sledge-loads of provisions, or charging across the moving floes, leaping from one to another as the intervening leads were opening or closing, often with barely time to escape from one uncertain foothold to a second hardly less uncertain. Their first week was a week of cruel discouragement—of sickness and distress, of mishaps without number, of toilsome struggling with heavy loads over rough masses of broken ice, which opened in wide cracks and lanes of water almost beneath their feet. The progress made was less than a mile a day, and even this must be passed and repassed, with load after load, boats, sleds, provisions, sick, until the whole had been dragged, ferried, tumbled into place. And when, at the week's end, the Captain obtained an observation, he found that the ice-drift had brought all to naught, and far outrun even their painful efforts; so that, instead of five miles to the south, the seven days had sent them thirty miles to the northwest.
Only to Melville and Ambler did De Long make known his secret. The others were allowed to remain in happy ignorance that all their labor had only made their case more hopeless. Still they plodded on towards the southwest, now over great blocks and ridges, now upon sliding, shifting floes. One day the ice would be in motion all about, swinging and swirling this way and that, opening in their path broad lanes of water only to be traversed by ferrying in the boats, or by flying bridges made from the floating cakes. Another day they would cross a stretch of confused floe bergs, which was the hardest work of all. Another would find them floundering through deep snow, and ponds and water-holes, tired and wet, with footgear worn to shreds, but ever struggling to reach the open water which they knew must be somewhere upon the ice-pack's outer edge.
So for five weeks they continued their slow advance, making good little more than a mile a day. But the ice-drift was now helping them, and pushed them onward two miles while they were marching one. So that at least there was something for hope to feed on during this dreary time; and still more courage came to them from the sight of land ahead. It cost them eighteen days of toil to reach it, and at the last they were nearly carried past it by the swift currents; but, charging with a rush across the broken floes, they leaped the last space and landed safely on the ice-foot.
The new-found land, for it was their discovery, was named Bennett Island, and upon its shores they rested for a week. Then after gathering fresh strength, they turned their steps once more to the southward. They had not yet cleared the pack, but the water was free enough to work the boats. In the first cutter was De Long with Ambler. The second cutter was assigned to Chipp, while Melville, with Danenhower still in part disabled, commanded the whale-boat. Young ice now checked their progress, and it was only by breaking their way, or tedious tracking along the pack, sometimes even, when the lanes closed up, by dragging boats over the floes, that they could make their progress good. But each day the water became more open, and another month brought them to the islands of New Siberia. Here the three boats, drawn into the mill-race between the islands, were whirled along in the swift current, surrounded by the whirling floes, and found themselves at last upon the open ocean.
The dangers of the past were now forgotten. Resting a short space at the islands, De Long with his three boats headed for the Lena Delta, whence he might make his way southward to the Russian settlements. One more stop was made at the Island of Semenovski, on Sunday the 11th of September. It was the last time that all would be together, although they knew it not, and De Long, as was his wont, held divine service and read the Articles of War. On Monday morning all embarked and sailed with prosperous breezes until the afternoon, when the wind freshened to a tempestuous gale. As night came on—a fearful night in which it seemed as if no boat could live—the three crews, which had for two long years faced together the perils of the Arctic, were driven apart, never to meet again.
Of Chipp, the generous and devoted first lieutenant of the Jeannette, and his people in the second cutter, the last that was seen was on this night, when the others parted from them, struggling in their little boat against the fury of the tempest. What happened to them no man knows, for months of tireless search in every nook and corner of the coast failed to reveal a trace of what might have been their fate. For them we must believe that no morn ever broke upon that night of horror.
We do know that the whale-boat, a stauncher craft, was only saved by the skill and vigilance that guided her movements through the perils of the storm. At daybreak she was still uninjured, and a wise foresight directed her to the eastward along the coast into the great bay that receives the southernmost of the Lena's outlets. Here three days of chance sailing in passages among the Delta islands brought Melville and his party to the native settlements, where, as their force was spent, they landed and found rest and shelter that slowly brought them back to health and strength.
The first cutter, in which were De Long and Ambler with Collins and eleven men, survived the night, though losing mast and sail. Moving with difficulty in their disabled boat, they only reached the coast on Saturday, when they grounded at the Delta's most northern point, and near the mouth of the main northern outlet. Wading ashore through the thin ice that for a mile seawards covered the shallow beach, they landed with their instruments and records, and with four days' scant provisions, set out on their southward march.
It was a cruel fate that marked out De Long's landing place. The Lena Delta in October is a desolate waste, snow-covered, a labyrinth of intersecting streams, impassable to boats by ice, but ice as yet too thin to bridge them. From the landing place on the north coast to the Delta's head, where the river branches out to its divergent mouths, a space of eighty miles in a line due south, there is no human habitation. The point that Melville reached lies far off to the southeast. Along the coast a little way, not more than thirty miles from where the cutter stranded, is another village, the northernmost of the winter settlements. But of this village De Long knew nothing. His wanderings, and the untiring searches that others made to find him, have mapped out for us the lands and waters of the Delta, but to him, at landing, they were all unknown. His map, if map it could be called, had names that seemed the names of places where men dwelt, but they were blind guides. They pointed out only one hope, that by following the main river and going south, he would in time reach a settlement. Of habitations to the west, along the coast and within easy reach, they gave, alas, no clue.
So with the same unfaltering resolution which had carried him, and those whose lives rested upon his word, through so many perils, he started with them on the southward journey. The long confinement in the boat, the hardships and exposures of the retreat, had sapped their energies, and they were in no condition for forced marching. One of the men, Ericksen, crippled and weak beyond his fellows, kept all the party back, when every moment was vital to their safe deliverance. Tenderly they cared for him, waited for him, carried him, weak as they were, when he could no longer walk himself, until at length his death relieved them of their burden. But by this time their own strength was nearly spent, and toil as they might, they could not make up for the days already lost.
We need not dwell upon the events of that fatal journey. Its history is written day by day in the Captain's journal, where, in letters firm and sharp to the very end, the whole record is preserved. It tells how a man of unconquerable will, firm in his faith, kept up for six weeks of agony of mind and body the struggle with a remorseless fate that stared him in the face. It tells of weary marches and counter-marches; of days of painful toil, fighting against the pitiless gusts of wind that swept those dreary plains; of bitter nights, without shelter and without rest; of weakness and illness creeping over the men by slow degrees; of hunger gradually turning to starvation. It tells how hopes were raised by tracks of deer, by footprints of men even, only to be blasted, for, as mischance would have it, natives had gone that way but a few days before, and others found the records of the band after De Long had passed. It tells how, after three weeks of unsuccessful effort, the Captain sent Nindemann and Noros off for succor; how for ten days thereafter the main body struggled on, hoping each day that the expected help would reach them; and at last, how for ten days more, unable to move, having reached the parting of the streams at the Delta's head, they waited, giving up one by one, until only the Captain and the Surgeon remained alive. And then the record ceases.
Read the piteous story of these last ten days, the final ending of that glorious retreat, which had lasted one hundred and thirty days since the ship went down—a story of little else than death:
"Friday, October 21st—131st day. Kaack was found dead about midnight between the doctor and myself. Lee died about noon. Read prayers for sick when we found he was going.
"Saturday, October 22d—132d day. Too weak to carry the bodies of Lee and Kaack out on the ice. The doctor, Collins, and I carried them around the corner out of sight. Then my eye closed up.
"Sunday, October 23d— 133d day. Everybody pretty weak. Slept or rested all day and then managed to get enough wood in before dark. Read part of divine service. Suffering in our feet—no footgear.
"Monday, October 24th—134th day. A hard night.
"Tuesday, October 25th—135th day.
"Wednesday, October 26th—136th day.
"Thursday, October 27th—137th day. Iverson broken down.
"Friday, October 28th—138th day. Iverson died during early morning.
"Saturday, October 29th—139th day. Dressier died during night.
"Sunday, October 30th—140th day. Boyd and Goertz died during night. Mr. Collins dying."
The pencil drops—the eye is glazed, the arm is palsied, the fingers stiffen and grow cold. The fight has been fought, the struggle is ended. The others, one by one, have passed away. There is no more that human effort can accomplish.
"O, let him pass! He hates him.
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer."
De Long and Ambler lie side by side. We know not to which of them first came the whispered summons of the death angel, but we know that they were the last to answer. What was it, think you, that made these two hold out to the last? Was it that they were made of tougher fiber, endowed with greater health and vigor—greater than their seasoned shipmates, the hardy seaman, the Alaskan hunter? I think not. It was that in them lay that unconquerable purpose to keep their charge, to fulfill, even to the bitter end, their sacred trust. And thus it happened that De Long, his brother officer still faithful at his side, only surrendered his commission when the Almighty had disbanded his command.
There is more yet to be told of this expedition, but we may not dwell upon it here: how Danenhower first attempted a desperate search for his lost companions; how Melville heard from Nindemann and Noros of his Captain's cruel plight, and how, before he had regained his strength, he braved alone the Arctic storms and cold and hunger, traversing the Delta down to the very coast, freely putting his life again at hazard, in the faint hope that he might bring relief; how a second time he scoured the plains in March, and found the bodies, and, laying them in the earth to rest, built over them the cairn and cross, in whose likeness this stone has been erected here; how the Russian Government, faithful to its old tradition of friendship, lent its aid freely to the explorers; how the later relief parties came out, and how the generous patron of the expedition gave lavishly of his time and fortune to carry on the search and to lighten the sufferings of the survivors. But it is not of these things that we are speaking here and now. It is not to the living, but the dead, that this day is consecrated.
Dead they are indeed, but dying as they did they left behind them a renown that to the Service they loved and died for remains, and will remain forever, a priceless heritage. That long retreat, over five hundred miles of drifting ice and open ocean, a retreat matchless in the records of Arctic achievement, shines out, even through the dark tragedy at its close, with the triumphant splendor of a victory won. On the long roll of the world's explorers are no brighter names than those of De Long and his gallant company of the Jeannette. They fell not, warriors though they were, in war, nor was the fate of nations trembling upon the issue of their struggle. But it is not in war alone that martyrs win their crowns; nor is it only in the clash of arms and the din of battle that is revealed the beauty of heroic death.
It matters not whether their bones lie here, or at their homes, or on the bleak Siberian coast, where they gave up their lives; "the whole earth," said Pericles, "is the sepulcher of illustrious men." But it is fitting that here should be their monument. It stands here for us Americans, who hold our Navy and our Country dear, as a memorial of what her sons have done, and as an earnest of what they will do hereafter. It stands here for you, the comrades of those young officers who fell, to give you added strength and courage, when you too find yourselves the victims of relentless fate, and driven to the edge of the black chasm of despair. It stands here, last of all, for you, Cadets of the Navy, that daily you may have before your eyes this bright example of heroic virtue—virtue which in the past has been the pride and glory of your Service, and which it will rest with you to transmit in undimmed luster to the generations yet to come. Heart-rending as is the burden of that song, borne to us upon the wings of the Siberian wind, it is not the mournful music of defeat. As with their great Norse ancestors, the sea-heroes, the death-chant of our own sea-heroes rings only with a joyous strain of triumph; and in their triumph we triumph also.
"Paeans, sing high! What would we with a dirge?
Proudly we weep our brave."
There they stand, the martyrs of the Lena Delta, the men, who, through high courage, overcame disaster; surrounded by that goodly company of brave explorers, whose memory, like theirs, remains enshrined within these walls—Collins, a victim of the poisonous miasma of the Isthmus; Strain, perishing from hunger and fatigue under the burning sun of the tropics; Talbot, sailing in his open boat over fourteen hundred miles of the Pacific to bring succor to his shipwrecked comrades; and Herndon, issuing unharmed from the perils of the Amazon, but yielding his life, a cheerful sacrifice, to save the passengers upon his sinking ship.
There they stand,
"with the rays
Of morn on their white shields of expectation,"
illumined by the brightness of their own imperishable fame, serenely waiting for the final muster; while from the chorus of uplifted voices come the ringing notes of an Io Triumphe, re-echoing throughout all the ages, proclaiming in eternal harmonies the glory of those who fought their fight out to the end, and who, through death, achieved undying victory.