Arctic Obsession. Alexis S. Troubetzkoy

      In 1596, William Barents’s third expedition in search of the Northeast Passage became ice-locked off Novaya Zemlya. A contemporary sketch shows “the exact manner of house wherein we wintered.”

      It took nearly a month to complete construction, and on October 24 the sixteen men moved into their new quarters. The building measured thirty-two feet by twenty, constructed of driftwood and ship’s planking; with the roof covered by slate gathered from nearby. As the men were making the final run with the sled carrying supplies from the stranded ship to their new quarters, they were attacked by three bears. While Heemskirk and de Veer fought the beasts with halberds, the remainder of the party ran for the ship. The distracted animals paused long enough for the men to make a goodly head start, but quickly gave chase. The sailors made it safely to the vessel and a lively battle ensued with the animals, soon joined by Heemskirk and de Veer. The sole means of defence at hand was the two halberds and an abundance of fireplace logs that were hurled at the marauders, “and every time we threw they ran after them, as a dog [might] do at a stone cast at him.” The struggle came to an abrupt close by a well-placed halberd blow on one animal’s delicate snout. The pained bear ran off with the other two closely behind. “We thanked God that we were so well delivered from them.”

      With the passing of time, the bears seemed to have migrated out of the region and, in their wake, white fox appeared in large numbers. One such animal was killed with a hatchet, skinned, and roasted on a spit. It was found to taste like a rabbit, and “its skin served us for a good defense [against the cold].” The lamps at the dinner table were fuelled by melted bear fat and outside the shelter lay the frozen carcasses of beasts that had been hunted earlier.

      October 28: “Three of our men went to the place where we had set the bear upright and there stood frozen, thinking to pull out her teeth. But it was clean covered over with snow. And while they were there it began to snow so fast, that they were glad to come home as fast as they could. But the snow beat so sore upon them that they could hardly see their way, and had almost lost their way.”

      November 4: “It was calm weather, but then we saw the sun no more, for it was no longer about the horizon. Then our surgeon made a bath for us to bathe in, of a wine pipe,[14] wherein we entered one after the other, and it did us much good and was a great means of our health.” By mid-November the clock ceased ticking and all sense of time was lost; was it day or was it night? Dark inside, dark outside. Men crawling out of their bunks “to make water” outdoors could not discern “whether the light they saw was the light of day or of the moon.”

      By then, they became conscious of the diminishing supply of bread — “we shared our bread amongst us, each man having four pounds and ten ounces for his allowance in eight days … whereas before we ate it up in five or six days.” Traps set for fox proved effective and the animals became an important food source, that and plentiful fish. The store of beer was also a concern for not only was the supply lessening, but the stuff “was for the most part wholly without strength, so that it had no flavor at all.” Wine was rationed — “every man had two glasses a day, but commonly our drink was water which we melted out of the snow.”

      As for successive weather notations of late November and early December : “foule weather,” “faire weather,” “darke weather,” “still weather,” “indifferent weather,” but for the most part it was “foule,” with a continuous blow of east winds. It was “so cold that when we washed our sheets and wrung them, they froze so stiff that, although we laid them by a great fire, the side that lay next to the fire thawed, but the other side was hard frozen.” Boots turned “as hard as horns upon our feet, and within they were white froze.” Indoor it was not only dark, but the quarters were smoke-filled for lack of sufficient draw by the primitive chimney. And it was bitterly cold — “we could hardly sit by the fire because of the smoke, and therefore stayed in our cabins [bunks]. We heated stones which we put in our cabins to warm our feet, for both the cold and the smoke were insupportable.” Sleep often proved impossible because of the thunderous cracking of ice in the nearby sea.

      At one time the cold became so bitter that they decided to burn some coal brought from the ship. The satisfying intensity of the fire “cast a great heat” and the men gathered happily about the table. Soon, however, poisonous fumes overcame one of them and the others found themselves developing nausea and headaches. The nearly asphyxiated man was hustled out-of-doors, had vinegar sprinkled on his face, and in the cold, bracing air he soon came around. Barents “gave every one of us a little wine to comfort our hearts.”

      By mid-December the checking of fox traps became a grim task because of the excessive cold and wind for “if we stayed too long there arose blisters upon our faces and our ears.” The plentiful fox provided not only sustenance, but their skins were fashioned into snowsuits. Christmas Day came and went as any other day with no mention of the occasion — “it was foule weather with a northwest wind.” It had been snowing steadily and the house had become literally snowed in. On the 28th one of the men thought to explore the outdoors, but to do so he had first to pry open the frozen door and then dig a passage through the wall of blocking snow. “He found it so bad weather that he stayed not long and told us that the snow lay higher than our house.”

      New Years’ Day, 1597. A ration of wine for every man, sipped sparingly for the depleting stock. “We were in fear that it would still be long before we should get out from thence.” The cold and wind were so bad that days passed without anyone venturing outside — “in four or five days we durst not put our heads out of doores,” writes de Veer. Little wonder at the uncertainty of days: with no clock or view of the outside world, how could the incarcerated crew determine a day’s beginning or end? Finally, to check the wind, a pike was thrust through the chimney opening “with a little cloth or feather upon it,” but the improvised vane froze instantly and proved useless.

      And so the days and weeks dragged into April. During that time food stores diminished, especially store of bread, which was a cause for alarm. Men weakened as illnesses of one sort or another seemed constantly to plague them with one death being recorded. The appearance of scurvy was particularly concerning — these pioneer Arctic explorers had not yet learned that fresh bear meat was an effective counteragent. The gathering of wood became a task beyond endurance, for in the passing of time the search had to be made farther afield. The valued fox population petered out and the bears reappeared. A particularly close call was had when one threatened entry into the house through the chimney — it was killed.

      The days eventually grew longer and the sun’s rays not only warmed the spirits of the closeted men, but brought about changes to the stark Arctic landscape. Where before there was only rugged ice on the nearby sea, now more and more open water became visible. Barents’s broken ship, however, continued in its firm ice-bound captivity. The inspections that had been carried out periodically during the winter had long revealed that the vessel was probably beyond repair, and now the accumulated frozen waters within the hold confirmed the worst: the ship would never sail again. All hopes of the despairing men to return home appeared to have vanished and only miraculous intervention by the Almighty could save them.

      Great as the anguish