Buddy Levy - Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition

September 1, 1883

Expedition commander Lt. Adolphus W. Greely stood on the edge of the ice floe listening to the constant groan and roar of the ice pack, a sound so eerily hideous that it had come to be known by Arctic explorers as the Devils symphony. Not even the howling windwhich was pushing out to sea the small ice floe Greely and his twenty-four men were stranded on, away from their destinationcould drown out the weird and terrible sound of the pack: ice grinding against ice, shearing and shrieking and wailing, an ever-present reminder of their desperate vulnerability in this colossal and hostile environment. He and his men were mere specks, adrift on a small island of sea ice moving at the mercy of the tide and winds. Two of their boats had been hauled up onto the ice, and a thirdthe ten-thousand-pound steam launch Lady Greelyhad been made fast to the side of the floeberg with ice anchors.

Greely consulted with his meteorologist, who took readings through the blowing snow. It was 11F. No polar party had ever recorded a lower temperature this early in the year. Greely surveyed the desolate surroundings between Ellesmere Island and Greenland: To the west, on the Ellesmere Island side of the lower Kane Basin, were rugged, rocky cliffs, and beyond them the snowcapped Victoria and Albert Mountains rose high above. To the east were foggy fiords and mist-shrouded peaks rising from the Greenland shore. Everything and everyoneall the gear and boats and menwere encrusted with a veneer of frost.

They had made it to within thirty miles above Cape Sabine, the location where Greelythrough prearranged and explicitly written military ordershad instructed relief ships to deposit food for his expeditionary force. But for the last few days they had been drifting slowly away from land and back toward the north, away from shore and the food cache that Greely hoped would be their salvation. His men were exhausted from three weeks of nearly constant motion, their hands raw and bleeding inside their sealskin mittens from pulling at the oars and from hauling the boats on and off icebergs every dayor sometimes every hour. Their shoulders were sore and blistered from the drag ropes. Men shivered, nearly hypothermic, as they fought for sleep bivouacked directly on the ice or hunkered in the bottoms of their uncovered small craft. Greely took his trusted sergeant, David Brainard, aside and they carefully inventoried their dwindling stores. Counting the various meats, including pemmican, bacon, and beefplus the hardtack breadthere were rations for perhaps fifty days, maybe a week longer if the hunters could shoot seals, walruses, or bears.

The expedition had already been through tremendous trials. Together, more than two hundred miles to the north, they had been confronted by and survived every possible challenge: attacks by wolves; hurricane-force winds; temperatures approaching 100 below zero; and near insanity brought on by the months of total darkness. Following orders, three weeks earlier Greely had commanded his men to abandon the comforts of Fort Congerwhich they had built above an inlet at the far northeastern shore of Ellesmere Island. They had turned away from the forts coal-burning cookstove, its fireplace, insulated walls, and protective roofand a years supply of foodand traveled by boats into the ice-choked seas, heading south toward Cape Sabine. Navigating the roiling chop and massive bergs through mist and fog, sleet and snow, and dying autumn light had been treacherous. And although Greely would not admit it, his poor eyesight was making navigation nearly impossible. He needed a better set of eyes to do the ice piloting.