Resolute (6 page)

THE INTREPID
Edward Parry led three searches for the passage; he also commanded an expedition seeking the North Pole.

Barrow had given specific orders to the two explorers. Among other objectives, they were to attempt to solve Arctic riddles that were the result of much earlier explorations. Did the bay that William Baffin claimed to have discovered, one that Barrow felt was key to finding the passage, really exist? And what about Greenland? Was it an island, or was it connected to North America? They were also to make navigational recordings, including currents and tides, and were to collect whatever specimens they could find. Barrow's orders, however, made it very clear that their main objective, by far, was “to endeavor to ascertain the practicability of a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean along the Northern Coast of America.”

By the middle of June, the pair had entered Davis Strait, and, like Buchan and Franklin had been, Ross and Parry were dazzled by the colors, shapes, and colossal size of the icebergs and frozen mountains they drifted past. Some of the bergs, with their tall columns supporting icy slabs, reminded Parry of the mysterious structure at Stonehenge. A deeply religious man, he would later write that the magnificence of the landscape around him immediately caused him to ponder “upon the immensity of the creator who could call these enormous masses of ice into being.” To th explorers' amazement, they discovered that they were not alone. After sailing a few miles up the strait, they encountered a fleet of thirty-six British whaleships whose crew cheered their arrival. But the whalers also had dire warnings for the explorers: The ice, they told them, was building up faster and earlier than in previous winters.

Sobered by the warnings, Ross and Perry moved on along the Greenland coast, picking their way through steadily mounting ice floes, constantly surrounded by dense fog. Then, near-disaster struck. Without warning a vicious gale erupted, causing the ships to collide, tearing apart spars, rigging, and lifeboats. When the storm abated the pair resumed their search, aware that a similar event could take place at any time.

Two days later, they made their first discovery—the Netsilik people, an Inuit culture that was completely unknown to the outside world. The Netsilik had never seen a white man. They had no knowledge of ships or boats and, in fact, thought that the vessels were alive. When one of the British officers showed the Inuits his watch, they thought that it, too, was a living being. They were particularly astounded at the sight of John Sacheuse, the native interpreter from South Greenland whom Ross had brought along on the voyage. They had no idea that other people like them existed.

The Englishmen were just as ignorant about the natives. When Parry's landing boat touched shore he had one of his officers carry a white flag with an olive branch painted on it—the universal sign of peace. The natives had no idea of what it meant. Not only had they never seen a flag; they had never seen a tree. But, thanks to Sacheuse's interpreting skills and Ross's desire to make friends with whatever natives he encountered, a rapport with the Inuit was established. Later, Ross described how this was accomplished in his 1819 published journal, descriptively titled
A Voyage of Discovery, Made Under the Orders of the Admiralty, in His Majesty's Ships
Isabella
and
Alexander,
for the Purpose of Exploring Baffin's Bay, and Inquiring into the Probability of a North-West Passage:

It was an extraordinary encounter. But it would prove to be a fateful missed opportunity as well. For now that they had established rapport with the natives, it never entered any of the white men's minds to ask the Inuit to explain how they managed to survive in such a hostile environment. It would not be the last time that such an opportunity was ignored—a lapse that would lead to tragic consequences in the future.

Leaving the natives, Ross and Parry sailed on and in mid-August made an even more important discovery, or more accurately, rediscovery. In finding what Ross's charts told him was undisputedly Baffin Bay, he realized that he was entering what Barrow believed was one of the gateways to discovering the passage. And after two centuries, he was confirming the fact that William Baffin had indeed discovered this important body of water. Baffin had long been one of Ross's heroes and later he would write of the satisfaction he derived in proving wrong those who, for so long, had doubted Baffin's accomplishment. (The existence of Baffin Bay had the subject of controversy since the early seventeenth century; see note, page 258.)

“In re-discovering Baffin's Bay,” he wrote, “I have derived great additional pleasure from the reflection I have placed in a fair light before the Public, the merits of a worthy and able Navigator [William Baffin]; whose fate, like that of many others, it has not only been to have lost, by a combination of untoward circumstances, the opportunity of acquiring during his life-time the fame he deserved; but could he have lived to this period to have seen his discoveries expunged from the records of geography, and the bay with which his name is so fairly associated, treated as a phantom of the imagination.”

After sailing through Baffin Bay without incident, Ross and Parry then followed the west coast of Greenland northward until, on August 19, they entered Smith Sound, distinguished by the two capes that lay on either side—which Ross named for his two ships. Two weeks later, they found the entrance to Lancaster Sound, another waterway that Barrow and others believed might be a vital link in the passage.

Shortly before entering Lancaster Sound, Ross had mistakenly thought that he had spotted a large body of land, one of several mirages that he had experienced during the voyage. But Lancaster Sound was not a mirage. Parry, in particular, was now convinced that the great prize was before them. Noting in his journal that the current in the sound flowed exactly as it did in the open ocean, he wrote: “It is impossible to remark this circumstance without feeling a hope that it may be caused by this inlet being a passage into a sea to the westward of it.”

Ross however was not sure. Thirty miles up the sound, with Parry sailing some leagues behind him, his doubts, he believed, were confirmed. Peering off into the distance through a break in the fog he spotted a long range of connected, formidable mountains that completely blocked any further passage. Later in his published account of the voyage, Ross would recall what he saw:

Immediately upon spotting what he believed to be an impenetrable barrier, Ross ordered his crew to halt the
Isabella.
Declaring that to continue would be fruitless, he not only ordered that the ship be turned around and sailed back through the sound, but commanded that it should continue on directly back to England. If there were indeed mountains blocking his way, and if Ross had continued sailing toward them only to find that they were impassable, his decision to abort the voyage through Lancaster Sound would seem justified. But to abandon the search for the passage altogether? As Parry would later point out, there were enough provisions on both ships to permit the explorers to winter down and then resume the search after the spring thaw.

Even more inexplicable was the fact that not only had Ross decided not to sail further to determine if the mountains were indeed impenetrable, but no one else on either ship had seen the mountains. The answer was quite simple. They were not there. The Croker Mountains existed only in Ross's imagination. He had suffered his most serious mirage.

As the
Isabella
sailed back past him, the astonished Parry had no choice but to follow his commander. He, and most of the other men, were angry and disappointed. Their feelings were dramatically expressed by the
Alexander's
purser, William Hooper. “Thus vanished our golden dreams, our brilliant hopes, our high expectations,” he wrote in his journal, “and without the satisfaction of proving these dreams to be visionary, these hopes to be fallacious, those expectations to be delusive! To describe our mortification and disappointment would be impossible, at thus having our increasing hopes annihilated in a moment, without the shadow of reasoning appearing.”

Why did John Ross turn tail and head for home? Perhaps, as was the case with so many others who would follow him, his struggles through the Arctic, although relatively brief, simply proved too much for him. Perhaps he never really believed that there was Northwest Passage, and despite Barrow's orders, felt that his real objective was to rediscover Baffin Bay. It remains a puzzle, one of the first of many mysteries that would be so much a part of nineteenth-century polar exploration.

Ross and Parry arrived back in England on November 11, 1818, and within a few days made their reports to the Admiralty. Barrow had been deeply disappointed with Buchan and Franklin's failure to reach the North Pole, but his feelings had been tempered by his understanding that they had encountered conditions beyond their control. He was absolutely furious with Ross. He would never forgive him for not checking to see that the so-called Croker Mountains really existed and particularly for abandoning the entire expedition so prematurely.

He was not alone in his criticism. Ross was lampooned throughout Great Britain, especially in the press. How, the newspapers decried, could such an opportunity be missed because of what so many of the officers and men on the
Isabella
and
Alexander
felt certain was a mirage? Try as he did to justify his actions, John Ross would never regain the confidence of Barrow and the Admiralty.

CHAPTER 3.

T
HE POLE
had not been reached; the passage had not been found. But John Barrow was not to be deterred. If anything, he was more determined than ever that England stake its claim to the Arctic. Every day lost meant another day when a Russian or an American might claim the prize. It was May 1819, little more than six months after Buchan and Ross had returned home, and Barrow had already organized two more expeditions and was ready to send them out.