Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival (23 page)

The
Karluk
wasn’t part of history, though. Not yet. The ship floated along as part of the ice floe for weeks, with no end in sight. In early October, McKinlay and his mates could see open water stretching tantalizingly around the floe to the south, but were powerless to do anything about it. And so they sat, waiting for something—anything—to happen.

They did their best to keep busy. McKinlay took to handicrafts, at one point making a medicine chest for the ship’s doctor. The
Karluk
’s
mechanics overhauled virtually every moving part in the engine room, preparing for a quick getaway should the possibility of escape ever present itself. This not only kept them busy and staved off boredom and depression, but also allowed them to hold on to the only thread of hope they had, a sound survival strategy.

Despite the otherwise dire circumstances, the crew never stopped appreciating the awe-inspiring beauty of the landscape. Stark though it may have been, here was a world few of these young men could ever have imagined, including the teacher McKinlay. The sun reflected off a landscape that stretched seemingly to the end of the world. The ice floes around them rose and fell as if with minds of their own, sometimes crashing together with such force that they would form huge ridges rising dozens of feet into the sky. Polar bears and seals were their constant companions. When darkness fell, the northern lights danced eerily across the night sky.

As strange as it may seem, it is a good strategy to appreciate the beauty of nature around you, even if you are in peril. Most survivors report doing this at one time or another during their ordeals. It is the same as maintaining a sense of humor in your darkest hours. It takes your focus away from the misery of your current situation.

In the meantime, Captain Bartlett was now in charge of the ship. And while he would go on to make some very wise decisions in the months to come, he fell flat in those early days aboard the
Karluk.
In early October, the ship’s doctor presented Bartlett with a letter requesting that he hold a meeting with the entire crew, where he would lay out his plans for their future. Bartlett confidently replied that no such meeting was necessary, and let the matter end there. So when the doctor presented Bartlett with another letter ten days later, the skipper refused to accept it altogether.

I think Captain Bartlett made a big mistake in avoiding the meetings. It seems like he was living in a world of hope and disbelief, and was essentially denying the grave nature of their situation. To the contrary, he should have done what all good leaders do in survival situations: realistically assess the situation, share that knowledge with the others, and prepare for the worst.

Yet he didn’t. The days passed into weeks, and an oppressive feeling of hopelessness began to take hold of the crew. This sense of overwhelming and contagious apathy can sometimes be worse in a large group than a small group. Among a large group, people can sometimes become distractions for one another, forget the gravity of their survival ordeal and focus on the boredom. Small groups usually don’t have the luxury of distraction, however, and tend to focus on—and tackle—the survival situation almost immediately.

So Bartlett missed another opportunity to lead. It was his responsibility to assess the morale of the crew. He should have sensed their despondency and organized games, contests, and activities that have kept other arctic exploration parties eager and vital under similar circumstances. This is especially important when the fundamentals of life—food, water, shelter, clothing—are accounted for and there’s little else to do.

As October turned into November, Bartlett finally seemed to kick into gear when he realized that there was little hope the
Karluk
would make it through the winter. He chose an area of what he thought to be the oldest and most stable ice on the floe, and ordered the crew to begin moving the ship’s supplies there. Bartlett now recognized that their only hope of survival was to move as much of their cargo as possible off the
Karluk,
because she was in danger of being crushed and sinking.

It was a good decision, but I believe the captain waited far too long. In the end, they moved all the necessary supplies off the ship, but Bartlett never seemed to consider the mental well-being of his men. He should have started the work effort much earlier, when the men were at risk of sinking into depression. This would have given them something to do to pass their time, a reason for being.

In fact, why not dismantle the ship completely and rebuild it somewhere safe? Of course, it’s easy for me to ask that as I write this, in warmth and comfort. And what if the opposite had happened and a lead opened up and set them free? Either way, if radical action such as dismantling the ship were to be taken, it should have been much earlier. Six days later, McKinlay and the others had moved a massive store of supplies out onto the ice:

Bartlett then very wisely had the men use the supplies—particularly the wooden cases that held various items—to construct the walls of the two houses that would soon become their homes. The tops of the crates all faced the interiors of the houses, for easy access to their contents. The extra timber they carried was used to make floors and the roof rafters, over which was spread sailcloth.

Building the houses seems to be Bartlett’s first real bit of survival thinking, much more so than having the supplies removed from the ship, which was more reactive than proactive (the
Karluk
was about to be crushed). It shows that Bartlett was beginning to think about their long-term survival.

Bartlett also had the men insulate the outsides of the houses with blocks of snow, another smart move. As counterintuitive as this may seem, snow is an excellent insulator. It is dense, keeps the warm air in and the cold air out, and is especially useful at keeping out the wind, which is the greatest killer of all in the cold.

Bartlett’s inspiration for using snow as insulation may have come from Kuraluk and Kataktovik, the two Inuit men on board (the other Inuit on the
Karluk
were Kuraluk’s wife and two children). Quiet and reserved, the Inuit were tireless hunters who provided a constant supply of seal and polar bear meat to the captain.

Although the crew did not need to move into their makeshift houses right away (the ship was still intact), they proved useful almost immediately for housing injured dogs. When Stefansson left, he had taken the twelve best sled dogs with him, which meant that extra care had to be lavished upon those remaining on the
Karluk.
It wasn’t easy, since they often seemed hell-bent on killing each other.

The aggression of true Inuit sled dogs is not particularly well known, but a frightening sight to behold. They can be utterly vicious to one another, and they often fight to the death. For three years, I ran Inuit sled dog teams, taking clients on wilderness trips and adventures. I have lost count of how many times I needed to jump into the middle of a five-dog fight with my fists and boots flailing. The dogs barely noticed me—so intent were they on fighting one another. I had to be as tough and strong with them as many ranchers are with horses, or they would have maimed—or killed—each other, a fate far worse than being kicked in the head by a musher.

As time passed, it became apparent that as seaworthy as the
Karluk
might have been as a fishing and whaling ship, she was ill equipped for a winter in the Arctic, both inside and out. The tables were too small, there were too few plates and mugs, and there weren’t enough stools and chairs on which to pass the monotonous days. Even the few lamps they had soon stopped working properly, so McKinlay took it upon himself to restore them to perfect working condition.

He meticulously took apart the lamps, boiled down every part, then put them all back together again. This is a classic example of how obsessing on a small detail can make survival more bearable. For many survivors, it’s okay to spend what may otherwise seem like an inordinate amount of time focusing on a small task. It occupies your mind and your hands, and may help you live to see another day.

McKinlay certainly did; his survival instincts were top-notch, even if they were tempered by his meek personality. Rather than become bogged down in misery and boredom, he used his time productively. To keep his body fit and sound, he spent hours running around the deck of the
Karluk.
I’m not sure if this exercise regimen was copied by the other members of the crew, but they would have been wise to do so. They still had plenty of food, so the activity would only have served to help. The alternative would have been to eat very little during times of inactivity and more when working hard.

I know I’ve used exercise as a way to keep warm and sane during many of my survival ordeals. During my first-ever
Survivorman
shoot in the boreal forest of northern Canada, I had to do jumping jacks and push-ups to keep my core temperature from falling dangerously low. My primary motivation was to create warmth, but the beneficial physical and psychological effects of such exercise should never be overlooked.

McKinlay’s survival instincts certainly did not stop with exercise, as he tried to make himself as ready as possible for the ordeal he knew would come. He even went so far as to study books from the ship’s library (he read an entire book about the arctic exploration ship the
Jeannette
) to learn lessons from explorers who had passed that way before. If anything, McKinlay was proactive.

But the schoolteacher was not beyond making mistakes. During one of his excursions off the ship, he was stricken with a case of frostbite on his hands. As a sign of the times, the ship’s doctor advised that the best way to treat the malady was to rub the affected area with snow, which we now know can cause permanent damage.

The months passed. November became December, and soon the crew was thinking about Christmas on the ship. Yet the Yuletide spirit did not extend to all members of the crew, as three of them began to make plans to leave the
Karluk
and strike out on their own. This news did not sit well with Captain Bartlett at all.

One morning shortly after Christmas, the crew was shaken from its torpor by the sound of a shot outside, which proved to be a huge crack that had opened up alongside the entire starboard length of the ship. It was the last thing any of them wanted to see, for they knew that pressure ridges formed around cracks in the ice. And if a pressure ridge—those places where massive ice floes smash and grind together like tectonic plates—formed anywhere near the ship, the
Karluk
was doomed.

Preparations for abandoning ship took on a new sense of urgency, a development that helps illustrate just how complacent they had been. Even though they were helpless in one of the most unforgiving climates on earth, they still weren’t thinking like people in a perilous survival situation. They knew the sinking of the
Karluk
was likely, yet they didn’t prepare themselves to the point of being a finely oiled machine. That was a serious mistake.