Arctic "Ghost Ship"

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 124, 28 May 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

Arctic "Ghost Ship"

By Francis Dickie.

First of her kind, a "real," yet "ghost." ship, voyaging it crew for five years, defying the Polar pack, the steel steamer Baychimo bids to become more famous than the legendary Flying Dutchman.

SHE has appeared again—the Baychimo! — phantom ship, yet reality, the only vessel in all the tremendously dramatic history of the Western Arctic to defy the ice pack and escape destruction for more than two years. A party of Eskimos skirting the frozen shores of Beaufort Sea between ley Cape and Point Barrow, glimpsed her again recently, lying far out in the Polar pack. But stormy weather, and, perhaps more, the knowledge of how the last band of Eskimos to board her nearly lost their lives, prevented these men from going upon this mysteriously •till existing "ghost" ship, which has reappeared from time to time over a period of four years. Since men first sailed the sea, "ghost" ships have been common talk among sailors of all nations. Of all the stories relating to this class of vessel, that best known for centuries centres around the Flying Dutchman. This, however, was a ship only in men's imagination. Even the stories about it vary greatly. Among stories still more famous is that of the Marie Celeste. She was a mystery ship; to date quite beyond all fathoming; but she made only one dramatic appearance.

The Baychimo Is in a class all by, herself. She is no creation of fantastic imagery, or wild imagining of a ship, once foundered, returning. She is, in short, the only authentic "ghost" ship fully living up to> all the requirements of the "profession" that the world has ever seen. And her story is one far more interesting, exciting, baffling of explanation than any previous one in "ghost" ship annals upon all the seven seas. Thirteen hundred tons of steel, the Baychimo was the crack ship of the Hudson Bay Company's' northern fleet, and the second of two vessels pioneering for thsit company in opening up to steam navigation the vast and tremendously difficult trading territory bordering on Beaufort Sea, McClintock Channel and the end of the North-We6t Passage toward the Pacific. The Baychimo took up the work of the schooner, Lady Kindersley, after it was crushed in the Polar pack in 1921, the crew only escaping with their lives following a most terrible journey over the ice. For nine voyages the Baychimo made the treacherous 2000 miles of Western Arctic required to visit the eight Hudson Bay posts. She threaded intricate passages and uncharted stretches where shoal

water was always a lurking menace, and the leadsman's was a life of misery. There were no wharves in all that region. Worse even, the Baychimo had, in some cases, to lie miles off the points of call by reason of the shallow water. All outgoing cargo to the posts and incoming freight of bundled fur and mineral ore had to be loaded on ■ scows and towed either to or from the steamer. Not only this, but ice conditions permitting no harbour for the scows and launch, these had to be carried aboard the steamer all the way from Vancouver, Canada, and back again. Notwithstanding the Baychimo's latest performance tending to make men forget her others, her previous nine years of defeating the Polar pack while -carrying cargo back and forth through the so difficult waters of the Western Canadian Arctic, deserves very much a place in marine annals. For every trip was filled with drama. Take just this one incident selected from the story of her voyaging, all we've space for. here, but illuminating surely enough what her crew faced, and their bravery and ingenuity in meeting unavoidable disaster. It is set down as told by one of the members of the crew on her many voyages. "Toward midnight of that day we got our first view of the Polar sea. It was bright daylight as the ship began threading through the broken ice. Thousands of acres of white pans, huge. dripping snow-capped bergs, ,-\nd dirty masses of old, undermined ice floated quietly past. On the third lay of this particular battle with 400 miles of ice. I was down in the fo'c'sle cleaning out the dingy room. My ears were deafened

Strange Story of the Baychimo, Which Voyaged for Five Years Without a Crew

by the roar of the ice as it rolled along the steel side of the ship. Suddenly the engines ceased. A terrific jar shook the ship. I was hurled against the wall. Recovering, I rushed on deck. I ran to the fo'c'.sle head with others hurrying there. Twenty feet of her side smashed in! Orders were given. The ship backed away from the pan and headed rapidly for shore, anchoring in shallow water. A boat was lowered to examine the damage. Soon came the report: 'Tlates pushed in. Ribs cracked, but she's not leaking." The accident had been caused by the ship ramming a floe of sea ice. This was not dangerous, but. in glancing off she had struck heavily a pan of Mackenzie River fresh-water ice. This is much harder than that formed b} r salt water."

And yet this sturdy ship, for all her cracked ribs and plates pushed in. with the nearest station for repairs 2000 miles away, did not turn back, but calmly proceeded to finish out her always desperate voyage against time and the Polar pack. "The crew slaved day and night amid sleet and snow and August blizzards, and unexpectedly springing gales from the sea. The worst work at every port of call came after the last load had been put ashore and aboard. Weary, eager for sleep, the crew had still to prepare the ship for further dashing onward to the next post. The cumbrous scows and launch had to be lashed fast, always a difficult task. But every second almost had to be timed if the ship was to escape being shut in by the Polar pack, which event meant a year's imprisonment in the ice at least, possibly a dreadful death by being crushed in the shifting ice. On board also there was chainlocker duty. Oh that dreadful

chainlocker! Two able seamen had to be here. A gloomv pit it was. about oft square and Sft high, under the fo'c'sle head. Two men lowered themselves into tli is. By the faint 71g7it of a hurricane lamp they coiled- the massive anchor chain as the windlass drew in. Mud. filthy ooze, freezing water poured into the well. Men went in clean, to come out living models in clav. Every moment spent in this old-fashioned chainlocker was facing death of the most awful kind. If the windlass broke, the roiled chain in the well would have flashed out at a terrible rate, clanking, snapping, whipping back and forth in that confined space against the steel sides of the ship like an agonised lashing python of iron. Once when the chain ran out in this way, it smashed one of the men to pulp and took him in pieces out through the hawse-hole. This recollection was always in the minds of the men when on duty there. ... At Tree River, one of the farthest points we visited, a score of the primitive Copper Eskimos came aboard immediatelv on our arrival. To them the rumbling winches working cargo were a source of wonder and marvelling interest. One old man took hold of the revolving drum and tried to stop it with his hands. When he was almost pulled off his feet, several of the young men tried their hand at it. Watching their rueful faces, one of the crew was struck by an idea! He called to the winchman: "Hey, Mac. when I take hold of the drum, turn off the steam.' So the Eskimos saw apparently one white men do what several of them had failed to accomplish. "None of them spoke English. But we carried an interpreter aboard, and he translated that they had said: 'He has the strength of Naoiook, the bear.' " Caught In the Ice-Pack Sailing out of her home port, Vancouver, Canada., in the first week of July, 1931, the Baychimo made her usual nervously nasty passage of the Pacific, through Behring Strait and Beaufort Sea. The same feverish night and day labours of the crew", assisted by Eskimo, proceeded under the long light of the unletting sun. The shores of little-known Victoria Land, immense terra incognita, marked the end of the eastward journeying. With a million dollars in bundled fur the ship turned her nose toward Vancouver. But the Polar pack, like a live thing furious and vindictive at being balked so often, was waiting, moving down earlier than in many seasons. In a blinding blizzard on October 1 the Polar pack closed around the staunch old ship. So threatening were the conditions that Captain Cornwall established a base on safer ice nearer the shore about a mile from, but in sight of, the steamer. A rude shelter was built from boards carried from the ship. The captain and 16 the crew took up their quarters in this shelter to spend nearly a year until the next summer's thaw might free them. In answer to a wireless call an aeroplane on skiis managed to set through from Xome arid took off three passengers and the- rest of the crew.

Coal had to be conserved on board the ship, for it was very low. So the men spent toilsome days searching far along the nearby mainland for driftwood, which was very scarce. They shot a few polar bears to help out the ship's stores. Meeting e party of Eskimos they were able to secure some reindeer. Yet all tliolr staunch loyalty to the «hip. all the hardships they endured, all the anxiety of never knowing that the ire underneath them might not break up under tidal pressure and howling gale and carry them to their death—all came to naught. On the night of 24. a terrific change in temperature, a rise of 70 degrees. In the wake of this an abnormally high wind building up a blinding blizzard, holding the men tight within their shelter for two days. When the storm finally abated and they emerged. the ship was gone. A 1300-ton steel steamer had been wafted away by ft genii more magically powerful than anything in the Arabian Nights. And aboard the steamer was a million dollars in fur. Found and Lost Again From the captain's wide knowledge of ice conditions, he knew the ship had not ln?en smashed up and foundered. The thaw and following wind had simply wafted part of the sea ice containing the ship into the unknown. For weeks parties of men under the captain and Officers Snmmers and Kively sought over hundreds of square miles in vain. They gave up hope and moved to Point Barrow. 50 miles away. They had just got settled here when an Eskimo hunter came hurrying in to announce he had found the ship. She had travelled about 4-"» miles south and west of her first position. Captain Cornwall and some of the crew with Eskimo assistants raced with dog teams, a desperate dash across the ice. daring death from possible exterminating blizzard or opening water. On this journey they managed to salvage the greater portion of the fur. When they raced again for the remainder, the ship again had disappeared. Indeed, it would seem, from that first moment after captain and crew left the ship for the ice, that some Arctic witchery seized upon her. Unseen ghostly forces took charge of her helm, guiding her with uncanny precision. 'The ship was now definitely abandoned. It was the experience of every man familiar with this Arctic region that no vessel, and particularly one" so huge as the Baychimo, could" possibly escape for very long being crushed in the awful chaos of ever-shifting countless billions of tons of ice. Never in all the history of these western Canadian waters had a derelict ridden in the ice floes more than two seasons. Usuallv they went to pieces very quickly after being caught, as had the' Ladv vKindersley. the work of which the Baychimo had carried on. So naturally no one thought any more of the steamer as a reality. She had becon,.- just another victim of the Polar pack. Thus it was with almost unbelieving eyes that, five months later, a daring Arctic youth. Leslie Melvin. came upon the ship in the ice close inshore several hundred miles from Herschel Island. Melvin. alone, on a 3000-mile dog team journey from Herschel Island to Nome. was travelling light. So he did not salvage anything of value.

However, even this view of the ship did not change the certainty of all experienced men she would be seen no more. Yet in August, 1932, the Baychimo was seen moving slowly northward with the drifting pack. During that summer Eskimos sighted her several times In August of the next year, the schooner Trader came upon the "ghost" *hip now entering her third year of unprecedented life for a derelict in the icefloes. She was now truly a "ghost" ship, the first of her kind the Arctic had ever known, / Among those to board her upon this occasion of the schooner Trader's visit was the first white woman ever to set foot upon her deck since her lonely voyaging had begun. This was Miss Isobel Hutchison, a hardy Scottish botanist gathering Arctic plants for Kew Gardens. It was a weird and depressing visit. Miss Hutchison relates. Through the open hold she caujrht sight of scattered samples of mineral ore. caribou skins, broken bales of fur. and pillaged carpo boxes. Stranjre carjro. some of it, still untouched cases of priceless anthropoloffical specimens of the primitive coppei Eskimo from regions recently visited by white men for the first time. The specimens were the result of arduous journeying and fleeting by Richard Finns'!*, the Canadian scientist. In one

) corner of the hold a "Times" "Historv 1 of the Great War" cried out to lie taken ) from this icy world, where no one road In the pilot house a rusty typewriter > stood melancholy silent, aiid the charts i of seven seas were scattered upon the : floor, for the Arctic spectre now guiding her needed them not. ; The schooner Trader steamed awiv ' from the "ghost" ship riding so placidly • there in a great pan of ice. t Thus this ship, which no one with any knowledge of the Arctic conditions ; could po*«ibly believe would live more , than a winter, continued on her aimless. ! way sea<on after season. In all r-he ha* ■ been sighted by Kskimo and white men • a scfire of times over a peri<vl of nearly ' ' five year-. It is a record having no > parallel, one never even nearly approached by any other "anthemi ■" ghost ' ship in the history of the world. It is as though some phantom ; steersman infinitely wise to ice con- I ditinns came aboard on that Ootoher day in 1031 when her regular commander and crew- took to the ice. This "ghost"' ! ship has performed the impossible— l 'defied the inexorable criwliin? power of the Polar pack, and moved back and I forth aero-s the icy waste over ! thousands of miles, month after month durinjr five loner year-. All the Arctic mnrvels. and th world has » new' "abost"' ship far surpassing anything hitherto possessed. '