Excerpted from the bestselling book In The Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides
On July 8, 1879, the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco to cheering crowds in the grip of “Arctic Fever.” The official U.S. Naval expedition, funded by James Gordon Bennett, the eccentric and stupendously wealthy owner of The New York Herald, intended to reach the North Pole by sea. The ship was captained by an ambitious young officer named George Washington De Long, who led a team of 32 men deep into uncharted Arctic waters, carrying the aspirations of a young country burning to become a world power. The ship sailed as far north as possible, but soon was trapped in pack ice, where it would remain immobilized until summer.
CHRISTMAS MORNING dawned black and bleak, the winds howling, the temperatures outside so cold that the contracting bolts and metal fasteners throughout the ship kept up an eerie staccato as they snapped and cracked in their timbers. Overnight, a sleeping dog that was curled up on the pack had become so firmly adhered to the ice that it had to be removed with a shovel. It was impossible to take observations, for the lenses of the various instruments could not be cleared of frost and vapor. Inside the ship, a green scum of long-accumulated condensation clung to the walls, the ceilings, the bulkheads, and nearly every other interior surface.
“This is the dreariest day I have ever experienced,” De Long wrote, “and it is certainly passed in the dreariest part of the world.” On this Christmas morning, he felt he had nothing to celebrate. He was unaware that that very week, in Washington, the Navy Department had promoted him to the rank of lieutenant commander. As he thought of his wife, Emma, their daughter Sylvie, and the comforts of home, he could hardly drag himself out of bed.
But De Long’s spirits lifted when some of the men came aft to distribute a bill of fare that they’d secretly printed on the Jeannette’s small press. A Christmas feast was to be held at 3:00 p.m., with entertainment afterward. De Long’s mouth watered when he read the sumptuous menu —
SOUP.
Julienne.
FISH.
Spiced salmon
MEATS.
Arctic turkey (roast seal).
Cold ham.
VEGETABLES.
Canned green peas. Succotash.
Macaroni, with cheese and tomatoes.
DESSERT.
English canned plum pudding, with cold sauce.
Mince pie.
Muscat dates, figs, almonds, filberts, English walnuts, raisins, mixed candy from France direct by the ship.
WINES.
Pale sherry.
BEER.
London stout.
French chocolate and coffee.
“Hard tack.”
Cigars.
Arctic Steamer Jeannette
Beset in the pack, 72 degrees north latitude
The Christmas feast proved to be powerfully good, so good it brought tears to the men’s eyes. Afterwards, toasts were proposed, and everyone sipped a dram or two of what De Long called “a fine compound” that George Melville, ship’s engineer, had concocted from Irish whiskey and a few secret ingredients. Afterwards, Alexey, one of the Inuit hunters the crew added along its voyage, did a native Alaskan dance, and then there was clog dancing as Dressler sawed the fiddle and Kuehne worked his accordion. The festive mood had a curing effect. There was only one sour note: Jerome Collins, the ship’s meteorologist and resident reporter, refused to attend. He was holed up in his room, brooding. Since the failure of the electric Edison lights, Collins had slipped into a funk and could not be coaxed out of it. On this day, especially, he was in no mood to be merry.
But the men somehow managed to convince Collins to take charge of a minstrel show that was being planned for New Year’s Day. Collins instantly brightened to the idea. He would choreograph the whole show, write the scenes and intervening narrations — and he could sprinkle the thing with all the puns he wanted.
At midnight on the thirty-first, the New Year was announced by a rapid ringing of the ship’s bell by the man on the watch. Officers and crew assembled on the quarterdeck and sang out three cheers for the Jeannette. The next morning, a printed programme was circulated by a crewman done up in blackface, announcing a performance that night of “The Celebrated Jeannette Minstrels.” Among other acts, it promised an orchestral overture, a violin solo, a jig dance by the ever-energetic seaman John Cole, and a performance by “the world-renowned Aneguin, of the Great Northwest, in his original comicalities.”
At 8:30 that night, everyone assembled in the deckhouse, where a stage had been erected with a drop curtain and lanterns serving as footlights, the whole proscenium decorated with flags. Collins began the show with a prologue in which he read some “conundrums,” as he called them. They were groaners of the first order, but everyone was so glad to see him back in action, nobody cared —
“Why,” said Collins, “is that stanchion like Mr. James Gordon Bennett?”
Why?
“Because it supports the house.”
“And why do you suppose it is that the U.S.S. Jeannette will never run out of fuel?”
“Because we have Cole on board!”
Collins went on in this vein, ignoring the guffaws, eventually incorporating every member of the Jeannette into a riddle or a rhyme. Then the show began in earnest — with songs, skits, and dances. The various acts were interspersed with “Tableau vivants,” as Collins called them, silent scenes depicting such themes as “Sailors mourning over a dead marine” (two men mute with grief over an empty brandy bottle) or Our good Queen Anne (Aneguin dressed in drag). The acts were silly and amateurish, but everyone loved them. De Long judged Albert Kuehne’s violin solo “fine indeed, especially when one takes into consideration the fact that a seaman’s life does not render the fingers supple and delicate.” Ah Sam and Charles Tong Sing, the ship’s Chinese cooks, recited a Cantonese ballad, then broke into a sham knife fight. Then, said De Long, “Mr. Cole gave us a jig with all the gravity of a judge.”
Not since the day they left San Francisco had such mirth and fellow-feeling run through the ranks. “We broke up at eleven o’clock,” said De Long, “and we all felt satisfied with the ship, the minstrels, ourselves, and the manner in which we had celebrated the first day of the year of our Lord, 1880.”
Read the entire white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and survival in the Gilded Age. In the Kingdom of Ice is available wherever books are sold.
Hampton Sides is an award-winning editor of Outside and the author of the bestselling histories Hellhound on his Trial, Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, Anne, and their three sons.
