Mikkelsen and Iversen the day before setting off alone in April 1910. “It can’t be much worse a journey than the one we can almost see the end of now,” Iversen said. Before Mikkelsen had even voiced that concern-before, in fact, the three had made it back to the ship-Iversen, again, volunteered to accompany him. With Jørgensen very likely unfit for such an arduous undertaking, Mikkelsen would need a new right-hand man. Mikkelsen had already scheduled a springtime (and much longer) odyssey to Danmark Fjord to uncover any reports that Mylius-Erichsen may have stored in cairns along his trail. Jørgensen’s plight presented another issue. They’d be amputated “without any better anesthetic than half a bottle of whisky,” Mikkelsen wrote. The dogs became so ravenous that they began to kill and eat each other, and five of Jørgensen’s toes froze past the point of no return. They set off on the long road back to the Alabama, racing against time to make it there before starvation or frostbite overtook them. Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain Unfortunately, the surrounding ice had done quite a bit of melting, breaking up, and refreezing in the intervening years, and it became clear after three days of investigation that Mylius-Erichsen and Høeg-Hagen had been swallowed by the sea. They then gave him a proper burial and continued their search for his fallen friends. They shoveled away “with reverent hands the kindly snow that hid the pitiful remains of a modest hero,” as Mikkelsen wrote in an earlier account, and unearthed a few sketches of Brønlund’s companions and other odds and ends. Mikkelsen was the first to spot the hole that Brønlund’s body had been buried in. Two dogs died of exhaustion, and on October 25, the men basked in the last bit of sunlight they’d see for the whole winter. In 16 days, they covered a distance that Mikkelsen thought should’ve taken just five in better conditions, finally reaching the Denmark Expedition’s old camp-“Danmarkshavn”-and recuperating there for four days. “Often the ice was so thin that we could see swimming narwhals through it, and that was not so pleasant,” Mikkelsen recalled. The three travelers departed the Alabama with their dog-led sledges on September 26 and trod slowly over league after league of precariously pliant ice. Geological Survey Photographic Library, Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain
Jørgensen’s Last StandĮjnar Mikkelsen photographed by Ernest de Koven Leffingwell during an expedition to Alaska in 1907. Jørgensen tossed his hat in the ring-so, too, did Iversen, laughing off Mikkelsen’s insistent words of warning. After hearing his leader impress upon everyone how dangerous it would be, Lieutenant C. From there, Mikkelsen plotted a sledge journey to Brønlund’s final resting place, Lambert Land, some 330 miles north. “Well, skipper,” he said, “just give the word and the motor will start.”Īt last, the Alabama charted a course for northeastern Greenland, landing in late summer and dropping anchor in a safe spot off Shannon Island where they’d spend the winter. After a good 24 hours of cacophonous tinkering-which Iversen supplemented with his own “merry song” and “thoughtful whistling”-the new recruit emerged from below and flashed a toothy grin. Iversen, a charismatic young engineer with no Arctic experience who’d been dreaming about joining Mikkelsen’s crew since learning about the trip in a magazine. Only one volunteered for the gig: Iver P.
Luckily, the captain of a nearby ship in Iceland, the Islands Falk, got permission from the Danish Admiralty to lend one of his assistant mechanics to Mikkelsen for the entire expedition. The expedition’s mechanic, Aagaard, then became so ill that he had to be discharged-an especially pressing issue, since the Alabama’s motor was malfunctioning. The sledge dogs earmarked for the trip were riddled with disease, so Mikkelsen and his subordinates had to shoot them all and make a pit stop in the western Greenland town of Angmagssalik (now Tasiilaq) to purchase replacements from Inuit. The Alabama near Shannon Island in September 1909.
0 kommentar(er)
