Farthest North: The Life and Explorations of Lieutenant James Booth Lockwood, of the Greely Arctic ExpeditionLanman, Charles
History
Farthest North: The Life and Explorations of Lieutenant James Booth Lockwood, of the Greely Arctic Expedition
Lanman, Charles
Arctic regions; Lady Franklin Bay Expedition (1881-1884); Lockwood, James Booth, 1852-1884
As we pass over the daily records made by Lockwood in his journal at
this particular time, we find food and the dangers of starvation to
be the absorbing themes. It seems strange that, in a land of ice and
snow, there should have been any apprehensions about a sufficient
supply of drinking-water; but this was the case, and the fact came
home to the exiles when they found that their supply of tea had to
be reduced to half a cup per man. Good water was not only scarce,
but could not be obtained from the neighboring lake, their sole
dependence, without great toil in chopping away the ice. They had
the ice, of course, but there was not sufficient fuel to reduce it
to a liquid.
As they could keep warm only by remaining in their sleeping-bags,
the manner of visiting each other was simply to exchange
sleeping-bags; and thus, when Lockwood wanted to have a talk with
Greely, one of the companions of the latter would exchange bags with
the visitor.
On the 18th of January, another cloud was thrown upon the party by
the death of Cross. He died of a kind of heart-disease, induced, it
was supposed, by intemperance in drinking. For several hours before
his death he uttered low moans which seemed a kind of echo from the
grinding of the far-off ice-fields. His remains were enveloped in
coffee-sacks and an American flag, and deposited in a stony grave
near the neighboring lake, the only funeral remarks having been made
by Lieutenant Lockwood.
On the 21st, Lockwood had a talk with Greely about his own health;
said he was very weak, and had been so for two weeks, but had not
mentioned it for fear of depressing the men; he could not account
for it, and concluded by saying that if he should not be well or
better when the time came to make the contemplated passage of the
straits, he desired to be left behind with his share of the rations,
and then be sent for from Littleton Island. To this Greely replied
that he would never harbor such an idea for a single moment; that he
would never abandon a living soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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