Killigrew and the North-West Passage Read online

  ‘You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face when I’m dead because you were blind to my symptoms!’ said Latimer. ‘I ought to report you to the Royal Society of Apothecaries!’

  ‘No, I ought to report you to the RSA. They can send a circular to all their other members, warning them about you. For any favour, Latimer, will you stop bothering me with imaginary ailments and find something constructive to do? Away with you! I’ve work to do. Unless you’d like to help me with the dispensary returns…?’

  Latimer vanished.

  Strachan chuckled. ‘I shouldn’t complain. If it weren’t for Latimer – and your propensity for getting into scrapes – I’d be going off my head with the boredom. This is the most disgustingly healthy crew I’ve ever had the misfortune to sail with.’

  ‘I’d’ve thought that would please you,’ said Killigrew. ‘Doesn’t it leave you more time for your scientific investigations?’

  ‘Precious little opportunity I’ve had for those! Since we left the Whalefish Islands, we haven’t touched anywhere long enough for me to go ashore.’

  ‘The Old Man’s in a hurry to catch up with the rest of the squadron. Don’t worry: I should imagine we’ll be at Beechey Island for a year or two. That should give you plenty of opportunity for investigations.’

  ‘Beechey Island? That fly-speck on the maps! As if it hasn’t been picked over by enough explorers already. When I volunteered for this expedition, I thought we’d be sailing into uncharted waters, not nurse-maiding a depot ship for two years!’

  ‘“They also serve who only stand and wait”,’ Killigrew reminded him, although secretly he shared his disappointment. Everyone in the Venturer’s crew had volunteered. They had signed up for different reasons: some out of a feeling of duty to the men of Franklin’s expedition, fellow seamen; others keen for the double pay of Arctic discovery. But however noble or cynical their motives, everyone on board must have considered the glory and adventure of having a chance to be the ones who discovered the North-West Passage. From Commander Pettifer to young Private of Marines Andy Phillips, there was not a man on board who did not resent the fact that Sir Edward had failed to assign them a more exciting role to play in this expedition.

  Killigrew took his leave of Strachan and made his way up on deck to relieve Cavan as officer of the watch. There was little to be done while the Venturer was moored to the ice waiting for a lead to open, so Cavan was practising his pistol-shooting with Bombardier Osborne of the Royal Marine Artillery. Armed with their new Deane and Adams revolvers, the two of them were taking it in turns to shoot at bottles swinging from the foreyard. Cavan was cheerfully humiliating Osborne by blasting into smithereens every bottle that he got in his sight without even troubling to aim, or so it seemed. Taking his time, lining up each shot with all the careful aplomb of a clerk defending his honour on Calais Sands, Osborne was having less luck.

  The noise of gunfire and shattering bottles was drowned out by the groaning, creaking, screeching and cracking of the ice pack where it ground against the shore ice. Killigrew crossed to where Petty Officer Ågård stood on the quarterdeck. ‘Any sign of a lead opening up?’ he asked him in Swedish.

  The ice quartermaster shook his head. ‘Normally we could hope for this wind to push the Middle Pack away from the shore, sir, but it doesn’t seem to be working,’ Ågård replied in the same language. ‘There must be strong ocean currents at work.’

  A brawny, blond-haired Swede with blue eyes narrowed from years of squinting across the wide oceans, Olaf Ågård spoke perfectly good English – albeit with the East Riding accent of the Hull whalers he had first gone to sea on – but whenever Killigrew served with a foreigner he made a point of paying for lessons in that man’s language. This was his third voyage with Ågård, and he was becoming fluent in the tongue.

  Ågård had served as a quartermaster on their last voyage together, and with the Arctic experience he had gained during the ten years he had spent on the Greenland fishery he was well qualified for his current role of ice quartermaster, guiding the ship between the floes from the crow’s nest at the foretop and advising the captain on the quirks and perils of the ice.

  ‘Those poor devils out on the ice, Ågård – the survivors of the Carl Gustaf – what chance do they stand?’

  ‘Difficult to say, sir. If they’ve got warm clothes, vittles… they could stand every chance. I remember back in eighteen thirty there were nineteen ships sunk trying to get through the Middle Pack, including mine – a fifth of the entire whaling fleet. And not a man came to any harm. Baffin’s Fair, we called it: there were football matches on the ice, drinking and dancing, more like a celebration than a disaster. But the Arctic’s a capricious place, sir. You never know what she’s going to throw at you next. Those survivors from the Carl Gustaf might freeze to death, be attacked by polar bears, or go crazy and start killing one another. It’s been known to happen.’ Ågård shook his head again. ‘Why don’t we just send a sledge party to pick them up, sir?’

  ‘I’ve already suggested that,’ said Killigrew. ‘The Old Man’s against it. Says it’s too dangerous: he can’t risk losing that many men.’

  ‘I admit it would be risky, sir,’ agreed the ice quartermaster. ‘But if we wanted to avoid danger, none of us should have come to the Arctic in the first place. It’s better than doing nothing.’

  Killigrew glowered at the deck. Ågård was right. He sighed. ‘I want seven volunteers for a sledging party to try to rescue the men on the ice. Ask Orsini to fetch my pepperboxes. And for God’s sake, be discreet.’

  Understanding, Ågård grinned. ‘Ja, min herre.’

  ‘How are the Danish lessons coming along, sir?’ Osborne asked Killigrew.

  ‘That’s not Danish, that’s Swedish,’ said Cavan. ‘Although why a man would want to learn either language is beyond me. Most Danes and Swedes speak pretty good English, anyhow.’

  ‘A naval officer cannot know too many foreign languages, Mr Cavan,’ said Killigrew.

  The steward came up on deck a couple of minutes later, bearing Killigrew’s brace of six-barrelled revolving pistols. ‘Your pepperboxes, signore.’

  ‘Much obliged, Orsini.’

  ‘Are you going to join us for a little target practice, sir?’ asked Osborne, indicating the latest empty bottle that swung from the yard-arm.

  Killigrew had no such intention: his marksmanship was almost as bad as Osborne’s, and he suspected the bombardier knew it. But since Orsini had brought him the pistols rather sooner than he had anticipated, he had to do something to account for them rather than risk having Cavan and Osborne guess he intended to lead a sledging party on to the ice without Pettifer’s permission. One way or another, he knew that disobeying a direct order would lead to his court martial, but he would have preferred it to happen after he had a chance to rescue the remaining survivors of the Carl Gustaf.

  He drew a bead on the swinging bottle with one of his pepperboxes.

  ‘You’re not still using those antiques, are you, sir?’ asked Osborne.

  ‘They’ve given me perfectly good service until now,’ replied Killigrew. ‘Besides, my Coopers have six shots to your Deane and Adams’ five.’

  ‘Maybe so, sir, but the Deane and Adams is a lot lighter than one of your pepperboxes; and the trigger action isn’t as stiff either.’ Osborne held out one of his revolvers. ‘Why don’t you give it a try, sir?’

  Killigrew swapped his pepperbox for the bombardier’s revolver and drew a bead on the swinging bottle. The trick was to aim for the bottle where it reached the outmost extent of each oscillation, where it hung still for a split second before swinging back. He waited, getting the timing right in his head, took a deep breath, and as the bottle started to swing back into his line of fire he squeezed the trigger. As the hammer came back, the cylinder rotated through seventy-two degrees, bringing the next primed and loaded chamber into line with the barrel…

  He had a blinding flash of inspiration.

  The hamme
r came down and the gun went off. The bottle swung back across the deck, untouched.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ exclaimed Killigrew.

  ‘Er… I don’t think so, sir,’ said Cavan.

  ‘No, you blockhead! I mean, I’ve just thought of a way to get through the Middle Pack into the North Water!’ He tossed the revolver back at Osborne – who clutched it awkwardly to his chest and exchanged bewildered glances with Cavan – and ran across the deck to the fore hatch.

  ‘Doc!’

  It was a long-standing tradition, dating back to the time when ships had carried no surgeons and the ship’s cook had had charge of the medicine chest, that the cook was known as ‘the doctor’. Tommo Armitage was no exception, although such was the quality of his cooking that he was more likely to send a man to a sick bed than help him out of it. Not that anyone would have dared to say as much to his face: the cook had a violent temperament, and a habit of gesticulating with whatever he was holding at the time – usually a meat cleaver.

  Armitage pulled aside the curtain of Fear-Nought cloth across the entrance to the galley below and looked up to where Killigrew stood over the fore hatch. ‘Sir?’

  ‘That cake you’re baking to celebrate the anniversary of the Queen’s accession – is it round?’

  ‘Round, sir? Yes, sir. Don’t know that I know any other shape for a cake, ’cepting maybe square for weddings.’

  ‘Bring it to the captain’s day-room.’

  ‘Now, sir? It ain’t finished.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. And on your way, could you tell Ågård to forget the instructions I gave him a couple of minutes ago? And tell him to join me outside the captain’s quarters.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Armitage was bewildered, but he knew better than to waste time with stupid questions when the lieutenant was in this frame of mind.

  Killigrew made his way back to the quarterdeck. ‘Mr Cavan, would you be so good as to take the watch?’

  Cavan nodded.

  Killigrew turned to Osborne. ‘Come with me.’

  The two of them descended aft, and the lieutenant thrust his head into the chart-room, where he found the master working on his charts. ‘Could you join us, Yelverton?’ asked Killigrew. ‘I want your opinion on something.’

  ‘Certainly.’ The master joined Killigrew and Osborne in the corridor, where the lieutenant knocked on the door to Pettifer’s quarters. The sound set Horatia off barking at once. Killigrew glanced over his shoulder at the other two and all three of them rolled their eyes: it did not take much to set the dachshund off barking. The twelve husky dogs put together did not make half as much noise as Horatia on her own.

  ‘Who is it?’ called Pettifer.

  ‘Lieutenant Killigrew, sir, with Mr Yelverton and Bombardier Osborne. I think I may have thought of a way to get us through the ice.’

  ‘Come in, come in!’

  The three of them entered the day-room where they found Pettifer going through some papers at his desk.

  Killigrew knew that this expedition was the first time Pettifer had had a command since he had been promoted to commander. He had been a lieutenant at the time of the China War, and had served with distinction by all accounts. His promotion had effectively ended his career: the navy had more captains than it had ships for them to command. Like Killigrew, Pettifer lacked ‘interest’ – perhaps that was one reason why he got on so well with his lieutenant: they both disdained the politicking that went on at the Admiralty – so when it came to handing out commands his name was always a long way down the list. But last year Pettifer had met Lady Franklin at an Admiralty levee, and she had decided that he was just the man to rescue her husband. Some said that when it came to Arctic expeditions, Lady Franklin carried more political weight than all the Lords of the Admiralty combined.

  No one could say that Pettifer was not qualified for command of an exploring ship. As a midshipman, he had taken part in surveying the Great Lakes of North America after the great war with France, and afterwards had helped Lieutenant Owen carry out his great survey of Africa: charting the Dark Continent’s coasts from the Gambia to the Horn of Africa, an exercise that had taken five years and lost so many lives to yellow fever that someone had once commented that the 300 charts prepared by the expedition had been drawn and coloured with blood. Killigrew was not concerned that this was Pettifer’s first voyage to the Arctic – he was in the same boat himself – but it did give him pause for thought that this was the commander’s first command in nearly ten years. A good deal had changed in that time.

  Pettifer stood up and crossed to the table, gesturing for them to join him. ‘Be seated, gentlemen. A way through the ice? I’m intrigued, Mr Killigrew!’

  ‘With your permission, sir, I’d like to wait until Ågård’s joined us. I’d like to hear his opinion on this matter, if I may.’

  They sat down at the table and presently Armitage stumped in on his wooden leg, with the base of a sponge cake on a plate. ‘It ain’t finished yet, sir. I’ve still got to put the icing on it.’

  ‘It’s all right, Doc, we don’t need that great a degree of verisimilitude. Put it on the table,’ Killigrew told him. ‘With your permission, sir?’

  ‘What’s this for, Killigrew?’ asked Pettifer.

  ‘I need this to explain my idea, sir. Sorry, Doc: looks like you’re going to have to bake another cake for the anniversary of Her Majesty’s accession.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The cook placed the cake on the table with a sigh, and stumped out.

  The door from the captain’s cabin opened and Ursula Weiss emerged, her auburn hair tousled, sleep in her blue eyes. ‘What is going on?’ she asked.

  ‘Sorry to have disturbed you, ma’am,’ said Pettifer. ‘Mr Killigrew thinks he may have thought of a way to get us through the ice.’

  ‘Perhaps Frau Weiss would be good enough to join us, sir?’ suggested Killigrew. ‘She must have sailed through the Middle Pack a number of times. I’d value her opinion.’

  Ursula looked stunned; clearly she was not used to being consulted about anything. But she took the chair that Killigrew pulled out for her at the table. Pettifer was too polite to comment when she started straightening the edges of some of his papers, lining them up so they were exactly parallel with the sides of the table.

  Ågård arrived and was invited to join the others at the table. ‘All right, Killigrew,’ said Pettifer. ‘Now we’re all here… what the deuce is all this about?’

  ‘It’s so simple, sir, I wonder I didn’t think of it before.’ Killigrew reached behind him, took a weighty tome down from the bookshelves, and placed it on the table. ‘Imagine, if you will, this book is the shore ice.’ He pushed the plate with the cake on it up against the book. ‘This cake is the Middle Pack. And this nut…’ he took a walnut from the bowl at the centre of the table, ‘…is the Venturer.’ He placed it in the angle between the cake and the book. ‘As we all know, the Middle Pack rotates anticlockwise, rubbing up against the shore ice,’ Killigrew turned the plate.

  ‘Try not to get crumbs on Sir John Franklin’s first Narrative,’ chided Pettifer.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ Killigrew realised that Armitage had neglected to bring a cake slice. ‘May I borrow your letter opener, sir?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘We cut a dock in the pack ice, thus.’ Killigrew cut two parallel lines into the cake, opposite the walnut, about three inches apart. He then cut a third line, joining the tops of the first two cuts, and lifted out the oblong of sponge cake. ‘We sail the Venturer into the dock, thus.’ He put the walnut in the middle of the indentation in the sponge cake. ‘And then we just wait for the rotation of the Middle Pack to carry us round until we can sail out into the North Water.’ He turned the cake so that the indentation passed Sir John’s Narrative, and then pushed the walnut out again on the other side. Then he put the piece of cake he had cut out into his mouth and munched it. His smug expression faded rapidly: Armitage’s sponge could have been used for ballast.

&nb
sp; ‘By George!’ said Pettifer. ‘It’s quite insane, of course. But it might just work.’ He turned to the ice quartermaster. ‘What do you think, Ågård?’

  ‘The ice isn’t one cohesive mass, sir. It’s made up of masses of separate floes, all jumbled together. When the mouth of that dock grinds against the shore ice, we may find that the whole thing collapses. And you know what will happen then.’ He picked the walnut off the table, put it in his mouth and cracked it between his teeth. The graphic demonstration made Yelverton wince.

  ‘But if we chose a strong section of the floe?’ Pettifer asked eagerly. Yelverton shook his head. ‘It won’t work, sir. Let’s see, the edge of the pack moves at about a quarter of a knot. We’d want the dock to be deep: the mouth of it will almost certainly collapse, but if we’re far enough back, that shouldn’t make any odds. Say, four times the length of the Venturer, about two hundred yards. How thick would you say the ice is here, Ågård?’

  ‘It varies, sir. About four or five feet, I should say.’

  ‘Let’s assume the worst and say five; better to go too far back than not leave ourselves enough time to finish cutting the dock and get the Venturer inside before the mouth passes the shore ice. Even if we have two teams cutting the ice, it’ll take about a minute to cut through a foot of ice of that thickness – again, let’s play it safe and say two minutes. With the men taking ten-minute breaks every hour, we’re going to have to allow at least thirty hours to cut the dock, I should say. With the pack rotating at half a knot an hour, that means we need to sail back for seven and a half nautical miles to give ourselves a sufficiently narrow margin of error. I’m sorry, Killigrew. It was a good notion, but we simply don’t have enough open water.’

  The lieutenant cleared his throat. ‘There is a quicker way to cut a dock in the ice…’

  * * *

  ‘You’ve been itching to do this ever since we saw Ned Belcher blow up them empty tar barrels on the parade ground at Woolwich, ain’t you, sir?’ Petty Officer Molineaux commented with a grin.