Eludice

Thanksgiving Day excerpt (plus Arctic Moon mention!) from Hampden Gardiner's diary:

"Today has been set apart by the Commanding Officer as a day of thanksgiving. Various games and amusements took place during the day, including a shooting match at a lighted candle, foot races, snow shoe races (I took a second prize in a show shoe race) which were great sport to all hands. And there was also a race of the dog teams to Dutch Island and back. The time the sledges were absent going a distance of 4 miles was 28 minutes. In the evening Sgt. Rice bedecked himself in civilized garments including a coat cut in imitation swallow tail style and delivered the prizes won during the day. The prizes consisted of various useful articles of the toilet, and besides sweetmeats, etc. Extra allowances of rum was issued which made all hands feel livelier and the day ended up with a stag dance. We had divine service at 10 am.

A newspaper was started some time ago by Sgt. Rice and Pvt Henry and with Lt. Lockwood as chief editor. They notified the community that contributions would be acceptable. The first number of this paper was issued today and created much amusement and interest. It’s called the “Arctic Moon” and is supposed to shed light when the original orb is on the other side of the earth. It’s reception presages well its future success. And my best wishes are that it will attain success in its way. If it shows us the way through these dark days it will have attained undying fame."

What's this about the Arctic Moon? It would be super cool if we could read those issues. Oh wait you CAN because @zeehund found and transcribed three issues plus a Christmas supplement, available here!

Thank you @zeehund for the beautiful portrait of Hampden Gardiner! It's the perfect accompaniment for today's journal entry, which expounds on a particularly vivid aurora that bamboozled the Greely gang.

November 17, 1882:

"Have been having an extraordinary disturbance of magnetic needle for some hours past. This morning about 5 am when coming out of the Magnetic observatory after making my observation. I was suddenly dazzled by the display of light which greeted my eyes as I emerged from the darkness. The transition was so great and so sudden that I think it must have been a half minute at least before I recovered myself sufficiently to think what had happened. The whole heavens seemed one mass of colored flames arranged and disarranged and rearranged every instant. I hurried down to the quarters and hastily telling Israel and Linn who were working at the time to come out quick I returned outside myself afraid lest I should lose any portion of the beautiful exhibition. The display was so close to the earth that we repeatedly put up our hands as though we could touch something material by so doing.

There was one person who was so much affected by the display at its grandest moments that he lowered his head quickly and putting up his hands as though he would ward off a blow said the d—n thing will do some harm yet. All hands came from their beds to witness the display and auroras have been our most common phenomena since darkness set in. Magnetic observations (extra) were immediately commenced and continued at intervals of 5 minutes until the display shall end. This display sustained its greatest grandeur for probably 10 minutes and then gradually grew less brilliant. It continued all day with occasional vivid flashes. I doubt not that this is the grandest exhibition of the aurora which has ever been witnessed. I have read descriptions of other great auroras but they would but poorly suffice for the display I have just recorded and which I think it would be impossible to describe adequately."

November 10, 1881

Excerpt from Hampden Gardiner's diary at Fort Conger:

"A great day for gasoline our present illuminating agent. When Corp’l Salor was filling lamps in the lean-to the can containing part of our supply of gasoline exploded but without doing any damage. In the afternoon (4 pm) when supper was about to be announced Corp’l Ellison alarmed us much by crying fire. I was the first one out and I saw the carpenter shed in flames. Our fire brigade was soon at work with the extinguishers and the fire was soon put out. Quite a quantity of tools lumber and some clothes which the men had stored there were burned. Ellison had his face badly burned by the lamp as it exploded. He now has to stand a good deal of bantering on account of the funny appearance which he makes with his face enveloped in white bandages and hardly allowing him room to breath and see through."

I am delighted to announce that two diaries belonging to Sergeant Hampden S. Gardiner, an observer on the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, have been transcribed and are now available via the google drive linked below.

Born in 1858, Hampden Sidney Gardiner enlisted in the US Army Signal Corp in 1874 and was a graduate of the Signal Corp School of Instruction in Virginia. Prior to signing up for the LFBE, he was posted at various weather stations throughout the US.

The original scans and a partial transcript of the 1881-1883 diary were provided by the US Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) History Office, which retains the original diaries, as well as some various correspondences and other records relating to Gardiner. Stay tuned as these are gradually added to the drive!

I completed the transcription of the 1881-1883 diary that begins with Gardiner and his fellow expedition members aboard the Proteus. The first 100 days or so of the diary were transcribed by the CECOM History Office. This is the working journal that Gardiner would have been required to turn over to the US Signal Corp upon the completion of the expedition. It is not always riveting reading, with many entries being simple reports of the day’s official activities. Sometimes, however, Gardiner waxes poetic about the landscape or sneaks in a hint of a joke about his comrades.

The inimitable @zeehund transcribed Gardiner’s field journal, which begins with entries from 1883 after the expedition party has retreated from Fort Conger, and is interspersed with entries from field excursions from 1881 to 1883. The diary also includes sketches of the landscape of various areas near Fort Conger, as well as some sketches Gardiner made aboard the steamship Cortes, which carried many members of the expedition on their first leg of the journey out of New York. This diary ends in 1884 and contains Gardiner’s last written words before succumbing to starvation on June 12, 1884, just ten days before the remaining survivors were rescued.

I hope you enjoy reading about life at Fort Conger through Hampden's eyes. I'll also be adding some memorable quotes to the blog on their corresponding calendar days, so stay tuned or check the "gardiner diaries" tag for some frequently funny and sometimes poignant reflections from a guy who kind of worked his way into my heart while I was transcribing his words.

(Cover image courtesy of University of Wisconsin Press)

I recently finished reading Starvation Shore, a fictional novel of the Greely Expedition by Laura Waterman. I enjoyed it both as a fiction and as a representation of the events of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition.

I have some critiques. As a primarily nonfiction author, Waterman tends towards telling rather than showing, with an extremely relatable tendency to over-explain the context of some scenes. The novel also uses David Brainard as a sort of de facto main character, and we get more of a direct window into his thoughts and motivations than any other character. I would never complain about a focus on Brainard, but it would have been interesting to hear the same internal thoughts of other characters. Why not speculate on Adolphus Greely's thoughts and insecurities at crucial decision-making points, for example? That being said, we do get some of this from characters like Greely and Dr. Octave Pavy via fictional letters written to their spouses, just not in the way of direct point-of-view moments.

I think Waterman's writing flourishes best in moments for which there isn't a primary source, and I really enjoyed how she handled the big unanswered question of the expedition. Without giving too much away, the part where Brainard imagines the carcasses of bears and looks down to see his own hands as bear paws is my favorite bit in the novel.

Check out the first episode of my stint on Beyond the Breakers talking about the Karluk here or on your podcast app of choice! This will most likely end up being a FOUR episode series, plus a bonus episode talking about the Wrangel Island expedition.

Ernest Shackleton

Edward Israel

John the Weddell seal