Arctic Drift

64

The strong westerly winds finally began to abate, reducing the seas to a moderate chop. The settling winds brought with it a wispy gray fog that was common to the region during the spring and summer months. The thermometer finally climbed into double digits, prompting shipboard jokes about the balmy weather.

Pitt was just thankful that the weather had calmed enough to launch the submersible without risk. Climbing through the hatch of the Bloodhound, he settled into the pilot’s seat and began checking a bank of power gauges. Beside him in the copilot’s seat, Giordino reviewed a predive checklist. Both men wore just light sweaters, shivering in the cold cabin they knew would soon turn toasty from the electrical equipment aboard.

Pitt looked up as Jack Dahlgren stuck his poker face into the hatch.

“You boys remember, those batteries don’t hold their charge so well in this cold weather. Now, you go bring me back the ship’s bell and I might just leave the lights on for you.”

“You leave the lights on and I just might let you keep you job,” Giordino uttered back.

Dahlgren smiled and started humming the Merle Haggard standard “Okie from Muskogee,” then closed and sealed the hatch. A few minutes later, he worked the controls of a small crane, lifting the submersible off the deck and depositing it in the center of the ship’s brightly illuminated moon pool. Inside, Pitt signaled for its release, and the yellow cigar-shaped submersible began its descent.

The seafloor was just over a thousand feet deep, and it took the slowly drifting Bloodhound almost fifteen minutes to reach the bottom. The gray-green waters quickly melded to black outside the submersible’s large viewing port, but Pitt waited until they passed the eight-hundred- foot mark before powering up the bright bank of exterior high-intensity lights.

Rubbing his hands together in the slowly warming cabin, Giordino looked at Pitt with mock suffering.

“Did I ever tell you that I’m allergic to the cold?” he asked.

“At least a thousand times.”

“My mama’s thick Italian blood just doesn’t flow right in these icebox conditions.”

“I’d say the flow of your blood has more to do with your affinity for cigars and pepperoni pizzas than with your mother.”

Giordino gave him a thankful look for the reminder and pulled the stubby remains of an unlit cigar out of his pocket and slid it between his teeth. Then he retrieved a copy of the shipwreck’s sonar image and spread it across his lap.

“What’s our plan of attack once we reach the wreck site?”

“I figure we have three objectives,” Pitt replied, having earlier planned the dive. “First, and most obvious, is to try and identify the wreck. We know that the Erebus had a role in the ruthenium that was obtained by the Inuit. We don’t know if the same holds true for the Terror. If the wreck is the Terror, there may well be no clues whatsoever aboard. The second objective is to penetrate the hold and determine if there are any significant quantities of the mineral still there. The third objective is the most tenuous. That would be to search the Great Cabin and the captain’s cabin to determine if the ship’s log still exists.”

“You’re right,” Giordino agreed. “The log of the Erebus would be the holy grail. It surely would tell us where the ruthenium was found. Sounds like a long shot to hope that it survived intact, though.”

“Admittedly, but far from impossible. The log was probably a heavy leather-bound book stored in a chest or locker. In these cold waters, there’s at least a chance that it’s still in one piece. Then it would be up to the preservationists to determine if it could be conserved and ultimately deciphered.”

Giordino eyed the depth gauge. “We’re coming up on nine hundred and fifty feet.”

“Adjusting for neutral buoyancy,” Pitt replied, regulating the submersible’s variable ballast tank. Their descent slowed to a crawl as they passed the thousand-foot mark, and, minutes later, a flat, rocky seafloor appeared beneath them. Pitt engaged the propulsion controls and drove the vessel forward, skimming a few feet off the bottom.

The craggy brown seafloor was mostly devoid of life, a cold and empty world not far removed from the frozen lands protruding above the surface. Pitt turned the submersible into the current, guiding the vessel in a sweeping series of S turns. Though the Narwhal had been stationed directly above the wreck, Pitt knew that they had drifted considerably south during their descent.

Giordino was the first to spot the wreck, pointing out a dark shadow on their starboard flank. Pitt steered the Bloodhound hard to the right until the stately wreck materialized under their spotlights.

Before them sat a nineteenth-century wooden sailing ship. It was one of the most remarkable shipwrecks Pitt had ever seen. The frigid Arctic waters had retained the ship’s condition in a near-perfect state of preservation. Covered in a fine layer of silt, the ship appeared fully intact, from its bowsprit to its rudder. Only the masts, which had slipped from the deck during the long plunge to the bottom, lay out of place, dangling over the side railing.

Mired in its desolate eternal mooring, the ancient ship exuded a forlorn aura. To Pitt, the ship appeared like a tomb in an empty graveyard. He felt an odd chill thinking about the men who had sailed her, then been forced to abandon their home of three years under desperate conditions.

Slowly engaging the submersible, Pitt cruised in a tight arc around the vessel while Giordino activated a forward-mounted video camera. The hull timbers still appeared thick and sound, and in places where the silt was thin they could see a coat of black paint still adhering to the wood. As they rounded the stern, Giordino was startled to see the tips of a propeller protruding from the sand.

“They had steam power?” he asked.

“A supplement to sail, once they reached the ice pack,” Pitt confirmed. “Both ships were equipped with coal-fired locomotive engines installed for added propulsion through the thinner sea ice. The steam engines were also used to provide heat for the ship’s interior.”

“No wonder Franklin had the confidence to try to plow through Victoria Strait in late summer.”

“What he may not have had enough of by that point in the expedition was coal. Some figure they ran short of their coal supplies, and that may have accounted for the ships becoming trapped in the ice.”

Pitt pushed the submersible around to the ship’s port side, anxious to find lettering on the bow that might reveal the ship’s name. But he was disappointed to find instead the only real evidence of damage to the ship. The hull beneath the bow was blown out in a jagged mass of timbers, caused by the constricting ice. The damage had extended to the topside deck when the weakened section had struck the seafloor, causing the timbers above to buckle. A broad section of the bow on both sides of the centerline had crumpled like an accordion just a few feet astern of the vessel’s blunt prow. Pitt patiently hovered off both sides of the bow as Giordino brushed aside the silt with an articulated arm, but no identifying script work could be found.

“I guess this one wants to play hard to get,” Pitt muttered.

“Like too many of the women I’ve dated,” Giordino grimaced. “I guess we’ll have to take Dahlgren up on his ship’s bell offer after all.”

Pitt elevated the submersible above the deck, then swept toward the stern. The deck was remarkably clear of debris, the ship obviously configured in its winter hibernation mode when it was abandoned. The only unusual item was a large canvas structure that lay across the deck amidships. Pitt knew from the historical accounts that a tentlike covered structure was set up on the deck in winter so that the crew could escape the interior confines of the ship for exercise.

Pitt continued aft, where he found the helmsman’s station and the large wooden ship’s wheel, still standing upright and attached to the rudder. A small bell was mounted nearby, but, after careful scrutiny, he could find no markings on it.

“I know where the ship’s bell is,” Pitt stated, cruising back toward the bow. Hovering over the tangled mass of timbers and debris where the bow had buckled, he pointed down.

“It’s in the garbage pit here.”

“Must be,” Giordino agreed with a nod. “It’s not our day. Or night.” He checked a console of dials in front of him. “We have just under four hours of battery power remaining. Do you want to rummage around for the bell or have a look inside?”