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Daniel Webster
The Daniel Webster was a whaling ship based out of Massachusetts. She made four voyages to the Arctic. On the longest one, from 1860-1863, she stayed in Cumberland Sound for two winters and lost four of her crew to scurvy. On the same voyage, two of her crew members ran away. Their story, written down by one of the deserters, John Sullivan, is one of the most tragic and astonishing in the history of Cumberland Sound whaling.
On the night of August 4, 1860, nine American sailors deserted their ships in Cumberland Sound. These men, two from the Daniel Webster and seven from the Ansel Gibbs, rowed away in a 28-foot open whaleboat and disappeared into the night. This was no easy feat just south of the Arctic Circle in early August, but it was a foggy night, and the boat was concealed among the small rocky islands around the mouth of Kingnaite fjord. The rumour, which turned out to be true, was that the men were trying to get home.
During the first night, they rushed more than 50 miles across the Sound to Qimmiqsut (Nimigen Island). They kept their distance from settlements and ships and passed unremarked, one of over a 100 whaleboats in the region that season. They hurried out of the Sound, presumably fearful of being arrested, and returned to their ships. Desertion was a criminal offence.
The men would have had no way of acquiring the knowledge, skills and gear that could have kept them all alive. Only two of the nine deserters had ever been to sea before, and none had been to the Arctic. They had few personal possessions and had not been able to steal many more. Whaleboats were usually equipped with a small sail, a hatchet, a glass lantern, a flint, candles, a compass and perhaps bread and water to last a few days. Apart from this and their clothing, they had taken two guns, ammunition, five blankets, twenty pounds of bread and all the cooked provisions they could find. They had no maps, no charts and no navigational instruments apart from the whaleboat's compass. None of them would have known how to use such equipment anyway. When asked about the route they were planning to take, the only answer they could give was South.
Nevertheless, within a month, they had crossed Hudson Strait and were descending the coast of Labrador, having covered a distance of over 300 miles. They had killed nothing at all since leaving the vicinity of Cumberland Sound and had encountered no Inuit. They were desperate with hunger.
On September 3, Warren Dutton of the Daniel Webster died of exhaustion and lack of food. The other men ate every edible part of Dutton's body, even breaking up the bones and boiling them. A few days later, two of the men tried to murder John Sullivan, sneaking up behind him and clubbing him over the head. In the ensuing fight, Sullivan fatally stabbed one of them in the throat. It took an entire day for the man to die, and then they ate him.
Eventually the men were too weak to travel further. They consumed every leather object they had, including their boots and their belts. Despondent, they camped out by the shore, where they planned to, in the words of John Sullivan, "remain until we would die or be picked up".
A boatload of Inuit found the survivors, rescued and cared for them throughout the winter. The deserters' failure to live off the land as they moved south demonstrates just how dependent Qallunaat were on Inuit, especially if they were away from their ships for any reason.
NOTES :
Charles Francis Hall, Journal, July 1860-November 1860. Charles Francis Hall Collection, Smithsonian National Museum of American History Archives.
Sullivan in Ross, ed., Arctic Whalers, Icy Seas, 180.