A Reunion — Joe Ebierbing and Italoo Enoch

After Joe Ebierbing (Ipiirvik) and his wife, Hannah, were rescued by the Tigress north of Newfoundland in the spring of 1873, they and the entire group of 19 Inuit and qallunaat who had survived the most incredible ice-drift in Arctic history were taken from St. John's to Washington, where they were questioned as part of a government inquiry into the death of Charles Francis Hall.

The rest of the crew of the Polaris, those who had stayed aboard the ship off northern Greenland during the fierce storm of the previous October, had still not been heard from. So the American government decided to send two relief ships north to search for the missing men.

One of the ships was the Tigress, which the U.S. government purchased from her Newfoundland owners, the very ship that had rescued the ice-floe party.

Her captain for this voyage was James A. Greer. George Tyson signed on as an officer and four of the survivors of the ice-drift joined as crew members. One of them was Joe Ebierbing, who signed on as interpreter and ordinary seaman. Leaving Hannah and their daughter behind with friends in Wiscasset, Maine, Joe boarded the Tigress at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on July 14, to return to the Arctic.

Also on board was the Greenlander, Hans Hendrik, and his family. The Tigress would return them to their home. A chronicler of this relief expedition tells us:

"Joe had shipped as interpreter, but was put to work on board as a seaman, while Hans was a gentleman passenger; but as it happened, the latter could speak but little English, or understand it, so Joe took advantage of his superior knowledge, and led the simple-minded Hans to become his drudge, by gravely informing him that both were equally expected to work, thus exemplifying the old adage that ‘knowledge in power'."

After leaving Hans and his family at Disco Bay in Greenland, the Tigress steamed north to Smith Sound. On Aug. 14 Capt. Greer located the spot in Foulke Fjord where the Polaris had spent the previous winter.

Using Joe as an interpreter, Greer learned from an Inuk that the Polaris had sunk near that spot, and that Budington and his men had sailed southward in two of the ship's boats. Unknown to Capt. Greer, the missing men had been picked up by a Scottish whaler, the Ravenscraig, in June, even before the Tigress had left New York. With no way of knowing that, Greer turned the Tigress toward the Baffin coast in the hope of meeting whalers who might have picked them up or had news of them.

On Sept. 4, the Tigress anchored in Niantilik Harbour, close to Blacklead Island, in Cumberland Sound. This was Joe's homeland. He and Hannah and their infant son had left Baffin Island eleven years earlier with Charles Francis Hall aboard the whaler, George Henry. Now he was seeing friends and relatives for the first time in over a decade.

Maddeningly, no account of the Tigress voyage describes Joe's reunion with the countrymen he had not seen for so long. Tyson's account provides a few snippets of detail – that some of the Inuit that Hall had known were now at Niantilik, among them Bob and Polly and the old man Hall had called Blind George.

We are left to speculate. The Inuit, many of them closely related to Joe, would have heard of his travels from New England whalers. They would have inquired about Hannah, to whom many of them were also related. They would ask about the couple's adopted daughter, Panik, whom Hall had purchased for them from an Igloolik family during their five-year trip to Foxe Basin and the Central Arctic.

There would have been births, deaths, marriages, even murders to report. And Joe would have had stories to tell – about life in Groton, Connecticut, between expeditions, about the death of Hall, and particularly about the horrendous drift on the ice floe that he had so recently endured.

The Tigress remained at Niantilik for less than two weeks. Too soon the visit was over. But when the ship weighed anchor on Sept. 16, one extra passenger was on board. Joe had invited his half-brother, Italoo (probably Ittuluk), to accompany him to Groton to spend the winter. Italoo, who also went by the English name Enoch, thus became one of many Baffin Inuit to spend a winter in New England.

The following summer Italoo returned north, probably aboard Captain John Spicer's schooner, the Helen F. It was a long journey, for they whaled off the Greenland coast first, taking five whales near Cape Farewell.

Finally, after 91 days, Italoo reached home. Unable to write, he dictated a letter to Joe and Hannah on Sept. 19. It was taken down by another sailor, George Johnson. In it, he asks Joe to send him cartridges for his gun and to send letters in care of Captain Spicer's schooner.

Italoo must have enjoyed his time in Groton, for he tells Joe and Hannah that he thinks he will stay in the north for two years "and then I will come home again." But it was not to be. He died in Cumberland Sound later that fall.

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.