Inuit Adrift – 1500 Miles on an Ice Floe

In 1872, Charles Francis Hall's exploration ship, the Polaris, broke free from its winter quarters at Thank God Harbour in northern Greenland.

With Hall dead, Sidney O. Budington, the captain, gave up any idea of trying to head farther north. At any rate, he had little control over where the ship went, for although it was out of the harbour, it was locked in drifting ice, moving slowly southward.

Then on Oct. 15 a strong northern gale damaged the vessel. The captain decided, prematurely as it turned out, to abandon ship. The result was that some of the ship's crew remained aboard ship, while others ended up on an ice-floe with a hodge-podge of provisions and equipment and no way to return to the vessel.

When the blizzard subsided, Captain George Tyson – he had been the Polaris's ice-master – assessed the situation on the ice-floe. Their floating prison was a nearly circular piece of ice, about four miles in circumference. Besides Tyson, there were 18 people on the ice, including all of the expedition's Inuit. These were the famous Hannah and Joe Ebierbing (Ipiirvik), who had accompanied Hall on all his northern journeys, their daughter, and the Greenlander Hans Hendrik and his family.

They did not see the Polaris again. Thus began one of the most amazing survival stories in the annals of Arctic history. Nineteen men, women and children, adrift on an ice-floe, survived for 196 days while their floe drifted slowly southward through Smith Sound, Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, and into the North Atlantic.

Tyson immediately instructed the Inuit to build three snowhouses. He would live in one with Joe's family, Hans and his family would live in another, and the sailors, most of them German, would live in the third. Tyson wrote of his choice to live with Joe's family: "I prefer living with him, as both he and his wife, and even the child, can speak English, while in the men's hut I hear nothing but German, which I do not understand."

The sailors were quite helpless on the ice. Were it not for the presence of Joe and Hans, there is little doubt that the entire party would have perished. But in heeding Budington's call to abandon ship, both Inuit men had hastily thrown their kayaks onto the ice-floe, along with paddles and other hunting equipment.

Now their floating home formed a platform from which to launch their kayaks and hunt for the entire party. Often they returned empty-handed, but whenever they were successful, Tyson tried to ensure that everyone got his fair share of the food. As often as not, though, the Germans would appropriate everything for themselves. Often everyone was hungry.

On Nov. 21, the ice-master wrote in his journal, "Puney [Panik, Hannah and Joe's daughter] is often hungry, indeed, all the children often cry with hunger. We give them all that is safe to use. I can do no more, however sorry I may feel for them."

But it wasn't only the children who were hungry. Another of Tyson's journal entries notes, "Puney… sat looking at me for some time, and then gravely remarked, ‘You are nothing but bone!' And, indeed, I am not much else."

In December, Joe began to fear that the German sailors were plotting to kill and eat the Inuit. He told Tyson that he didn't like the look in the men's eyes, and he voluntarily turned his pistol over to Tyson. "God forbid that any of this company should be tempted to such a crime!" Tyson wrote. "However, I have the pistol now, and it will go hard with any one who harms even the smallest child on this God-made raft."

Tyson had a deep respect for the Inuit, especially Joe. But there was a practicality to his approach, too. "Setting aside the crime of cannibalism," he continued, "it would be the worst possible policy to kill the poor natives. They are our best, and I may say only, hunters; no white man can catch seal like an Esquimau, who has practiced it all his life. It would be like ‘killing the goose which lays the golden egg.' I shall protect the natives at all cost."

They drifted onward, slowly southward. At times they were quite close to the Baffin shore. At one point they drifted so close to the mouth of Cumberland Sound that Joe thought that the Inuit could make it over the ice to shore near his own homeland. But Joe was a man of honour, even when his own life was endangered. He would not abandon Tyson and the others of the party.

In March their situation worsened. In a storm their floe disintegrated into smaller pieces and they had to take to their small boat in heavy seas to find refuge on a larger piece of ice.

That floe split in two, cutting through the middle of Joe's hastily-constructed hut. By April they had passed the mouth of Hudson Strait and were adrift in the North Atlantic. As they entered warmer water, their small floe became increasingly fragile. They could not survive much longer.

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.