They were two explorers from the second great period of exploration. The first great period of exploration began when merchant-explorers in the 15th through 17th centuries began the search for a shortcut to the Far East and continued with the rush to find the riches of a New World that had been discovered. The second period began around the beginning of the Victorian Era when European colonial powers first began to lay claim to vast areas of the non-European world , and individuals and small groups of explorers, often driven by no more than simple, or scientific curiosity began to explore the heretofore unknown interiors of these areas. It continued when the arctic and antarctic regions became the subjects of their quests.
Both explorers would be New York born, but their early lives, their careers and their interests would take them far from New York, and only in fame would they return to the New York metropolis.
Both were wounded combat veterans, whose battlefield experiences would steel them for the hardships and dangers they would face.
And both would embark on adventures with incredible levels of risk that modern explorers might well consider unacceptable.
One would be the leader of his expedition and gain success through his careful planning, and leadership: inspiring and encouraging the men under his command to persevere through disasters. The other would be a member of an expedition, who, a common soldier, would excel by making the best of a disastrous situation, and leading by example.
One would be the leader of his expedition and gain success through his careful planning, and leadership: inspiring and encouraging the men under his command to persevere through disasters. The other would be a member of an expedition, who, a common soldier, would excel by making the best of a disastrous situation, and leading by example.
John Wesley Powell was born into a family of itinerant Methodist preachers who came to America from Wales in search of both greater economic and spiritual opportunities. John's family would move numerous times. The future explorer was born in the Methodist parsonage of Mount Morris, Genesee County, New York. Within a couple of years they would move to Castile, New York, then Jackson, Ohio, then Wheaton Illinois and finally, South Grove, Wisconsin.
The evangelical fire of his parents never blazed forth in their oldest son but instead he was drawn to the natural sciences. Young 'Wes' filled the upper floor of his parents' houses with all manner of specimens, indexed and crated, pickled and dried, pressed, pinned, caged and alive. In between teaching jobs he managed to pick up a substantial education at several mid-west colleges--but no degree, and several times an insatiable wanderlust led him postpone his formal education to take extended river trips. Traveling alone, by flat bottomed skiff he explored river environments the entire length of the Mississippi from St.Paul to New Orleans, and the Ohio river from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi.
As the Civil War approached, there was no doubt that the idealistic son of missionaries would take up arms in the great crusade to end slavery, but John Wesley Powell's military career (and life) was almost ended in his first battle. At the ferocious Battle of Shiloh he deployed his artillery company under heavy fire and as he raised his arm to signal his men to fire, a rebel minnie ball nearly removed his right forearm. Later that day a Union surgeon a would complete the job. He survived the deadly infection that followed, and could have honorably retired from the Army but returned, instead, to active duty. Promoted to the rank of major, "Wes" was given the responsibility of supervising sixteen batteries of guns, and over a thousand men that were destined for Sherman's March to the Sea, but were rerouted and thrown into the Battle of Nashville. Powell worked ceaselessly throughout December 1864, but by January the exhausted Powell had to retire from the Army, four months before the final Union victory.
Powell returned to civilian life to become a professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan University and taught courses at Illinois State University at Normal, south of Bloomington, Illinois. He also became curator for the museum of the State Natural Historical Society where he reconnected with his first love, studying and collecting samples from the natural world. Before long he was organizing an expedition to study the geology and natural world of the Rocky Mountains, staffed by his students and funded by several institutions, to whom he promised geological and biological specimens for their collections. In 1867 and 1868 Powell, his students and his wife explored the mountains around Denver, making observations and collecting samples. (Powell's wife, Emma Dean, became the first woman to climb Pike's Peak.) He also explored the headwaters of the Green, White and Grand Rivers, (later called the Colorado). It was then that he decided to explore the wildest stretches of the Colorado River by boat.
Stories persisted of Indians, trappers and adventurers who by plan or mishap had been swept down the raging rapids of the Colorado, never to be seen again. As late as 1857 a Lt. Joseph C. Ives had attempted to ascend the Colorado from the south, only to be thwarted by massive rapids.
'...the Colorado, along the greater part of its majestic and lonely way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed', Ives declared. Powell scouted out the course of the river as best he could, talking to mountain men, settlers and Indians who had some knowledge of the area. From barometric readings taken near his intended departure point where the new transcontinental railroad crossed the Green River, and at the flats near the southern end of the Grand Canyon he knew roughly the total number of feet (almost a mile) the rivers would drop. But could he expect the Green and the Colorado to descend along survivable rapids, or would great death-dealing falls, or series of falls lurk beneath sheer canyon walls, in remote areas, out of sight of anyone who had ever happened to travel along the canyons' rims? There was only one way to find out! He didn't even know the length of his journey on these un-mapped rivers with all of their twists and turns and switchbacks, so he planned for an expedition of from six to nine months.
On May 11, 1869 the recently completed Union Pacific Railroad delivered one of the strangest cargoes it had ever carried in its short history to its Green River Station in the arid southwestern lands of Wyoming territory. Four heavy wooden whaleboats ordered by Powell would be named by their crews Maid of the Canyon, Kitty Clyde's Sister, No Name, and Emma Dean. The expedition started down the Green river, on May 24th, traveling three days safely through three canyons until disaster struck. Then the "No Name" was wrecked in a rapid. One third of their food, many personal belongings and importantly three barometers, with which their leader hoped to gauge their descent were lost. After the accident Powell insisted they portage around the most dangerous rapids.
Several more successful, if exhausting, days of river running were followed by a couple days of rest, until on July 17 the fickle winds whipping through the canyons ignited brush near a campfire where the expedition had camped on a small island. In a few moments the whole island was ablaze and Powell's men were forced to take to their boats and obliged to continue their descent in semi-darkness. After 300 miles the Green entered the Colorado river and into never explored territory. More successful, if sometimes harrowing, days followed until July 28th.
Powell determined he was about 40 miles from an Indian reservation and would try to send letters from there to his family and the outside world. By now rumors were starting to spread that the expedition had failed and Powell and his whole party had perished. One hoax-ster was even making the rounds of newspapers pretending to be the sole survivor of the Powell expedition and offering to sell them stories of the debacle. Powell and three of his companions climbed out of the canyon and hiked to the Indian settlement. One of his party, an English adventurer who had lost all his belongings in the wreck of the first boat decided to stay .
Continuing on, three days later, the one armed Powell was climbing the Canyon wall when he slipped and nearly fell to his death, only to be saved by a climbing companion, George Bradley who saved him by removing his trousers and tossing him one leg, enabling Powell to pull himself to safety! A few days later Powell, nearly lost his life when the Emma Dean crashed into a rock and he was swept from the boat. The boat was saved but Powell lost his bedding, his last barometer and two hunting rifles.
In the days and weeks that followed progress was slow. Frequent stops had to be made to repair and caulk the battered and leaky whaleboats; much food had molded and had to be thrown away; game was scarce and rations had to be cut back. But Powell insisted on pursuing the objectives of his expedition,
continuing to stop for map making and to make scientific observations documenting the canyon's flora, fauna and geology. On August 27 the party encountered some of the worst rapids they had endured so far.
On August 28th three of Powell's party rebelled, insisting they be allowed to climb out of the canyon and hike cross country to wherever they might find settlements and relief. Powell noted the location on his map as "separation rapids." They were never seen or heard from again. The following day the rapids began to diminish as the canyon began to widen out and the day after that, they came to the confluence with the Virgin River. Settlers were seen fishing along the banks. They had survived!
John Wesley Powell returned from his expedition a celebrity and following an account of his expedition became a much-sought-after speaker. Repeating his journey in 1871, he staffed this second larger expedition with scientists and a photographer who produced some of the first photos of the Grand Canyon. On this trip he developed an intense interest in Native American ethnology. Powell moved to Washington and in the following years became an adviser to the Secretary of the Interior, founder and later director of the U.S. Geological Survey, head of the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology (for 23 years!), and founding member of the National Geographic Society.
David L. Brainard's military career, it could be said, began by accident! In 1876 the 19 year old David left his now-home in Freetown (Cortland Co.), New York to visit the grand Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, taking in among its many wonders an exhibit on Arctic life and animals. On his way home, when he came to transfer in New York City he discovered he had lost the $10 bill he had saved for a ticket home. Too embarrassed to contact his parents for money, he decided on impulse to take the free ferry to the Governor's Island Army Post and there he enlisted!
Soon, as a member of the 2nd Cavalry, he was on his way to the Montana Territory and the Indian Wars. It turned out that soldiering suited David well. Conscientious, and detailed oriented with unshakeable enthusiasm for carrying out orders Brainard advanced steadily from private, through corporal, to sergeant . In skirmishes with the Sioux he was wounded twice, in the hand and face. In 1881 he applied to join the Howgate Arctic expedition, but after that was cancelled, he applied to join an expedition to be led by Lt. Adolphus Greely, as part of a worldwide effort to study weather, climate, biology and magnetic activity of the Artic region. Greely, also a U.S. Cavalryman and signal corp. officer had been involved in telegraph installations and had become fascinated by the rapid growth of meteorological science that the instantaneous transmission of weather data facilitated.
In July 1881, aboard the S.S.Proteus and several support ships, Greely and 21 Army volunteers, with a contract doctor and 2 Greenlander hunters/sled dog handlers were dropped off at Lady Franklin Bay in Grinnell land (aka central Ellesmere Island) in the Canadian Arctic adjacent to northwestern Greenland. There they would build a research station, they named Ft. Conger, where they would explore and collect data until the next summer. Initially well supplied with 350 tons of supplies, and conveniently situated near an exposed seam of coal for the expedition's cast iron stove, Greely was not unduly worried when the expedition's relief ship was turned back in June 1882. Thick pack-ice blocked the long channel between Ellesmere Island and Greenland preventing the Neptune from approaching within 100 miles! The expedition, however, continued its work for another year, and Greely met one of his personal goals. Three of his men, including Brainard, trekked far up onto the frozen Arctic Ocean, exploring the farthest point north, within 7degrees lat. of the pole. (--A record held previously by Great Britain for 300 years.)
The third year, as summer ended, food supplies dwindled, concern grew. No relief ship appeared. Greely began to send out search parties to look for a ship, or for rock cairns left by a ship with supplies and/or messages of what had happened. In September Lt. Greely decided to put in motion a drastic contingency plan developed by the expedition planers. They would abandon Ft. Conger and retreat south with their data logs, instruments and what food they could carry in the two small barks and a small steam launch that had been left for them, to Cape Sabine, beyond (they hoped) the reach of the pack ice. And then, they would wait for rescue. Most of the men thought this was madness to abandon their camp at the onset of the arctic winter ! Long simmering dissatisfaction and dislike for their commander began to bubble up.
The 250 mile voyage was expected to take about 10 days but about midway in their journey a cold arctic blast froze the channel solid and the expedition was forced to drag their boats up onto the ice to prevent them from being crushed. What followed was an exhausting ordeal where the men were forced to drag their boats over the ice, to where they could find open water, to relaunch them, only to have their passage blocked by more floating ice, necessitating they drag their boats up again, then repeat the ordeal. It would take 51 days . As they approached their destination a scouting party returned with the worse possible news. From a cairn at point Sabine, they learned, the relief ship Proteus had been crushed in the pack ice and sank; the crew had been saved and evacuated to southern Greenland. News of the disaster and 40 days worth of food had been left at the cairn-- 40 days of food for them to survive 8 months of arctic winter!
One of Sgt. Brainard's principal duties had been to manage and parcel out supplies/rations to the men, a job he had done efficiently and equitably earning him the trust and respect of all. Now a tremendous burden had been placed on his shoulders. The months that followed would see Brainard issuing each man a pound of food per day; then, fewer and fewer ounces--precisely weighed out; then a thin gruel made from the boiled sealskin leathers of non-essential clothing, fortified with minute brine shrimp--copepods that Brainard and others had managed to net in the small patches of open water near their camp; then, Nothing. The expedition set up camp a few miles north of Cape Sabine overlooking the narrows, where they were not likely to be missed by a relief ship. They built a hut with stone walls covered by the overturned hull of the launch, a tarpaulin and a heavy layer of insulating snow--and waited.
The emotional effects of the ongoing ordeal began to have major consequences. On their retreat south, Greely fell into a serious depression. Only the intervention and encouragement of Brainard and a few others kept their chief from losing control. Members of the expedition who disliked Greely, and had had issues with him, advocated removing him from command. Only the resistance of Brainard and his friends prevented a mutiny. Then there was the issue of food theft. Almost from the beginning of the expedition someone had been stealing rations. The thief, a Pvt. Henry, was caught and reprimanded three times. Greely issued a written order. If Henry were to be caught again, he would be shot. Brainard and two other enlisted men were issued rifles--one gun had blanks, the other two active rounds. Henry was executed on June 6,1884.
Meanwhile, in Washington, congress dithered. It was embarrassing. Their well planned relief efforts had failed and their expensive Arctic whaler, they had bought in Scotland and refitted for breaking through arctic ice was now at the bottom of Baffin Bay. Besides, they had equipped the expedition with the most modern equipment, including a steam launch, coal stove and modern rifles. It was easy to delude themselves into imagining that the expedition's members were probably warm and cozy, growing fat on rich walrus blubber, and thick polar bear and musk ox steaks. In fact, one of the group's
hunters had brought down a wayward polar bear that provided a couple of days relief, and a couple scrawny arctic foxes had been shot; but that was all. In January 1884 the first of the explorers would die from starvation and scurvy and be buried in a shallow grave scratched in the permafrost on a nearby hill that would become known as Cemetery Ridge. One by one sixteen others would follow him, most to the ridge, but the last ones would lie where they fell, in the snow or on the ice, with their surviving companions too weak to provide the semblance of a proper burial.
Fortunately, Greely had a relentless advocate in the person of Henrietta Greely, his wife who, with a few congressmen tirelessly lobbied congress through the end of 1883, until funding for another arctic whaler and another rescue attempt was finally secured in April 1884. Two Scottish arctic whalers, the Thetis and the Bear were bought, and fitted out in America, with the British contributing the services of the supply ship Alert.
On June 23 the rescue party reached the survivors camp. A single skeletal figure was seen walking along the rocky shore. The stone-walled shelter with the upturned boat for a roof lay abandoned, flooded by meltwater runoff, and up the hill a short distance away lay a half- collapsed tent encased in ice. From inside the faltering voice of Adolphus Greely called out "cut the canvass." Six men lay there, perhaps no more than 48 hours away from death.
On board the Bear, six of the seven survivors, freed from the brutal cold and given nourishment recovered rapidly. But a seventh whose frozen fingers had been amputated in camp and whose feet would be amputated by the ship's doctor died when frost damaged tissue yielded to gangrene. In Portsmouth, NH and New York the surviving six would be given a heroes welcome. A short time later, however, the celebrations would be muted by the revelation that some of the deceased's bodies showed evidence of cannibalism. None of the survivors would ever admit to any knowledge of such acts.
Both Greely and Brainard would continue their careers in the Army. In 1886 David Brainard would be commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in recognition for his service in the Greely expedition. His steady competence and devotion to duty was recognized and he was regularly rewarded with promotion. In 1896 he was attached to the "Subsistence division" of the Quartermasters Corp. In the Spanish-- American War he would serve as chief commissary of the Philippines. Other postings and promotions would follow. In 1919 the once private who joined the military, almost by accident, would retire as a Brigadier General!
Marker of the
in the American Army
In an age when the average male height was about 5' 10", Amos Parker stood about 6'7'. Perhaps his size was a reason why during the preliminary softening of the British defenses at Yorktown he was chosen for a sapper squad whose job it was to chop an opening in the log defenses to allow an assault unit commanded by the Marquis de Lafayette to force their way in and neutralize this well fortified redoubt. His squad's job was to open a breach, then stand back--not firing, to avoid hitting the charging assault force (known in the military parlance of the day as the "forlorn hope"). The attack began. But the axemen had difficulty cutting through the large standing pallisade logs, while under heavy fire. In desparation Parker began wracking back and forth one of the standing timbers until he could physically uproot it and cast it aside. Then he repeated this two or three times until enough of an opening was made for the attackers to enter.
Lafayette had just entered the redoubt when a British defender got the young commander in his sights but before he could kill the General, Parker grabbed his musket and shot the Englishman. After the battle and the Cornwallis ' surrender Parker was court marshaled for insubordination but pardoned for saving the General's life. --And, oh, how do we know that Amos Parker was the tallest man in the American Army?
At official ceremonies, armies on parade typically put their largest, most impressive soldiers in front. At the surrender of Cornwallis, Amos Parker was there, in the very front row, the very first in line.
Next time--The Tragedy of Jane McCrae
