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Elisha Kent Kane Historical Society |
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XI: The Open Polar Sea: Filling the Needs of a Nation
The adventure and suffering of the expedition struck a chord with the nation. Ellis Oberholtzer wrote that Kane's narrative, expressed with "simplicity, modesty and unselfishness," touched all classes of people. (137) John Sampson in his cultural evaluation of Arctic narratives noted that stories of incredible suffering and endurance in the Arctic reassured the public of "that indomitable American spirit." He said, "in the context of the midcentury turmoil that threatened to destroy America, such statements... reveal the individual American's anxious reassertion of American specialness." (138) But unlike other Arctic exploration narratives, Kane's offered not only the reassertion of America's ability to survive, but the possibility of a new and better world. Kane's account of the Open Polar Sea as a utopia surrounded by the harsh reality of the Arctic is the embodiment of the nation's romantic idealism as well as of its psychological need of a place of peace and safety in a time of turmoil. An examination of Kane's Open Sea as a psychological need, a public creation, a scientific theory, and as the small hole in the ice that it actually was, helps explain the spirit of the times. When Kane returned he enthusiastically announced the discovery of the Open Polar Sea. Though William Morton and Hans Hendrik (who remained in the Arctic) were the only two men who saw the open water, newspaper accounts suggest that many of the men of the expedition were able to describe it in full detail. The Times said, "The lashing of the surf against this frozen beach of ice was, we are assured, impressive beyond description. Several gentlemen with whom we have conversed, speak of it with wonder and admiration." (139) In his official report to the Navy, Kane proclaimed the discovery of an "open and iceless area, abounding with life, and presenting every character of an open Polar sea." And in the map he and Sonntag drew, he wrote "Open Sea" in bold letters over the North Pole. In his journal from the Arctic, Kane wrote that the discovery "was well calculated to arouse emotions of the highest order... I do not believe there was a man among us who did not long for the means of entering upon its bright and lonely waters." (140) The romance of this discovery touched even the most scientific of accounts. Just a few months after Kane's return, Matthew Maury, father of modern oceanography, dedicated an entire chapter of his ground-breaking scientific work The Physical Geography of the Sea to the Open Polar Sea. He wrote:
Maury, a man who collected and compiled staggering amounts of oceanic information so precisely that his charts are still respected today, could not maintain his cool and calculated prose in the face of the Open Polar Sea. In the above passage he not only waxes poetic but places Kane, not Morton, at the shore of the open water and vicariously feels the pull of the mythology and longing of the "old ocean." The public was also enthralled with the idea of the Open Polar Sea. A good example of this is the editorial columns of the Times, where a few weeks after Kane's arrival, people began writing letters debating the cause of the open water. Someone from Aurora proposed it resulted from "the centrifugal force and the internal heating power of the earth." A few days later a man from Brooklyn disagreed, thinking instead that the true cause was the "spheroidical shape" of the earth which caused the poles to be 13 miles "nearer to the heated centrum" than the land around the equator. This, of course, meant that the poles were also insulated by a much thicker layer of atmosphere than any other part of the world.. (142) What is important to remember is that all of this celebration of the Open Polar Sea was based on the testimony of one man who knew that his friend and captain, who was deathly sick at the time, desperately wanted there to be an open sea in the middle of the Arctic. I am not suggesting that Morton did not see open water-most Arctic scholars now believe that he saw one of the many "Arctic oasis" that occur from time to time attracting huge numbers of wildlife seeking open water. What I am suggesting is that there was little chance that Morton could not have seen an Open Polar Sea. Morton believed there was an Open Polar Sea, he knew Kane wanted there to be and Open Polar Sea, and he had spent several years fighting the extremes of the Arctic to prove there was an Open Polar Sea. Given such conditions, it is easy to understand why any open water Morton saw would be an Open Polar Sea. Any other explanation simply would not have been acceptable. In his psychological analysis of exploration literature, Peter Knox-Shaw notes that explorers of new lands usually find what they imagine will be there. He calls this process "projection" and explains that it "is to locate a mental image in the external world." He argues that when people experience something completely new, what they perceive is actually more dependent on what they expect to see, than what they actually view. This explains why Columbus saw India, Ponce de Leon saw the Fountain of Youth, and the Conquistadors saw El Dorado. None of them could quite reach their destinations, but all of them were certain that they had caught a glimpse. Knox-Shaw extends this to political ideas showing that the early European discoverers of America, no matter where they landed, thought they had found Eden. This changed with the Puritans because they viewed themselves not as conquerors, but as exiles; "Exodus rather than Genesis presided over their encounter with the interior." Equally important was their Calvinist hatred of the natural state, which changed the new world from Eden to the dark and evil forest desperately in need of a city on the hill. (143) In his examination of explorers of the American West, Goetzmann also noted explorers' tendency to see what they expect to see. "[E]xplorers, as they go out into the unknown, are `programmed' by the knowledge, values, and objectives of the civilized centers from which they depart. They are alert to discover evidence of the things they have been sent to find." (144) What is important about Kane's discovery of the Open Polar Sea is not whether or not it existed, but that it did exist for the people of the time. Kane's whole crew could describe it, Maury could feel its pounding green waves, and the public could explain why it existed. What Kane found and what Kane became was not based on actual reality, but on what the nation wanted to believe. Kane was a survivor, a romantic, a scientist, and most importantly, a hero who led his people through terrible dangers back to safety. What this hero discovered was what the nation most wanted, an ideal open sea where life sailed smoothly though surrounded by hard and dangerous shores. In many ways, the Open Polar Sea was a vision of heaven surrounded by the perils of the world. In this sense, Kane's Arctic adventure could be read as a Christian metaphor not unlike John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Elisha Kent Kane projected what the nation most wanted to see in the turbulent times of the late 1850s. This is why Kane became a hero of the age and why his book sold 135,000 copies in less than three years. |