kAl Timmukarlutik Ammassallip av<strong>at</strong>aani unill<strong>at</strong>siartut. Dk Der holdes rast under indmarchen til land ud<strong>for</strong> Ammassalik. GB Time <strong>for</strong> a rest during the trek to land near Ammassalik. 56
kAl ’Teddy’-p napparutaani nasiffimmiit takuneqarsinnaavoq, sikutaq ’akunnittarfigisa<strong>at</strong>’ arfineq marlunngorluni qulloorsimasoq. Castaways found on drifting ice floe The sinking of M/S Teddy in East <strong>Greenland</strong> in 1923 could have ended in disaster – <strong>for</strong> two months, the ship’s 21-man crew b<strong>at</strong>tled the merciless, Arctic n<strong>at</strong>ure By Jens Brønden It had been days since any of them had slept. The fight to survive the storm and the pack ice in a sinking schooner left no time <strong>for</strong> rest. It was obvious th<strong>at</strong> M/S Teddy had taken so much punishment from the drifting ice in the <strong>Greenland</strong> Sea th<strong>at</strong> it would not take much, to make it sink. However, if they succeeded in finding their way out to open <strong>se</strong>a, the ship might be able to stay aflo<strong>at</strong> long enough to reach Iceland, with the assistance of the pumps. However, not many among the 21 men on board dared to hope <strong>for</strong> salv<strong>at</strong>ion. As far as the eye could <strong>se</strong>e from the crow’s nest on the mainmast, t<strong>her</strong>e was nothing but an endless ice wilderness. With the passing of the year, it got colder and colder and whenever t<strong>her</strong>e was time <strong>for</strong> a few hours of rest, it was so cold and damp th<strong>at</strong> nobody got a wink of sleep. The voyage home with Teddy had gone wrong and t<strong>her</strong>e were many reasons <strong>for</strong> this, but <strong>for</strong> the moment, all th<strong>at</strong> m<strong>at</strong>tered, was preparing <strong>for</strong> the worst. A few days earlier, the ship had been shaken by the pack ice so everyone jumped overboard onto the ice with their most precious pos<strong>se</strong>ssions. thE liEutEnant takEs ChargE Captain Bistrup, who had been next in command on the Denmark Expedition in 1906-1908, had lost perspective and initi<strong>at</strong>ive and made one wrong decision after the ot<strong>her</strong>. Nobody thought to save the ship’s cargo and provisions, so they <strong>at</strong> the very least could survive <strong>for</strong> a time on the ice floe. The crew ran around in hopeless confusion. On this day, the 24-year old lieutenant, Louis Rostock-Jen<strong>se</strong>n, took charge and got the men to unload the ship, t<strong>her</strong>eby safeguarding skins and provisions. Dk Fra udsigtstønden i ’Teddy’s stormast <strong>se</strong>r man, hvordan isflagen under ’hotellet’ var revnet i syv stykker. GB From the crow’s nest on Teddy’s mainmast, you could <strong>se</strong>e how the ice floe under the ‘hotel’ had broken into <strong>se</strong>ven pieces. The work with Teddy’s cargo and building a survival camp on the ice floe took place <strong>at</strong> the beginning of October 1923. The expedition had been away from home <strong>for</strong> three and a half months and was now on its return voyage from nort<strong>her</strong>nmost East <strong>Greenland</strong>, w<strong>her</strong>e the East <strong>Greenland</strong>ic trading company’s repre<strong>se</strong>nt<strong>at</strong>ives had <strong>se</strong>en to the company’s trading st<strong>at</strong>ions. Here, <strong>at</strong> the beginning of October, the we<strong>at</strong><strong>her</strong> was constantly changing. Good we<strong>at</strong><strong>her</strong> nourished the faint hope of getting out to <strong>se</strong>a, bad we<strong>at</strong><strong>her</strong> the opposite. The ship was t<strong>her</strong>e<strong>for</strong>e altern<strong>at</strong>ely loaded and unloaded. When the we<strong>at</strong><strong>her</strong> was good, the cargo was brought aboard Teddy, and when t<strong>her</strong>e was a storm and the ice creaked, the cargo was again brought out onto the ice. The men froze in minus 15 degrees centigrade. They were wet and deadly tired – <strong>se</strong>veral of them were starting to give up. The impassable we<strong>at</strong><strong>her</strong>, the violent <strong>for</strong>ces of the ice and the fear of not getting home alive marked the 21 men in different ways. Some of them were afraid, ot<strong>her</strong>s were ap<strong>at</strong>hetic, while ot<strong>her</strong>s again took up the challenge to save the ship and its crewmembers. thE arCtiC as mEntor The 24-year old lieutenant Louis Rostock-Jen<strong>se</strong>n meticulously describes the loss of M/S Teddy in his journal of the dram<strong>at</strong>ic voyage. Here, he wrote a day-by-day record of the events th<strong>at</strong> led up to the wreck and wh<strong>at</strong> happened to the crew afterwards. The journal, with Rostock-Jen<strong>se</strong>n’s own photographs was published by Gyldendal a couple of years ago, word <strong>for</strong> word and authentic. Teddy left the quay in Nyhavn on June 17th, 1923 under festivi- Suluk #03 <strong>Air</strong> <strong>Greenland</strong> Inflight Magazine 2012 57
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