Coping Mechanisms of Whalers and Arctic Explorers
Life at sea was no picnic for those who hunted for whales or explored the Arctic in the 1800s and early 1900s. Crewmen were far from home, in a seemingly lifeless environment, with food and drink supplies that dwindled when wooden ships became frozen in sea ice. To cope with these physical and psychological challenges, sailors north of the Arctic Circle resorted to a number of strategies to keep themselves from jumping overboard.
Peter Suedfeld, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, has read the diaries of seafaring men and women who journeyed to the Arctic in the nineteenth century. To search for clues about how sailors adapted to life on northern waters, Suedfeld recently visited the University of Alaska at the invitation of Judith Kleinfeld, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Northern Studies program.
Unlike other researchers who focused on the families arctic workers left behind, Suedfeld and Phyllis Johnson, a professor in the School of Family and Nutritional Science at the University of British Columbia, researched how sailors in the Arctic adapted to voyages that kept them from their families for a year or more. Suedfeld and Johnson sought out unedited journals of arctic explorers and read the writings of seafaring men, such as E.F. deBray, a British naval officer who kept a diary on an exploratory mission to the Arctic from 1852 to 1854, and seafaring women, such as Mary Lawrence, a whaling captain's wife who lived on a whaling ship in the Arctic from 1856 to 1860.
One of the biggest hurdles of arctic exploration was inactivity. Suedfeld said that a long period of unstructured time with nothing to do and no definite end in sight is a tough mental challenge. Boredom was the fate of most crew hands on Arctic whaling and exploration trips from faraway places, such as England and Canada. Things grew even more monotonous when a ship became locked in sea ice, sometimes for more than one winter. Ships' officers, such as deBray, wanted to "prevent the men from stagnating in deadly inactivity."
The crews of Canadian and American whaling ships frozen into the ice next to one another in the winter of 1903 to 1904 held foot races and played soccer. On board, the Canadian officers held lectures to which they invited the American whalers. Subjects included a trip to the Klondike, the evolution of fishes, and lantern slides about various voyages to the North Pole.
The arctic sailors also celebrated traditional holidays together. On the Diana, a whaling ship caught in sea ice in 1866, crewmen ate their long-saved rations of plum pudding as they celebrated what they thought would be their last Christmas. The ship's surgeon wrote: "We ate our Christmas dinner almost in silence, each man's mind being occupied with gloomy thoughts of home, families and friends." The crew of the Diana held on to survive past New Years, an event the surgeon also marked with a journal entry: "With the advent of the New Year hope springs up anew, and bony hands are shaken, smiles once more break forth on haggard faces, and `God bless you's' are exchanged as heartily as though we were in safety and at home." When the sun reappeared after a long arctic winter, British officers on deBray's ship, the Resolute, donated bottles of rum to sailors. With the rum, which was a staple on all the arctic whaling and exploration journeys of the day, the sailors drank to the health of the sun first, and then to Queen Victoria.
Suedfeld concludes that arctic whalers and explorers coped with life in the north by trying to re-create little bits of their home lives. Celebrating holidays, socializing with other sailors frozen in the same predicament, and special ceremonies with food and drink encouraged feelings of stability, security, purpose and diversion. The same mental challenges are faced by those who work today in remote, isolated places, Suedfeld said. It turns out the coping methods of isolated Alaskans are often remarkably similar to the sailors of yesterday.
