And now, tonight's presentation of Radio's outstanding theater of thrills, Suspense.
Tonight, we bring you a transcribed story of a group of brave men who risk their lives
in a desperate effort to save their fellow men.
We call it Arctic Rescue.
So now, starring Mr. John Stevenson, here is tonight's Suspense play, Arctic Rescue.
Remember this if you can.
Christmas night.
Miles and miles of endless, empty, broken white ice.
An ice floe drifting somewhere in the vicinity of the 73rd parallel, north of the Arctic
Circle.
Nothing but ice.
That is, nearly nothing.
If you look carefully through the winter night, you'll see two tiny dark blemishes.
The figures of two men.
One twisted in an unconscious heap is our skipper, Jonathan Blake.
The other figure, Gerald Stewart.
First mate.
Me.
It makes a sorry picture, eh?
Civilized men in a primitive wilderness of ice, waiting helplessly for death.
I, a sorry picture.
It's a far different picture you've seen if you'd been part of the excited crowd standing
at the battery of the New York waterfront on June morning, the year 1852.
Aye, Mrs. Stewart.
The moment of departure.
Aye, Lady Franklin.
You must take the high tide.
May God and his great mercy protect you and your men from the perils which await you.
You men are prepared for hardship, Lady Franklin.
And we shall succeed where the others have failed in ending the mystery of the Erebus
and Terran.
Aye.
Back to Aberdeen in time for a Christmas feast.
We'll prepare a Christmas celebration your men will never forget, Captain.
We're leaving for England next week.
I, I shall pray for you, Mr. Stewart.
For, for all of you.
Thank you, Miss Graycroft.
I'll stand many a watch out at sea thinking of last night, the ball, dancing and you.
That is, all of us will, I mean.
What I first made is trying to tell your niece, Lady Franklin, is how grateful the officers
and crew are for the farewell ball you held in their honor last night.
I'm the grateful one, Captain Blake.
Please bring them all home safely.
Come now, Lady Franklin, no need for worry.
The Jessica is a sturdy ship and the men are in good health and lofty spirits.
We'll be back by Christmas, you'll see.
The tide will change.
We must be on our way.
Then goodbye and good luck, Captain.
Goodbye, Lady Franklin.
Miss Graycroft.
Goodbye, Captain Blake.
Goodbye, Mr. Stewart.
Godspeed.
Thank you.
We shall see you on Aberdeen Christmas week.
Let's get aboard, Mr. Stewart.
Yes, sir.
Goodbye, Lady Franklin.
Stocky.
Yes, sir.
Drop the gangway.
Yes, sir.
All hands at their mooring stations, Mr. Stewart.
Yes, sir.
And pass the orders to Castor.
Aye, sir.
All hands, prepare to Castor.
Let go, one, two, three.
Let go, three and four.
Ship's underway, sir.
Aye.
Well, Mr. Stewart, fill your eyes with the sight of New York.
It's the last of it you'll be seeing for some time to come.
Aye, a good long time.
I am, sir.
As the Jessica moved slowly to the outer harbor, I watched a tiny, delicate white dot in the
crowd at the wharf.
She stood there beside Lady Franklin, waving.
And I watched until the morning fog erased the sight of the New York waterfront.
Aside from the ship's log, I have decided to keep a running account of this voyage.
This account will be transferred to a watertight jar and thrown to the currents should any
sudden disaster occur.
The first three weeks of navigation north were merely a matter of settling down to ship's
routine.
On June 30th, after officers' mess, we sighted Point Farewell on the Greenland coast.
The time had come for the captain to read a letter of instructions given to him by Lady
Franklin.
Captain Blake, I am sure you will do all that any man can in discovering the fate of my
husband, Sir John Franklin, and his two ships, the Erebus and Terror.
But my only fear is that you might sacrifice your lives in the unknown regions of the Arctic.
Therefore, let me state that above all else, the preservation of the lives of you and your
heroic companions is more important to me than the purpose of your journey.
May God in his great mercy preserve you all from harm amidst the perils which await and
restore you to us safely and in health, as well as armor.
Your sincere and attached friend, Jane Franklin.
These are the only written instructions I have, gentlemen.
Now then, Mr. Stewart, the map, please.
Here it is, gentlemen.
The most recent admiralty map of the Arctic regions that we are approaching.
Map?
It's almost completely blank.
Aye, Mr. Halliday.
Thousands of miles of uncharted wilderness.
And somewhere in that frozen tundra, Sir John Franklin and his men vanished.
Aye.
And our search will begin tomorrow when we drop anchor in Goldhau.
We'll pick up our ice pilot, Mr. Patrick Hanson's, from additional supplies and then make for
the Arctic Circle.
The Arctic Circle.
It sounds like the edge of the world, eh, Stuart?
Yeah, it's a little frightening, too.
You frightened?
Mr. Halliday, if I were you, I would respect Mr. Stewart's fear of what lies before us.
Captain, I was just thinking, if Franklin was looking for the northwest passage, he'd
probably make an approach through here, through Lancaster Sound.
Aye.
Then he must have passed Ponds Bay here.
And according to our information, there are Eskimos at Ponds Bay.
They might have seen his ships enter Lancaster Sound.
And if they did, then we'll have something to go by.
I hope Mr. Hanson understands the Eskimo dialects.
They can tell us much.
I don't see how we can cover all this territory and get back by Christmas, Captain.
We have no choice, Mr. Stewart.
If we get caught beyond the Arctic Circle after the summer months, we may never get
back.
Never?
Aye.
In the winter, the seas are covered with great ice flows.
Once a ship is frozen in, in those latitudes, it'll stay there until the summer thaw.
And you can't imagine the horrors we'd endure in an Arctic winter, Mr. Halliday.
I, uh, I suppose not.
Captain and his men were probably frozen in for the winter and...
And they were never heard from again?
Exactly.
Well, that would give you a brief idea of what we're in for, gentlemen.
You'll know more after Mr. Hanson comes aboard.
Any questions?
I have nothing but questions, Captain.
I wish I had the answers, Stewart.
Noon the next day, we dropped anchor in the harbor of Godhab.
Here we could take on coal, additional winter clothing, dogs and Eskimo drivers, and Mr.
Hanson, our ice pilot.
Godhab was nothing more than a few huts of the Baffin Bay Trading Company.
And as we prepared to go ashore, a longboat suddenly appeared alongside.
Captain Blake.
Aye.
I'm Patrick Hanson, your ice pilot, sir.
We were about to send a boat ashore for you, Mr. Hanson.
No time for that, Captain.
But we planned on picking up supplies and dogs.
I brought them.
They're in the boat.
Well, what's the rush, Mr. Hanson?
This is Gerald Stewart and I first made.
You've never been to the Arctic before, Mr. Stewart.
No.
You'll take my word for it.
We'd better get up there while we got the summer weather, you bet.
All right.
So we run into a little summer ice.
The Jessica's prepared for it.
Yeah.
She looks like a good, strong ship.
We've never seen an iron ship up here before.
And steam engine, too.
That's not all the Jessica has.
There's an additional iron plates across her hull as well as added bracing thwart ship.
And the forward ten feet of the bow is solid iron and razor sharp at the edge.
What do you think that will do to your ice, Mr. Hanson?
You wait and you see what the ice can do to a ship, even an iron ship, Mr. Stewart.
Mr. Hanson, you received my letters.
Yeah.
And you made inquiries about the Erebus and terror?
Yeah.
They've us here.
They couldn't get dogs, so they headed for Ponds Bay.
Across Baffin Bay.
That's right.
Just as we thought.
Mr. Halliday.
Yes, sir.
Get those supplies aboard, then prepare the ship for sea.
Aye, aye, sir.
Mr. Stewart, you can chart a course for us.
We'll cross the Arctic Circle next and on to Ponds Bay.
We set a north by northwest course, leaving the last outpost of civilization behind us,
and crossed the great Baffin Bay.
On July 4th, we crossed the Arctic Circle without ceremony.
Then we had ice freezing on deck and in the rigging.
A day later, we saw our first floating iceberg.
For this time of the year, we should not have seen either one.
From Goat Hub to Ponds Bay, six and a half days.
Perfect calm.
Upon landing, we found a small contingent of Eskimos, but nothing else.
They seemed hostile and would give us no information.
Then as we were preparing to return to the Jessica, one of the natives, a girl, rushed
from one of the huts and down to the beach.
Josef?
What's she saying, Mr. Henson?
I'm not sure.
Captain, look.
She has something in her hand.
She wants us to look at it.
It's a small brass button.
From a naval uniform.
Aye.
See if she'll trade it for some sewing needles.
Josef?
Galaga?
What does she mean by that?
Josef?
She's trying to say a man's name.
Josef Galaga?
Stuart, is that name on Sir John's crew list?
I'm looking, sir.
Yes, sir, it's here.
Quartermaster, Josef Galaga.
They've been here.
Aye.
Better get back to the ship, men.
Looks like a gale brewing.
Josef?
Let her keep the buttons, Stuart.
Give her the needles, too.
Yes, sir.
Josef?
Yes, sir.
After leaving Ponds Bay, two months passed without incident.
Then we entered Lancaster Sound and approached the scarcely charted islands along Barrel
Strait.
Then we encountered great mountains of floating ice, and we had only a few hours of twilight
each day.
We crossed the 75th parallel and north into Wellington Channel to Bathurst Islands, the
last of the charted islands on my maps.
Then on September 10th, weather changed.
Northwest gales, sleet, and heavy fogs had forced us to a bare crawl.
And worse, mammoth ice floes had closed in all around us.
Mrs. Stuart?
Yes, sir.
Keep an eye on the temperature.
Aye, aye, sir.
Ice, ice.
There ahead.
Codamaster, starboard, six degrees.
We've been getting smaller all the time.
Captain, the temperature's still dropping.
Ten above zero.
What do you think of this lead, Hanson?
I think maybe we better back out of here.
Back out?
Take a look of Stern, Hanson.
Back out where?
Captain?
What is it, Elodie?
The rudder won't respond.
Six below, sir.
Ice, there ahead.
The lead is getting smaller, Captain.
Aye, aye.
Well, the Arctic seems to be closing down on us on all counts.
The walls of the lead moved in closer until a man could jump to the ice from either side
of the ship.
And then the Jessica was cutting through the ice, making her own lead.
But slowly, we lost speed.
And then, finally, the ship gave up to the ice.
We, uh, be frozen in now.
Aye.
Stop engines, Mr. Stewart.
Yes, sir.
Well, Captain Blake, looks like we can forget about looking for Sir John Franklin and his
ships.
Now that we've frozen in, we're going to have to look out for our own lives, you bet.
You are listening to Arctic Rescue, tonight's presentation in radio's outstanding theater
of thrills, Suspense.
The precinct house, the hub of a policeman's life, is a world in itself.
All the distorted, misguided emotions of humanity are channeled through its doors and dealt
with by the men who work there, protecting us every hour of the day and night.
You can get another authentic glimpse of this tense but tireless life Thursday on that brilliantly
realistic CBS radio drama, 21st Precinct, heard every Thursday night over most of these
same stations.
Not only will you hear another exciting, incisive drama of police life, you will win a new knowledge
of and respect for the men in precinct houses everywhere on 21st Precinct.
And now we bring back to our Hollywood sound stage, John Stevenson, starring in tonight's
production, Arctic Rescue, a tale well calculated to keep you in Suspense.
September 10th, 1852.
Unless a miracle occurred, we were frozen in the Arctic for the rest of the winter months.
A sea of ice surrounded us and the ship took on a starved list from the pressure of the
flow.
Rations were cut in food, water and coal consumption.
Furious gales came and went.
There were more freezing temperatures, often as low as 35 below.
The doctor was a busy man.
Nearly all hands suffered from frostbite, many from gangrene.
Conditions aboard the Jessica were deplorable.
I thought they couldn't get any worse.
October came, November, December, and we thought of home and the holidays and of Lady Franklin
and Miss Craycroft sitting alone at the Christmas feast that was to be held in our honor.
On Christmas Day, the cook outdid himself.
We had a feast aboard the Jessica on the last of the salt pork and the beef.
And with the last of the ulcet's ale and minced meat, the cook made pies.
And we had a celebration, Christmas Day, 1852.
Men, men, the captain has a word to say.
I drop below to offer you my greetings on this holiday and to wish you a much happier
Christmas next year.
Christmas Eve, 1853.
One year later.
We're still frozen in.
Summer came and passed without an appreciable rise in temperature and the ice failed to
break up.
Men living on pemmican, occasionally bear meat and seal blubber.
No more lime juice.
This means scurvy.
The year also saw the loss of 11 men, the doctor and the ice pilot Hanson among them.
Two in a chase with a pole of air, three from scurvy and the rest from gangrene.
Most of the men have frostbite.
Our second Christmas in the Arctic, a flow that holds the ship is drifting south down
Peel Sound.
We saw the shores of King William Island and the captain sent three men on a sledge to
look for food depots or a rock can, anything.
They returned today.
Where did you find it, Halliday?
In a can.
We also found empty pemmican cans and bits of ship's timber.
Stuart, listen to this.
It was written by Franklin himself.
1851.
Latitude 69 degrees, longitude 98 degrees west.
HMS Terror sank when ice broke.
Erebus still frozen in.
We said since April 12th, 1850, we are deserting the Erebus, attempting overland march to Back's
Fish River to Hudson Bay.
If unheard from, when this found, we must be considered lost.
Sir John Franklin, Captain, HMS Erebus.
We've found what we came for.
Aye.
Then they're all dead.
Aye.
If something doesn't happen pretty soon, we'll be dead too.
Makes for a very merry Christmas, eh, Captain?
Captain!
I hear it.
The ice.
It's breaking.
Great cracks open in the ice, and then out of the water through the openings another
great mountain of ice would rise.
Great slabs of surface a hundred yards wide shattered up into the turning water.
All around us great jagged fingers of ice crashed up through the flow.
All hands abandon ship.
Stuart, get your tools.
We're going out on the ice too.
I could feel the ship jarring loose under me, and suddenly the Jessica wrench sharply
throwing me across the deck.
The last sound in my ears was then Jessica tearing loose from the ice.
Slowly I became aware of a pain in my leg.
Then of movement.
I opened my eyes.
The captain was helping me walk.
I looked into the winter darkness for the familiar sight of the Jessica.
I saw nothing.
Nothing but ice.
Skipper.
Feeling better, lad.
What about the ship?
Gone down.
The rest of the men?
I don't know.
Gone.
The flow's evaporated.
Most of them are on the other side.
Where are we walking to?
I don't know.
Keep walking.
We'll keep walking.
We'll find a u-lock, Stuart.
What's Christmas without a u-lock in the hearth?
Move, Skipper.
Move.
We walked on and on, climbing jagged hummocks of ice, falling through thin spots, legs got
wet, froze.
We beat the ice off, walking in circles through the arctic night.
Endless circles.
Very good.
Rest.
We'll rest a bit.
Rest.
Sleep a bit in the ice.
Warm, comforting ice.
No, don't sleep.
Keep awake, Captain.
Sleep, Stuart.
The fire in the hearth will keep us warm, and tomorrow, Christmas morning, it'll be there,
Stuart, you'll see.
What will be there?
It'll be there.
You'll see.
Don't, don't go to sleep, Captain.
Don't sleep.
My eyes grew heavy.
I craved sleep, but to sleep was to die.
I was ready.
In the sky over the horizon, a star.
The night was overcast.
There were no other stars.
Just one.
In the distance, I could see it.
Stuart, it was still there.
A bright star over the horizon.
Captain, Captain.
Up, up, on your feet.
Captain, we're going to keep walking.
Captain, Captain, get up.
I want to sleep.
You've got to get up, got to get up.
Keep on walking.
Okay.
Where?
There, that way.
Towards that star.
We walked on, slowly.
I carry the skipper, unconscious now.
What could it be?
There were no lights in the optic, no stars through the overcast.
We kept moving, and the star came closer.
I couldn't believe what suddenly appeared.
Through the darkness, directly beneath the star, was the vague outline of a ship.
A ship.
Mike, Mike, help, help me.
He's coming out of it.
Stuart, Stuart.
Ship.
I saw Starkey, Halliday.
In the flesh.
I saw a ship.
Yes, I know. You're on it, see?
Where did it come from? It's not the Jessica.
I know, it's the Erebus, one of Franklin's ships.
The one they deserted.
The Erebus? Where did it come from?
Well, there we were, all of us, except you and the captain, lying on that flow after the Jessica went down.
Ready to die, just as we thought you'd died.
And then, just as graceful as you please, we see a ship drifting slowly out of the fog, through the broken ice, right to us.
The captain? I left him out on the ice.
No, he's all right. We brought him aboard.
And pretty soon, we'll be on our way home.
Home?
Yes, the ice is open. We can get out. The Erebus will take us back.
How's that for a Christmas surprise?
I follow the star.
What?
He's sleeping.
What was that he said? He followed a star?
Oh, he must have seen that lantern we hung on the main must. He stuck it for a star.
Saved his life, and the captain.
And being that it's still Christmas, I guess you could call it a miracle.
Eh, Starkey?
Aye.
Aye, I guess you could have that, sir.
Suspense.
In which John Stevenson starred in tonight's presentation of Arctic Rescue.
Next week, the story of a man who thought the best way to commit murder was to plan it first.
We call it Variations on a Theme.
That's next week on...
Suspense.
Suspense is transcribed in Hollywood by Anthony Ellis. Tonight's script was written by Gus Baines.
The music was composed by Lucien Morrowek and Renée Garagang and conducted by Wilbur Hatch.
Featured in the cast were Herb Butterfield, Norma Barton, Lillian Bajoff, Richard Heal, George Walsh, John Doddsworth, and Clayton Post.
Stay tuned for five minutes of CBS News to be followed on most of these same stations by the Jack Carson Show.
You hear America's favorite shows on the CBS Radio Network.