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By Root 739 0

will not have to search for the wreck—the tip of Fox’s boiler rises out of the water at low tide. Wedged into the rocks, just where we’ve tied up our boat, are Fox’s hawse pipes, the iron sleeves that once protected the wooden hull from the anchor chain. Pulled free of the wreck after Fox broke up, they were probably left here for salvage and then abandoned, just like the boiler. Wooden hull planking lies on the beach, nearly perfectly preserved. Close by is a section of Fox’s wrought-iron propeller shaft. I’m worried that the hulk, which broke apart in 1940, has been picked away and that nothing but the boiler remains. There’s only one way to find out, though. Pulling on our thick dry suits to keep out the freezing water and our heavy gear, Mike, Warren and I step off into the numbingly cold water and drop down to the bottom to see what remains of Fox.

James Delgado beside the smokestack or funnel of FOX, now serving as a navigational marker in Qeqertarsuaq harbor in Greenland. Mike Fletcher.

The rocks that surround the resting place of Fox are worn and rounded by the ice, and covered with slippery seaweed. We follow the rocks down to the sand and gravel seabed, 16 feet below. The cold bites into me, right through the thick layers of the dry suit and the protective “woolies” beneath it. My lips and cheeks, the only bare skin exposed to the sea, throb with the cold, then quickly turn numb.

The water is relatively clear, and ahead we see the ship’s boiler, completely submerged at high tide. Lying in the sand next to it are the shattered remains of the stern: broken timbers, twisted bronze bolts and a massive iron yoke that once reinforced the rudder. Nearby, a large iron pulley, part of the ship’s steering apparatus, lies atop fallen timbers. We swim past the boiler as Warren films the scene. The boiler has been torn free of its mount in the hull and dragged here to the stern, probably by the ice that buries the wreck each winter. The thick iron is ripped and part of the boiler gapes open, exposing the fire tubes inside it. Coal-fired heat once flowed through those tubes to make the steam that powered Fox, but now they lie cold and dead in the shattered remains of the shipwreck. Trailers of weed drape the boiler, and small fish dart into the protection of the dark boiler as we swim by.

The keel and keelson that formed the sturdy backbone of Fox lie before us, along with the collapsed starboard side of the hull, partially buried in the sand and the mats of algae that blanket the bottom of the cove. The current sweeps through the wreck, exposing brief glimpses of dark oak, rusted iron, and the shrouded shapes of frames (the “ribs” of the ship) and planks. As Mike and Warren videotape the wreck, I work quickly with a measuring tape and use a pencil to make notes and draw what I see on a sheet of frosted Mylar taped to a plastic clipboard. My notes, together with the video images and the photographs I am also taking, will help us to assemble a map of the broken-up ship, replicating on paper what we see in the gloom of the cove. I am particularly keen to capture as much information as possible because Fox’s plans vanished many years ago.

Astonishingly, half of Fox survives, pressed into the seabed by years of ice pushing into this small cove. It is an unexpected boon. The ice has flattened the curving side of the hull, shattering the thick layers of planks that formed it and wrenching the bolts out of the timber. And yet much survives, telling us a great deal about the ship. One of the keys to Fox’s survival in the Arctic was the original hull laid down in the Aberdeen shipyard of Alexander Hall & Company. From what remains, I can see that it was formed from diagonally laid planks of Scottish larch, fastened with thick bronze bolts to make a tightly sealed hull with the strength of an interwoven basket. Over these planks, McClintock had the shipyard fasten two layers of thick planks to sheath the hull against the ice. Splintered and torn, one layer of these planks remains in place, held on by the stubs of tough oak