Sumner falls through Arctic ice and is rescued

Patrick Sumner’s fall through the ice and rescue turn an ordinary sealing expedition into a near-fatal test of endurance. Separated from the other hunters on unstable floes, he falls into Arctic water, cannot pull himself out, and receives no immediate help. Black eventually finds him and raises the apparently lifeless surgeon from a crevice; Otto and two other searchers carry him back to the Volunteer. Sumner survives an immersion lasting about three hours and begins recovering aboard ship.

The sealing hunt and its dangers

The incident takes place after the Volunteer sails north from Lerwick through fog, sleet, and gales. On the eleventh day, the weather settles and the crew encounters sea ice near Jan Mayen Island. They prepare for sealing with rifles and other equipment, and, two days after first seeing the main seal pack, lower their boats. The hunt is commercial work as well as a physical undertaking: Brownlee counts the skins and estimates their value, while competition from Dutch, Norwegian, Scottish, and English ships makes a promising catch something to pursue quickly.

After the first hunt, Brownlee decides to send a sixth boat, putting Sumner in it with Cavendish, the steward, the cabin boy, and several crewmen who had been reluctant to work. The boat reaches a group of seals after rowing southeast. The hunters kill three adults and six young seals, while the remaining animals escape. Cavendish then climbs a pressure ridge and points the party toward other locations. The group disperses across the ice, carrying out a task in which distance from the boat, physical exertion, and shifting floes all complicate the return.

By noon, Sumner has killed six more seals and is about a mile from the whaleboat, hauling roughly a hundred pounds of skins. He sees Cavendish ahead and another hunter farther off, but neither is close enough to hear him when he calls. Sumner is fatigued from pulling the load, and he is already managing a bad leg. His thoughts turn to the warmth of his cabin and the laudanum he takes each evening; the drug is part of his private routine during the voyage, while the hunt requires him to rely on his body and keep moving across the ice.

The fall and the struggle to get out

At a gap about a yard wide between two floes, Sumner throws his rope across and prepares to jump. From experience, he knows to take off from his bad leg and land on his good one. As he steps forward, however, his standing foot slips sideways. He pitches into the water instead of clearing the gap. The fall separates him abruptly from the work party and leaves him in a position where neither the boat nor the other hunters can immediately help.

Sumner gets his hands onto the ice edge, but the surface will not give him enough purchase to climb out. His arms are weakened by the morning’s work, and the rope cannot support his weight because the skins attached to it are too light. The nearby floes are shifting, adding the danger that he could be caught between them; remaining in the water also threatens to leave him unconscious. He calls for Cavendish, whom he believes may have seen him fall, but no one answers. The scene makes the hunt’s risks concrete: the same dispersed movement that enables the crew to cover the seal pack also leaves a man alone when he falls.

Sumner tries repeatedly to raise himself onto the floe. On his third attempt he uses his elbow as a pivot and manages to lift part of his upper body above the edge. The floe shifts, his hold fails, and he falls back into the water. The narrative keeps the episode centered on effort rather than on a rescue already in progress: at this point he has no assistance, and the rope is of no use to him. He is eventually left wedged between two floes, with his head and shoulders above the water and the rest of his body below.

Black’s rescue and return to the ship

Black finds Sumner in that crevice and initially cannot tell whether he is breathing. He fastens a sealing rope around Sumner’s chest, pulls him sideways to free him, and hauls upward. Sumner’s body comes loose; Black then grabs his coat and brings him fully onto the ice. When Sumner does not respond, Black strikes his face until an eyelid flickers open. Black’s actions transform the episode from an unobserved accident into a rescue, but he does not attempt the return alone.

Black fires his rifle twice to summon help. About ten minutes later, Otto arrives with two other members of the search party. The four men carry Sumner back to the ship, one taking each limb. His wet clothing has frozen stiff, making the journey difficult, and the men use a block and tackle to lift him aboard. Brownlee looks down at him and asks whether he is breathing; Black confirms that he is. The rescue thus depends on several stages of help: Black locates and frees Sumner, the signal brings the searchers, the group transports him, and the ship’s crew gets him onto the deck.

Recovery and consequences

Once aboard, Sumner cannot initially speak. Black helps him sit up and feeds him bouillon from a teacup, but after two spoonfuls Sumner stops taking it. When he can speak, his first request is for laudanum. Black tells him that he was in the water for three hours and that an ordinary man would not survive such an immersion. Sumner does not remember the water or the cold, although he retains a brief memory of looking up at the snow-filled sky before losing awareness. The request for the drug immediately reasserts the dependence that had accompanied him during the hunt, even as his survival makes clear that the episode has not ended his voyage.

In the weeks after the rescue, as the Volunteer travels from Jan Mayen Island toward Cape Farewell, Sumner regains color, energy, and appetite. He walks the deck for exercise and sketches in his journal. His recovery also leads back into the ship’s labor: after whales are killed, he is assigned to move heavy blocks of blubber from the foredeck down to the hold. The work leaves him bruised and aching, but he experiences satisfaction in completing it and, for once, sleeps without laudanum. The fall therefore marks both a severe interruption and a return to physical participation. Sumner’s later work does not erase his vulnerability, but it shows him resuming a place in the expedition after the crew has brought him back from the ice.