James Markham Marshall Ambler, Hero of the Arctic

James Markham Marshall Ambler, Hero of the Arctic

By John T. Toler

Located in the graveyard beside Leeds Episcopal Church at Markham are the gravesites of several Fauquier families whose roots go back to the founding of the county. Notable among them is a monument to James Markham Marshall Ambler, a surgeon in the U.S. Navy, whose epitaph reads he “died in October 1881 in the 33rd year of his age near the mouth of the Lena River.” There his story ended, but the events leading up to his death in the northern reaches of Siberia have become legendary.

Ambler was born December 30, 1848 at “The Dell,” near Hume, second of four sons and five children of Dr. Richard Cary Ambler and his wife, Susanna Marshall Ambler. At 16 he joined the 12th Virginia Cavalry Regiment, serving during the last months of the Civil War.

Returning home, Ambler attended Washington College in Lexington for two years, then the University of Maryland School of Medicine, earning his degree in 1870. After practicing for four years, he joined the Navy as an assistant surgeon.

Serving at the Norfolk Naval Hospital in 1878, Ambler became involved with an expedition to reach the North Pole by sea undertaken by the Navy, but financed by James Gordon Bennett Jr., owner of the New York Herald.

Bennett was interested in finding a sea route to the North Pole. The popular theory was that there was an “Open Polar Sea” at the top of the world. Earlier efforts to discover this route had failed.

Bennett contacted Lt. George Washington DeLong, asking him to take a leave of absence from the Navy to lead another expedition to reach the North Pole. Once naval support was secured, DeLong arranged the purchase of a decommissioned British gunboat, the 142-foot steamer Pandora, at Le Havre, France, previously used in Arctic exploration. DeLong paid $6,000.

The Pandora sailed to the Mare Island Naval Shipyard off Vallejo, California for refitting, and was formally commissioned in the Navy as the USS Jeanette. DeLong assembled the 33-man crew, including Ambler as the medical officer, an excellent choice.

“Surgeon Ambler stood as ready to dispense cheer and inspiration as salve, bandage, or quinine to each morning’s sick parade,” wrote Leonard F. Guttridge in “Icebound: The Jeanette Expedition to Find the North Pole” (1986).

After a brief delay off the Siberian Coast, the Jeanette headed toward Wrangel Island, where they would set up their winter quarters. However, by early September, ice began thickening, and with 120 miles to go, progress halted and the ship was locked in the ice.

On January 19, 1880, the hull was breached by the ice and began taking on water. Heroic efforts by the crew kept her from sinking.

Ambler’s duties ranged from treating minor injuries and the effects of the cold to serious surgery on the eye of the ship’s navigation officer. He also was tasked with determining the salinity of ice melted to replace the ship’s dwindling water supply.

Hopes that the ship could break free during the Arctic summer of 1880 were soon dashed. The drifting continued, and on May 17, 1881, an island was sighted in previously uncharted seas, the first land the crew had seen in over a year.

On June 11, 1881, the Jeanette was briefly freed, but the next day, the ice crushed the hull and it sank about 350 miles off the Siberian coast.

The crew started to trek south over the ice to the New Siberian Islands, dragging provisions and equipment in a large cutter, a smaller cutter and a whaleboat toward the Lena Delta.

Their goal was to reach Bulun, a Siberian settlement in the delta about 100 miles from the coast. They departed Sept. 12 with 14 men, including DeLong and Ambler in the large cutter, seven in the small cutter under Lt. Charles Chipp, and ten in the whaleboat led by Engineer George W. Melville.

However, a storm broke and the boats were separated. Chipp’s cutter and crew were lost at sea. Melville’s whaleboat ended up farther south and eventually reached civilization. On Sept. 17, DeLong’s cutter ran aground on the northern limit of the delta. The men waded ashore and began the overland trek.

Running low on food and in poor physical condition, they headed south, stopping to rest and replenish their dwindling food stock by hunting wildlife. Ambler continued treating the men in his party, including amputation of toes lost to frostbite.

The first man died on Oct. 6. DeLong then ordered the two strongest men, William Nindemann and Louis Noros, to go for help. He told Ambler to go with them, but he declined, stating that his duty as a doctor was to stay with the sick men.

The party struggled on, but their food was gone by Oct. 10, and one by one, the men were dying. In DeLong’s journal, he noted the deaths of all the others except Ambler. His last entry was dated Oct. 30.

Ambler wrote a letter to his brother Edward in Markham, which read in part,

“My Dear Brother: We have been without food for nearly two weeks…We can barely get enough wood now to keep warm, and in a day or two that will be passed. I write to you all to assure you of the deep love I now and have always borne you. If it had been God’s will for me to have seen you all again I had hoped to have enjoyed the peace of home-living once more.

“To all my friends and relatives a long farewell. As for myself, I am resigned, and bow my head in submission to the Divine Will. God in His infinite mercy grant that these lines may reach you. Your loving brother, J. M. Ambler.”

Ambler died holding a Colt Navy pistol. “The cartridges were all loaded. He had not shot himself,” wrote Guttridge. “The eventual conclusion was that he had the pistol in hand to kill any bird or beast that approached the bodies.”

Melville’s whaleboat crew finally made it to the Siberian town of Zemovialach. A native gave him a note from Nindemann, reporting that the DeLong party had reached land. Melville notified the Navy and the New York Times about the sinking of the Jeanette. A search party was organized and it headed north on Nov. 5, 1881.

On Nov. 28, Melville found logbooks, navigation equipment and other items taken from the Jeanette by Delong, but did not find their camp. Exhausted and out of food, they returned to Zemovialach.

A second search was organized in February, 1882, and on March 23, they found the camp and the bodies of the ten men. Among the artifacts were DeLong’s journal and Ambler’s letter.

Due to distance and weather conditions, the effort to bring the bodies back to the U.S. was delayed until November 1883. The bodies of James Ambler and two others were sent to their families for private burial; the rest were buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

On Oct. 4, 1931 a special worship service honoring James Marshall Ambler was held at the Leeds Church Cemetery, marking 50 years since Ambler’s death. Several hundred people attended, including many members of the Marshall and Ambler families.

In his sermon, Rev. F. G. Ribble spoke of Ambler’s sacrifice, ending with “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.”