THE RETURN VOYAGE IN THE ICE.
“Let our trusty band Haste to Fatherland, Let our vessel brave Plough the angry wave.” Thorhall’s Saga.
Cape Joseph Henry was lost to sight as the ―Alert‖ rounded Cape Rawson; but very heavy ice off Cape Union for a time completely obstructed our progress.
Excessive caution was necessary in handling the ship amongst these ponderous floes. Patience combined with perseverance are essential virtues inseparable to successful ice navigation, and they were constantly called into requisition in order to ensure a safe deliverance from the dangers which surrounded us.
A vigilant look-out had to be kept on the pack, and the ship was moved from time to time in order to avoid a ―nip.‖ Frequently we would observe a heavy floe coming into contact with the large grounded masses of ice that lined the coast, forcing them over, or crumbling them into shapeless fragments, thus clearly illustrating our own fate should we be so unfortunate as to be caught between the two.
The orders ―up‖ and ―down screw and rudder‖ 344 were given and executed several times during each day. As on our outward journey, preparations were now made for abandoning the ship at a moment‘s notice. Tents, clothing, cooking utensils, and all necessaries for a life on shore were spread out on the upper deck in readiness to be thrown on the ice in the event of such a catastrophe.
The cool way in which we all spoke of the probable loss of our home, and the prospect of being cast adrift at a moment‘s notice, was very remarkable. Perhaps the knowledge that our consort, the ―Discovery,‖
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was within some forty miles of us, and therefore within easy travelling distance, might account for the light manner in which such a calamity was regarded; but it was impossible to disguise the fact that the loss of our good ship would be a very serious, not to say uncomfortable, event.
Steam had to be kept ready at a few minutes‘ notice, so as to take advantage of every little opening that might occur in the ice, even though we should only succeed in advancing a few hundred yards. On one occasion the ship was purposely forced into the pack, with which it drifted to the southward; but on the turn of the tide, when the ice began to drift in the opposite direction, it was no easy matter to free ourselves from the bondage to which we had voluntarily subjected ourselves. If it can be avoided, it is best not to allow a ship to get beset, even when the drift of the pack is favourable.
As we proceeded south, although our progress was slow, the change in the appearance and massiveness of the ice was very palpable. Occasionally we would meet small specimens of our palæocrystic friends, over which we had travelled during the preceding spring, 345 but, as a rule, the ice was of a much lighter description. Still the floes were far heavier than those met with in Baffin Bay, and by no means to be despised.
During the time the ship was detained, waiting for the ice to open to allow her to proceed, our sportsmen were not idle, landing at all hours of the day and night in order to procure fresh food for the sick. So successful were they in their forays that the sick were supplied with a fresh meat meal daily,—geese, ducks, and hares forming the principal part of their ―bags.‖ The slaughter amongst the former was tremendous—entire flocks numbering from fifty to seventy birds falling victims to the prowess of not more than two guns, and within the short space perhaps of half an hour! The unfortunate birds being in the act of moulting were, of course, unable to escape the unerring aim of our marksmen.
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In addition to crops of mustard and cress that we succeeded in raising on board, we were able to obtain small quantities of sorrel, which the convalescents were sent on shore to gather from the valleys and sides of the hills, often returning with sufficient to enable a limited allowance to be served out periodically. Sometimes the sick men were sent on shore themselves to browse on this excellent antiscorbutic.
On the morning of the 5th of August, being within twenty miles of the ―Discovery,‖ Egerton, accompanied by one of the men, was sent to give them information of our position. Our own ship was then, and had been for the past forty-eight hours, effectually jammed by the ice and unable to move. In the mean time we on board the ―Alert‖ were endeavouring to get our vessel clean, and into something like order and ship-shape. On the following morning we 346 sustained a slight ―nip,‖ caused by the ice setting rapidly in towards us. Our rudder head was badly wrenched before the rudder could be unshipped, and the iron tiller was bent and crippled. We only succeeded in easing the pressure by exploding some charges under the ice. In the forenoon Rawson, with two of the men belonging to the ―Discovery,‖ walked on board. We were, of course, delighted to see them and to hear news of our consort.
From them we learnt that poor Egerton had lost his way, and did not arrive on board their ship until after he had been wandering about for eighteen hours! The news from the ―Discovery‖ was what we feared. Notwithstanding the large amount of musk-ox flesh procured by them during the autumn and following summer, scurvy had attacked her crew in almost the same virulent manner as it had ours. The return journeys of some of their sledge parties were simply a repetition of our own. Beaumont‘s division—the one exploring the north-western coast of Greenland—had suffered very severely, and we heard with extreme regret that two of his small party had succumbed to this terrible disease.
The rest of his men, with himself and Dr. Coppinger, had not yet returned to the ―Discovery,‖ having remained in Polaris Bay to recruit their healths. This was, indeed, a bitter ending to our spring campaign,
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on which we had all set out so full of enthusiasm and hope. It had the effect, however, of confirming Captain Nares in his resolution to proceed to England. With such broken-down crews it would have been folly indeed to have risked the rigours of a second Arctic winter; and there was really nothing left for us to do, Beaumont having 347 done his work so well that it would have been impossible for us to have extended any exploration in that quarter. The ―Discovery‖ had been afloat for some time, and was in perfect readiness to proceed to sea on the arrival of Beaumont and his party. Their absence caused us great anxiety, as the pack, being in motion between ourselves and Polaris Bay, and consequently where they would have to cross, made us fully alive to the risks and dangers they would encounter whilst crossing it. Still we hoped to hear of their safe arrival as soon as we should drop anchor alongside our consort in Discovery Bay.
The most important news was that a large seam of lignite of the Miocene period had been discovered within about three miles of their winter quarters. They had not been able to utilize this coal, but several large specimens had been carried to the ship—the result of experiments made being that it was reported, for steaming purposes, equal to the best Welsh coal.
Whilst imprisoned by the ice and waiting to escape, our naturalist made an interesting discovery within two hundred yards of the ship. On the beach, about twenty feet above high-water mark, he observed some wood which, on examination, proved to be portions of sledge runners and cross-pieces; also a snow scraper, made from the tusk of a narwhal or walrus, and a large lamp, apparently a piece of schistose rock hollowed out.1 These relics are the most northern traces of Eskimos yet found. Their position would lead one to suppose that the wanderers had arrived so far north along the shores on the western side of the 348 channel, and from thence crossed over to the opposite Greenland coast; the cliffs to the northward being very steep, and although not actually impassable, great difficulty would be experienced in travelling along their base. This, and the absence of animal life,
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would readily account for their desire to leave such an inhospitable and sterile land.
On the 7th and 8th of August the ship was subjected to some very severe squeezes. On the latter day a large floe-berg pressed violently against the vessel and forced her on shore, lifting the stern bodily out of the water to a height of about five feet. The noise of the cracking of the beams and the groaning of the timbers was a sound that once heard will never be forgotten. To those below, the crumbling of the pitch in the deck seams sounded like a shower of hail on the upper deck. Fortunately for us the floe-berg was heavy and of deep flotation, and therefore grounded before it had time to cause the destruction of the ship. It was a grand sight to witness some of the neighbouring floe-bergs—great masses of ice from sixty to seventy feet in thickness—turned completely over and swept away by the pack in its irresistible career.
REDUCING A FLOE-BERG.
We had no time, however, to indulge ourselves in watching spectacles of such magnificence. Our position was by no means pleasant: any pressure upon the ship, caused by spring tides or otherwise, must
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inevitably crush her; and the prospect of another winter in the ice began to dawn upon us. There was apparently no escape, as, from our experience of the preceding year, we had cause to believe that, when once the floe-bergs grounded along the coast, they remained immoveable during the whole winter, and 349 here were we forced on shore by a floe-berg which had grounded immediately outside us. Our only chance was to reduce the huge mass of ice by which we were imprisoned, so as to lighten it sufficiently to float and drift away at high water.
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