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OUTING ADVENTURE LIBRARY
ADRIFT
IN THE ARCTIC ICE PACK
From the History of the First
U. S. Grinnell Expedition in
Search of Sir John Franklin
By ELISHA KENT KANE, M.D.
EDITED BY
HORACE KEPHART
NEW YORK
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
MCMXVI
Copyright, 1915, by
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
I
T was in the summer of 1845 that Sir John Franklin undertook his fourth voyage into the Arctic regions, in search of a northwest passage, and disappeared forever in that icy waste.
Franklin’s two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, were supposed to be provisioned for three years. When this interval had passed without word of the daring navigator there was grave fear that he had met with disaster. Then began an unparalleled series of search and relief expeditions, public and private, English and American: five separate ones in 1848, three in 1849, ten in 1850, two in 1851, nine in 1852, five in 1853, two in 1854, one in 1855, and one in 1857.
Among the earliest of these was one from the United States, known as the first Grinnell expedition, which left New York in May, 1848. Lady Franklin had appealed to the President of the United States to enlist his countrymen as a “kindred people, to join heart and hand in the enterprise of snatching the lost navigators from a dreary grave.” Accordingly a bill was introduced in Congress to fit out an expedition for this purpose; but the process of legislation was too slow to provide vessels and equipment in the short time that was left for such a venture.
At this juncture a New York merchant, Henry Grinnell, outfitted two of his own vessels for the service and proffered them gratuitously to our government. They were at once accepted under a joint resolution of Congress, and the President was authorized to detail officers and men from the navy to man the ships.
This little squadron comprised the Advance, of 144 tons, and the Rescue, of 91 tons, carrying, respectively, seventeen and sixteen officers and crew. The expedition was under command of Lieut. Edwin J. De Haven.
The senior medical officer was Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, who was destined later (1853) himself to lead a second Grinnell expedition on this same quest. In the present instance, Dr. Kane states that “while bathing in the tepid waters of the Gulf of Mexico” he received a telegram from Washington detaching him from the Coast Survey and ordering him to proceed forthwith to New York for duty upon the Arctic expedition. Although he made the overland trip of thirteen hundred miles with all possible despatch, he had only a fraction of a day left in New York in which to equip himself for service in the polar seas. It fell to him to be not only chief surgeon and scientific observer of the expedition, but also its historian.
In view of the elaborate scientific methods of outfitting for arctic exploration in our own day, it is interesting to contrast the vessels and equipment hurriedly assembled for a venture into the Far North at a time when so little was known of that inhospitable region. Dr. Kane says: "It was not, perhaps, to be expected that an expedition equipped so hastily as ours, and with one engrossing object, should have facilities for observing very accurately, or go out of its way to find matters for curious research. But even the routine of a national ship might, I was confident, allow us to gather something for the stock of general knowledge. With the assistance of Professor Loomis, I collected as I could some simple instruments for thermal and magnetic registration, which would have been of use if they had found their way on board. A very few books for the dark hours of winter, and a stock of coarse woolen clothing, re-enforced by a magnificent robe of wolf-skins, that had wandered down to me from the snow-drifts of Utah, constituted my entire outfit; and with these I made my report to Commodore Salter at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“Almost within the shadow of the line-of-battle ship North Carolina, their hulls completely hidden beneath a projecting wharf, were two little hermaphrodite brigs. Their spars had no man-of-war trigness; their decks were choked with half-stowed cargo; and for size, I felt as if I could straddle from the main hatch to the bulwarks.
“At this first sight of the Grinnell Expedition, I confess that the fastidious experience of naval life on board frigates and corvettes made me look down on these humble vessels. They seemed to me more like a couple of coasting schooners than a national squadron bound for a perilous and distant sea. Many a time afterward I recalled the short-sighted ignorance of these first impressions, when some rude encounter with the ice made comfort and dignity very secondary thoughts.
“The Advance, my immediate home, had been originally intended for the transport of machinery. Her timbers were heavily moulded, and her fastenings of the most careful sort. She was fifty-three tons larger than her consort, the Rescue; yet both together barely equaled two hundred and thirty-five tons.
“To navigate an ice-bound sea, speed, though important, is much less so than strength. Extreme power of resistance to pressure must be combined with facility of handling, adequate stowage, and a solidity of frame that may encounter sudden concussions fearlessly; and it seemed to both Mr. Grinnell and Lieutenant De Haven that these qualities might be best embodied in such small vessels as the Advance and Rescue. It was, indeed, something like a return to the dimensions of our predecessors of the olden time; for the three vessels of Frobisher summed up only seventy-five tons, and Baffin’s largest was ten tons less in burden than the Rescue. As the vessels of our expedition were more thoroughly adapted, perhaps, for this dangerous service than any that had been fitted out before for the Arctic seas, I will describe them in detail.
“Commencing with the outside: the hull was literally double, a brig within a brig. An outer sheathing of two and a half inch oak was covered with a second of the same material; and strips of heavy sheet-iron extended from the bows to the beam, as a shield against the cutting action of the new ice. The decks were double, made water-tight by a packing of tarred felt between them. The entire interior was lined, ceiled, with cork; which, independently of its low conducting power, was a valuable protection against the condensing moisture, one of the greatest evils of the polar climate.
“The strengthening of her skeleton, her wooden frame-work, was admirable. Forward, from kelson to deck, was a mass of solid timber, clamped and dove-tailed with nautical wisdom, for seven feet from the cut-water; so that we could spare a foot or two of our bows without springing a leak. To prevent the ice from forcing in her sides, she was built with an extra set of beams running athwart her length at intervals of four feet, and so arranged as to ship and unship at pleasure. From the Samson-posts, strong radiating timbers, called shores, diverged in every direction; and oaken knees, hanging and oblique, were added wherever space permitted.
“Looking forward to the hampering ice fields, our rudder was so constructed that it could be taken on board and replaced again in less than four minutes. Our winch, capstan, and patent windlass were of the best and newest construction.
“A little hurricane-house amidships contained the one galley that cooked for all hands, and a large funnel of galvanized iron was connected with the chimney, in such a way that the heat circulating round it might supply us with melted snow. An armorer’s forge, a full set of ice anchors, a couple of well-built whale-boats, and three anthracite stoves, made part of the outfit.
“In a word, every thing about the two vessels bore the marks of intelligent foresight and unsparing expenditure.
“With the governmental arrangements we were not so fortunate. It seems to be inseparable from national as well as corporate administration, that it is less effective than the action of individuals. Neither our own navy nor that of Great Britain attains results so cheaply, promptly, or well, as the commercial marine; and it is a fact, only expressed from a sad conviction of its truth, that, in spite of the disciplined intelligence of many of our officers, the naval service of the public is regarded among our merchant brethren, and by the community they belong to, as non-progressive and old-fashioned in all that admits of comparison between the two. They excel us in equipment, and speed, and substantial economy.
“I can not, then, say much in praise of either the dispatch or excellence of our strictly naval equipment. There were other things, besides the diminutive size of our brigs, to remind one of the days of the ancient mariners. Some that were matters of serious vexation at the moment may be forgotten now, or remembered with a smile. Our heterogeneous collection of obsolete old carbines, with the impracticable ball-cartridges that accompanied them, gave us many a laugh before we got home. Thanks to the incessant labors of our commander, and the exhaustless liberality of Mr. Grinnell, most of our deficiencies were made up, and we effected our departure in time for the navigation of Baffin’s Bay.
“Our crews consisted of man-of-war’s-men of various climes and habitudes, with constitutions most of them impaired by disease, temporarily broken by the excesses of shore life. But this original defect of material was in a great degree counteracted by the strict and judicious discipline of our executive officers. The crews proved in the end willing and reliable; and, in the midst of trials which would have tested men of more pretension, were never found to waver. I record, in the commencement of this narrative, how much respect and kindly feeling I, as one of their little body, entertain for their essential contribution to the ends of the expedition."
Speaking of the quick transition from harbor life and home associations to the discomforts of arctic voyaging in these tiny ships, he continues:
“The difference struck me, and not quite pleasantly, as I climbed over straw and rubbish into the little peculium which was to be my resting-place for so long a time. The cabin, which made the homestead of four human beings, was somewhat less in dimensions than a penitentiary cell. There was just room enough for two berths of six feet each on a side; and the area between, which is known to naval men as ‘the country,’ seemed completely filled up with the hinged table, the four camp-stools, and the lockers. A hanging lamp, that creaked uneasily on its gimbals, illustrated through the mist some long rows of crockery shelves and the dripping step-ladder that led directly from the wet deck above. Everything spoke of cheerless discomfort and narrow restraint....
“I now began, with an instinct of future exigencies, to fortify my retreat. The only spot I could call my own was the berth I have spoken of before. It was a sort of bunk—a right-angled excavation, of six feet by two feet eight in horizontal dimensions, let into the side of the vessel, with a height of something less than a yard. My first care was to keep water out, my second to make it warm. A bundle of tacks, and a few yards of India-rubber cloth, soon made me an impenetrable casing over the entire wood-work. Upon this were laid my Mormon wolf-skin and a somewhat ostentatious Astracan fur cloak, a relic of former travel. Two little wooden shelves held my scanty library; a third supported a reading lamp, or, upon occasion, a Berzelius’ argand, to be lighted when the dampness made an increase of heat necessary. My watch ticked from its particular nail, and a more noiseless monitor, my thermometer, occupied another. My ink-bottle was suspended, pendulum fashion, from a hook, and to one long string was fastened, like the ladle of a street-pump, my entire toilet, a tooth-brush, a comb, and a hair-brush.
“Now, when all these distributions had been happily accomplished, and I crawled in from the wet, and cold, and disorder of without, through a slit in the India-rubber cloth, to the very centre of my complicated resources, it would be hard for any one to realize the quantity of comfort which I felt I had manufactured. My lamp burned brightly; little or no water distilled from the roof; my furs warmed me into satisfaction; and I realized that I was sweating myself out of my preliminary cold, and could temper down at pleasure the abruptness of my acclimation.”
The expedition progressed northward without special incident until the 8th of July, when, having passed Uppernavik, “the jumping-off place of Arctic navigators,” the two vessels became locked fast in the ice. Then began a heart-breaking task of warping through the pack with ice-anchor, cable and winch. It was “all hands” at this heave and haul, from captain to cook, and the doctor too. “We were twenty-one days thus imprisoned, never leaving a little circle of some six miles radius.” Then they struck open water-leads, and made fair progress for sailing vessels under such circumstances, but “how often when retarded by baffling winds or unfavorable leads, have I wished for a few hours of steam!”
On August 18th they passed the ice barrier of Baffin Bay, and bore away southwesterly towards Lancaster Sound, in more open water than they had seen for weeks. Several British rescue squadrons were known to be somewhere in these waters, including a number of steamers, but De Haven and his associates were ignorant of their course and intended scheme of search.
“We had dreamed before this, and pleasantly enough, of fellowship with them in our efforts, dividing between us the hazards of the way, and perhaps in the long winter holding with them the cheery intercourse of kindred sympathies. We waked now to the probabilities of passing the dark days alone. Yet fairly on the way, an energetic commander, a united ship’s company, the wind freshening, our well-tried little ice-boat now groping her way like a blind man through fog and bergs, and now dashing on as if reckless of all but success—it was impossible to repress a sentiment almost akin to the so-called joyous excitement of conflict.
“We were bidding good-by to ‘ye goode baye of old William Baffin’; and as we looked round with a farewell remembrance upon the still water, the diminished icebergs, and the constant sun which had served us so long and faithfully, we felt that the Bay had used us kindly.”
On August 19th they fell in with two of the British vessels,—and now begins the interesting part of Kane’s narrative: the discovery of the site of Franklin’s first winter encampment, then of three head-stones marking the graves of men belonging to his expedition, and finally the separation of the American squadron from their English allies, the freezing-in of the two ships, and their drifting helplessly in the ice pack, month after month, through the long Arctic night, where no vessel ever had wintered before—drifting “toward God knows where!”
The following pages comprise chapters XX to XLVI of Dr. Kane’s work “The U. S. Grinnell Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin: a Personal Narrative” (London and New York, 1854), omitting nothing but some scientific observations that do not add to the interest of the book as a record of heroic adventure.
In this narrative Dr. Kane tells of the first discovery of traces of the Franklin expedition—the winter encampment on Beechey Island, and the three graves. No more was learned of the ill-starred navigators until 1854, when Dr. Rae, of the Hudson’s Bay Company heard that a party of white men had been seen, four winters before, on King William’s Land, and that their bodies had been afterwards found on the mainland. From the Eskimos who gave him this report he obtained various relics of the Franklin expedition that were unquestionably authentic.
In 1859 numerous other relics were found, including a paper on which was the following memorandum.—
“25 April, 1848.—H. M. ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on 22 April, 5 leagues N.N.W. of this, having been beset since 12 Sept., 1846. The officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F. R. M. Crozier, landed here in lat. 69° 37′ 42″ N., long. 98° 41′ W. Sir John Franklin died on 11 June, 1847, and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men.
“And start on to-morrow, 26th, for Back’s Fish River.”
Nothing further has ever been heard of the discoverers of the northwest passage. They vanished in the great white silence.
Horace Kephart.
ADRIFT IN THE ARCTIC ICE PACK
[ADRIFT IN THE ARCTIC ICE PACK]
"A
ugust 19. The wind continued freshening, the aneroid falling two tenths in the night. About eight I was called by our master, with the news that a couple of vessels were following in our wake. We were shortening sail for our consort; and by half past twelve, the larger stranger, the Lady Franklin, came up along side of us. A cordial greeting, such as those only know who have been pelted for weeks in the solitudes of Arctic ice—and we learned that this was Captain Penny’s squadron, bound on the same pursuit as ourselves. A hurried interchange of news followed. The ice in Melville Bay had bothered both parties alike; Commodore Austin, with his steamer tenders, was three days ago at Carey’s Islands, a group nearly as high as 77° north latitude; the North Star, the missing provision transport of last summer, was safe somewhere in Lancaster Sound, probably at Leopold Island. For the rest, God speed!
“As she slowly forged ahead, there came over the rough sea that good old English hurrah, which we inherit on our side the water. ‘Three cheers, hearty, with a will!’ indicating as much of brotherhood as sympathy. ‘Stand aloft, boys!’ and we gave back the greeting. One cheer more of acknowledgment on each side, and the sister flags separated, each on its errand of mercy.
“8 P.M. The breeze has freshened to a gale. Fogs have closed round us, and we are driving ahead again, with look-outs on every side. We have no observation; but by estimate we must have got into Lancaster Sound.
“The sea is short and excessive. Every thing on deck, even anchors and quarter-boats, have ‘fetched away,’ and the little cabin is half afloat. The Rescue is staggering under heavy sail astern of us. We are making six or seven knots an hour. Murdaugh ahead, looking out for ice and rocks; De Haven conning the ship.
“All at once a high mountain shore rises before us, and a couple of isolated rocks show themselves, not more than a quarter of a mile ahead, white with breakers. Both vessels are laid to.”
The storm reminded me of a Mexican “norther.” It was not till the afternoon of the next day that we were able to resume our track, under a double-reefed top-sail, stay-sail, and spencer. We were, of course, without observation still, and could only reckon that we had passed the Cunningham Mountains and Cape Warrender.
About three o’clock in the morning of the 21st, another sail was reported ahead, a top-sail schooner, towing after her what appeared to be a launch, decked over.
“When I reached the deck, we were nearly up to her, for we had shaken out our reefs, and were driving before the wind, shipping seas at every roll. The little schooner was under a single close-reefed top-sail, and seemed fluttering over the waves like a crippled bird. Presently an old fellow, with a cloak tossed over his night gear, appeared in the lee gangway, and saluted with a voice that rose above the winds.
“It was the Felix, commanded by that practical Arctic veteran, Sir John Ross. I shall never forget the heartiness with which the hailing officer sang out, in the midst of our dialogue, ‘You and I are ahead of them all’ It was so indeed. Austin, with two vessels, was at Pond’s Bay; Penny was somewhere in the gale; and others of Austin’s squadron were exploring the north side of the Sound. The Felix and the Advance were on the lead.
“Before we separated, Sir John Ross came on deck, and stood at the side of his officer. He was a square-built man, apparently very little stricken in years, and well able to bear his part in the toils and hazards of life. He has been wounded in four several engagements—twice desperately—and is scarred from head to foot. He has conducted two Polar expeditions already, and performed in one of them the unparalleled feat of wintering four years in Arctic snows. And here he is again, in a flimsy cockle-shell, after contributing his purse and his influence, embarked himself in the crusade of search for a lost comrade. We met him off Admiralty Inlet, just about the spot at which he was picked up seventeen years before."
Soon after midnight, the land became visible on the north side of the Sound. We had passed Cape Charles Yorke and Cape Crawfurd, and were fanning along sluggishly with all the sail we could crowd for Port Leopold.
It was the next day, however, before we came in sight of the island, and it was nearly spent when we found ourselves slowly approaching Whaler Point, the seat of the harbor. Our way had been remarkably clear of ice for some days, and we were vexed to find, therefore, that a firm and rugged barrier extended along the western shore of the inlet, and apparently across the entrance we were seeking.
It was a great relief to us to see, at half past six in the evening, a top-sail schooner working toward us through the ice. She boarded us at ten, and proved to be Lady Franklin’s own search-vessel, the Prince Albert.
This was a very pleasant meeting. Captain Forsyth, who commanded the Albert, and Mr. Snow, who acted as a sort of adjutant under him, were very agreeable gentlemen. They spent some hours with us, which Mr. Snow has remembered kindly in the journal he has published since his return to England. Their little vessel was much less perfectly fitted than ours to encounter the perils of the ice; but in one respect at least their expedition resembled our own. They had to rough it: to use a Western phrase, they had no fancy fixings—nothing but what a hasty outfit and a limited purse could supply. They were now bound for Cape Rennell, after which they proposed making a sledge excursion over the lower Boothian and Cockburne lands.
The North Star, they told us, had been caught by the ice last season in the neighborhood of our own first imprisonment, off the Devil’s Thumb. After a perilous drift, she had succeeded in entering Wolstenholme Sound, whence, after a tedious winter, she had only recently arrived at Port Bowen.
They followed in our wake the next day as we pushed through many streams of ice across the strait. We sighted the shore about five miles to the west of Cape Hurd very closely; a miserable wilderness, rising in terraces of broken-down limestone, arranged between the hills like a vast theatre.
On the 25th, still beating through the ice off Radstock Bay, we discovered on Cape Riley two cairns, one of them, the most conspicuous, with a flag-staff and ball. A couple of hours after, we were near enough to land. The cape itself is a low projecting tongue of limestone, but at a short distance behind it the cliff rises to the height of some eight hundred feet. We found a tin canister within the larger cairn, containing the information that Captain Ommanney had been there two days before us, with the Assistance and Intrepid, belonging to Captain Austin’s squadron, and had discovered traces of an encampment, and other indications "that some party belonging to her Britannic majesty’s service had been detained at this spot." Similar traces, it was added, had been found also on Beechy Island, a projection on the channel side some ten miles from Cape Riley.
Our consort, the Rescue, as we afterward learned, had shared in this discovery, though the British commander’s inscription in the cairn, as well as his official reports, might lead perhaps to a different conclusion. Captain Griffin, in fact, landed with Captain Ommanney, and the traces were registered while the two officers were in company.
I inspected these different traces very carefully, and noted what I observed at the moment. The appearances which connect them with the story of Sir John Franklin have been described by others; but there may still be interest in a description of them made while they were under my eye. I transcribe it word for word from my journal.
“On a tongue of fossiliferous limestone, fronting toward the west on a little indentation of the water, and shielded from the north by the precipitous cliffs, are five distinct remnants of habitation.
“Nearest the cliffs, four circular mounds or heapings-up of the crumbled limestone, aided by larger stones placed at the outer edge, as if to protect the leash of a tent. Two larger stones, with an interval of two feet, fronting the west, mark the places of entrance.
“Several large square stones, so arranged as to serve probably for a fire-place. These have been tumbled over by parties before us.
“More distant from the cliffs, yet in line with the four already described, is a larger inclosure; the door facing south, and looking toward the strait: this so-called door is simply an entrance made of large stones placed one above the other. The inclosure itself triangular; its northern side about eighteen inches high, built up of flat stones. Some bird bones and one rib of a seal were found exactly in the centre of this triangle, as if a party had sat round it eating; and the top of a preserved-meat case, much rusted, was found in the same place. I picked up a piece of canvas or duck on the cliff side, well worn by the weather: the sailors recognized it at once as the gore of a pair of trowsers.
“A fifth circle is discernible nearer the cliffs, which may have belonged to the same party. It was less perfect than the others, and seemed of an older date.
“On the beach, some twenty or thirty yards from the triangular inclosure, were several pieces of pine wood about four inches long, painted green, and white, and black, and, in one instance, puttied; evidently parts of a boat, and apparently collected as kindling wood.”
The indications were meagre, but the conclusion they led to was irresistible. They could not be the work of Esquimaux: the whole character of them contradicted it: and the only European who could have visited Cape Riley was Parry, twenty-eight years before; and we knew from his journal that he had not encamped here. Then, again, Ommanney’s discovery of like vestiges on Beechy Island, just on the track of a party moving in either direction between it and the channel: all these speak of a land party from Franklin’s squadron.
Our commander resolved to press onward along the eastern shore of Wellington Channel. We were under weigh in the early morning of the 26th, and working along with our consort toward Beechy—I drop the “Island,” for it is more strictly a peninsula or a promontory of limestone, as high and abrupt as that at Cape Riley, connected with what we call the main by a low isthmus. Still further on we passed Cape Spencer; then a fine bluff point, called by Parry Point Innes; and further on again, the trend being to the east of north, we saw the low tongue, Cape Bowden. Parry merely sighted these points from a distance, so that the shore line has never been traced. I sketched it myself with some care; but the running survey of this celebrated explorer had left nothing to alter. To the north of Cape Innes, though the coast retains the same geognostical character, the bluff promontories subside into low hills, between which the beach, composed of coarse silicious limestone, sweeps in long curvilinear terraces. Measuring some of these rudely afterward, I found that the elevation of the highest plateau did not exceed forty feet.
Our way northward was along an ice channel close under the eastern shore, and bounded on the other side by the ice-pack, at a distance varying from a quarter of a mile to a mile and three quarters. Off Cape Spencer the way seemed more open, widening perhaps to two miles, and showing something like continued free water to the north and west. Here we met Captain Penny, with the Lady Franklin and Sophia. He told us that the channel was completely shut in ahead by a compact ice barrier, which connected itself with that to the west, describing a horseshoe bend. He thought a south wester was coming on, and counseled us to prepare for the chances of an impactment. The go-ahead determination which characterized our commander made us test the correctness of his advice. We pushed on, tracked the horseshoe circuit of the ice without finding an outlet, and were glad to labor back again almost in the teeth of a gale.
Captain Penny had occupied the time more profitably. In company with Dr. Goodsir, an enthusiastic explorer and highly educated gentleman, whose brother was an assistant surgeon on board the missing vessels, he had been examining the shore. On the ridge of limestone, between Cape Spencer and Point Innes, they had come across additional proofs that Sir John’s party had been here—very important these proofs as extending the line along the shore over which the party must have moved from Cape Riley.
Among the articles they had found were tin canisters, with the London maker’s label; scraps of newspaper, bearing the date 1844; a paper fragment, with the words “until called” on it, seemingly part of a watch order; and two other fragments, each with the name of one of Franklin’s officers written on it in pencil. I annex a fac-simile of one of these, the assistant surgeon of the Terror. They told us, too, that among the articles found by Captain Penny’s men was a dredge, rudely fashioned of iron hoops beat round, with spikes inserted in them, and arranged for a long handle, as if to fish up missing articles; besides some footless stockings, tied up at the lower end to serve as socks, an officer’s pocket, velvet-lined, torn off from the dress, &c., &c.; all of which, they thought, spoke of a party that had suffered wreck, and were moving eastward. Acting on this impression. Captain Penny was about to proceed toward Baffin’s Bay, along the north shore of Lancaster Sound, in the hope of encountering them, or, more probably, their bleached remains.
For myself, looking only at the facts, and carefully discarding every deduction that might be prompted by sympathy rather than reason, my journal reminds me that I did not see in these signs the evidence of a lost party. The party was evidently in motion; but it might be that it was a detachment, engaged in making observations, or in exploring with a view to the operations of the spring, while the ships were locked in winter quarters at Cape Riley or Beechy, which had returned on board before the opening of the ice.
I may add, as not without some bearing on the fortunes of this party, whatever may have been its condition or purposes, that the vacant water-spaces around us at this time were teeming with animal life. After passing Beechy, we saw seal disporting in great flocks, rising out of the water as high as their middle, like boys in swimming; the white whale, the first we had seen, to the extent of thirty-eight separate shoals; the narwhal, or sea-unicorn; and, finally, that marine pachyderm, the tusky walrus. These last were always crowded on small tongues of ice, whose purity they marred not a little—grim-looking monsters, reminding me of the stage hobgoblins, something venerable and semi-Egyptian withal. We passed so close as to have several shots at them. They invariably rose after plunging, and looked snortingly around, as if to make fight. Polar bears were numerous beyond our previous experience, and the Arctic fox and hare abounded. If we add to these the crowding tenants of the air, the Brent goose, which now came in great cunoid flocks from the north and north by east, the loons, the mollemokes, and the divers, we may form an estimate of the means of human subsistence in these seas.
O
N the 27th, the chances of this narrow and capricious navigation had gathered five of the searching vessels, under three different commands, within the same quarter of a mile—Sir John Ross', Penny’s, and our own. Both Ross and Penny had made the effort to push through the sound to the west, but found a great belt of ice, reaching in an almost regular crescent from Leopold’s Island across to the northern shore, about half a mile from the entrance of the channel. Captain Ommanney, with the Intrepid and Assistance, had been less fortunate. He had attempted to break his way through the barrier, but it had closed on him, and he was now fast, within fifteen miles of us, to the west.
After breakfast, our commander and myself took a boat to visit the traces discovered yesterday by Captain Penny. Taking the Lady Franklin in our way, we met Sir John Ross and Commander Phillips, and a conference naturally took place upon the best plans for concerted operations. I was very much struck with the gallant disinterestedness of spirit which was shown by all the officers in this discussion. Penny, an energetic, practical fellow, sketched out at once a plan of action for each vessel of the party. He himself would take the western search; Ross should run over to Prince Regent’s Sound, communicate the news to the Prince Albert, and so relieve that little vessel from the now unnecessary perils of her intended expedition; and we were to press through the first openings in the ice by Wellington Channel, to the north and east.
It was wisely determined by brave old Sir John that he would leave the Mary, his tender of twelve tons, at a little inlet near the point, to serve as a fallback in case we should lose our vessels or become sealed up in permanent ice, and De Haven and Penny engaged their respective shares of her outfit, in the shape of some barrels of beef and flour. Sir John Ross, I think, had just left us to go on board his little craft, and I was still talking over our projects with Captain Penny, when a messenger was reported, making all speed to us over the ice.
The news he brought was thrilling. “Graves, Captain Penny! graves! Franklin’s winter quarters!” We were instantly in motion. Captain De Haven, Captain Penny, Commander Phillips, and myself, joined by a party from the Rescue, hurried on over the ice, and, scrambling along the loose and rugged slope that extends from Beechy to the shore, came, after a weary walk, to the crest of the isthmus. Here, amid the sterile uniformity of snow and slate, were the head-boards of three graves, made after the old orthodox fashion of gravestones at home. The mounds which adjoined them were arranged with some pretensions to symmetry, coped and defended with limestone slabs. They occupied a line facing toward Cape Riley, which was distinctly visible across a little cove at the distance of some four hundred yards.
The first, or that most to the southward, is nearest to the front in the accompanying sketch. Its inscription, cut in by a chisel, ran thus;
“Sacred
to the
memory
of
W. Braine, R. M.,
H. M. S. Erebus.
Died April 3d, 1846,
aged 32 years.
‘Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.’
Joshua, ch. xxiv., 15.”
The second was:
“Sacred to the memory of
John Hartnell, A. B. of H. M. S.
Erebus,
aged 23 years.
‘Thus saith the Lord, consider your ways.’
Haggai, i., 7.”
The third and last of these memorials was not quite so well finished as the others. The mound was not of stone-work, but its general appearance was more grave-like, more like the sleeping-place of Christians in happier lands. It was inscribed:
“Sacred
to
the memory
of
John Torrington,
who departed this life
January 1st, A.D. 1846,
on board of
H. M. ship Terror,
aged 20 years.“
“Departed this life on board the Terror, 1st January, 1846!” Franklin’s ships, then, had not been wrecked when he occupied the encampment at Beechy!
Two large stones were imbedded in the friable limestone a little to the left of these sad records, and near them was a piece of wood, more than a foot in diameter, and two feet eight inches high, which had evidently served for an anvil-block: the marks were unmistakable. Near it again, but still more to the east, and therefore nearer the beach, was a large blackened space, covered with coal cinders, iron nails, spikes, hinges, rings, clearly the remains of the armorer’s forge. Still nearer the beach, but more to the south, was the carpenter’s shop, its marks equally distinctive.
Leaving “the graves,” and walking toward Wellington Straits, about four hundred yards, or perhaps less, we came to a mound, or rather a series of mounds, which, considering the Arctic character of the surface at this spot, must have been a work of labor. It inclosed one nearly elliptical area, and one other, which, though separated from the first by a lesser mound, appeared to be connected with it. The spaces thus inclosed abounded in fragmentary remains. Among them I saw a stocking without a foot, sewed up at its edge, and a mitten not so much the worse for use as to have been without value to its owner. Shavings of wood were strewed freely on the southern side of the mound, as if they had been collected there by the continued labor of artificers, and not far from these, a few hundred yards lower down, was the remnant of a garden. Weighing all the signs carefully, I had no doubt that this was some central shore establishment, connected with the squadron, and that the lesser area was used as an observatory, for it had large stones fixed as if to support instruments, and the scantling props still stuck in the frozen soil.
Travelling on about a quarter of a mile further, and in the same direction, we came upon a deposit of more than six hundred preserved-meat cans, arranged in regular order. They had been emptied, and were now filled with limestone pebbles, perhaps to serve as convenient ballast on boating expeditions.
These were among the more obvious vestiges of Sir John Franklin’s party. The minor indications about the ground were innumerable: fragments of canvas, rope, cordage, sail-cloth, tarpaulins; of casks, iron-work, wood, rough and carved; of clothing, such as a blanket lined by long stitches with common cotton stuff, and made into a sort of rude coat; paper in scraps, white, waste, and journal; a small key; a few odds and ends of brass-work, such as might be part of the furniture of a locker; in a word, the numberless reliquiæ of a winter resting-place. One of the papers, which I have preserved, has on it the notation of an astronomical sight, worked out to Greenwich time.
With all this, not a written memorandum, or pointing cross, or even the vaguest intimation of the condition or intentions of the party. The traces found at Cape Riley and Beechy were still more baffling. The cairn was mounted on a high and conspicuous portion of the shore, and evidently intended to attract observation; but, though several parties examined it, digging round it in every direction, not a single particle of information could be gleaned. This is remarkable; and for so able and practiced an Artie commander as Sir John Franklin, an incomprehensible omission.
In a narrow interval between the hills which come down toward Beechy Island, the searching parties of the Rescue and Mr. Murdaugh of our own vessel found the tracks of a sledge clearly defined, and unmistakable both as to character and direction. They pointed to the eastern shores of Wellington Sound, in the same general course with the traces discovered by Penny between Cape Spencer and Point Innes.
Similar traces were seen toward Caswell’s Tower and Cape Riley, which gave additional proofs of systematic journeyings. They could be traced through the comminuted limestone shingle in the direction of Cape Spencer; and at intervals further on were scraps of paper, lucifer matches, and even the cinders of the temporary fire. The sledge parties must have been regularly organized, for their course had evidently been the subject of a previous reconnoissance. I observed their runner tracks not only in the limestone crust, but upon some snow slopes further to the north. It was startling to see the evidences of a travel nearly six years old, preserved in intaglio on a material so perishable.
The snows of the Arctic regions, by alternations of congelation and thaw, acquire sometimes an ice-like durability; but these traces had been covered by the after-snows of five winters. They pointed, like the Sastrugi, or snow-waves of the Siberians, to the marchers of the lost company.
Mr. Griffin, who performed a journey of research along this coast toward the north, found at intervals, almost to Cape Bowden, traces of a passing party. A corked bottle, quite empty, was among these. Reaching a point beyond Cape Bowden, he discovered the indentation or bay which now bears his name, and on whose opposite shores the coast was again seen.
It is clear to my own mind that a systematic reconnoissance was undertaken by Franklin of the upper waters of the Wellington, and that it had for its object an exploration in that direction as soon as the ice would permit.
There were some features about this deserted homestead inexpressibly touching. The frozen trough of an old water channel had served as the wash-house stream for the crews of the lost squadron. The tubs, such as Jack makes by sawing in half the beef barrels, although no longer fed by the melted snows, remained as the washers had left them five years ago. The little garden, too: I did not see it; but Lieutenant Osborn describes it as still showing the mosses and anemones that were transplanted by its farmers. A garden implies a purpose either to remain or to return: he who makes it is looking to the future. The same officer found a pair of cashmere gloves, carefully “laid out to dry, with two small stones upon the palms to keep them from blowing away.” It would be wrong to measure the value of these gloves by the price they could be bought in Bond Street or Broadway. The Arctic traveler they belonged to intended to come back for them, and did not probably forget them in his hurry.
The facts I have mentioned, almost all of them, have been so ably analyzed already, that I might be excused from venturing any deductions of my own. But it was impossible to review the circumstances as we stood upon the ground without forming an opinion; and such as mine was, it is perhaps best that I should express it here.
In the first place, it is plain that Sir John Franklin’s consort, the Terror, wintered in 1845-6 at or near the promontory of Beechy; that at least part of her crew remained on board of her; and that some of the crew of the flag-ship, the Erebus, if not the ship herself, were also there. It is also plain that a part of one or both these crews was occupied during a portion of the winter in the various pursuits of an organized squadron, at an encampment on the isthmus I have described, a position which commanded a full view of Lancaster Sound to the east of south, and of Wellington Channel extending north. It may be fairly inferred, also, that the general health of the crews had not suffered severely, three only having died out of a hundred and thirty odd; and that in addition to the ordinary details of duty, they were occupied in conducting and computing astronomical observations, making sledges, preparing their little anti-scorbutic garden patches, and exploring the eastern shore of the channel. Many facts that we ourselves observed made it seem probable that Franklin had not, in the first instance, been able to prosecute his instructions for the Western search; and the examinations made so fully since by Captain Austin’s officers have proved that he never reached Cape Walker, Banks’ Land, Melville Island, Prince Regent’s Inlet, or any point of the sound considerably to the west or southwest. The whole story of our combined operations in and about the channel shows that it is along its eastern margin that the water-leads occur most frequently: natural causes of general application may be assigned for this, some of which will readily suggest themselves to the physicist; but I have only to do here with the recognized fact.
So far I think we proceed safely. The rest is conjectural. Let us suppose the season for renewed progress to be approaching; Franklin and his crews, with their vessels, one or both, looking out anxiously from their narrow isthmus for the first openings of the ice. They come: a gale of wind has severed the pack, and the drift begins. The first clear water that would meet his eye would be close to the shore on which he had his encampment. Would he wait till the continued drift had made the navigation practicable in Lancaster Sound, and then retrace his steps to try the upper regions of Baffin’s Bay, which he could not reach without a long circuit; or would he press to the north through the open lead that lay before him? Those who know Franklin’s character, his declared opinions, his determined purpose, so well portrayed in the lately published letters of one of his officers, will hardly think the question difficult to answer: his sledges had already pioneered the way. We, the searchers, were ourselves tempted, by the insidious openings to the north in Wellington Channel, to push on in the hope that some lucky chance might point us to an outlet beyond. Might not the same temptation have had its influence for Sir John Franklin? A careful and daring navigator, such as he was, would not wait for the lead to close. I can imagine the dispatch with which the observatory would be dismantled, the armorer’s establishment broken up, and the camp vacated. I can understand how the preserved-meat cans, not very valuable, yet not worthless, might be left piled upon the shore; how one man might leave his mittens, another his blanket coat, and a third hurry over the search for his lost key. And if I were required to conjecture some explanation of the empty signal cairn, I do not know what I could refer it to but the excitement attendant on just such a sudden and unexpected release from a weary imprisonment, and the instant prospect of energetic and perilous adventure.
"A
UGUST 28. Strange enough, during the night. Captain Austin, of her majesty’s search squadron, with his flag-ship the Resolute, entered the same little indentation in which five of us were moored before. His steam-tender, the Pioneer, grounded off the point of Beechy Island, and is now in sight, canted over by the ice nearly to her beam ends. He has come to us not of design, but under the irresistible guidance of the ice. We are now seven vessels within hailing distance, not counting Captain Ommanney’s, imbedded in the field to the westward.
“I called this morning on Sir John Ross, and had a long talk with him. He said that, as far back as 1847, anticipating the ‘detention’ of Sir John Franklin—I use his own word—he had volunteered his services for an expedition of retrieve, asking for the purpose four small vessels, something like our own; but no one listened to him. Volunteering again in 1848, he was told that his nephew’s claim to the service had received a recognition; whereupon his own was withdrawn. ‘I told Sir John,’ said Ross, ‘that my own experience in these seas proved that all these sounds and inlets may, by the caprice or even the routine of seasons, be closed so as to prevent any egress, and that a missing or shut-off party must have some means of falling back. It was thus I saved myself from the abandoned Victory by a previously constructed house for wintering, and a boat for temporary refuge.’ All this, he says, he pressed on Sir John Franklin before he set out, and he thinks that Melville Island is now the seat of such a house-asylum. ‘For, depend upon it,’ he added, ‘Franklin will be expecting some of us to be following on his traces. Now, may it be that the party, whose winter quarters we have discovered, sent out only exploring detachments along Wellington Sound in the spring, and then, when themselves released, continued on to the west, by Cape Hotham and Barrow’s Straits?’ I have given this extract from my journal, though the theory it suggests has since been disproved by Lieutenant M’Clintock, because the tone and language of Sir John Ross may be regarded as characteristic of this manly old seaman.
“I next visited the Resolute. I shall not here say how their perfect organization and provision for winter contrasted with those of our own little expedition. I had to shake off a feeling almost of despondency when I saw how much better fitted they were to grapple with the grim enemy, Cold. Winter, if we may judge of it by the clothing and warming appliances of the British squadron, must be something beyond our power to cope with; for, in comparison with them, we have nothing, absolutely nothing.
“The officers received me, for I was alone, with the cordiality of recognized brotherhood. They are a gentlemanly, well-educated set of men, thoroughly up to the history of what has been done by others, and full of personal resource. Among them I was rejoiced to meet an old acquaintance. Lieutenant Brown, whose admirably artistic sketches I had seen in Haghe’s lithotints, at Mr. Grinnell’s, before leaving New York. When we were together last, it was among the tropical jungles of Luzon, surrounded by the palm, the cycas, and bamboo, in the glowing extreme of vegetable exuberance: here we are met once more, in the stinted region of lichen and mosses. He was then a junior, under Sir Edward Belcher: I—what I am yet. The lights and shadows of a naval life are nowhere better, and, alas! nowhere worse displayed, than in these remote accidental greetings.
“Returning, I paid a visit to Penny’s vessels, and formed a very agreeable acquaintance with the medical officer. Dr. R. Anstruther Goodsir, a brother of assistant surgeon Goodsir of Franklin’s flag-ship.
“In commemoration of the gathering of the searching squadrons within the little cove of Beechy Point, Commodore Austin has named it, very appropriately, Union Bay. It is here the Mary is deposited as an asylum to fall back upon in case of disaster.
“The sun is traveling rapidly to the south, so that our recently glaring midnight is now a twilight gloom. The coloring over the hills at Point Innes this evening was sombre, but in deep reds; and the sky had an inhospitable coldness. It made me thoughtful to see the long shadows stretching out upon the snow toward the isthmus of the Graves.
“The wind is from the north and westward, and the ice is so driven in around us as to grate and groan against the sides of our little vessel. The masses, though small, are very thick, and by the surging of the sea have been rubbed as round as pebbles. They make an abominable noise.”
The remaining days of August were not characterized by any incident of note. We had the same alternations of progress and retreat through the ice as before, and without sensibly advancing toward the western shore, which it was now our object to reach. The next extracts from my journal are of the date of September 3.
“After floating down, warping, to avoid the loose ice, we finally cast off in comparatively open water, and began beating toward Cape Spencer to get round the field. Once there, we got along finely, sinking the eastern shore by degrees, and nearing the undelineated coasts of Cornwallis Island. White whales, narwhals, seals—among them the Phoca leonina with his puffed cheeks—and two bears, were seen.
“The ice is tremendous, far ahead of anything we have met with. The thickness of the upraised tables is sometimes fourteen feet; and the hummocks are so ground and distorted by the rude attrition of the floes, that they rise up in cones like crushed sugar, some of them forty feet high. But that the queer life we are leading—a life of constant exposure and excitement, and one that seems more like the ‘roughing it’ of a land party than the life of shipboard—has inured us to the eccentric fancies of the ice, our position would be a sleepless one.
“September 4, 2 A.M. Was awakened by Captain De Haven to look at the ice: an impressive sight. We were fast with three anchors to the main floe; and now, though the wind was still from the northward, and therefore in opposition to the drift, the floating masses under the action of the tide came with a westward trend directly past us. Fortunately, they were not borne down upon the vessels; but, as they went by in slow procession to the west, our sensations were, to say the least, sensations. It was very grand to see up-piled blocks twenty feet and more above our heads, and to wonder whether this fellow would strike our main-yard or clear our stern. Some of the moving hummocks were thirty feet high. They grazed us; but a little projection of the main field to windward shied them off.
“I killed to-day my first polar bear. We made the animal on a large floe to the northward while we were sighting the western shores of Wellington, and of course could not stop to shoot bears. But he took to the water ahead of us, and came so near that we fired at him from the bows of the vessel. Mr. Lovell and myself fired so simultaneously, that we had to weigh the ball to determine which had hit. My bullet struck exactly in the ear, the mark I had aimed at, for he had only his head above water. The young ice was forming so rapidly around us that it was hard work getting him on board. I was one of the oarsmen, and sweated rarely, with the thermometer at 25°.
“On the way back I succeeded in hitting an enormous seal; but, much to my mortification, he sunk, after floating till we nearly reached him.
“Without any organization, and with very little time for the hunt, the Advance now counts upon her game list two polar bears, three seals, a single goose, and a fair table allowance of loons, divers, and snipes. The Rescue boasts of four bears, and, in addition to the small game, a couple of Arctic hares. Our solitary goose was the Anas bernicla, crowds of which now begin to fly over the land and ice in cunoid streams to the east of south. It was killed by Mr. Murdaugh with a rifle, on the wing.
“How very much I miss my good home assortment of hunting materials! We have not a decent gun on board; as for the rifle I am now shooting, it is a flintlock concern, and half the time hangs fire.”
The next morning found me at work skinning my bear, not a pleasant task with the thermometer below the freezing point. He was a noble specimen, larger than the largest recorded by Parry, measuring eight feet eight inches and three quarters from tip to tip. I presented the skin, on my return home, to the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia.
The carcass was larger than that of an ordinary ox fatted for market. We estimated his weight at nearly sixteen hundred pounds. In build he was very solid, and the muscles of the arms and haunch fearfully developed. I once before compared the posterior aspect of the Arctic bear to an elephant’s. All my mess-mates used the same comparison. The extreme roundness of his back and haunches, with the columnar character of the legs, and the round expansion of the feet, give you the impression of a small elephant. The plantigrade base of support overlapped by long hair heightens the resemblance. The head and neck, of course, are excluded from the comparison.
At five in the afternoon we succeeded in reaching within a quarter of a mile of the shore off Barlow’s Inlet, and made fast there to the floe. This inlet is but a few miles from Cape Hotham, and is marked on the charts as a mere interruption of the coast line. Parry, who named it, must have had wonderfully favoring weather to sight so accurately an insignificant cove. He was a practiced hydrographer.
The limestone cliffs rise on each side, forming stupendous piers gnarled by frost degradation, between which is the entrance, about a quarter of a mile wide. The moment our little vessel entered the shadow of these cliffs, a quiet gloom took the place of bustling movement. We ground our way into the newly-formed ice, and, after making a couple of ships’ lengths, found ourselves within a sort of cape of land floe, surrounded by high hummocks and anchored bergs. It was a melancholy spot; not one warm sun tint; everything blank, repulsive sterility.
“September 6. The captain, Mr. Murdaugh, Mr. Carter, and myself started on a walk of exploration. The distance between the brig and the shore is not over three hundred yards, but the travel was arduous. The ice was eight and ten feet thick, studded with broken bergs and hummocks. These fragments were seldom larger than our Rensselaer dining-room, some twenty feet square, and, owing either to the rise and fall of the tides or the piling action of storms, deep crevices were formed around their edges, partially masked by the snow which had found its way into them, and by an icy crust over the surface. Alternately jumping these crevices and clambering up the hummocks between them made it a dangerous walk. We had some narrow escapes. Reaching the shore, we pushed forward about a mile and a quarter to the head of the inlet, and then crossed over on the ice to a cairn that stood near it. We found nothing but a communication from Captain Ommanney, whose vessels we saw as we entered the lead yesterday, informing the Secretary of the Admiralty that he had been off this place since the 24th, and that ‘no traces are to be found on Cornwallis Island of the party under Sir John Franklin’—a somewhat too confident assertion perhaps, seeing that the island, if it be one, is more than fifty miles across, and that the observations can hardly have extended beyond the coast line.
“September 7. The spot at which we have been lying is in front of Barlow’s Inlet. There is no barrier between it and our vessels but the young ice, which has now attained a thickness of three inches. On the east we have the drift plain of Wellington Channel, impacted with floes, hummocks, and broken bergs; and to the south we look out upon a wild aggregation of enormous hummocks. These hummocks are totally unlike anything we saw in Baffin’s Bay. They seem to have been so disintegrated by the conflicting forces that raised them as to have lost altogether the character of tables. If hogshead upon hogshead of crushed sugar had been emptied out at random, two or three in one pile, and two or three ship loads in another, and the summits of these irregular heaps were covered over with a succession of layers of snow, and the heaps themselves multiplied in number indefinitely, and crowded together in a disordered phalanx, they would look a good deal like the hummock field some twenty yards south of us. These fearful masses are all anchored, solid hills, rising thirty feet above the level from a bottom twenty-two feet below it.
“Our situation might be regarded as an ugly one in some states of the wind, but for the solid main floe to the north of us. This projected from the cliff, which served as an abutment for it; and, after forming a sort of cape outside of our position, extended with a horseshoe sweep to the northward and eastward, as far as the eye could reach, following the trend of the shore. It formed, of course, a reliable break-water. Commodore Austin’s vessels were made fast to it some distance to the north and east of us.
“The barometer had given us, in the early morning of the 4th, 29.90, since when it rose steadily till the 5th, at 6 A.M., when it stood 30.38. For the next twenty-four hours it fluctuated between .33 and .37; but at 6 A.M. of the 6th, it again began to rise; by midnight, it had reached 30.44; and before ten o’clock P.M. of the 7th, it was at the unwonted height of 30.68. At 2 P.M. the wind had changed from S.S.E. to N.N.E., and went on increasing to a gale.
“We were seated cosily around our little table in the cabin, imagining our harbor of land ice perfectly secure, when we were startled by a crash. We rushed on deck just in time to see the solid floe to windward part in the middle, liberate itself from its attachment to the shore, and bear down upon us with the full energy of the storm. Our lee bristled ominously half a ship’s length from us, and to the east was the main drift. The Rescue was first caught, nipped astern, and lifted bodily out of water; fortunately she withstood the pressure, and rising till she snapped her cable, launched into open water, crushing the young ice before her. The Advance, by hard warping, drew a little closer to the cove; and, a moment after, the ice drove by, just clearing our stern. Commodore Austin’s vessels were imprisoned in the moving fragments, and carried helplessly past us. In a very little while they were some four miles off."
The summer was now leaving us rapidly. The thermometer had been at 21° and 23° for several nights, and scarcely rose above 32° in the daytime. Our little harbor at Barlow’s Inlet was completely blocked in by heavy masses; the new ice gave plenty of sport to the skaters; but on shipboard it was uncomfortably cold. As yet we had no fires below; and, after drawing around me the India-rubber curtains of my berth, with my lamp burning inside, I frequently wrote my journal in a freezing temperature. “This is not very cold, no doubt”—I quote from an entry of the 8th—“not very cold to your forty-five minus men of Arctic winters; but to us poor devils from the zone of the liriodendrons and peaches, it is rather cold for the September month of water-melons. My bear with his arsenic swabs is a solid lump, and some birds that are waiting to be skinned are absolutely rigid with frost.”
In the afternoon of this day, the 8th, we went to work, all hands, officers included, to cut up the young ice and tow it out into the current: once there, the drift carried it rapidly to the south. We cleared away in this manner a space of some forty yards square, and at five the next morning were rewarded by being again under weigh. We were past Cape Hotham by breakfast-time on the 9th, and in the afternoon were beating to the west in Lancaster Sound.
“The sound presented a novel spectacle to us; the young ice glazing it over, so as to form a viscid sea of sludge and tickly-benders, from the northern shore to the pack, a distance of at least ten miles. This was mingled with the drift floes from Wellington Channel; and in them, steaming away manfully, were the Resolute and Pioneer. The wind was dead ahead; yet, but for the new ice, there was a clear sea to the west. What, then, was our mortification, first, to see our pack-bound neighbors force themselves from their prison and steam ahead dead in the wind’s eye, and, next, to be overhauled by Penny, and passed by both his brigs. We are now the last of all the searchers, except perhaps old Sir John, who is probably yet in Union Bay, or at least east of the straits.
“The shores along which we are passing are of the same configuration with the coast to the east of Beechy Island; the cliffs, however, are not so high, and their bluff appearance is relieved occasionally by terraces and shingle beach. The lithological characters of the limestone appear to be the same.
“We are all together here, on a single track but little wider than the Delaware or Hudson. There is no getting out of it, for the shore is on one side and the fixed ice close on the other. All have the lead of us, and we are working only to save a distance. Ommanney must be near Melville by this time: pleasant, very!
“Closing memoranda for the day: 1. I have the rheumatism in my knees; 2. I left a bag containing my dress suit of uniforms, and, what is worse, my winter suit of furs, and with them my double-barrel gun, on board Austin’s vessel. The gale of the 7th has carried him and them out of sight.
“September 10. Unaccountable, most unaccountable, the caprices of this ice-locked region! Here we are again all together, even Ommanney with the rest. The Resolute, Intrepid, Assistance, Pioneer, Lady Franklin, Sophia, Advance, and Rescue; Austin, Ommanney, Penny, and De Haven, all anchored to the ‘fast’ off Griffith’s Island. The way to the west completely shut out."
T
HE succeeding pages are very little else than a transcript from my journal. It would have been easy to condense them into a more attractive form; but they relate to the furthest limits of our cruise, “long arum meta viarum” and some of the topics which they embrace may perhaps invite that sort of evidence which is best furnished by a contemporary record.
“September 11, Wednesday. Snow, light and fleecy, covering the decks, and carried by our clothes into our little cabin. The moisture of the atmosphere condenses over the beams, and trickles down over the lockers and bedding. We are still alongside of the fixed ice off Griffith’s Island, and the British squadron under Commodore Austin are clustered together within three hundred yards of us. Penny, like an indefatigable old trump, as he is, is out, pushing, working, groping in the fog. The sludge ice, that had driven in around us and almost congealed under our stern, is now by the ebb of the tide, or at least its change, carried out again, although the wind still sets toward the floe.
“September 12, Thursday. We have had a rough night. About 4 P.M., the heavy snow which had covered our decks changed to a driving drift; the wind blew a gale from the northwest, and the thermometer fell as low as +16°. All the squadron of search, with the exception of Penny, were fastened by ice-anchors to the main ice; but the great obscurity made us invisible to each other.
“At three the Rescue parted her cable’s hold, and was carried out to sea, leaving two men, her boat, and her anchors behind. We snapped our stern-cable, lost our anchor, swung out, but fortunately held by the forward line. All the English vessels were in similar peril, the Pioneer being at one time actually free; and Commodore Austin, who in the Resolute occupied the head of the line, was in momentary fear of coming down upon us. Altogether I have seldom seen a night of greater trial. The wind roared over the snow floes, and every thing about the vessel froze into heavy ice stalactites. Had the main floe parted, we had been carried down with the liberated ice. Fortunately, every thing held; and here we are, safe and sound. The Rescue was last seen beating to windward against the gale, probably seeking a lee under Griffith’s Island. This morning the snow continues in the form of a fine cutting drift, the water freezes wherever it touches, and the thermometer has been at no time above 17°.
“September 12, 10 P.M. Just from deck. How very dismal every thing seems! The snow is driven like sand upon a level beach, lifted up in long curve lines, and then obscuring the atmosphere with a white darkness. The wind, too, is howling in a shrill minor, singing across the hummock ridges. The eight vessels are no longer here. The Rescue is driven out to sea, and poor Penny is probably to the southward. Five black masses, however, their cordage defined by rime and snow, are seen with their snouts shoved into the shore of ice: cables, chains, and anchors are covered feet below the drift, and the ships adhere mysteriously, their tackle completely invisible. Should any of us break away, the gale would carry us into streams of heavy floating ice; and our running rigging is so coated with icicles as to make it impossible to work it. The thermometer stands at 14°.
“At this temperature the young ice forms in spite of the increasing movement of the waves, stretching out from the floe in long, zigzag lines of smoothness resembling watered silk. The loose ice seems to have a southerly and easterly drift; and, from the increasing distance of Griffith’s Island, seen during occasional intervals, we are evidently moving en masse to the south.
“Now when you remember that we are in open sea, attached to precarious ice, and surrounded by floating streams; that the coast is unknown, and the ice forming inshore, so as to make harbors, if we knew of them, inaccessible, you may suppose that our position is far from pleasant. One harbor was discovered by a lieutenant of the Assistance some days ago, and named Assistance Harbor, but that is out of the question; the wind is not only a gale, but ahead. Had we the quarters of Capua before us, we should be unable to reach them. It is a windward shore.
“11 P.M. Captain De Haven reports ice forming fast: extra anchors are out; thermometer +8°. The British squadron, under Austin, have fires in full blast: we are without them still.
“12 M. In bed, reading or trying to read. The gale has increased; the floes are in upon us from the eastward; and it is evident that we are all of us drifting bodily, God knows where, for we have no means of taking observations.
“September 13, 10 A.M. Found, on waking, that at about three this morning the squadron commenced getting under weigh. The rime-coated rigging was cleared; the hawsers thashed;[A] the ice-clogged boats hauled in; the steamers steamed, and off went the rest of us as we might. This step was not taken a whit too soon, if it be ordained that we are yet in time; for the stream-ice covers the entire horizon, and the large floe or main which we have deserted is barely separated from the drifting masses. The Rescue is now the object of our search. Could she be found, the captain has determined to turn his steps homeward.
[A] So in the original. Evidently a misprint.—(Ed.)
“11:20 A.M. We are working, i. e., beating our way in the narrow leads intervening irregularly between the main ice and the drift. We have gained at least two miles to windward of Austin’s squadron, who are unable, in spite of steamers, to move along these dangerous passages like ourselves. Our object is to reach Griffith’s Island, from which we have drifted some fifteen miles with the main ice, and then look out for our lost consort.
“The lowest temperature last night was +5°, but the wind makes it colder to sensation. We are grinding through newly-formed ice three inches thick; the perfect consolidation being prevented by its motion and the wind. Even in the little fireless cabin in which I now write, water and coffee are freezing, and the mercury stands at 29°.
“The navigation is certainly exciting. I have never seen a description in my Arctic readings of any thing like this. We are literally running for our lives, surrounded by the imminent hazards of sudden consolidation in an open sea. All minor perils, nips, humps, and sunken bergs are discarded; we are staggering along under all sail, forcing our way while we can. One thump, received since I commenced writing, jerked the time-keeper from our binnacle down the cabin hatch, and, but for our strong bows, seven and a half solid feet, would have stove us in. Another time, we cleared a tongue of the main pack by riding it down at eight knots. Commodore Austin seems caught by the closing floes. This is really sharp work.
“4 P.M. We continued beating toward Griffith’s Island, till, by doubling a tongue of ice, we were able to force our way. The English seemed to watch our movements, and almost to follow in our wake, till we came to a comparatively open space, about the area of Washington Square, where we stood off and on, the ice being too close upon the eastern end of Griffith’s Island to permit us to pass. Our companions in this little vacancy were Captain Ommanney’s Assistance, Osborne’s steam tender the Pioneer, and Kater’s steamer the Intrepid. Commodore Austin’s vessel was to the southward, entangled in the moving ice, but momentarily nearing the open leads.
“While thus boxing about on one of our tacks, we neared the north edge of our little opening, and were hailed by the Assistance with the glad intelligence of the Rescue close under the island. Our captain, who was at his usual post, conning the ship from the foretop-sail yard, made her out at the same time, and immediately determined upon boring the intervening ice. This was done successfully, the brig bearing the hard knocks nobly. Strange to say, the English vessels, now joined by Austin, followed in our wake—a compliment, certainly, to De Haven’s ice-mastership.
“We were no sooner through, than signal was made to the Rescue to ‘cast off,’ and our ensign was run up from the peak: the captain had determined upon attempting a return to the United States.”
It could not be my office to discuss the policy of this step, even if the question were one of policy alone. But it was one of instructions. The Navy Department, imitating in this the English Board of Admiralty, had, in its orders to our commander, marked out to him the course of the expedition, and had enjoined that, unless under special circumstances, he should “endeavor not to be caught in the ice during the winter, but that he should, after completing his examinations for the season, make his escape, and return to New York in the fall.” In the judgment of Commodore De Haven, these special circumstances did not exist; and he felt himself, therefore, controlled by the general terms of the injunction. I believe that there was but one feeling among the officers of our little squadron, that of unmitigated regret that we were no longer to co-operate with our gallant associates under the sister flag. Our intercourse with them had been most cordial from the very first. We had interchanged many courtesies, and I should be sorry to think that there had not been formed on both sides some enduring friendships.
In a little while we had the Rescue in tow, and were heading to the east. She had had a fearful night of it after leaving us. She beat about, short-handed, clogged with ice, and with the thermometer at 8°. The snow fell heavily, and the rigging was a solid, almost unmanageable lump. Steering, or rather beating, she made, on the evening of the 12th, the southern edge of Griffith’s Island, and by good luck and excellent management succeeded in holding to the land hummocks. She had split her rudder-post so as to make her unworkable, and now we have her in tow. An anchor with its fluke snapped—her best bower; and her little boat, stove in by the ice, was cut adrift.
“We were now homeward bound, but a saddened homeward bound for all of us. The vessels of our gallant brethren soon lost themselves in the mist, and we steered our course with a fresh breeze for Cape Hotham.
“As we passed the sweep of coast between Capes Martyr and Hotham, and were making the chord of the curve, our captain called my attention to a point of the coast line about six miles off. On looking without a glass, I distinctly saw the naked spars of a couple of vessels. ‘Brigs!’ said I. ‘Undoubtedly,’ said De Haven; and then both of us simultaneously, ‘Penny!’ On looking with the glass, the masts, yards, gaffs, every thing but the bowsprits, were made out distinctly. Lovell was called and saw the same. Murdaugh, who was half undressed, was summoned; and he, examining with the glass, saw a third, which De Haven, after a look, confirmed as a top-sail schooner, the Felix of old Sir John.
“We changed our course, ran in, and determined to convince ourselves of their character, and perhaps to speak them. The fog, however, closed around them. Still we stood on. Presently, a flaw of wind drove off the vapor; and upon eagerly gazing at the spot, now less than three miles off, no vessels were to be seen.
“I can hardly comment upon this strange circumstance. It was a complete puzzle to all of us. Refractive distortion plays strange freaks in these Arctic solitudes; but this could hardly be one of its illusions. Four persons saw the same image with the naked eye, and the glass confirmed the details. There was no disagreement. As plainly as I see these letters did I see those brigs; and although we supposed the Lady Franklin and Sophia to be ice-caught at or toward Cape Walker, I did not hesitate to name them as the vessels before us. Ten minutes of obscurity, we sailing directly toward them, a sudden interval of brightness—and they had passed away.
“Some large hummocks of grounded ice were near them, and we try to convince ourselves that they may have been closed in by changes in our relative positions; but this is hard to believe, for we should have seen their upper spars above the ice. I gazed long and attentively with our Fraünhofer telescope, at three miles’ distance, but saw absolutely no semblance of what a few minutes before was so apparent.”
We were obliged several times the next day to bore through the young ice; for the low temperature continued, and our wind lulled under Cape Hotham. The night gave us now three hours of complete darkness. It was danger to run on, yet equally danger to pause. Grim winter was following close upon our heels; and even the captain, sanguine and fearless in emergency as he always proved himself, as he saw the tenacious fields of sludge and pancake thickening around us, began to feel anxious. Mine was a jumble of sensations. I had been desirous to the last degree that we might remain on the field of search, and could hardly be dissatisfied at what promised to realize my wish. Yet I had hoped that our wintering would be near our English friends, that in case of trouble or disease we might mutually sustain each other. But the interval of fifty miles between us, in these inhospitable deserts, was as complete a separation as an entire continent; and I confess that I looked at the dark shadows closing around Barlow’s Inlet, the prison from which we cut ourselves on the seventh, just six days before, with feelings as sombre as the landscape itself.
The sound of our vessel crunching her way through the new ice is not easy to be described. It was not like the grinding of the old formed ice, nor was it the slushy scraping of sludge. We may all of us remember, in the skating frolics of early days, the peculiar reverberating outcry of a pebble, as we tossed it from us along the edges of an old mill-dam, and heard it dying away in echoes almost musical. Imagine such a tone as this, combined with the whir of rapid motion, and the rasping noise of close-grained sugar. I was listening to the sound in my little den, after a sorrowful day, close upon zero, trying to warm up my stiffened limbs. Presently it grew less, then increased, then stopped, then went on again, but jerking and irregular; and then it waned, and waned, and waned away to silence.
Down came the captain: “Doctor, the ice has caught us: we are frozen up.” On went my furs at once. As I reached the deck, the wind was there, blowing stiff, and the sails were filled and puffing with it. It was not yet dark enough to hide the smooth surface of ice that filled up the horizon, holding the American expedition in search of Sir John Franklin imbedded in its centre. There we were, literally frozen tight in the mid-channel of Wellington’s Straits.
“September 15. The change of tide, or, rather, those diurnal changes in the movement of the ice which seem to be indirectly connected with it, gave us a little while before noon a partial opening in the solid ice around us. We made by hard work about a mile, and were then more fast than ever. The ice alongside will now bear a man: the wind, however, is hauling around to the westward. With a strong northwester, there might still be a hope for us.
“This afternoon, at 6h. 20m., a large spheroidal mass was seen floating in the air at an unknown distance to the north. It undulated for a while over the ice-lined horizon of Wellington Channel; and after a little while, another, smaller than the first, became visible a short distance below it. They receded with the wind from the southward and eastward, but did not disappear for some time. Captain De Haven at first thought it a kite; but, independently of the difficulty of imagining a kite flying without a master, and where no master could be, its outline and movement convinced me it was a balloon. The Resolute dispatched a courier balloon on the 2d; but that could never have survived the storms of the past week. I therefore suppose it must have been sent up by some English vessel to the west of us.
“I make a formal note of this circumstance, trivial as it may be; for at first Franklin rose to my mind, as possibly signalizing up Wellington Channel.”
Cape Hotham was at this time nearly in range, from our position, with the first headland to the west of it; and our captain estimated that we were about thirty miles from the eastern side of the strait. The balloon was to leeward, nearly due north of us, more so than could be referred to the course of the wind as we observed it, supposing it to have set out from any vessel of whose place we were aware. It appeared to me, the principal one, about two feet long by eighteen inches broad; its appendage larger than an ordinary dinner-plate. The incident interested us much at the time, and I have not seen any thing in the published journals of the English searchers that explains it.
T
HE region, which ten days before was teeming with animal life, was now almost deserted. We saw but one narwhal and a few seal. The Ivory gull too, a solitary traveler, occasionally flitted by us; but the season had evidently wrought its change.
Several flocks of the snow bunting had passed over us while we were attached to the main ice off Griffith’s Island, and a single raven was seen from the Rescue at her holding grounds. The Brent geese, however, the dovekies, the divers, indeed all the anatidæ, the white whales, the walrus, the bearded and the hirsute seal, the white bear, whatever gave us life and incident, had vanished.
The following Sunday, the 15th, was signalized by the introduction of a bright new “Cornelius” lard lamp into the cabin, a luxury which I had often urged before, but which the difficulties of opening the hold had compelled the captain to deny us. The condensation of moisture had been excessive; the beams had been sweating great drops, and my bedding and bunk-boards bore the look of having been exposed to a drizzling mist. The temperature had been below the freezing point for a week before. The lamp gave us the very comfortable warmth of 44°, twelve degrees above congelation. It was a luxury such as few but Arctic travelers can apprehend.
For some days after this, an obscurity of fog and snow made it impossible to see more than a few hundred yards from the ship. This little area remained fast bound, the ice bearing us readily, though a very slight motion against the sides of the vessel seemed to show that it was not perfectly attached to the shores. But as I stood on deck in the afternoon of the 16th, watching the coast to the east of us, as the clouds cleared away for the first time, it struck me that its configuration was unknown to me. By-and-by. Cape Beechy, the isthmus of the Graves, loomed up; and we then found that we were a little to the north of Cape Bowden.
The next two days this northward drift continued without remission. The wind blew strong from the southward and eastward, sometimes approaching to a gale; but the ice-pack around us retained its tenacity, and increased rapidly in thickness.
Yet every now and then we could see that at some short distance it was broken by small pools of water, which would be effaced again, soon after they were formed, by an external pressure. At these times our vessels underwent a nipping on a small scale. The smoother ice-field that held us would be driven in, piling itself in miniature hummocks about us, sometimes higher than our decks, and much too near them to leave us a sense of security against their further advance. The noises, too, of whining puppies and swarming bees made part of these demonstrations, much as when the heavier masses were at work, but shriller perhaps, and more clamorous.
I was aroused at midnight of the 16th by one of these onsets of the enemy, crunching and creaking against the ship’s sides till the masses ground themselves to powder. Our vessel was trembling like an ague-fit under the pressure; and when so pinched that she could not vibrate any longer between the driving and the stationary fields, making a quick, liberating jump above them that rattled the movables fore and aft. As it wore on toward morning, the ice, now ten inches thick, kept crowding upon us with increased energy; and the whole of the 17th was passed in a succession of conflicts with it.
The 18th began with a nipping that promised more of danger. The banks of ice rose one above another till they reached the line of our bulwarks. This, too, continued through the day, sometimes lulling for a while into comparative repose, but recurring after a few minutes of partial intermission. While I was watching this angry contest of the ice-tables, as they clashed together in the darkness of early dawn, I saw for the first time the luminous appearance, which has been described by voyagers as attending the collision of bergs. It was very marked ; as decided a phosphorescence as that of the fire-fly, or the fox-fire of the Virginia meadows.
Still, amid all the tumult, our drift was toward the north. From the bearings of the coast, badly obtained through the fogs, it was quite evident that we had passed beyond any thing recorded on the charts. Cape Bowden, Parry’s furthest headland, was at least twenty-five miles south of us; and our old landmarks. Cape Hotham and Beechy, had entirely disappeared. Even the high bluffs of Barlow’s Inlet had gone. I hardly know why it was so, but this inlet had somehow or other been for me an object of special aversion: the naked desolation of its frost-bitten limestone, the cavernous recess of its cliffs, the cheerlessness of its dark shadows, had connected it, from the first day I saw it, with some dimly-remembered feeling of pain. But how glad we should all of us have been, as we floated along in hopeless isolation, to find a way open to its grim but protecting barriers.
I return to my journal.
“September 19, Thursday. About five o’clock this morning the wind set in from the northward and eastward; but the ice was tightly compacted, and for a while did not budge. Presently, however, we could see the water-pools extending their irregular margins. Ahead of us, that is, still further to the north, was ice apparently more solid than the ten-inch field around us. It shot up into larger hummocks and heavier masses, and was evidently thicker and more permanent. It had been for the past two days not more than fifty yards ahead, and we called it in the log the ‘fixed ice.’ By breakfast-time this opened into two long pools on our right, and one on the left, which seemed to extend pretty well toward the western shore. It was evident that we were now drifting to the southward again.
“The sun, so long obscured, gave us to-day a rough meridian altitude. Murdaugh, always active and efficient, had his artificial horizon ready upon the ice, and gave us an approximate latitude. We were in 75° 20' 11″north. A large cape and several smaller headlands were seen, together with apparently an inlet or harbor, all on the western side. They remain unchristened. From our mast-head, no positive land was visible to the north. Tides we have not had the means of observing. Our soundings on the 17th gave us bottom at 110 fathoms, nearly in mid-channel.
“September 19, 11:20 P.M. The wind continued all day from the northward and westward, freshening gradually to a gale. The barometer fell from 29.73 to 32, and our maximum temperature was 26°. A heavy fall of snow covered the deck.
“September 20. I have been keeping the first watch and anxiously observing the ice; for I am no sailor, and in emergency can only wake my comrades. The darkness is now complete. The wind has changed again. At three A.M. it set in from the southward and eastward, increasing gradually to a fresh gale. Perhaps it may be the breaking up of the season, or some unusual premonition of stern winter; but certain it is that our experience of Lancaster Sound has given us anything but tranquillity of winds. We entered on the wings of a storm; and ever since, with the exception of about three days off Cape Riley, we have had nothing but gales, rising and falling in alternating series from the north to northward and westward, and from the south to southward and eastward. The day was as usual ushered in with snow, and the thermometer rose to the height of 29°; yet to sensation it was cold. There is something very queer about this discrepancy between the thermometrical register and the effects of heat. It thawed palpably to-day at 28°; and yet all complain of cold, even without the influence of the wind.
“We are now, poor devils! drifting northward again. Creatures of habit, those who were anxious have forgotten anxiety; glued fast here in a moving mass, we eat, and drink, and sleep, unmindful of the morrow. It is almost beyond a doubt that, if we find our way through the contingencies of this Arctic autumn, we must spend our winter in open sea. Many miles to the south. Captain Back passed a memorable term of vigil and exposure. Here, however, I do not anticipate such encounters with drifting floes as are spoken of in Hudson’s Bay. The centre of greatest cold is too near us, and the communication with open sea too distant.—
“I was in the act of writing the above, when a startling sensation, resembling the spring of a well-drawn bow, announced a fresh movement. Running on deck, I found it blowing a furious gale, and the ice again in motion. I use the word motion inaccurately. The field, of which we are a part, is always in motion; that is, drifting with wind or current. It is only when other ice bears down upon our own, or our own ice is borne in against other floes, that pressure and resistance make us conscious of motion.
“The ice was again in motion. The great expanse of recently-formed solidity, already bristling with hummocks, had up to this moment resisted the enormous incidence of a heavy gale. Suddenly, however, the pressure increasing beyond its strength, it yielded. The twang of a bow-string is the only thing I can compare it to. In a single instant the broad field was rent asunder, cracked in every conceivable direction, tables ground against tables, and masses piled over masses. The sea seemed to be churning ice.
“By the time I had yoked my neck in its serape, and got up upon deck, the ice had piled up a couple of feet above our bulwarks. In less than another minute it had toppled over again, and we were floating helplessly in a confused mass of broken fragments. Fortunately the Rescue remained fixed; our hawser was fast to her stern, and by it we were brought side by side again. Night passed anxiously; i. e., slept in my clothes, and dreamed of being presented to Queen Victoria.
“September 21, Saturday. We have drifted still more to the northward and eastward. An observation gave us latitude 75° 20′ 38″ N. We are apparently not more than seven miles from the shore. It is still of the characteristic transition limestone, very uninviting, snow-covered, and destitute; but we look at it longingly. It would be so comforting to have landed a small depôt of provisions, in case of accident or impaction further north.
“No snow until afternoon. Thermometer, maximum 22°, minimum 19°, mean 20° 35'. Wind gentle, and now nearly calm, from southward and eastward to southward.
“About tea-time (21st), the sun sufficiently low to give the effects of sunset, we saw distinctly to the north by west a series of hill-tops, apparently of the same configuration with those around us. The trend of the western coast extending northward from the point opposite our vessel receded westward, and a vacant space, either of unseen very low land or of water, separated it from the Terra Nova, which we see north of us. Whether this Grinnell Land, as our captain has named it, be a continuation of Cornwallis Island or a cape from a new northernland, or a new direction of the eastern coast of North Devon, or a new island, I am not prepared to say. We shall probably know more of each other before long.
“September 22, Sunday. A cloudless morning: no snow till afternoon. Our drift during the night has been to the northward; and, except an occasional crack or pool, our horizon was one mass of snow-covered ice.
“The beautifully clear sky with which the day opened gave us another opportunity of seeing the unvisited shores of Upper Wellington Sound. Our latitude by artificial horizon was 75° 24′ 21″ N., about sixty miles from Cape Hotham. Cape Bowden, on the eastern side, has disappeared; and on the west, Advance Bluff, a dark, projecting cape, from which we took sextant angles, was seen bearing to the west of south. To the northward and westward low land was seen, having the appearance of an island,[B] and mountain tops terminating the low strip ahead. The trend of the shore on our left, the western, is clearly to the westward since leaving Advance Bluff. It is rolling, with terraced shingle beach, and without bluffs. It terminates, or apparently terminates, abruptly, thus:
after which comes a strip without visible land, and then the mountain tops mentioned above. Beyond this western shore, distant only seven miles, we see mountain tops, distant and very high, rising above the clouds.
[B] I have followed my journal literally. I find, however, in my copy of the log-book, below the entry of the watch-officer which mentions this island, a note made by me at the time: “I can see no island, but simply this prolongation or tongue.”
“September 25, Wednesday. The wind has changed, so that our helpless drift is now again to the north. The day was comparatively free from snow; but not clear enough to give us an observation, or to exhibit the more distant coast-lines. We can see the western shore very plainly covered with snow, and stretching in rolling hills to the north and west. A little indentation, nearly opposite the day before yesterday, is now in nearly the same phase—if any thing, a little to the southward. We have therefore changed our position by drift not so much as on the preceding days. The winds, however, have been very light. Advance Bluff is now shut in by ‘Cape Rescue,’ the westernmost point yet discovered of Cornwallis Island. This shows that we are nearing the shore.
“Toward the north and a little to the west is a permanent dark cloud, a line of stratus with a cumulated thickening at the western end. This is the same during sunshine and snow-storm, night and day. It is thought by Captain De Haven to be indicative of open water. It may be that Cornwallis Island ends there, and that this is a continuation of the present channel trending to the westward. Or this dark appearance may be merely the highland clouds over the mountains seen on Sunday; but De Haven suggests that it is rather a vacant space, or water free from ice; the exemption being due to the island and adjacent western shore (not more than seven miles from it), acting as a barrier to the northern drift of the present channel."
I
AM reluctant to burden my pages with the wild, but scarcely varied incidents of our continued drift through Wellington Channel. We were yet to be familiarized with the strife of the ice-tables, now broken up into tumbling masses, and piling themselves in angry confusion against our sides—now fixed in chaotic disarray by the fields of new ice that imbedded them in a single night—again, perhaps, opening in treacherous pools, only to close round us with a force that threatened to grind our brigs to powder. I shall have occasion enough to speak of these things hereafter. I give now a few extracts from my journal; some of which may perhaps have interest of a different character, though they can not escape the saddening monotony of the scenes that were about us.
I begin with a partial break-up that occurred on the 23d.
“September 23. How shall I describe to you this pressure, its fearfulness and sublimity! Nothing that I have seen or read of approaches it. The voices of the ice and the heavy swash of the overturned hummock-tables are at this moment dinning in my ears. ‘All hands’ are on deck fighting our grim enemy.
“Fourteen inches of solid ice thickness, with some half dozen of snow, are, with the slow uniform advance of a mighty propelling power, driving in upon our vessel. As they strike her, the semi-plastic mass is impressed with a mould of her side, and then, urged on by the force behind, slides upward, and rises in great vertical tables. When these attain their utmost height, still pressed on by others, they topple over, and form a great embankment of fallen tables. At the same time, others take a downward direction, and when pushed on, as in the other case, form a similar pile underneath. The side on which one or the other of these actions takes place for the time, varies with the direction of the force, the strength of the opposite or resisting side, the inclination of the vessel, and the weight of the superincumbent mounds; and as these conditions follow each other in varying succession, the vessel becomes perfectly imbedded after a little while in crumbling and fractured ice.
“Perhaps no vessel has ever been in this position but our own. With matured ice, nothing of iron or wood could resist such pressure. As for the British vessels, their size would make it next to impossible for them to stand. Back’s ‘Winter’ is the only thing I have read of that reminds me of our present predicament. No vessel has ever been caught by winter in these waters.
“We are lifted bodily eighteen inches out of water. The hummocks are reared up around the ship, so as to rise in some cases a couple of feet above our bulwarks—five feet above our deck. They are very often ten and twelve feet high. All hands are out, laboring with picks and crowbars to overturn the fragments that threaten to overwhelm us. Add to this darkness, snow, cold, and the absolute destitution of surrounding shores.
“This uprearing of the ice is not a slow work: it is progressive, but not slow. It was only at 4 P.M. that nips began, and now the entire plain is triangulated with ice-barricades. Under the double influence of sails and warping-hawsers, we have not been able to budge a hair’s-breadth. Yet, impelled by this irresistible, bearing-down floe-monster, we crush, grind, eat our way, surrounded by the ruins of our progress. In fourteen minutes we changed our position 80 feet, or 5.71 per minute.
“Sometimes the ice cracks with violence, almost explosive, throughout the entire length of the floe. Very grand this! Sometimes the hummock masses, piled up like crushed sugar around the ship, suddenly sink into the sea, and then fresh mounds take their place.
“Our little neighbor, the Rescue, is all this time within twenty yards of us, resting upon wedges of ice, and not subjected to movement or pressure—a fact of interest, as it shows how very small a difference of position may determine the differing fate of two vessels.
“September 24. The ice is kinder; no fresh movements; a little whining in the morning, but since then undisturbed. The ice, however, is influenced by the wind; for open water-pools have formed—three around the ship within eye distance. In one of these, the seals made their appearance toward noon; no less than five disporting together among the sludge of the open water. I started off on a perilous walk over the ruined barricades of last night’s commotion; and, after cooling myself for forty minutes in an atmosphere ten degrees above zero, came back without a shot. The condensed moisture had so affected my powder that I could not get my gun off.
“This condensation is now very troublesome, dripping down from our carlines, and sweating over the roof and berth-boards. When we open the hatchway, the steam rises in clouds from the little cabin below.
“We have as yet no fires; worse! the state of uncertainty in which we are placed makes it impossible to resort to any winter arrangements. Yet these lard lamps give us a temperature of 46°, which to men like ourselves, used to constant out-door exercise, exposure, and absence of artificial heat, is quite genial. But for the moisture—that wretched, comfortless, rheumatic drawback—we would be quite snug.
“Our captain is the best of sailors; but, intent always on the primary objects and duties of his cruise, he is apt to forget or postpone a provident regard for those creature-comforts which have interest for others. To-day, with the thermometer at 10°, we for the first time commenced the manufacture of stove-pipes. I need not say that the cold metal played hob with the tinkers. If they go on at the present rate, the pipes will be nearly ready by next summer.
“September 26. The hummocks around us still remain without apparent motion, heaped up like snow-covered barriers of street rioters. We are wedged in a huge mass of tables, completely out of water, cradled by ice. I wish it would give us an even keel. We are eighteen inches higher on one quarter than the other.
“The two large pools we observed yesterday, one on each side of us, are now coated by a thick film of ice. In this the poor seals sometimes show themselves in groups of half a dozen. They no longer sport about as they did three weeks ago, but rise up to their breasts through young ice, and gaze around with curiosity-smitten countenances.
“The shyness of the seal is proverbial. The Esquimaux, trained from earliest youth to the pursuit of them, regard a successful hunter as the great man of the settlement. If not killed instantaneously, the seal sinks and is lost. The day before yesterday, I adopted the native plan of silent watching beside a pool. Thus for a long time I was exposed to a temperature of +8°; but no shots within head-range offered; and I knew that, unless the spinal column or base of the brain was entered by the ball, it would be useless to waste our already scanty ammunition.
“To-day, however, I was more fortunate. A fine young seal rose about forty yards off, and I put the ball between the ear and eye. A boat was run over the ice, and the carcass secured. This is the second I have killed with this villainous carbine: it will be a valuable help to our sick. We are now very fond of seal-meat. It is far better than bear; and the fishiness, which at first disturbed us, is no longer disagreeable. I simply skin them, retaining the blubber with the pelt. The cold soon renders them solid. My bear, although in a barrel, is as stiff and hard as horn.
“Took a skate this morning over some lakelets recently frozen over. The ice was tenacious, but not strong enough for safety. As I was moving along over the tickly-benders, my ice-pole drove a hole, and came very near dropping through into the water.
“September 27. This evening the thermometer gave 3° above zero. A bit of ice, which I took into my mouth to suck, fastened on to my tongue and carried away the skin. When we open the cabin hatch now, a cloud of steam, visible only as the two currents meet, gives evidence of the Arctic condensation.
“Afar off, skipping from hummock to hummock, I saw a black fox. Poor desolate devil! what did he, so far from his recorded home, seven miles from even the naked snow-hills of this dreary wilderness? In the night-time I heard him bark. They set a trap for him; but I secretly placed a bigger bait outside, without a snare-loop or trigger. In the morning it was gone, and the dead-fall had fallen upon no fox. How the poor, hungry thing must have enjoyed his supper! half the guts, the spleen, and the pluck of my seal.
“Lovell raised a swing; cold work, but good exercise. He rigged it from the main studding-sail boom. Murdaugh and Carter are building a snow-house. The doctor is hard at work patching up materials for an overland communication with the English squadron—an enterprise fast becoming desperate. Yet, drifting as we are to unknown regions north, it is of vast importance that others should know of our position and prospects.”
Our position, however, at the end of September, thanks to the rapidly-increasing cold, gave promise of a certain degree of security and rest. The Advance had been driven, by the superior momentum of the floes that pressed us on one side, some two hundred and fifty feet into the mass of less resisting floes on the other; the Rescue meanwhile remaining stationary; and the two vessels were fixed for a time on two adjacent sides of a rectangle, and close to each other. The unseen and varying energies of the ice movements had occasionally modified the position of each; but their relation to each other continued almost unchanged.
We felt that we were fixed for the winter. We arranged our rude embankments of ice and snow around us, began to deposit our stores within them, and got out our felt covering that was to serve as our winter roof. The temperature was severe, ranging from 1°.5, and 4° to +10°; but the men worked with the energy, and hope too, of pioneer settlers, when building up their first home in our Western forests.
The closing day of the month was signalized by a brilliant meteor, a modification of the parhelion, the more interesting to us because the first we had seen.
“October 1, Tuesday. To-day the work of breaking hold commenced. The coal immediately under the main hatch was passed up in buckets, and some five tons piled upon the ice. The quarter-boats were hauled about twenty paces from our port-bow, and the sails covered and stacked; in short, all hands were at work preparing for the winter. Little had we calculated the caprices of Arctic ice.
“About ten o’clock A.M. a large crack opened nearly east and west, running as far as the eye could see, sometimes crossing the ice-pools, and sometimes breaking along the hummock ridges. The sun and moon will be in conjunction on the 3d; we had notice, therefore, that the spring tides are in action.
“Captain Griffin had been dispatched with Mr. Lovell before this, to establish on the shore the site for a depôt of provisions: at one o’clock a signal was made to recall them. At two P.M., seeing a seal, I ran out upon the ice; but losing him, was tempted to continue on about a mile to the eastward. The wind, which had been from the westward all the morning, now shifted to the southward, and the ice-tables began to be again in motion. The humming of bees and upheaving hummocks, together with exploding cracks, warned me back to the vessel.
“At 3:20, while we were at dinner, commenting with some anxiety upon the condition of things without, that unmistakable monitor, the ‘young puppies,’ began. Running on deck, we found a large fissure, nearly due north and south, in line with the Advance. A few minutes after, the entire floe on our starboard side was moving, and the ice breaking up in every direction.
“The emergency was startling enough. All hands turned to, officers included. The poor land party, returning at this moment, tired and dinnerless, went to work with the rest. Vreeland and myself worked like horses. Before dark, every thing was on board except the coal; and of this, such were the unwearied efforts of our crew, that we lost but a ton or two.
“This ice-opening was instructive practically, because it taught those of us who did not understand it before how capriciously insecure was our position. It revealed much, too, in relation to the action of the ice.
“1. The first crack was nearly at right angles to the axis of the channel; the subsequent ones crossed the first; the wind being in the one case from the westward, and afterward changing to the southward.
“2. The next subject of note was the disintegration of the old floes. It took place almost invariably at their original lines of junction, well marked by the hummocky ridges. This shows that the cementation was imperfect after seventeen days of very low temperature; a circumstance attributable, perhaps, to the massive character of the up-piled tables, which protected the inner portion of them from the air, and to the constant infiltration (endosmose) of salt-water at the abraded margins.
“3. The extent to which the work of super and infra position had been carried during the actions may be realized, when I say that the floe-piece which separated from us to starboard retained the exact impression of the ship’s side. There it was, with the gangway stairs of ice-block masonry, looking down upon the dark water, and the useless embankment embracing a sludgy ice-pool.
“We could see table after table, more properly layer after layer, each not more than seven inches thick, extending down for more than twenty feet. Thus, it is highly probable, may be formed many of those enormous ice-tables, attributed by authors to direct and uninterrupted congelation.
“The quantity of ice adhering to our port-side must be enormous; for although the starboard floe, in leaving us, parted a six-inch hawser, it failed to budge us one inch from the icy cradle in which we are set.”
T
HREE days after this entry the thermometer had fallen to 11° below zero. Our housings were not yet fixed, and we had no fires below; indeed, our position was so liable to momentary and violent change that it would have been impracticable to put up stoves. Still, our lard-lamp in the cabin gave us a temperature of +44°; and so completely were our systems accommodated to the circumstances in which we were, that we should have been quite satisfied but for the condensed moisture that dripped from every thing about us. Our commander had allowed me to place canvas gutters around the hatchways, and from these we emptied every day several tin cans full of water, that would otherwise have been added to the slop on our cabin floor. But the state of things was, on the whole, exceedingly comfortless, and, to those whom the scurvy had attacked, full of peril. I remember once, when the lard-lamp died out in the course of the night, the mercury sunk in the cabin to 16°. It was not till the 19th that we got up our stoves.
The adaptation of the human system to varying temperatures struck me at this time with great force. I had passed the three winters before within the tropics—the last on the plains of Mexico—yet I could now watch patiently for hours together to get a shot at seals, with the thermometer at +10°. I wrote my journal in imaginary comfort with a temperature of 40°, and was positively distressed with heat when exercising on the ice with the mercury at +19°.
I return to my diary.