Transcriber’s Note: The map is clickable for a larger version, if the device you’re reading this on supports that.MAPof theNOVAYA ZEMLYA SEAfor theAustro-HungarianExpeditions.
Transcriber’s Note: The map is clickable for a larger version, if the device you’re reading this on supports that.
MAPof theNOVAYA ZEMLYA SEAfor theAustro-HungarianExpeditions.
1. The ice-sheet spread over the Arctic region is the effect and sign of the low temperature which prevails within it. During nine or ten months of the year this congealing force continues to act, and if the frozen mass were not broken up by the effects of sun and wind, of rain, waves, and currents, and by the rents produced in it from the sudden increase of cold, the result would necessarily be an absolutely impenetrable covering of ice. The parts of this enormous envelope of ice sundered by these various causes now become capable of movement, and are widely dispersed in the form of ice-fields and floes.
2. The water-ways which separate these parts are called “leads,” or, when their extent is considerable, “ice-holes.” The meshes of this vast net, which is constantly in motion, open and close under the action of winds and currents in summer; and it is only in its southern parts that the action of waves, rain, and thaw produces any considerable detachments. Towards the end of autumn, the ice, forming anew, consolidates the interior portions, while its outer edge pushes forward, like the end of a glacier, into lower regions, untilabout the end of February the culminating point of congelation is attained. Motionless adhesion of the fields, which naturally reach their greatest size in winter, does not, however, exist even then; for during this period they are incessantly exposed to displacement and pressure from the currents of the sea and the air.
3. When the ice is more or less closed, so as to render navigation impossible, it is called “pack-ice,” and “drift-ice” when it appears in detached pieces amid predominating water. Since there are forces operating which promote the loosening process at its outer edge, and its consolidation within, it is self-evident, that the interior portions tend to the character of “pack-ice,” and its outer margin to that of “drift-ice.” This general rule, however, is so modified in many places, by local causes, currents, and winds, that we find not unfrequently at the outer margin of the ice thick barriers of pack-ice, and in the inner ice, ice-holes (polynia[1]) and drift-ice.
4. Ice navigation, during its course of three hundred years, has created a number of terms to designate the external forms of ice, the meaning of which must be clearly defined. Ice formed from salt-water is called “field-ice;” that from the waters of rivers and lakes “sweet-water ice.” The latter is as hard as iron, and so transparent that it is scarcely to be distinguished from water. Icebergs are masses detached from glaciers. The words “patch,” “floe,” “field,” express relative magnitude, descriptive of the smallest ice-table up to the ice-field of many miles in diameter. The term “floe,” however, is generally applied to every kind of field-ice, without reference to its size. The ice which lies along coasts, or which adheres to a group of islands within a sound, is called “land-ice.” Sledge expeditions depend on its existence and character. Along the coast-edge land-ice is broken by the waves and tide, and the forms of its upheaval and deposition on the shore constitute the so-called “ice-foot.” Broken ice, or “brash,” is an accumulation of the smaller fragments of ice which are found only on the extreme edge of the ice-belt. “Bay-ice” is ice of recent formation, and its vertical depth is inconsiderable.
5. Land-ice is less exposed to powerful disturbances, and its surface, therefore, is comparatively level, and is only here and there traversed by small hillocks called “hummocks” or “torrosy.” These are the results of former pressures, and they are gradually reduced to the common level by evaporation, by thawing, and by the snow drifting over them.
6. But ice-floes exposed to constant motion from winds and currents, and to reciprocal pressure, have a more or less undulating character. On these are found piles of ice heaped one upon another, rising to a height of twenty or even fifty feet, alternating with depressions, which collect the thawed water in clear ice-lakes during the few weeks of summer in which the temperature rises above the freezing point. The specific gravity of this water, where it does not communicate with the sea by cracks, is in all cases the same with the specific gravity of pure sweet water; and as the salt is gradually eliminated from the ice, the water produced is perfectly drinkable. In the East Greenland Sea ice-floes frequently measure more than twelve nautical miles across—these are ice-fields properly so called.[2]In the Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya Seas, they are much smaller, as Parry also found.
7. The thickness which ice acquires in the course of a winter, when its formation is not disturbed, is about eight feet. In the Gulf of Boothia, Sir John Ross found the greatest thickness about the end of May; it was then ten feet on the sea and eleven feet on the lakes. In his winter harbour in Melville Island, Parry met with ice seven or seven-and-a-half feet thick; and Wrangel gives the thickness of a floe on the Siberian coast, which had been formed in the course of a winter, at nine-and-a-half feet. According to the observations of Hayes the ice measured nine feet two inches in thickness in Port Foulke. He estimates it, however, by implication, far higher in Smith’s Sound: “I have never seen,” he says, “an ice-table formed by direct freezing which exceeded the depth of eighteen feet.”
8. The rate at which ice is formed decreases as the thickness of the floe increases, and it ceases to be formed as soon as the floe becomes a non-conductor of the temperature ofthe air by the increase of its mass, or when the driving of the ice-tables one over the other, or the enormous and constantly accumulating covering of snow, places limits to the penetration of the cold.
9. While therefore the thickness which ice in free formation attains is comparatively small, fields of ice from thirty to forty feet high are met with in the Arctic Seas; but these are the result of the forcing of ice-tables one over the other by pressure, and are designated by the name of “old ice,” which differs from young ice by its greater density, and has a still greater affinity with the ice of the glacier when it exhibits coloured veins.
10. When the cold is excessive a sheet of ice several inches thick is formed on open water in a few hours; this, however, is not pure ice, but contains a considerable amount of sea-salt not yet eliminated; complete elimination of the saline matter takes place only after continuous additions of ice to its under surface. A newly-formed sheet of ice is flexible like leather, and as it becomes harder by the continued cold, its saline contents come to the surface in a white frosty efflorescence.
11. Hayes mentions that he met with fields of ice from twenty to a hundred feet thick in Smith’s Sound. But if it is difficult in many cases to distinguish glacier-ice, when found in small fragments, from detached portions of field-ice, it is often still more difficult to distinguish between old and new ice, and the attempt to do so is merely arbitrary, because their masses depend not on their age alone, but on other processes to which they are exposed. A floe of normal thickness is never more than two or three years old; and if it is to exist and preserve its size for a longer period, it must somewhere attach itself to land-ice, so as to escape destruction from mechanical causes, and dissolution from drifting southwards. Many floes run their course from freezing to melting within a year.
12. The perpetual unrest in the Arctic Sea, which continues undiminished even in the severest winter, and the incessant change in the “leads” and “ice-holes,” are the main causes of the increase of the ice, both in its area and in its vertical depth. Were this constant movement to cease, the result would be the formation of a sheet of ice of theuniform thickness of about eight feet over the whole Polar region.
13. A layer of snow, which, like the ice itself, is at a minimum in autumn, covers the whole surface of all the ice-fields. This snow, which in winter is sometimes as hard as a rock, sometimes as fine as dust, takes, towards the end of summer, more and more the character of the glacier snow of our lofty Alpine ranges. Its grains, in a humid state, exceed the size of beans, and when in motion they make a rustling noise like sand. This granular snow is the residuum of the incomplete evaporation of what fell in the winter, and of the surface of the ice which has become “rotten” and porous. Its crystals are frequently from a third to a sixth of an inch in length, and firm ice is found even in autumn only at the depth of one or two feet. In the North of Spitzbergen, Parry observed that the surface of the ice was frequently cut up into ice-needles of more than a foot long by the drops of rain, which in summer fall upon it, and in some places he found it overspread with red snow. We ourselves never saw the phenomenon observed by Parry, and the ice-crystals we met with seldom exceeded the length given above.
14. Field-ice is of a delicate azure-blue colour, and of great density, and there is, in these respects, no difference between that of the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Cook, indeed, calls the South Polar ice colourless, though Sir James Clark Ross speaks expressly of the blueness of its ice-masses. Sea-ice surpasses the ice of the Alps both in the beauty of its colour and in its density. The glorious blue of the fissures is due to the incidence of light, the blue rays of which only are reflected, while the other rays are absorbed. A spectrum observation made in 1869 on a Greenland ice-field gave brownish red, yellow, green and blue. The yellowish spots observed in ice are due to the presence of innumerable microscopic animalculæ.
15. Sea-ice, which, when the cold is intense, is hard and brittle, loses this quality with the increase of temperature till it acquires an incredible toughness, far exceeding that of glaciers; and floes several feet thick bend under mutual pressure before they split. Hence the fruitlessness, especiallyin summer, of all attempts to loosen the connexion of its parts by blasting with gunpowder.
16. The specific gravity of sea-ice is 0.91, and accordingly about nine parts of a cubical block of ice are under water, while one part only rises above the surface. If, however, the ice of a floe be irregularly formed and full of bubbles, the specific gravity will be correspondingly reduced, and the volume submerged may diminish to two-thirds of the whole mass.
17. The irregularity of the forms of ice is so great, that no deduction can safely be drawn from them; cases may occur where a recently-formed ice-floe, which has been attached to old ice, is forced by its neighbour to sink under the normal level; hence the submergence of floes beneath the level of the sea is often overstated.
18. The temperature of the Arctic Sea at the surface is generally below the freezing point, and then increases slightly with the depth. Sir James Ross observed that the temperature in all oceans does not alter at great depths, and placed this constant temperature at 39° F. In summer the temperature of the atmosphere rises little above freezing point, and, according to Sir James Ross, it is still less at the South Pole, because he saw no thaw-water streaming down from the icebergs there as he did in the North. It was first observed in Forster’s days, that is about a century ago, that the salt was gradually eliminated from frozen sea-water. Of this fact Cook knew nothing; and even Sir James Ross endorses Davis’s remark that “the deep sea freezes not.” But the fact that ice is formed on the open sea, and far from the vicinity of land, was first asserted by Scoresby, and has been confirmed by all subsequent observers, though it was long disputed.
19. The crackling sound so commonly heard along the outer edge of the ice exposed to the action of the waves, is a consequence of the penetration of its pores by the sea-water, which is then immediately frozen, and disruption follows at once. But disruption on a far grander scale is due to a cause the very opposite of this, the sudden contraction and splitting of the ice, even in the great ice-fields, which is produced usually in winter by the sudden fall of the temperature.
20. When light falls on a field of pack-ice, it is reflected in the stratum of air above it, and this span of light, called the “ice-blink,” just above the horizon, warns the navigator of the impossibility of penetrating further. This phenomenon is often observed also over drift-ice, although not so intense nor so yellow in colour as over pack-ice.
21. Water spaces, on the other hand, show their presence by dark spots on the horizon, produced by the formation of clouds from ascending mists. These are the so-called “water-sky,” and faithfully indicate the “leads” beneath them. Above the larger “ice-holes,” they assume the dark colours of a thunder-sky, though they are never so strongly defined.
22. The annual evaporation from the surface of the ice, which even in winter is never entirely interrupted during the severest frost, and the destruction of ice by the action of rain and waves, are balanced, to speak generally, by its re-formation by frost. The maximum accumulation of ice takes place in spring, its minimum in the beginning of autumn. We observed in the autumn of 1873 not only the evaporation of the snow of the preceding winter, but also a vertical decrease of ice of about four feet. Evaporation is, therefore, the most potent regulator of the balance between waste and growth in the accumulation of ice; and next in importance is the drifting of its masses towards the south through all those openings by which the Polar waters mingle with the waters of lower latitudes.
23. However great the agitation of the sea may be in the open ocean, and though it may dash its waves with wild fury on the edge of the ice, within the icy girdle it is undisturbed, in consequence of the enormous weight of the superincumbent masses. It is only in the large “ice-holes,” and when the winds are very high, that the action of waves is discernible. An isolated accumulation of floes in a circular form, suffices to produce a calm interior sea, and its outer edge only encounters the beat of the ocean.
24. The ceaseless attack to which the ice is exposed on its outer edge is the cause of its excavation and undermining. Hence its centre of gravity is constantly displaced; and the overturning of its masses and its strange transformationsare the consequences of this instability. The smaller the masses of the ice, the more fantastic are the shapes they assume.
25. Change of colour in the sea as we enter the ice-region is frequently, though not invariably, observed. Almost immediately on entering the ice, its normal dull green colour gives place to a deep ultramarine blue, especially in the East Greenland seas, and this colour is maintained under all changes of the weather, and is only modified by local currents. Two hundred and fifty years ago it appeared to Hudson, on the coast of Spitzbergen, that the sea, whenever it was free from ice, was green, and that its being covered with ice and its blueness of colour were intimately connected. Sir James Ross states that in both Polar oceans the colour of the sea changes in the neighbourhood of ice, and that the dull brownish colour sometimes seen near pack-ice in the Antarctic Ocean is owing to an infinite number of animalculæ. The rapid fall of the temperature of the water to the zero point is another indication that ice is near.
26. Of all the ice-formations in the Arctic Seas, icebergs are the most enormous. “It is well known that ice is not by any means so heavy as water, but readily floats upon its surface. Consequently whenever a glacier enters the sea, the dense salt water tends to buoy it up. But the great tenacity of the frozen mass enables it to resist the pressure for a time. By and by, however, as the glacier reaches deeper water, its cohesion is overcome, and large fragments are forced from its terminal front and floated up from the bed of the sea to sail away as icebergs.”[3]This process is sometimes called “the calving” of the glaciers; and the direction of the cleavage is a pre-indication of the forms of the masses when detached. The characteristic features of icebergs are their simple outline, differing widely from the fantastic shapes which the fragments of sea-ice tend to assume; their great height as compared with their breadth—their greenish-blue colour—their distinct stratification—their slight transparency—and the roughly-granulated character of their ice. Icebergs with long, sharp-pointed peaks, like those exhibited in numerous illustrations, have noreal existence. It is only fragments of field-ice, raised up by pressure, exposed to the action of waves and the process of evaporation which are transformed into fantastic shapes. Icebergs are generally of a pyramidal or tabular shape, and in time they are usually rounded off into irregular cones. They vary in height from 20 to 300 feet. Sir John Ross (1818) mentions an iceberg of 51 feet; Baffin (1615) of 240 feet; Parry (1819) of 258 feet; Kane (1853) of 300 feet; and Hayes (1861) one 315 feet high, the depth of which below the water-line he estimated at half a mile. On the coast of East Greenland, Scoresby once counted 500 icebergs, some of which reached the height of 200 feet; and during the second German North-Pole expedition, we saw many at the mouth of the Kaiser Franz-Josef fiord which measured 220 feet in height. In Austria Sound, and on the east coast of Kron-Prinz Rudolph’s land, their altitude varied from 80 to 200 feet. From the covering of mist which envelops them, icebergs generally appear much higher than they really are, and their depth below the surface is not so considerable as is generally supposed. In an iceberg 200 feet above the water, a total height of 600 to 800 feet may, as a mean, be inferred. It is only glaciers of a very great size which shed icebergs; smaller glaciers, like those of Novaya Zemlya, only strew the sea with a multitude of fragments which resemble broken sea-ice. Hence the appearance of icebergs is connected with the proximity to glacier-covered lands, and with the currents which prevail along their coasts. Baffin’s Bay, Smith’s Sound, East Greenland, the South-East of Greenland, Austria Sound, are the principal places where they collect together and lie like fleets before the entrances of bays and gulfs. Under-currents of the sea take them not unfrequently in directions contrary to the drift of the field-ice, which depends only on upper-currents; and abnormal winds may sometimes carry them out to seas where they have been seldom or never seen.[4]This appears to be the case even with those met with on the north-west coast of Novaya Zemlya. On the other hand, they have never been seen on the coasts of Siberia, which have no glaciers.
27. The constant displacement of the centre of gravity of an iceberg, resulting from the unsymmetrical decrease of its form, causes its periodical oversetting; and the different temperature of the internal and external ice is the principal cause of its rending asunder with a noise like thunder; a process which occurs generally in the height of summer.
1. Although it be impossible to give any one, who has not with his own eyes seen the Arctic Sea, a perfectly clear conception of its character, the phenomena described in the preceding chapter are sufficient to indicate the difficulties and dangers to which its navigation is necessarily exposed. And to these difficulties and dangers, formidable enough in themselves, are often added the evil influences of preconceived theories and exaggerated expectations, usually followed by bitter disillusions. The calm judgment, which, to all the bold plans of navigation within the Polar basin, opposes distrust in their feasibility, while it points to the hundred expeditions which have at last returned home after penetrating but a little way into the frozen sea, is an attainment of slow growth. Years, too, must be devoted to the theoretical study of the Polar question, to the examination of all that predecessors have experienced and recorded. But this study is very important to Polar navigators; for the discoveries which they too readily regard as exclusively their own prove sometimes to have been made centuries before them.
2. A most essential element of success is the choice of a favourable ice year; and the commander of an expedition must possess sufficient self-control to return, as soon as he becomes convinced of the existence of conditions unfavourable for navigation. It is better to repeat the same attempt on a second or even a third summer, than with conscious impotence to fight against the supremacy of the ice.
3. Polar navigators have learnt in the school of experience to distinguish between navigation in the frozen seas remotefrom the land, and navigation in the so called coast-waters. The former is far more dangerous, entirely dependent on accident, exposed to grave catastrophes, and without any definite goal. It affords no certainty of finding a winter harbour for the long period when cold and darkness render navigation impossible. On the other hand, a strip of open water, which retreats before the growth of the land-ice only in winter, forms itself along coasts, and especially under the lee of those exposed to marine currents running parallel to them; and this coast-water does not arise from the thawing of the ice through the greater heat of the land, but from the land being an immovable barrier against wind, and therefore against ice-currents. The inconstancy of the wind, however, may baffle all the calculations of navigation; for coast-water, open as far as the eye can reach, may be filled with ice in a short time by a change of the wind. Land-ice often remains on the coasts even during summer, and in this case there is nothing to be done but to find the open navigable waters between the extreme edge of the fast-ice and the drift-ice. Should the drift become pack-ice, the moment must be awaited when winds setting in from the land carry off the masses of ice blocking the navigation, and open a passage free from ice, or at least only partially covered with drift-ice. It is evident that navigation in coast-waters must be slow and gradual, though it has always been attended with the greatest advantages. Barentz was the first who tested its value; but it was Parry, the most distinguished of all Polar navigators, who discovered its full importance, and from his day it has been accepted as an incontrovertible canon of ice-navigation. On this point he himself says: “Our experience, I think, has clearly shown, that the navigation of the Polar Seas can never be performed with any degree of certainty without a continuity of land. It was only by watching the openings between the ice and the shore that our late progress to the westward was effected; and had the land continued in the desired direction, there can be no question that we should have continued to advance, however slowly, towards the completion of our enterprise.”[5]
4. The successes of the English in the North American Archipelago were the result of this mode of navigation. Its principle is to search for and sail along the network of narrow channels when the main passage is blocked by pack-ice, and to turn to account the narrowest opening between the ice and the land. In the Siberian coast expeditions also this method of constantly following the coast-waters has been successfully observed. Where coast-water does not exist, or only to a limited extent, as on the East Coast of Greenland, this method is of course impracticable. The fate of the second German North Pole expedition is an illustration of this; it was ordered to penetrate in this direction, and its failure was inevitable. On the other hand, all the unsuccessful attempts of expeditions to penetrate northward from Spitzbergen—expeditions whose course and termination resemble each other as one egg resembles another—may be reckoned among those in seas remote from land. To the same category belong the expeditions for the discovery of a north-east passage, and simply because of the great extent of frozen sea between Novaya Zemlya and Cape Tcheljuskin.
5. In the frozen sea remote from the land, from 200 to 300, or at the most 400, nautical miles must, according to all past experience, be regarded as the greatest distance which a vessel is able to compass, under the most favourable conditions, during the few weeks of summer in which navigation is possible. The fact that Sir James Ross at the South Pole, and Norwegian fishermen in the Sea of Kara, accomplished still greater distances, only proves that they were little or not at all impeded by ice. Ross observed that the ice-floes of the Southern Arctic Seas are smaller than those of the Northern: “The cause of this is explained by the circumstance of the ice of the southern regions being so much more exposed to violent agitations of the ocean, whereas the northern sea is one of comparative tranquillity.”[6]The rarer occurrence of land at the South Pole permits freer scope to the currents of the sea, diminishes the opportunity for the growth of ice on the coasts, tends to widen the passages in the network of water-ways, and thus facilitates navigation. Even the swell of the sea within the ice is observed in theSouth Polar Ocean, while it is never seen in the North. Besides the greater hindrances peculiar to the whole North Polar Sea, there is the specially unfavourable circumstance, in the case of the North-East passage, that the shallowness of the Siberian Sea prevents a close navigation of its coasts.
6. The choice of the most appropriate season is another important consideration in ice-navigation; for this period does not fall at the same time in all seas, and the disregard of season was a common cause of the failures of the expeditions of earlier centuries. Since the frozen sea remains unbroken and almost unaffected by the action of the sun even in June, and at that time extends far to the south, it is evident that all attempts to force a passage in that month are labour thrown away. The ice-barrier retreating northward, or the transformation of pack into drift-ice, leaves free navigable water four or five weeks later. The month of August is the best time for ice-navigation in Baffin’s Bay; the end of July or beginning of August on the East Greenland coasts; the second half of August and the beginning of September in the Spitzbergen waters; and in the region of the Parry Islands the favourable opportunity ends about the beginning of September. In general, it seems that the time most propitious for all the coast-water routes, begins some weeks earlier than the corresponding period in the frozen seas remote from land. But since, even in the first weeks of September, the most promising conditions are often succeeded by a sudden reaction due to storms, to cold setting in rapidly, or to excessive falls of snow, navigation in the land-remote frozen seas, in itself so extremely hazardous, becomes specially critical, just when the ice-sheet at its minimum appears to promise the greatest results.
7. The help of steam power is an indispensable requisite, as by it a vessel is able to defy the capricious changes of the wind. The movements of a ship amid the ice are made in interminable curves, and the power to describe an arc with the least radius enables a vessel to follow up narrow and often blocked water-ways. As it is incessantly exposed to severe shocks from the ice, a paddle-wheel steamer is useless; and even in screw-steamers care must be taken to protect the propeller by a special construction.
8. The rate of speed of a vessel in the ice must necessarily be moderate. From three to six miles an hour are sufficient: and a rate of eight or ten miles would soon render her not seaworthy. But even with this reduced rate, her whole frame-work is shaken and loosened at last by the incessant shocks she sustains; and this condition of the ship becomes apparent when concussion with the ice is followed not by a noise as of thunder, but by a low, dull, groaning sound. The larger a vessel, the less her capacity to withstand these shocks, and the sooner will these signs of her diminished strength betray themselves.
9. An Arctic ship should be built with sharp rather than with full lines, so that when pressed by the ice, she may more easily escape being nipped and crushed. A ship built with what is called—in England—full lines, a full, round ship, is not easily raised but is liable to be crushed by ice-pressure. TheHansawas built in this manner, and was crushed by the first squeeze from the ice; theGermaniaand theTegetthoffwere both of them sharp-built ships, and stood the test of the ice excellently well. To protect it from the effects of grinding on ragged “ice-tongues,” the hull is generally iron-plated for some feet under water, and the bows are strengthened as much as possible, because this part of the ship is exposed to the greatest shocks.
10. The tactics of a ship in the ice are guided entirely by the character of the hindrances to be overcome. If the ice-fields be large and heavy, they are then generally separated by broader water-ways and “leads,” and a ship may often amid such ice follow her course for hours with few deviations subject always to the danger of being “beset” and crushed. When the passage is blocked by a barrier of ice, the situation becomes grave and serious; for such fields are not to be displaced by any force which the ship may exert, and nothing is left to the navigator but to await their parting asunder in a position as sheltered as possible. When the ice is loose and the floes comparatively small, the impeding barriers may be charged by the ship. She may then force asunder some of these floes or separate them by the continuous pressure of steam-power. In cases of this kind, large vessels have the advantage, and can bring to bear a greater amount of pressure,whereas smaller ones stick fast and remain immovable. These accumulations of ice, while they make a “besetment” more likely, diminish the danger of pressure.
11. Hence it is clear that small are to be preferred to large vessels for ice-navigation, except under circumstances of rare occurrence; first, because they are more readily handled, and next, because of their greater power of resistance and of their being more easily raised under pressure from the ice. Their one disadvantage of lesser momentum is of comparatively slight consequence. The experience of all the North Pole expeditions of this century shows, that ships of 150, or at the most of 300 tons, are best suited for all purposes.
12. Iron ships have often been employed, but with no success; they are far less able to bear pressure than wooden ships, as was proved, among other things, by the fate of theRiver Tayin 1868, in Baffin’s Bay, and of theSophia, a Swedish ship of discovery in the north of Spitzbergen.
13. It admits of no question, that two vessels should be employed in preference to one, and this should be accepted as a first principle whenever the means at our disposal admit of it. Both ships should also be provided with steam-power, for otherwise their separation is almost inevitable,—a danger, however, for which, under all circumstances, they must be prepared.
14. All that is commonly understood about piercing the ice by sawing and boring through it is a delusion, and arises from the misunderstanding of technical expressions. Where there is navigable water, there any one can sail—where there is none, no one. In 1869 and 1870, after coming on acul-de-sacof ice in Greenland to the east of Shannon Island, we could not penetrate a yard further; in 1871, in loose, but solid ice, we drew away only by warping on the smaller floes, without being able to make the slightest progress, and in 1872 we were twice “beset,” in heavy ice, in spite of our steam power. The penetration of close pack-ice is an impossibility: in this case patient endurance is alone of any avail, and hence Sir John Ross so emphatically recommends the Polar navigator “never to lose sight of the two words caution and patience.”[7]If avessel, therefore, is arrested by impenetrable masses barring its way, the breaking up of the ice must be patiently awaited, and this, generally, is effected by calms, although the ebb and flow of the tide appear to have an influence on the solidity of the ice. It is then usual with sailing ships to seek the larger “ice-holes,” or keep in the freest water-ways, in order to guard against the danger of being completely inclosed. These precautions, however, are not so requisite for steam-vessels, as their power to escape quickly and in any direction secures them against this danger. A steam-vessel may even venture to fasten on to an ice-floe by means of an ice-anchor, and of course under its lee, the fires being banked up, so that by getting up steam she may shift her place as soon as the ice moves nearer. As a principle, and so far as it is possible without the exhaustion of her powers, a ship in the ice should endeavour to be in constant motion, even though this entail many changes of her course and the temporary return to a position which had been abandoned. The making fast to a floe, however, should never be attempted, except when every hope of navigating in the surrounding waters has been proved fruitless. The fastening a vessel to an iceberg diminishes, indeed, its drifting, but is, if possible, to be avoided, because of the danger of the iceberg overturning or rending asunder, things which occur far more frequently than we should be led to expect from their great appearance of stability. When a ship, notwithstanding every possible caution, is “beset,” it is then advisable to “ship” the rudder in order to protect it from injury, to which it is peculiarly liable from its unusual weight and size. A ship is exposed to considerable danger when she finds herself among icebergs in a calm; but since these are over-spread by a dazzling sheen, even in the thickest mist, the peril of the position is to be avoided at the last moment by warping.
15. As the happy choice of a sea-way is one of the essential conditions of success in ice-navigation, the ability to determine the ship’s position and to ascertain whether a surface covered with ice to the horizon, admits of being penetrated, is most desirable. Hence the employment of a balloon would be of the last importance in Arctic navigation. The advantage of being able to ascend from the ship in a balloon secured by arope, to the height of a few hundred feet, is self-evident; and, undoubtedly, the first vessel which avails herself of this great resource will derive extraordinary benefit from it.
16. From the deck of a ship even drift-ice appears to be of such solidity at a little distance as to defy navigation, while from the mast-head more water than ice may be descried. In order then to extend the horizon, a look-out, called “the crow’s nest,” is fixed on the mast-head, in which an officer is always on the watch, and from which all the operations of the vessel are directed. In a ship of the size and height of theTegetthoffthe horizon visible from “the crow’s nest” extends to about eleven miles,[8]but at the distance of even five miles the possibility of penetrating cannot be determined with sufficient exactness. It is the business of the officer in “the crow’s nest” to observe the passages through the ice and distant objects generally, as he is in the best position to fulfil this most important duty. It is the special business of the watch on the forecastle to mark what lies in the immediate neighbourhood of the vessel, and his constant care is demanded to avoid isolated ice-floes and prevent collision with them. The seaman at the helm steers the ship by the signs and calls which come to him from “the crow’s nest,” and modifies them according to those of the watch on the forecastle. The rest of the crew remove the smaller fragments of ice from the vessel’s course, special care being taken to prevent their damaging the screw.
17. While sea-currents move the ice in close and continuous lines, winds produce great disturbances in their movement, and open long “leads” in the direction of their course, which often alternate with strips of the thickest pack-ice. This movement of the ice varies with each accumulation of floes, as its rate of motion depends on the height of the ice-field, which then acts as a sail. It is ascertained by experience that calms, on the other hand, have the remarkable property of breaking up the ice. The knowledge and application of these circumstances are essential to the Arctic navigator. If the course of a ship lies across or against a current, it is constantly deflected. The deflection on the coast of East Greenland,for example, amounted to five, even ten miles, within twenty-four hours; hence the importance of choosing routes with and not against the course of currents.
18. Lastly, it is of the greatest moment to choose betimes an appropriate winter harbour, and it is therefore necessary to keep near the coast towards the close of the season for navigation. To find one suitable for shelter during the winter in an unknown Arctic region is a matter of great difficulty, for it very often happens, that the ice drifts out from these “docks”[9]in the storms which constantly occur, or perhaps the “dock” is so sheltered, that the ice, if it breaks up at all, breaks up only in the following summer. Shallow bays which freeze almost to the bottom, lying under the lee of a current or within a fiord, are the most appropriate spots in which to winter.
1. Around the lonely apex of the Pole stand cairns of stone which serve to mark the points to which the restless spirit of human enterprise and discovery has penetrated. In its zenith wheels the sea-gull in its flight, and the harpoon-persecuted seal finds on its ice-floes an unapproachable asylum; but the Pole itself remains the goal which no human effort has yet reached.
2. As all knowledge is perfected slowly and gradually, so man’s knowledge of the earth and its configuration forms no exception to this general rule. Of the few attempts of early antiquity to enlarge the domain of geographical knowledge, tradition tells us only of the Argonautic expedition of the Greeks, of the voyage of the Phœnicians to Ophir, and their bolder circumnavigation of Africa. With the conception of the spherical form of the earth the still vague notion of climatal zones makes its appearance, and to this, four centuries before Christ, Pytheas of Marseilles gave the first scientific elucidation and the first approximation to modern theories by his doctrine of the Polar Circle. Almost contemporaneously Alexander’s expedition to the wonder-land of India created a paradise for commerce and navigation, to secure which a shortened route,the route through the ice—the most perverse notion that ever entered into the mind of man to conceive—was one thousand eight hundred years afterwards eagerly and passionately sought.
3. Rome had extended her knowledge to Scandinavia, and Seneca’s prophetical mind foresaw the discovery of newworlds. But the deluge of religious strifes, the migrations of nations in the earlier part of the Middle Ages, the holy zeal for destruction in the apostles to the heathen, proved formidable barriers to the extension of geographical knowledge, which were broken through only by the piratical hordes of Normans so renowned in story. While the Romans boasted that Britain had never been circumnavigated, the Normans, throwing the deeds of the Phœnicians into the shade, discovered Greenland, and becamethe first Polar Navigators.
4. Travels by land were the principal means by which the geographical knowledge of the world was enriched; but during the Middle Ages the information which travellers communicated, uncertain and superficial even for Europe, served only to supply food for the fancies of map-makers, as far as the distant parts of the world were concerned.
5. But the grand moment at length arrived in the history of mankind when the civilization of the West, looking beyond the narrow horizon of the Old World, and awaking from the geographical dreams of centuries, burst the fetters of tradition, and within three hundred years perfected the knowledge of our planet up to the Pole.
6. When by his famous line of partition, Pope Alexander VI. granted to Spain and Portugal the new countries discovered in the East and West, the brigantines of these nations spread themselves over all seas in search of new lands and fresh glory. To the other maritime nations, to the English and the Dutch, nothing remained, if they meant to acquire gold-yielding lands, but to drive the Spaniards and Portuguese from their conquests, or to seek new Eldorados—yea, by the discovery of sea routes on the north of Asia and America, to aspire to India itself. This was the conception first entertained by both the English and the Dutch, and Geography at any rate profited by their delusions. These nations were not to blame if those routes, known afterwards as theNorth-WestandNorth-East passages, degenerated into chimeras, if passages had to be sought in higher and still higher latitudes,—ultimately in the ice itself, although the Dutch geographer, Plancius, struck out the consoling theory of theopen Polar Sea.
7. But who in those days could presuppose that thecontinents of Asia and America, just where those passages were attempted, symmetrically developed the most enormous longitudinal dimensions? Even the actual discovery of the vast extent of Siberia exerted but little influence on the question of the North-East passage, for the achievements of individuals were not then so quickly disseminated as at present. A succession of men in vessels poorly equipped now struggled against the supremacy of the ice, avoiding at first the dreaded wintering, while they attempted sometimes the North-East, sometimes the North-West, sometimes the passage over the Pole itself. In these attempts many lost their lives; many returned, despairing of but still hoping for the solution of the problems—but no one reached the goal.
8. The amazing simplicity of the first adventurers is seen in Frobisher’s project to erect forts, duly provided with cannons and men, on the commanding points of the passage, in the letters of recommendation given by kings of England to the leaders of the expedition for the small Saracenic states which were supposed to exist beyond the river Obi; but these old navigators carried no letter of recommendation to the great potentate—the ice. Gold, too, they hoped to find in the North, because the book of Job speaks of gold coming from thence, and the North-East passage was considered as free from danger, because Pliny mentions some Indians who had been driven towards Norway!
9. When another century and a half had elapsed, a series of unsuccessful attempts to force the North-East passage put a decisive check to material interests in Polar expeditions. The North-East passage belonged henceforward to the history of the past. The English and Dutch withdrew from the Novaya Zemlya seas; and after Wood’s retreat no scientific expedition entered those seas for two hundred years,until the days of the Austrian Expeditions.
10. Among the maritime nations of Europe, it was England, and especially her merchants, who had hitherto largely invested in the costs and risks of these Argonautic expeditions “for the glory of God and the good of the country.” The Dutch soon contented themselves, after Barentz’s death, with the capture of whales in the Arctic seas; France remained an unconcerned spectator, while the sylphs of Versaillesconsumed the whalebone of whole fleets of whalers; and Spain and Portugal early withdrew from seas in which, instead of ingots of gold, ice-floes only were to be found. But even for England the days of the prophets had now passed away—the days of a Cabot, a Mercator,[10]a Wolstenholme, and a Walsingham. Men of weight raised their voices against the chimeras of Arctic commercial routes, and Chillingworth contemptuously compared an expedition for the discovery of the North-East passage to the study of the Fathers.
11. It may be asked why nations struggled with dauntless ambition for the lost cause of the barren North-West and North-East passages, while for a century they stretched forth timid hands after the rich treasures of lands lying in the more favoured zones?The mighty stimulus of the love of the marvellousexplains this series of efforts taken up by generation after generation. Frobisher, Davis, Baffin, and the Novaya Zemlya adventurers, told on their return of gold-lands far within the domains of the icy Hydra. Their tales of single combats with spear or matchlock against polar bears, of the dreadful snow-storms and fearful cold of the Arctic winter, were heard with grim delight by listeners on whom no hardships were imposed. Or they spoke of a darkness that continued for months, of the flaming arches of the northern lights, of the sun remaining visible for many weeks in the heavens, of a race of dwarfs, of unheard-of animals, of fish as big as ships of war, of monsters with long teeth which precisely resembled the Sphinxes of the plains of the Pyramids, of white and blue foxes, of floating mountains of dazzling crystal, of ships seen upside down in the air—when had ever the mind of man more food to nourish the love of the marvellous or greater incentives to stimulate the love of distinction? But besides these appeals to the imagination, every generation desires new confirmations of its convictions; and hence geographical questions, after being shelved for a time, come again to the front as by an inward necessity.
12. If the earlier Polar expeditions pursued exclusively material ends, a decided change appears in those of the present century—the Polar world itself became an object of scientific investigation. With Sir John Ross (1818) began aseries of expeditions, at first subservient to the idea of a North-West passage, but which ultimately derived all their importance from their attempt—ineffectual as it proved—to rescue the lives of 139 men, who had fallen far from the fields and scenes where earthly fame is commonly achieved. It was these expeditions, still fresh in the memory of this generation, which, summoning to their aid the modern power of steam against the ice, succeeded in drawing on our Arctic maps a circle whose mean distance was 200 (German) miles from the Pole. Parry on the frozen sea of Spitzbergen had approached it within 100 miles (German); Kane, Hayes and Hall on the coast of the Kennedy Channel, the former to within 116, and the two latter to within 108 miles, and the Austro-Hungarian expedition to within 109 miles.
13. M’Clintock, who returned with the relics of the Franklin expedition, succeeded in perfecting a mode of discovery independent of the ship—that by means of sledging—admirably adapted for future Arctic expeditions. But the North-West passage for which six generations had toiled, though discovered, was shown to be utterly worthless for all material purposes—a dreary web of coast lines.
1. The Arctic Sea, in some of its features, forcibly impresses us with its resemblance to the glaciers of the Alps. In both cases, the ice presses from a region, colder and less favoured by climate, towards one warmer and more favoured. In the Alpine glaciers, the movement is from above downwards; in the Frozen Ocean, the movement is from a higher to a lower geographical latitude. In both cases, the tongues and spurs of the masses of ice formed by the configuration of the land or by currents of the sea, terminate, whenever they reach an isothermal curve of altitude or latitude, the mean temperature of which suffices to dissolve them or prevent their formation. Moraines also have their equivalent in the Arctic Sea; for it is an established fact that icebergs and ice-fields laden with thedébrisand rubbish of Arctic lands, deposit these burdens round the outer edge of the Frozen Ocean, and to this process, partially at least, the origin of the Newfoundland Banks is ascribed. If this comparison between the phenomena of high latitudes and great altitudes be just, then we should have as much reason to believe in the existence of the so-called open Polar Sea, as we should have to maintain, that in our glacier ranges ice ceases to be formed above a certain altitude.
2. The belief of past times[11]in such a sea shows how unsatisfactory is the simple to man’s mind, and how old is his tendency to clothe the remote and the uncommon witha garment of the marvellous. What was the open Polar Sea but the “Harz Sea” of the North, or the legendary zone of the ever-sunny Eden of the Hyperboreans, far beyond the land of the Anthropophagi over which was spread an atmosphere veiled in snow, and through which no light could penetrate! Who has ever seen this open Polar Sea? Do the accounts of navigators confirm its existence? Nay—their accounts are rather a series of counter-statements: Hudson, Baffin, Phipps, Tschitschagoff, Buchan, Franklin, Parry, Collinson, Scoresby, M’Clintock, Koldewey, Torell, Nordenskjöld, have all expressed their disbelief in its existence. If some have pretended that they have seen it, how strange it is that they never sailed on it! It has recently been attempted to make the great champion of the Polar question, Dr. Petermann, a supporter of this conception; but in the “Mittheilungen” of this highly meritorious geographer, there are many passages which most emphatically protest against it. His views extend only to an inner Polar Sea navigable under certain circumstances, and every one acquainted with those regions may adopt his point of view, though he refuses to admit the existence of the open Polar Sea.
3. In those centuries when the Natural Sciences were little cultivated, when the theories of the Trade Winds, of Equatorial and Polar sea-currents, were still unknown, and when as yet the processes in the Frozen Ocean had not been submitted to scientific investigation, we cannot be surprised at the preconceptions which were formed concerning its phenomena. In those times all beyond Norway was a chaos of ice-filled darkness; the necessity of a scientific investigation of those wastes was not felt; and down to the time of Sir John Ross, Polar navigators on their return home brought with them no kind of scientific knowledge of Nature in the Arctic regions. To reach India was the main if not the only end they had in view. The instructions which Willoughby, the first Polar navigator, received, give us an insight into the delusions of earlier times. These, for example, warned adventurers against men-eaters who swam naked in the sea, and in the rivers. It was the period of fables long since forgotten. Maldonado, de Fuca, Bernarda, Yelmer, Andrejew,Martinière, and the whale-fishers, brought home tales of passages to India discovered, of new continents, of the ascertained connexion of Novaya Zemlya with the northernmost point of Siberia (Yelmerland) or even with Greenland. Two centuries ago the failure of all attempts at a North-East passage was attributed to Russia’s commercial policy, inasmuch as it had been proved to the satisfaction of all, that the heat was greater in the north, that the seas there ceased to freeze, and that the country was covered with a luxuriant green!
4. There was, indeed, a certain logical consequence in the belief of an inner Polar Sea, as long as it was unknown that ice is formed on the open sea as well as on the coasts. There was also one argument, which made the existence of such a sea not altogether improbable. It might be assumed, that the formation of ice renewed every year in the Arctic regions, would necessarily produce eternal bulwarks of congelation and destroy all organic life, unless sea-currents modified these extremes of climate. The ice which is formed round the Pole—it was argued—is not of an unlimited but of a definite quantity. Since, then, this quantity of ice must be brought with tolerable uniformity from the innermost Polar region to lower latitudes by the action of sea-currents, there are at least one or two months of the summer when the ice is at a minimum, when no new formation takes place, and when a sea relatively ice-free may appear in the place of the sea which had been covered with ice. This sea would be the more open and navigable, just in proportion as less land might be found at the Pole. But in this assumption it is implied, that the ice moves with perfect regularity and in radial lines from a given point without any disturbance from winds, or counter-currents, or land, consequently with a quiet simplicity of hydrography, for which Nature, neither there nor elsewhere, shows any predilection. Dove makes the mean annual temperature of the North Pole, 2·5° F.; but it is probably still less. What, then, is the probability of an open Polar Sea, if this annual mean only be considered? All the accounts too of animal life increasing in exuberance as we advance northwards—from which a more favourable climate within the innermost Polar region and an open Polar Sea have been inferred—must be received with caution, for theappearance of numerous flocks of birds proves only that they remain where open water prevails for a time and that they change their abode with its change of place.
5. In more recent times great influence has been attributed to the Gulf Stream as a power influencing all the seas, known and unknown, of the whole Arctic region. Dr. Petermann, however, in a lately published work, endeavours to show that its effects are discernible only on the northern seas of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. Its action on the coasts of Spitzbergen has been indisputably established by the Swedes, who discovered there certain tropical plants (Entada gigalobium); but the penetration of the warmer waters of this current to the northern coasts of Novaya Zemlya has not been so positively ascertained. In the Austrian Expedition of 1873-4, we discovered no proofs of its existence. We found neither the constant current, nor the water of a higher temperature, which characterizes that renowned stream.
6. For a long time the “ice-holes,” seen by Wrangel and Morton, were regarded as indications of an ice-free Polar Sea. With regard to those seen by Morton in 81° 22′, Richardson very justly remarks: “The open water of the Kennedy Channel is not of greater extent in the month of June than the open spaces which have occasionally been seen in summer on the north of Spitzbergen by whale-fishers.” Wrangel, when he describes the “Polynjii,” which he saw on the east of the New Siberian Islands, accounts for them by the action of a local coast-wind; and yet Wrangel would have been the first to favour the notion of an inner Polar Sea, for he still thought, in opposition to Scoresby, that ice could not be formed on the open sea, because of the absence of land as a support for the ice in its formation.
7. The first practical application of the theory of an open Polar Sea was long ago devised by Plancius; the discovery, namely, of a route in high latitudes to China. But the expeditions to the North Pole, properly so termed, sprang also from this theory, which was held with the greatest pertinacity. The evidence of unsuccessful undertakings was always met and outweighed by the counter-experience of one favourable year in the ice. Thus Barentz, in the exceedingly propitious summer of 1594, advanced without difficulty onedegree of latitude beyond the northern extremity of Novaya Zemlya, while his successors frequently encountered insurmountable difficulties at Cape Nassau, and he himself in the following year, 1595, found the state of the ice changed much for the worse. In the years 1871, 1874, Mack, Carlsen, and the two Austro-Hungarian expeditions came upon an open sea in the very places where very few, if any, water-ways were to be seen in 1872 and 1873. In the summers of 1816, 1817, the mighty stream of ice on the coast of East Greenland had decreased to such an extent that Scoresby met with little ice between 74° and 80° N.L., but since then whalers have constantly seen the heaviest ice there, heavier than anywhere else. In 1753 and 1754, the Sea of Kara and the Novaya Zemlya Sea were free from ice. But in subsequent years the whale-fishers knocked in vain at their ice-barred entrances. In 1823 Lütke from a point on the west coast of the Sea of Kara saw that sea without ice; but, in the middle of August, 1833, Pachtussow found the western side of that sea open, while in the previous year he himself could not pass the Karian Gates. Again in 1743 and 1773, the North Spitzbergen Sea held out promises the most inviting, which might possibly have permitted the reaching of a still higher degree of latitude than that which Nordenskjöld and Koldewey attained in 1868. Sir John Ross, in the first year of his second voyage, found all things most favourable for navigation; but in the following year the very reverse; and Sir James C. Ross experienced the same alternation of circumstances in the Southern Polar Sea. In 1850, Penny found the Wellington Channel free from ice, but in 1852, Belcher, although he penetrated far further than Penny, was confronted in the same channel by pack- and drift-ice. Scoresby the younger, to whose profound faculty of observation we owe the most significant hints on the nature of the Polar Sea, although he had navigated the Greenland ice-ocean for twenty years, landed only once on its coast. The Swedish expedition (1861) could approach the north-east of Spitzbergen only in boats; Smith sailed over the sea there (1871) as far as Cape Smith. The walrus-hunter, Matilas, sailed round (1864) the north-east island completely, and Carlsen, an ice navigator, as successful as he was skilful, in1863 circumnavigated Spitzbergen, and in 1871 Novaya Zemlya, and discovered there the relics of Barentz’s winter quarters. In 1872, King Karl Land was circumnavigated, although both Koldewey and Nordenskjöld (1868) as well as the first Austrian expedition (1871) had in vain attempted to approach it. How greatly also, in the same year, the state of the ice varies in different places, is proved by the fact, that Franklin learnt from the whalers that they never saw the ice so thick and so strong in Davis Straits as at the end of July 1819, while Parry, more to the north by some degrees of latitude, pursued his path of discovery even to Melville Island, and in the following year returned to England without meeting any special obstacles. These examples, to which many more might be added, show how variable are the chances of ice-navigation from one year to another. But however variable the conditions of the ice may be, the impediments, even under the most favourable circumstances, are so very great, that we have never been able to penetrate the innermost Polar regions,—penetrate, that is,to where, according to the views of an earlier time, the open Polar Sea should be found.
8. Those propitious ice-years amount therefore to nothing more than a greater recession of the outer ice-barrier—trifling when compared with the mighty whole—or to an increased navigability of certain coast-waters, or to a local loosening of the inner Polar ice-net. In reality the whole Arctic Sea, with its countless ice-fields and floes, and its web of fine interlacing water-ways, is nothing but a net constantly in motion from local, terrestrial, or cosmical causes. All the changes and phenomena of this mighty network lead us to infer the existence of frozen seas up to the Pole itself; and according to my own experience, gained in three expeditions, I considerthat the states of the ice between 82° and 90°N.L.will not essentially differ from those which have been observed south of latitude 82°; I incline rather to the belief that they will be found worse instead of better.
9. If this view be correct, it will remain an insuperable difficulty to reach the Pole with a ship. The penetrating to 82° or 83° exhausts, according to all past experience, the disposable time for navigation, and presupposes moreover the most favourable conditions for the attaining of such highlatitudes. A ship which reaches 82° N.L. by the beginning of autumn must risk nothing more, should only navigate really open water, and the expediency of securing a winter harbour should then outweigh every other consideration.
10. He who expects with a ship of the present construction to reach the Pole in a single summer, necessarily believes in an ocean at the Pole. But even if an expedition should penetrate to 84° in Smith’s Sound, or should reach Cape Tcheljuskin on the north-east route, it would not follow that such an ocean exists, but only that the Polar Sea presents at different times and in different places open water-ways, which may enable a ship to advance beyond a point hitherto reached; but it is improbable that the circumstances which favoured this will be repeated the next summer, so as to permit the ships to penetrate still further—or to return. The last American expedition returned without being able to speak decisively as to the possibility of navigating Lincoln Sea, and since this has not yet been verified by fact, we must suspend our judgment on the matter. To the English expedition, which has taken this route to the Pole, is reserved the great work of throwing light on the region of Upper Smith’s Sound, and the whole civilized world will hail with joy any successes which a nation, so long conspicuous for its perseverance in the cause of discovery, may happily achieve.
1. The eagerness of human nature for gain and material prosperity is so great, that we are wont to estimate the value of all undertakings by the standard of utility; and too often it is forgotten, that each generation is destined to fulfil the task of acquiring and collecting the knowledge which is to benefit only a later generation. If, then, the Polar question be valueless for our material interests, is it therefore valueless for science? and assuming that it is for the present worthless as far as gain and wealth are concerned, must it continue so for all time? Not that we are entitled, even from this narrower point of view, to deny the usefulness of Polar exploration, as Cook seems to have done when he said, “Never from those regions will any advantage accrue to our race;” but rather bear in mind what Sir James Ross tells us: “The profit which accrued to England, in each year after the voyage (1818) of my uncle (Sir John Ross) in North Baffin’s Bay, from those rediscovered parts of the Arctic seas, was more than enough to defray all the expenses of the voyages of discovery undertaken from 1818 to 1838.” Scoresby with his single ship made a million thalers by the capture of whales, and the Americans had for many years a clear profit of eight million dollars from the fisheries of the frozen seas of Behring’s Straits. There were also, it is true, very considerable losses; for, in 1830, nineteen English ships engaged in the whale fishery were “beset” in the ice of Melville Bay, and nearly all destroyed; in 1871, twenty-six American ships were crushed to pieces in Behring’s Straits, and as many as seventy-threeDutch vessels sank in one year in the seventeenth century from the pressure of the ice.
2. We do not, however, mean to assert, that the progress of Polar discovery is always followed by a corresponding increase in the capture of fish in the Arctic seas. On the contrary, the take of oil-yielding animals is steadily decreasing, and even if an open sea should be discovered in 82° N.L., in which whales should be found in as great abundance as ice-floes unhappily are, the whaler with his poor equipment would never be able to follow them thither. The fur countries, once as productive as the mines of Peru, are incapable of further extension; even the treasures of mammoths’ tusks have become rare, and in order to bring thirty tons of lignite from the north-east of Greenland, a ship must expend seventy tons of sound coal in the transit, besides passing the winter there. That the teas of China, the silks of Japan, the spices of the Moluccas will never descend to us from the ice-fields has long been settled. No one at the present day thinks any longer of the commercial value of the North-West and North-East passages. Modes of escape from the perils and caprices of the ice have grown out of the endeavour to discover routes of commerce, which lay beyond the reach of the cannon of the Spaniards at the time when they aspired to the monopoly of the trade of the world. The reward of 25,000 gulden, offered by the Dutch government for the discovery of a North-East passage, and that of £20,000 by the English parliament for the North-West passage, have never been paid, because never claimed, nor are they, in the least degree, likely to be claimed.[12]
3. Yet, quite independent of material results, Polar exploration presents no unworthy object for scientific investigation—a region of the globe 120,000 square miles in extent never yet entered by man. The Polar question, asa problem of science, aims at determining the limits of land and water, at the perfecting of that network of lines with which comparative science seeks to surround our planet, even to its Poles. The completion of this labour will serve to discover those physical laws which regulate climates, the currents of theatmosphere and sea, and the analogies of geology with the earth as we see it.
4. But how is this to be attained? At first it would appear as if the methods of ice-navigation had been followed by such success, that their continued application guaranteed still greater results. The gradual advance by means of ships, from the Polar Circle to 73°, 75°, 79°, or even to 82° N.L., has been the result and is the reward of the labours of three centuries. But to reach higher degrees, from 82° to 90°, depends on other conditions than mere time. That increased experience and boldness have removed many of the inconveniences and dangers attendant on Arctic navigation is undoubtedly true, but it is also as true, that, upon the whole,the safely and convenience of ice-navigation have more steadily increased than its successes. Hudson, Baffin, and especially Scoresby, and even some whalers of the seventeenth century, reached latitudes which have scarcely been exceeded since, and in many cases this progress was due, not to greater boldness and experience, but rather to chance and the caprices of the ice, which “to the whaler often permitted glances into its interior, which were denied to the scientific explorer.”
5. The greater perfection of our means enables us to conduct Polar expeditions with greater facility. Instead of dissipating our strength by sending out several ships, even small fleets, amounting sometimes to fifteen ships (often not larger than the boats of a modern Polar ship), since the days of Sir John Ross, we equip one or two ships only, strongly built for their “special purpose, provided with steam-power, and with all that is desirable or requisite; and instead of despatching them for short summer cruises, we provision them, send them out for several years, and, by appropriate nourishment and the aid of medical science, protect the crews from the scourge of scurvy. In those days, when even the wealthy lived during the winter on salt beef, and English squires were obliged at the beginning of winter, on account of the scarcity of food for the cattle, to kill and salt a portion of their herd, preserved and antiscorbutic victuals were an impossibility to a Hudson, a James, a Fox, in their winters amid the ice. Those introduced by Ross—then called “Donkin’s meat”—have been greatly improved since, and through them the scurvy,which used to carry off whole crews of ships, has lost its former terrors.
6. In this power to extend our expeditions without danger, and especially in sledge journeys during the autumn and spring, which are possible only to expeditions prepared to winter in the ice, are the grounds why we have not halted at the barriers “of the bulwarks built for eternity;” in the Rennselaer harbour, in the Lancaster-Barrow route, or at the Pendulum islands. It is only sledge expeditions, as Middendorf says, which have been able to effect results of any magnitude on the inaccessible coasts of the extreme north; and the great extent to which the Russians had used sledge expeditions evidently served as an example both to the English and to Kane.
7. In Polar expeditions, therefore, we have probably reached, so far as the exploration of the highest latitudes by means of ships is concerned, the limits of possibility. The extraordinary success which fell to the lot of Hall’s expeditionteaches us only the possibility of encroaching but a little beyond that limit, even under the most favourable circumstances.
8. In all cases where the attempt shall be made to reach the highest latitudes with a ship, I would again recommend the route through Smith’s Sound, because, in the first place, I believe that any considerable advance is only to be expected in coast-water; and in the second place, because the Grant Coast offers facilities for sledge expeditions on a large scale. East Greenland in the higher latitudes, 73°-75°, may be regarded as inaccessible; and the attempt to penetrate northwards in its coast-water was a delusion of the second German North-Pole expedition. In the north of Spitzbergen, and in Behring’s Straits, fifty expeditions and countless whalers have heard from the ice an imperiousne plus ultra; and the same prohibition has been uttered to as many expeditions on the North-East passage. In both these routes the cause of failure was the disproportion between what could be reached in one or two summers, and the vast extent of sea blocked by impenetrable ice. In like manner, the probability of reaching the Pole itself with our present resources is so small, and the attempt to do it is so utterly disproportionate to the sacrifices exacted and the results achieved, that it would be advisableto exclude it from Arctic exploration, until, instead of the impotent vessels of the sea, we can send thither those of the air.