CHAPTER IVICE NAVIGATION

OnJuly 6,11908, a black, rakish-looking steamer moved slowly up the East River, New York, beside a puffing tug. Seen broadside on, this craft was as trim and rakish as a yacht; seen end on, the impression given was of the breadth of beam and solidity of a battle-ship.

A sailor, glimpsing any feature of this vessel,—the slender, raking pole-masts; the big, elliptical smoke-stack; the sharply inclined stem; the overhanging stern; the sheer of the bows; the barrel at the mast-head,—would have noted its peculiarity, and looked the vessel over with great interest; and yet she did not look a “freak” ship. As she passed along, whistles on each shore vied with one another in clamorous salutations, and passing craft, from the little power-boat to the bigSound steamer, dipped flags and shrieked a greeting.

BEGINNING THE NORTH POLE VOYAGEThe “Roosevelt” steaming up East River, N. Y., July 6, 1908

BEGINNING THE NORTH POLE VOYAGE

The “Roosevelt” steaming up East River, N. Y., July 6, 1908

With glasses one could make out on a pennant flying from the masthead,Roosevelt. The Stars and Stripes at the stern were fluttering up and down incessantly, and the white jets of steam from her whistle were continuous in answer to the salutes.

This was the arctic ice-fighterRoosevelt, as sturdy and aggressive as her namesake, built on American plans, by American labor, of American material, and then on her way to secure the North Pole as an American trophy.

At Oyster Bay the ship was inspected and given God-speed by President Roosevelt, then steamed out through Long Island Sound, to Sydney, Cape Breton, for her cargo of coal, then through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, up the Labrador coast, through Davis Strait, across Melville Bay, and between the arctic Pillars of Hercules, Cape Alexander and Cape Isabella, to the battle-ground and the fight for which she was built—the conquest of the contracted channels filled with massive, moving ice which form the American gateway to the polar ocean.

The design of theRooseveltwas based upon twenty years of actual experience afloat and ashore in the very region where she was to be used. I had reversed all previous practice in regard to polar ships, and had made this one a powerfulsteamer with auxiliary sail power instead of a sailing-ship with auxiliary steam-power. I had seen her keel fashioned and laid, I had seen her ribs grow in place, I had seen them clothed with planks, the steel-clad stem and stern shape themselves, had seen every timber put into place and every bolt driven. I felt that I had beneath my feet a magnificent tool and fighting machine that would put me within striking distance of the pole.

Innumerable conversations during a number of years with all kinds of intelligent, well-read people have shown me conclusively that outside of the scientist, the geographer, and those who have made a study of polar exploration, the average person has no idea whatever of the real character of polar ice.

Perhaps the most general impression—I shall not call it idea, because it is not definite enough for that—is that the ice of the polar ocean is a smooth, even, permanent surface, and that the terrible cold of that region was the principal reason why it was not traversed long ago. Others think that this ice is snow-covered, and still others are far enough advanced to think of it as rough, hummocky, or even ragged, but yet as fixed as land itself.

Ideas as to the thickness of the ice are equally wrong, varying from a few feet to a conception of the entire polar ocean as solid. Most peopletake it for granted that the ice has been formed by the freezing of the ocean water.

The character of ice varies in different portions of the polar regions. North of Spitzbergen and Franz-Josef-Land and the long stretches of the Siberian coasts there may be even in midwinter miles of ice of a few inches or a foot or two in thickness. This, however, the navigator of a ship rarely sees, as it has either been broken up by the wind or melted by the sun before the season of navigation begins.

In Melville Bay and the channels of the North American archipelago, like Lancaster Sound and Jones Sound and their western extensions, ice forms early in the autumn and continues to increase in thickness through the winter until it reaches a thickness of six or eight feet or, in the fresher waters near the coast of North America, nine feet in thickness.

Some of this ice, with the advent of summer, slowly melts in place and disappears. Most of it, however, gradually decreases in thickness as spring progresses, becomes perforated with holes where the warmer and fresher water from the melting snow on its surface bores through, and then moves off in great fields sometimes miles across.

Ice of this kind, encountered in July or August, presents about the simplest form of ice-work.Two or three well-directed blows at full speed by a ship like theRooseveltwill often start a crack across a field a mile or more wide through which the ship can slowly crowd her way. Or continuous ramming will result in progress, from half to a full ship’s length being gained at a blow.

Such ice presents no menace at any time to a ship like theRoosevelt, as it cannot crush her, and is simply irritating because of the slow progress it causes and the persistent way in which it drags along the ship’s side. In ice like this the monotony is often relieved by the cry of “Nannook!” (bear), from the masthead, and the resulting scurry over the ice in pursuit of the animal.

North of Greenland and Grant Land, from their northern shores to the pole, the character of the ice of the polar ocean is entirely different. In my final journey to the pole less than one-tenth of the ice traversed was ice formed by the freezing of the ocean surface, and more than nine-tenths was fresh-water ice, great fields, some of them of astonishing thickness, broken off from the low, undulating glaciers of northern Grant Land and Greenland, and the “glacial fringe” which skirts all those northern coasts.

The thickness of ice varied from half an inch to an inch on cracks and narrow lanes a few yards wide that had just frozen over, to floes drawing one hundred and twenty feet of water, and with hummocks thirty feet above water-level.

During the winter this mass of ice is for the most part quiet, except that at the spring-tides of every month cracks and narrow lanes form, and then freeze rapidly again. Violent wind-storms will cause some disturbance in the ice, the pressure against the hummocks and ragged pinnacles of the large fields causing them to crush any thin ice before them and throw it up in ridges, thus leaving lanes or pools of open water behind, and causing a slow grinding, twisting motion of the pack, which, however, stops, and the open water freezes over, with the cessation of the wind.

In June, July, August, September, October, and November the mass of ice becomes separated into its various parts, and while no water may be visible, the fields and cakes of ice are simply in contact, not frozen together. Then the spring-tides cause much greater motion, and a violent storm will set the whole mass driving before it, with the big floes wheeling and smashing everything in their course until the storm ceases or the movement is stopped by contact with land. Wide lanes and large areas of open water form, and do not freeze over, and the whole ocean is similar to a river in which the ice breaking up in the spring is moving.

This is the time when the ice pours into all the southward-leading channels; that is, between Franz-Josef-Land and Spitzbergen, between Spitzbergen and Iceland, between Iceland andGreenland, and down the American gateway between Greenland and Grant Land.

In none of these places is ice navigation a more serious proposition than in the last. With the exception of brief and infrequent periods when the combination of a fresh southwesterly wind and ebb-tide pushes a fan of open water or loosely drifting ice-cakes out from the northern entrance to this channel between Cape Sheridan and Cape Brevoort, the ice is constantly moving rapidly southward through this outlet. When strong northerly winds combine with spring-flood tides, it rushes through with a violence that is startling.

Entering the widely flaring funnel between Cape Joseph Henry and Cape Stanton, then the narrower one between Cape Sheridan and Repulse Harbor, the ice is compressed between the iron cliffs of Cape Beechey and Polaris Promontory (less than eleven miles), while the swift current of this deep gorge does not permit it to stop, and despite a slight overflow into Newman Bay, is forced sometimes a hundred feet up the cliffs by the resistless momentum and pressure from behind. In mid-channel the pressure forces the ice to rafter, or ride, one field over the other, or the edges of the floes crumble as they come together, and pile up the huge ice-blocks in long ridges fifty or seventy-five feet high. Many of the ice-cakes are forced far under water. One who has seen a big drive of logs which filled the banks of a rapidriver pile up and plunge under and ride over when some narrow rock gorge is reached can get a crude idea.

Once through this gorge, Lady Franklin Bay and Peterman Fiord give the ice a chance to expand, and a ship may find here in Hall Basin some open water. Then the walls narrow again between Cape Defosse and Cape Bryant, and farther south the passage is obstructed by Franklin Island and Cape Constitution, till the main channel is less than ten miles wide, before opening out into the wide expanse of Kane Basin, only to be constricted again between Cape Sabine and Cairn Point to a width of twenty-two miles.

When working north in these channels, the only sure way much of the time is to hug the shore, taking advantage of every sheltering point and shallow bit of water, crowding on all steam and forcing ahead a few miles on the ebb-tide, then making fast with all the lines and holding on desperately during the flood-tide, with the ice spinning past only a few feet from the ship’s side. Occasionally courage and judgment give a fifty or hundred mile run in mid-channel, but at its end a firm shore-hold is necessary to prevent being set back by the ever southward rush of the ice, and losing all the hard-earned miles.

A kind of ice navigation that may be encountered by polar ships returning from a voyage late in the season is the tough, leathery, newly formingyoung ice. A fortunate experience and apprenticeship in the whalerEagle, in a very late and unusual voyage in 1886, gave me some knowledge of this, which proved invaluable in later years, and on the expedition of 1905–06 kept me from being held in the arctic a year longer with the crippledRoosevelt. For nearly twenty-four hours on theEaglevoyage, her crew, rushing back and forth across her deck timed by Captain Jackman or me, rolled her from side to side, while her engines, going at full speed, slowly drove her out of the clutch of the young ice in Cumberland Sound. A day later, and we probably would not have escaped.

In 1906, when at last, late in September, the batteredRooseveltforced her way out of the heavy ice some miles north of Cairn Point, young ice several inches thick extended all the way to Littleton Island. This ice was just a little too thick for theRooseveltto steam through, but by rolling her, as we had rolled theEagleyears before, she moved slowly through it. A little later an easterly breeze sprang up, and, with all sails set, these heeled theRooseveltto just the right angle to have her lee bow turn the ice under her in a steady stream, and she walked along to open water without a hitch.

At this season of the year a returning ship should never stop in a deep bay, should, if possible,not got caught over night in loose ice, and should always have full steam up.

DRYING SAILS ON THE “ROOSEVELT” AT CAPE SHERIDAN

SHEAR-POLES FOR HANDLING THE “ROOSEVELT’S” INJURED RUDDER

The key to all polar work is ice navigation. It has made possible the attainment of the north and south poles and the solution of many other mysteries of the surrounding regions which have baffled scientists for hundreds of years. It is ice navigation which puts an expedition where it can do its work, puts it within striking distance of its objective, and without this key the knowledge which the world now has of polar conditions and geography would be comparatively little.

The history of ice navigation dates back to the latter part of the fifteenth century, when for the first time the arctic circle was penetrated by Sebastian Cabot. What ice navigation was in the earliest days it is almost impossible to imagine, though some of the old chronicles give here and there a glimpse of it, and the narrative of Barents’s voyage helps us to form an idea. It is no wonder that in the little craft of those days the terrors of the ice to first adventurers loomed as terrible as the horrors of our childhood ghost-stories.

With the growth of the whale fisheries in Baffin and Hudson Bays, the navigation of the ice by the Scottish and American sailors in the first whalers, square-rigged sailing-ships, became a science, and the way in which those ships were worked throughtortuous leads under sail was almost unhuman, if some of the stories are believed. With a strong breeze, these ships could even at times do a bit of ramming, backing their sails to give them sternway, and then squaring them forward to go ahead. But when there was no wind, then they were often laboriously “tracked” by their crews walking along the ice; that is, towed along like canal-boats with a tow-rope. At other times a small anchor would be carried out ahead as far as the longest hawser on board, hooked in a hole cut in the ice, and the ship slowly warped up to it by working the windlass.

When the ice was in small pieces, the crew would get out with long poles and push piece after piece behind the vessel, enabling her to move slowly ahead. Often, however, hours and even days of laborious work would be set at naught by a shift of the wind or a movement of the ice setting the ship back for miles.

This use of poles to push the ice aside was the custom even up to very recent times. I recall how theWindward, in August, 1898, coming out of Etah Harbor, was obliged to force her way through a stream of ice two or three miles in width. The engine power of theWindwardwas pronouncedly weak, and we were obliged to resort to this method to get the ice out of the way, so that she might strike feeble blows at the firmer cakes.

I also remember distinctly the feelings withwhich I watched theHope, a more powerful ship, less than a mile north of us, moving steadily along through ice of the same character, finally emerging into the open water on the outside of the stream, and disappearing from sight to the south before theWindwardwas completely through.

The introduction of steam revolutionized polar navigation as it did all other kinds, though the first attempt to utilize it in theVictorywas a rank failure. To whalers fitted with engines as well as sails, voyages, which before were a gamble, now became a regular certainty, and fishing-grounds were sought and utilized that before were absolutely impossible.

Without steam the conquest of the south polar regions would have been impossible despite Weddell’s surprising voyage in the early thirties. Without steam the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage might still be unnegotiated, and without steam the north pole would still be undiscovered.

As late as the fifties and sixties the ships of Kane and Hayes were propelled by sails alone. Hall in the seventies was the first American to have a steam vessel.

With the construction of the powerfulRoosevelt, built not only for avoiding ice pressure, but for forcing her way through it and, when necessary, smashing it with powerful blows, ice navigation became a gladiatorial contest, a royal sport,with theRoosevelt’ssteel-clad bow as cæstus and her fifteen hundred tons of displacement to drive it home.

There is probably no place where ice navigation is so hazardous as in the Smith Sound, or American, route to the pole, where the heaviest of ice, swift currents, narrow channels, and iron shores make the pressures sudden, erratic, almost continuous, and of great intensity. The negotiation of the three hundred and fifty miles of virtually solid ice of all conceivable shapes and sizes that lie between Etah and Cape Sheridan presents problems and difficulties, which will test the experience and nerve of the ablest navigator, and the powers of the strongest vessel that man can build. The value of detailed experience in such strenuous work cannot be too strongly accentuated. In my earlier expeditions I have traveled the shores of these channels anywhere from three to eight times, and know every foot of the coast from Payer Harbor in Ellesmere Land to Cape Joseph Henry on the Grant Land shore, and the ice conditions to be encountered. It was my minute familiarity with the tides of these regions, the small bays or indentations which would afford shelter to a ship, as well as the places which grounding icebergs would make impracticable and dangerous, together with the ice experience and determination of Captain Bartlett, that made it possible four times for theRooseveltsuccessfullyto navigate these channels, a feat which was long regarded as utterly impossible.

Scotch “Aurora”Norwegian “Fram”American “Roosevelt”Italian “Stella Polare”German “Gauss”British “Discovery”COMPARATIVE PICTURES OF VARIOUS EXPLORING SHIPS

Scotch “Aurora”Norwegian “Fram”American “Roosevelt”Italian “Stella Polare”German “Gauss”British “Discovery”

Scotch “Aurora”Norwegian “Fram”American “Roosevelt”

Italian “Stella Polare”German “Gauss”British “Discovery”

COMPARATIVE PICTURES OF VARIOUS EXPLORING SHIPS

The earliest voyages into polar waters were made almost solely in the interests of commerce—to discover, if possible, a short route to China and the East Indies. Keen and costly was the rivalry among the various European nations, and many daring and hardy navigators were sent out by Great Britain, Holland, Russia, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and France.

In 1588, John Davis, following the coast of Greenland from Cape Farewell to Sanderson Hope, a distance of eight hundred miles, gained for Great Britain the record of farthest north, 72° 12´.

Hudson in 1607 broke this record by reaching 80° 23´ N. Lat., and on his return reported the discovery of large numbers of whales and walruses. As a result the arctic circle became the Mecca for the next two centuries for hundreds of whaling-ships and thousands of men from Northern countries.

In 1773, almost one hundred and seventy-five years later, Hudson’s record was surpassed by the small margin of twenty-five miles by Phipps, and this new record was not bettered until 1806, when Scoresby, an enterprising British whaler, ventured to deviate from the beaten track of the whalers and reached 81° 30´ N. Lat.

Several attempts were made by Parry to findthe Northwest Passage, and although he was unsuccessful in this, the experience gained in ice-work was most valuable and marked a new era in polar exploration. He was the first to suggest the idea of a journey afoot from a land base to the North Pole.

After Parry came Ross, and later Franklin; but it was not until 1850–55 that the Northwest Passage was accomplished by McClure on foot. McClure traversed the ice between his ship, theInvestigator, which had entered the polar ocean via Bering Strait, and was crushed by the ice in Barrow Strait, and Collinson’s ship, theEnterprise, in Melville Sound, and returned to England via Lancaster Sound and Davis Strait. The actual navigation of the Northwest Passage was effected by Roald Amundsen, who in 1903–06 sailed from the Atlantic to the Pacific in theGjoa.

Subsequently arctic navigators turned their attention to the attainment of the North Pole, and in 1853–55 for the first time in America took a part in ice navigation. Kane discovered and explored the shores of Kane Basin, and outlined a route to the pole, which is now known as the American route.

Hayes, who had accompanied Kane, undertook a later expedition, but did not materially extend Kane’s work.

In 1871, Hall, another American, forced his ship, thePolaris, to a new northing of 82° 11´.Four years later Nares in theAlertattained 83° 20´ N. Lat. These two ships were the only ones up to this time which had successfully negotiated the channels forming the American gateway to the pole.

All previous records for ice navigation in the arctic regions of the Western Hemisphere were broken by theRoosevelt, which reached Cape Sheridan in 1905, and penetrated two miles beyond it in 1908. One ship only has been nearer the pole, theFram, but this higher latitude was attained not under stress of her own power, but by drifting in the grip of the ice.

A glance at the history of north polar exploration will show that it is studded with crushed and foundering ships.

Barents, in 1594–95, lost his ship and his life, his crew barely escaping. Following him came Bering, whose vessels were wrecked, causing the loss of his life, and much suffering on the part of his men before they reached safety on the coast of Kamchatka. TheDorotheaof Franklin’s expedition in 1818 was badly crushed in the ice; in the expedition of Parry and Lyon in 1823–24 Lyon’s vessel was nearly wrecked on two occasions, and Parry’s vessel, theFury, was actually lost; Captain Ross who started out in theVictoryin 1829, was obliged to abandon her. Franklin’s two ships, theErebusandTerror, were lost. TheAssistance,Pioneer,Intrepid,Resolute,Investigator,were all lost in the course of the search for the Franklin expedition. The Bremen exploring vesselHansawas wrecked (1860–70), and the crew forced to take to the drift ice and later to their boats. Hall’s ship, thePolaris, in 1872 was caught in and drifted with the ice, nearly destroyed in a violent gale off Northumberland Island, and later grounded. In 1874, Payer and Weyprecht, leaders of the Austrian expedition which discovered Franz-Josef-Land, were obliged to abandon their ship, and with their crew, in four small boats, struggled with the ice-pack for three months before they reached the open sea on their way to safety. In 1879 theJeannette, under the command of DeLong, was caught in the ice, and two years later was crushed and sunk, a number of the party, including DeLong himself, losing their lives.

Some of these disasters have been the result of inexperience, others have been due to the disregard of the first principles of ice navigation, and still others are directly attributable to the utter unfitness of the ship for ice-work. Striking examples of the latter were theJeannetteandPolaris. These ships, because of their build, should never have gone into the ice. Wall-sided as they were, once caught between opposing fields of ice there was no escape for them, as their shape made it utterly impossible for them to rise and escape the deadly pressure.

ICE NAVIGATION BEFORE THE ADVENT OF POWERFUL STEAMERS

THE “ROOSEVELT” BESET IN WRANGEL BAY

The difficulties of ice navigation increase with higher latitude. Any vessel navigating in polar waters may at any time be crushed so suddenly that nothing below can be saved. At Etah I have always made preparations for such an emergency, and had all the pemmican, tea, coffee, biscuits, sugar, oil, ammunition,—in fact, all the essentials necessary to sustain life and health,—placed on deck close to the rail, where it could easily be thrown off to the ice. In addition to this, the whale-boats, fully equipped for a week or ten-days’ voyage, were ready at a moment’s notice to be lowered. Each boat, beside the required complement of oars, oar-locks, boat-hooks, a liquid compass, and a bailer, contained pemmican, conveniently packed in six-pound tins; biscuits, fifty pounds; coffee, ten pounds; compressed tea, five pounds; sugar, ten pounds; condensed milk, ten cans; salt; oil, five gallons; a small oil-stove; one rifle and one hundred cartridges; one shotgun and fifty shells; one box of matches in a tightly-corked bottle; one hatchet; knives; a can-opener; needles, and thread; and medical supplies consisting of quinine, astringent, bandages, cotton, gauze, boracic acid, dusting powder, needles, catgut, and liniment. And every member of the party, including the Eskimos, had a small bundle of extra clothing packed, and stood ready to leave the ship immediately after throwing off the supplies and lowering the boats.

The heavy pack-ice which surges down Smith Sound past Littleton Island usually makes it almost impossible to follow the coast of Greenland northward, and on leaving Etah it is necessary to cross to Cape Sabine, on the Ellesmere Land side.

As a rule, the trip from Etah to Cape Sabine presents no particular difficulty to a ship like theRoosevelt, and it may at times be made in continuous open water.

From Cape Sabine the most practical course lies along the west shore, where at ebb-tide a navigable lane of water is often to be found between the shore ice and the moving pack. In 1905, after leaving Cape Sabine and working northward along the west shore past Bache Peninsula and Hayes Point, we were forced to seek shelter in Maury Bay to avoid the heavy ice advancing swiftly before a stiff northerly wind. By keeping a close watch on the ice and availing ourselves of every opportunity to advance, we followed the shore-line up past Scoresby Bay and Richardson Bay. Two attempts to reach Cape Joseph Goode failed, each time theRooseveltbeing driven back to Cape Wilkes by the ice-pack. Rawlings Bay was packed with ice, and conditions to the northward, on the Grinnell Land side, altogether so unfavorable, that I determined to cross Kennedy Channel and proceed northward on the Greenland side, previous experience in this regionhaving led me to believe that in most seasons Kennedy and Robeson channels could be more easily traversed on the Greenland side than on the Grinnell Land side.

After a long, hard struggle we reached the loose ice off Cape Calhoun, and headed north from Crozier and Franklin islands. Finding the channel which lies between Franklin Island and Cape Constitution impracticable, we followed the main channel close to Franklin Island.

As far as Joe Island it was fairly easy sailing as polar navigation goes. Making theRooseveltfast to the ice-foot here, a trip to the summit of the island showed the Greenland side of Hall Basin as far as Cape Lupton, and possibly up to Cape Sumner, free from ice, while the Grinnell Land coast was filled with heavy ice, making navigation out of the question. Just beyond Cape Lupton, while breaking a way through a small gap in the ice, a quick change in the current, which runs very swiftly in this deep and narrow channel, forced the ice-floes together about theRoosevelt, smashing her up against and along the ice-foot. In less time than it takes to describe, it twisted the back of her rudder, snapped her tiller-rods, almost put her steering-gear out of commission permanently, and necessitated a stop of several days at Newman Bay to make repairs.

We had hoped that a lead across Robeson Channel to the neighborhood of Cape Union wouldmake the return to the west side of the channel comparatively easy, but in this we were disappointed.

In 1908 the route of theRooseveltfrom Cape Etah to Sabine and up the west coast of Kane Basin, past Victoria Head, was virtually the same as in 1905. This year, however, we found Kennedy Channel almost free from ice, and with no fog to delay, theRooseveltsteamed her way up the center of it, and broke all previous records by navigating the channel’s one hundred miles of length in one day.

Before reaching Robeson Channel we encountered ice and fog, and were once driven over to the east coast at Thank God Harbor in an attempt to find an opening in the pack. With this exception the Grinnell Land and Grant Land coasts of the channels were found practicable from Cape Sabine to Cape Sheridan.

On the return voyage from Cape Sheridan to Etah in 1908 I determined to try out a new route in these narrow and ice-filled channels. Instead of hugging the shore, theRoosevelt, on reaching Cape Union, was deliberately driven out into the pack-ice in order to work her way down the center of Robeson and Kennedy Channels. For a ship not specially built for ice-work such a course would be almost certain to result in disaster, but for one of theRoosevelttype, and in the hands of experienced ice-navigators, I consider this byfar the preferable return route. It is also the quickest route, the trip from Cape Sheridan to Cape Sabine taking only twenty-three days, or twenty-three days less time than by the old route in 1906.

The navigation of polar waters demands incessant watchfulness and instant readiness even under apparently the most favorable conditions. During the passage of Kennedy and Robeson Channels Bartlett was nearly always in the crow’s-nest, and while I had almost unbounded faith in his judgment, I spent much of the time in the rigging below the crow’s-nest, watching the ice ahead, and in the worst places often relieving Bartlett of too great a load of responsibility by backing up his judgment with my own views. The periods of night at such times might as well not have been, for it is possible to get only snatches of sleep in the short times when nothing else remains to be done, and Bartlett and I have spent days and even weeks at a time in these regions without thinking of taking our clothes off to sleep.

The chief engineer, like his assistants, stood his eight- or twelve-hour watch, and was almost always to be found in the engine-room when theRooseveltwas passing through dangerous places; for any slip in the machinery at a critical time would have resulted in the loss of the ship.

TheRoosevelthas undoubtedly deliberately struck heavier blows while fighting ice than anyother ship would dare to attempt. Many times she has reared and risen on a steel blue mass of old floe-ice till I was reminded of a hunter rising to a stone wall. Repeated blows of her steel stem in the same spot have at times split pieces of floes, or the projecting tongue of a big floe which barred our passage, of almost incredible thickness just as a small hand ice-pick, if properly used, will split a large cake of ice.

In loose ice or in one season’s ice or in any kind of ice in the open sea a ship like theRooseveltmay be regarded as immune.

Really serious conditions are those met in threading a way through a succession of big floes of heavy ice in contracted channels where the tides run rapidly, and where the impingement of one floe against an unyielding headland may cause a jam extending for miles, the floes coming together like the cars of a long freight train in a head-on collision.

Under these conditions the movements of the floes are watched with hawk eyes, and if it is seen that the ship is going to be caught between two of the fields, she is made fast in a concavity in the edge of one floe or the other, with a point of ice ahead and astern to take the brunt of the pressure. Then, if there is time and the floes are very heavy, the crew go out onto the ice with pick-axes and bevel down the edge of the floe against the ship’s side to assist her in rising.

This beveling of the edge of the ice next to the ship’s side was always done when theRooseveltwas made fast against the face of the ice-foot in an exposed position. Sometimes charges of dynamite in line a few yards away from the ship will shatter the edge of the floe and form a cushion of smaller pieces for the ship to be forced against.

With skill and good judgment it is often possible to drive the ship into a sheltered pool where three floes coming together form a deadlock, expending their force against each other while the ship lies in a little ice-locked pool of water as in a natural harbor. Sometimes this harbor opens with change of the tide. Often it grows smaller and smaller till it disappears; but time is thus given to make the ship secure, and sometimes, by placing dynamite to smash off a corner and having full steam on to jump the ship through before the floes close again, escape is effected.

TheRoosevelt’smost serious times were at the northern entrance to Kennedy Channel, where at the neck of the funnel there is a grinding hell of great ice-fields crowding one another on the rush of the spring-tides in their eagerness to get south. A memorable instance was her thirty-five-hour battle across the channel from Cape Sumner to Wrangel Bay August, 1905, a distance offifteenmiles.

Two crucial situations are when, with the unbroken face of a big floe on one side, the point orcorner of another on the other side catches the ship. In this situation, if the ship does not rise, she is lost. The other is when a big field, with the weight and pressure of miles of ice behind it, comes slowly rotating along the shore with resistless force. Every effort should be made to get outside of such a floe. If this is impossible, then the ship should be driven into a niche of the ice-foot, if possible in the lee of some stream delta, made fast with every line, and the edge of the ice-foot abreast of the ship beveled down as low as possible to facilitate the ship’s rising on it.

TheRoosevelthad two or three very close calls of this kind on her upward voyages, the ice pressing up over the ice-foot and piling up on the cliffs a few hundred yards ahead or astern of her. I recall one instance where with the glasses I saw from the crow’s-nest huge ice-blocks climb fifty feet up the cliffs at a point a mile or so ahead of us at the very place where some hours earlier I had thought of making theRooseveltfast to await the turn of the tide. Fortunately I had decided to take no chances, and had retreated a mile or so to a safer position.

THE “ROOSEVELT” STEAMING THROUGH THE ICE-PACK

FLOE IN LADY FRANKLIN BAY THAT LIFTED THE “ROOSEVELT” NEARLY CLEAR OF WATER

There is one phenomenon in this region which is certain to cause the leader of an expedition temporary palpitation of the heart the first time it occurs. When the ice-floes come together, and the edges crush and pile up in great ridges of ice-blocks, other pieces of ice are forced down, andin the deeper portions of Kennedy Channel large granite-like blocks are held down undoubtedly one hundred or more feet below the water. When the ice pressure relaxes, these start for the surface, gathering momentum, as they rise, and leap half their bigness above water, then settle back.

Two or three times blocks of this kind on their way up struck the bottom of theRoosevelta resounding thump just as she was released from the strain of ice pressure and had settled back into the water. The shock is different from the tense vibrations of ice pressure or the crash of butting ice at full speed, or the grinding crunch of running on a rock. It is an upward shock as from the blow of a great hammer, that jars every timber in the ship. Its first occurrence usually forces the involuntary exclamation, “My God! what has happened now?” After the first time, one is always ready for it, and so is not disturbed.

No attempt should ever be made to anchor in this kind of navigation unless one wishes to present the ice deities with his anchor and much or all of his cable.

Just as sure as the anchor is put down a big floe will come along and squat on it; then there is nothing to do but unshackle your cable and let it go. It cost me two anchors and two cables one summer’s trip to learn this lesson thoroughly. On another voyage in a usually safe position a big floe compelled me to drop an anchor and all ofits cable, though I recovered it the next season.

Whenever the ship is to be made fast, it should be done with lines and hawsers made fast to ice pinnacles, holes in the ice, or ice anchors.

It is well also to bring the end of line or hawser on board, so that it can be cast loose without sending a man off the ship. Movements of ship and ice are sometimes too rapid to risk a man.

To a ship built as sturdily as theRoosevelt, with no greater speed and with a lively helm, icebergs are no bugbear. During the upward voyage it is continuous daylight, so that even in thick weather there should be no difficulty, with ordinary care, in detecting the proximity of bergs along the Labrador coast and in Greenland, waters in time to avoid them. North of Kane Basin real icebergs are rarely seen, and these only small ones. In the polar ocean there is nothing that can be dignified by the name. On the return voyage, in the long, dark nights and short, dull days of late autumn, in Melville Bay, Davis Straits, and along the Labrador coast, they compel a careful lookout. With all lights shut off, a reliable man way forward, and two officers on the bridge, we never had serious trouble even in the darkest nights in detecting the “loom” of a berg in time to shift the wheel and avoid it. “Growlers”—that is, translucent fragments of bergs as hard as granite, of the same color as the water, and just barely floating—are the kind ofice that succeeds most completely in rendering itself invisible. My ships have bumped these more than once in brilliantly clear weather, with no other ice in sight and the lookout gone below.

I recall coming home across Melville Bay in one of my earlier auxiliary ships. It was a brilliant moonlit September night, not a piece of ice in sight anywhere, a fresh following breeze, and the ship making about ten knots. It was the mate’s watch, and the other officers and members of the expedition were below in the cabin when suddenly there was a terrific bump. The ship seemed to stop completely for an instant; then, after a vicious lurch or two, went on her way. Every one in the cabin except the captain went in a mess against the bottom of the forward bulkhead. The captain, sitting on the after locker, was nearly cut in two against the cabin table, and went about for a day or two like a man who had been kicked below the belt by an army mule. We had made a bull’s-eye shot at what appeared to be the only growler in the bay. Of course these growlers are not a source of danger to a ship like theRoosevelt, though they would be to a weaker ship.

I have thought, if I should go north again, that I would try a search-light for the autumn return voyage. In thick fog, of course, such a light would be of little or no use.

A trick that is sometimes of considerable value in squeezing through the ice is to use the ship asa big pinch bar to separate two cakes of ice. With the stem forced into the crack between the cakes, the engines are driven ahead full speed and the wheel thrown hard over alternately to port and starboard. In this way the bows are gradually forced farther and farther in until the ice has been pried apart, and the ship squeezes through.

Streams of ice in the open sea are a pronounced comfort in heavy weather. If the ship is on the lee side, she can steam along in smooth water, with the wind blowing a howling gale, the ice acting as a breakwater. If she is on the weather side, a ship like theRooseveltcan force her way into the pack and lie in comfort. This is often a distinct help with a deeply loaded ship on the upward voyage.

In the one season’s ice of Melville Bay a ship may often force her way through mile after mile by continuous repeated blows like a drill or well-borer, smashing the ice into small pieces for some feet or yards at every blow. But once past Cape Sabine there is no more of this. Then it needs skill as well as power, and progress is a matter of dodging, turning, squeezing, twisting, rushing along a narrow lane of water and striking sledge-hammer blows at points or masses of blue granite; then, when further progress is absolutely impossible, banking fires to save coal and waiting for the next round.

THE “ROOSEVELT” LASHED TO THE ICE FOOT

IN THE CROW’S NEST

It needs incessant watching of every move of an enemy with a myriad tricks and resources, and then instant decision,—“pep,” as my young friend Borup would have put it,—and a little courage.

In all my experiences I recall nothing more exciting than the thrill, the crash, the shock of hurling theRoosevelt, a fifteen-hundred-ton battering-ram, at the ice to smash a way through; or the tension of the moments when, caught in the resistless grip of two great ice-fields, I have stood on the bridge and seen the deck amidships bulge upward and the rigging slacken with the compression of the sides; or have listened to the crackling fusillade of reports, like an infantry engagement, from the hold, and felt the quivering of the whole ship like a mighty bowstring, till she leaped upward, free of the death-jaws, and the ice in snarling turmoil met beneath her keel and expended its fury upon itself.

Again I can see Bartlett up in the crow’s-nest, at the head of the swaying mast, jumping up and down like a mad man, swearing, shouting to the ship, exhorting it like a coach with his man in the ring. Ah, the vibrating bigness of it! How fine it would seem to be at it again!

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