WE ARE FROZEN IN
It was clear by this time that there would be no chance this year to
reach new lands to the north by direct voyaging and that we should be
lucky if we succeeded in winning our way through to Herschel Island
before the ice closed in for the winter. By the afternoon of the
eleventh we managed to get as far east as Lion Reef. Here we tied on
to a grounded floe to hold our gain and take advantage of our next
chance to go east. Between Lion Reef and the mainland a few miles away
ran a current which set the ice moving smartly in all directions, but
unfortunately we drew too much water to venture into those shallow
lanes.
I took the opportunity afforded by our pause to examine the stem of
the ship and found that by contact with the ice two of the brass
stem-plates were gone and several bolts loosened in those that remained.
Whenever we were stationary in the ice, Murray, the oceanographer,
would use his dredge. He had been doing this in fact all along the
coast, ever since we were off Blossom Shoals. At this time he used a
dredge which he had brought with him; later on he used dredges made by
our engineers.
The dredge consisted of a rectangular frame, two feet by three, made of
four iron rods two inches wide by half an inch thick, welded together
at the corners, with a bag about two feet deep securely fastened to
this framework. The bag was made of cotton twine in a two-and-a-half
inch mesh; it narrowed towards the bottom. Sometimes cheese-cloth was
placed inside the bag to catch the animalculæ. A rope was fastened to
the middle of one side of the framework so that, when lowered to the
bottom of the sea, the framework would maintain an upright position,
with the bag extended out behind it.
When Murray got ready to use the dredge he would get over the rail of
the ship, which was only four feet above the surface of the ice, go
to the edge of a lead and find out the depth of the water by the hand
lead-line; then he would lower the dredge, put the rope on his back and
walk along the edge of the lead, dragging the dredge behind him. He
could handle it alone up to a depth of twenty fathoms; beyond that he
had to have help, which we all of us gladly gave. I do not believe that
dredging was ever done in that part of the Arctic before. Before we got
through we had brought up a good many specimens which were entirely
unknown to Murray, and others, such as coral, which we had hardly
expected to find in that neighborhood.
While we were tied up off Lion Reef, I sent out a boat to make
soundings; the report was so promising that we started on our way
again, on the morning of August 12, steaming through the loose ice
and keeping as near shore as possible. The ice moved according to
the direction and velocity of the wind, to which its irregularities
afforded plenty of sail-like surfaces. The wind had been northwest,
keeping the ice packed towards shore; it now veered round to the
southwest and loosened the ice to the northeast, outside of the reef.
We steamed along through the open water and because the ice near the
shore was closely packed, we were driven farther off shore than I
liked. We had to follow the open lanes, however, and go where they led.
About eight P. M. we were stopped by a large, unbroken sheet of ice.
This was very similar to the ice which I have seen in Melville Bay on
the west Greenland coast; it was part of the past season’s ice. Seldom
over a foot thick, it was honeycombed with water-holes; the _Roosevelt_
could have ploughed her way through it but the _Karluk_ was powerless
to do so.
We were now half way across Camden Bay, about fifteen miles west of
Manning Point, about where Collinson, in the _Enterprise_, had spent
the winter of 1853-4. We had come about 225 miles from Point Barrow,
considerably more than half the distance to Herschel Island. It seemed
at the moment as if we should be able to get through for the rest of
the way. As events proved, however, this was our farthest east, for
the next day, August 13, the open water closed up astern, the ice came
together all around us and held the ship fast. There was scarcely any
wind and consequently no movement of the ice.
The next day conditions remained the same. We tried to force our way
towards the land but failed and could do nothing but wait. For several
days there came no appreciable change either in weather or in our
position until on the eighteenth we had a heavy snowstorm all day,
which was just what was needed to make assurance doubly sure; the snow
formed a blanket on the ice and later on its melting and freezing
cemented the ice snugly about the ship so that she was made almost an
integral part of the floe itself. The weather was perfectly calm but
so dull and hazy that for several days we could not see the shore.
Finally on the twenty-first we had a fine, clear day and about thirty
miles south of where we lay, could see the snow-capped summits of
the Romanzoff and Franklin Mountains, the northernmost range of the
Rockies, the backbone of the continent.
There was very little alteration in the ship’s position until August
26 when, with a light north wind, the ice moved a few miles to the
westward, carrying us with it. The next day we had a heavy snowstorm
with wind from the east and we moved still farther west; the next day
we drifted westward again, and the next and the next, and for a good
many days, sometimes a knot an hour, sometimes faster, parallel to the
land but six or seven miles away from it. At times we could see lanes
of open water, but they were always too far away for us to reach with
our imprisoned vessel. Yet nearer the land the water was open and, so
far as we could tell from where we were, no ship would have experienced
much difficulty in making her way along there in either direction.
If we had used all our dynamite we could have broken a pathway for
about a quarter of a mile but no farther and, as the open water was
much farther away than that, there was obviously no use in trying the
experiment.
Meanwhile, by August 22, Stefansson had decided to send Beuchat and
Jenness ashore, to make their way eastward and join the southern
party in the event of our not getting any nearer Herschel Island. In
fact, besides the two anthropologists, McKinlay and Wilkins, also,
could properly be regarded as passengers aboard the _Karluk_; their
apparatus, however, was too heavy for safe transportation to the shore
over the ice as it then was, loose and shifting.
All hands busied themselves in getting Beuchat and Jenness ready for
their journey. On account of the precarious nature of the young ice,
however, which was making in the leads towards the land and between the
older floes but was not yet altogether dependable, the start was not
made until the twenty-ninth. They got away about eleven A. M. with one
sledge and seven dogs and a supporting party consisting of Wilkins,
McConnell and the doctor and three Eskimo, two of whom were to return
to the ship with the sledge and dogs and the supporting party. On the
sledge they carried a skin-boat in which Beuchat and Jenness might
proceed to Herschel Island, where they would find plenty of food,
whether the _Mary Sachs_ and the _Alaska_ succeeded in reaching there
or not. The whole project went awry, however, because the party had
gone scarcely a mile and a half from the ship when the skin-boat was
damaged, as the sledge bumped along over the rough surface of the ice,
and when Stefansson went out to investigate he ordered the whole party
back to the ship again.