[Illustration: TWILIGHT AT MIDDAY, FEBRUARY 1874.]
NEW LANDS
WITHIN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE.
_NARRATIVE OF THE DISCOVERIES
OF THE AUSTRIAN SHIP “TEGETTHOFF”
IN THE YEARS 1872-1874._
BY
JULIUS PAYER,
ONE OF THE COMMANDERS OF THE EXPEDITION.
WITH MAPS AND NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS
BY THE AUTHOR.
Translated from the German, with the Author’s Approbation.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
549 AND 551 BROADWAY.
1877.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
In laying this book before the Public I desire, in the first instance,
to acknowledge without reserve my sense of the great merits of my
colleague, Lieutenant Weyprecht. The reader of the following pages will
learn with what unwearied, though fruitless, energy he struggled to free
the _Tegetthoff_ from her icy prison, and what dauntless courage and
unfailing command of resources he displayed in our hazardous retreat
from the abandoned ship, till the moment of our happy rescue. The order
and discipline maintained on board ship, and in the terrible march over
the Frozen Ocean, as well as in the perilous boat voyage after leaving
the ice-barrier, were mainly due to his distinguished abilities. He had
supreme command of the expedition, as long as its duties were strictly
nautical; when the operations of sledging and surveying began, I had the
responsibility of a separate and independent command.
Nor ought I to be slow to pay my tribute of respect to the perseverance
and constant self-denial of Lieutenant Brosch and Midshipman Orel. It
would be difficult to determine, whether they shone more as officers of
the ship, or as observers of scientific phenomena. The highly important
duty of managing the stores and provisions was discharged also by
Lieutenant Brosch with a conscientiousness that secured the confidence of
all.
To the watchful skill of Dr. Kepes we owed it, that the health and
constitution of the members of the expedition suffered so little from all
their hardships and privations.
The conduct of the crew was on the whole praiseworthy. Their obedience to
command, their perseverance and resolution shown on every occasion, will
be cited as an example of what these virtues and qualities can achieve
amid the most appalling dangers and trials.
With regard to my narrative, I make no claim for it founded on its
literary excellence; rather I sue for indulgence to its manifold
shortcomings. I have not written for the man of science, though I have
not shunned a few scientific details. Nor have I aimed at presenting a
record, which might be profitable to those who shall follow us in the
same career of discovery, though some hints will be found in my pages
which will not be without their use to those who may consult them for
information and guidance. Rather I have endeavoured to narrate our
sufferings, adventures, and discoveries in a manner which shall be
interesting to the general reader who reads to amuse himself.
The magnetical and meteorological observations, so carefully taken and
tabulated by Weyprecht, Brosch, and Orel, together with the sketches of
the Fauna of the Frozen Ocean, drawn by myself from the collection of Dr.
Kepes, were presented to the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Vienna, and
will in due time be published under the auspices of that august body.
PRELIMINARY NOTICE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
It will be interesting to English readers to learn a few particulars
concerning the two leaders of the Austrian North Polar Expeditions. Carl
Weyprecht was born in Hesse-Darmstadt in 1838, and in his eighteenth
year entered the Austrian navy. Ten years afterwards he was present
at the action between the Austrian and Italian fleets at Lissa—July
20, 1866; was promoted to the rank of lieutenant of the second class,
and _decorated_ with the order of the Iron Cross in recognition of his
services in that battle. It was shortly after this, that Weyprecht
volunteered to take the command of a small vessel, manned by only
four seamen, which was to sail from Hammerfest to explore the Arctic
Ocean. This dauntless offer was the basis of the first German North
Polar expedition. When, however, permission to act in this capacity
was obtained, Lieutenant Weyprecht was serving on board the Austrian
frigate _Elizabeth_, which formed one of the squadron sent by the
Austrian Government to bring home the body of the ill-fated Maximilian.
Immediately on his return to Europe he repaired to Gotha, eager to place
his services at the command of the expedition which had meantime been
planned by Petermann and a committee of patrons of Arctic exploration.
But unhappily, just at this moment his health, which had suffered from
fever caught at New Orleans, failed, and the command of the expedition,
known as the first German North Polar Expedition (May 24-October 10,
1868), was undertaken by Captain Koldewey. It was only in 1871 that
he recovered his health, and in the June of that year began, in the
_Isbjörn_, his life of Arctic experience and discovery. In the following
year, 1872, he was appointed to the naval command of the expedition
which sailed in the _Tegetthoff_, whose strange and eventful history is
recorded in the following pages.
His companion and colleague, Julius Payer, was born at Schönau in
Teplitz, Bohemia, in 1841, and received his education as a soldier at
the Wiener-Neustadt Military Academy, 1856-59, where General Sonnklar
was his teacher in geographical science, and early imbued his mind
with a love for the grandeurs of the glacier world. With the rank of
“Ober-Lieutenant” he served in the campaign of 1866 in Italy, and was
_decorated_ for his distinguished services at the battle of Custozza.
Afterwards, while serving with his regiment in Tyrol, he gained great
celebrity as one of the most successful Alpine climbers, and turned his
experience as a mountaineer to profit in his surveys of the Orteler
Alps and glaciers. Payer gained his first experience as an Arctic
discoverer in the second German North Polar Expedition, under Koldewey
and Hegemann—June 15, 1869-Sept. 11, 1870. His services during that
expedition were of a most distinguished character. He shared in the
most important discoveries which were then made, specially those of
König Wilhelm’s Land, and of the noble Franz-Josef Fjord. He acquired
in East Greenland the experience of sledging, which was of such eminent
use in his explorations of the great discovery of the _Tegetthoff_
Expedition—Kaiser Franz-Joseph Land. He shines too as an author in his
descriptions of Greenland scenes, in the _Second German North Polar
Voyage_, published in 1874 by Brockhaus of Leipzig, and partially
reproduced in an English translation by the Rev. L. Mercier and Mr. H. W.
Bates. For these services, on the return of the expedition, he was again
_decorated_, receiving the order of the Iron Crown.
In the voyage of the _Isbjörn_, June 21-Oct. 4, 1871, we find him
associated with Weyprecht in the pioneering voyage described in the
earlier part of this work, and lastly as joint commander of the renowned
_Tegetthoff_ expedition, June, 1872-September, 1874.
The Gold Medals entrusted to the Royal Geographical Society were awarded
in 1875: the Founder’s Medal to Lieutenant Weyprecht, and the Patron’s
Medal to Lieutenant Julius Payer.
* * * * *
As these pages are passing through the Press, the country has been
deeply moved by the unexpected intelligence of the return of the
Arctic Expedition. Gratulations on its safe and happy return have been
unanimously and eagerly expressed by all the organs of public opinion.
Disappointment, however, has, we fear, fallen on many minds as, after
the first feelings of joy at the safe arrival of the officers and crews
of the _Alert_ and _Discovery_, they read the brief telegraphic summary
sent by Captain Nares: “Pole impracticable,”—“No land to northward.”
Popular enthusiasm looked rather for the conquest of the Pole; expected,
perhaps, to read, one day, that the Union Jack had been hoisted there,
to commemorate the triumph of England’s perseverance at last rewarded.
Few, we apprehend, would pass through the chill of these two clauses of
the message to mark the hope contained in the third—“voyage otherwise
successful.” In what special respects the success proclaimed was
achieved, we must patiently wait for a future record to reveal; but
while awaiting the history which no doubt will be written to justify and
prove this announcement, let us exercise our loyal belief in the skill
and courage of our countrymen, and feel persuaded that what men could do
under their circumstances no doubt was done by them.
The interest which will be excited afresh in Arctic discovery and
adventure, will doubtless sharpen the interest in the volumes which
record the fortunes of the Austrian expedition; and we venture to
affirm—without undue partiality—that, though the history of Arctic
exploration and discovery abounds in records of lofty resolution and
patient endurance of almost incredible hardships, the narrative of the
voyage of the _Tegetthoff_ will be found to fall below none in these
high qualities. The mere destiny of the vessel itself equals, if it does
not exceed, in the element of the marvellous, anything which has before
been recorded. Surely this is borne out when we think, that on August 20,
1872, the _Tegetthoff_ was beset off the coast of Novaya Zemlya; remained
a fast prisoner in the ice, spite of all the efforts made by her officers
and crew to release her; drifted during the autumn and the terrible
winter of 1872—amid profound darkness—whither they knew not; drifted to
the 30th of August in the following year (1873), till, as if by magic,
the mists lifted, and lo! a high, bold, rocky coast—lat. 79° 43′ E.,
long. 59° 33′—loomed out of the fog straight ahead of them. Close to this
land—which could be visited with safety only twice, on the 1st and 3rd
of November of that year—the ship remained still fast bound in the ice.
Not till the winter of 1873 had passed, and the sun had again returned,
was it possible to explore the land, which had been so marvellously
discovered. On the 10th of March, 1874, the sledge journeys commenced,
and terminated May 3rd, after 450 miles had been passed over, and the
surveys and explorations completed, which enabled Payer to write the
description of Kaiser Franz-Josef Land (pp. 258-270), which shows that
other still undefined lands, with an archipelago of islands, have been
added to the geography of the earth.
But the perils of the expedition did not end here. On the 20th of August,
1874, it was resolved to abandon the _Tegetthoff_ in the ice, and to
return in sledges and boats to Europe. Captain Nares tells us, in his
telegraphic despatch, that the sledging parties of the _Alert_ and
_Discovery_ compassed on an average one-and-a-quarter mile per day on
the terrible “Sea of Ancient Ice,” and discovered, after the experience
gained in seventy miles passed under these conditions, that the “Pole
was impracticable.” If our readers wish to have a conception of the
toils and perils of the Austrian sledge parties on their return from the
_Tegetthoff_ let them mark the single image presented to the mind by
the statement (p. 364):—“After the lapse of two months of indescribable
efforts, the distance between us and the ship was not more than nine
English miles.” Had the ice on the Novaya Zemlya seas remained as
obstinate as it seems to have done in the new desolation, the “Sea of
Ancient Ice,” escape would have been as impossible to the _Tegetthoff’s_
crew, as advance towards the Pole was to the sledge parties of our last
Arctic expedition. But fortunately, soon after, “leads” opened out in the
ice; the boats were launched, and after about another month of alternate
rowing and sledging, the ice barrier was happily reached in the unusually
high latitude 77° 40′; and the brave men who three months before had left
the _Tegetthoff_ were saved.
This is perhaps the most marked analogy between the perils of the two
expeditions; so far as those of our own are yet known. But the scientific
conclusions of Lieutenant Payer, as set forth in the general Introduction
to his narrative, strikingly harmonize with the actual discoveries of the
_Alert_ and _Discovery_. Already it is authoritatively announced, that
there is no open Polar Sea; that this hypothesis is as baseless as the
existence of President’s Land. In the fourth chapter of that Introduction
(pp. 25-31), our author has analysed with great sagacity the various
theories on which that hypothesis was made to rest, working up to the
conclusion, that no such sea exists. The demonstration of experience now
takes the place of enlightened argument and opinion; fact and theory are
here at one.
Nor can we forbear to direct attention to another statement in the same
chapter. Let our readers mark the prophetic spirit of the following
passage: “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 consider that 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” (p.
30). And “worse instead of better” they have been found, as we cannot
doubt, when we weigh the ominous significance of the designation the “Sea
of Ancient Ice.”
History may or may not verify the position which the telegram so briefly
resumes—“The Pole impracticable.” Impracticable no doubt it was, if the
condition of the ice seen by our expedition in that awful sea be its
normal condition. All that it was possible for men to dare and achieve,
England will feel that her officers and sailors dared and achieved under
the circumstances they encountered. It may be, that later experience will
show, that even that Sea may present to future explorers an aspect less
tremendous; yea, that in some seasons, which science may yet predict,
when her theories of the sun-spots are matured and formulated, open water
will be found, as perhaps it was found in the year of the expedition of
the _Polaris_, where the heroic sledging parties from the _Alert_ and
_Discovery_ saw nothing and found nothing, but piled-up barriers of ice
rising to the height of 150 feet.
It would be idle to predict, in the face of these results, that the Pole
shall yet be reached. Any confident prediction in this spirit would, at
the present moment, be singularly inopportune, as well as unwise. But
despair would be equally unjustifiable, while its influence would be
most hurtful and depressing, especially if Arctic exploration and the
attainment of the Pole were supposed to be identical propositions. There
are two things: reaching the North Pole, and the exploration of the
Polar region. If the former appeals more to the imagination, and readily
calls forth the emotions which are fed by the love of the marvellous,
the latter enlists the sympathies of those who take a broader view of
the necessities of Arctic exploration. These have found a powerful
representative in one whose services entitle him to speak with authority,
in the naval chief of the _Tegetthoff_ expedition. At a meeting of the
German Scientific and Medical Association held at Gratz in September of
1875, Weyprecht read a paper on the principles of Arctic exploration,
in which, according to the summary of its contents, which appeared
in _Nature_, October 11, 1875, he maintains, that the Polar regions
offer, in certain important respects, greater advantages than any other
part of the globe for the observation of natural phenomena—Magnetism,
the Aurora, Meteorology, Geology, Zoölogy, and Botany. He deplores,
that while large sums have been spent and much hardship endured for
geographical knowledge, strictly scientific observations have been
regarded as holding a secondary place. Though not denying the importance
of geographical discovery, he maintains, that the main purpose of
future Arctic expeditions should be the extension of our knowledge
of the various natural phenomena which may be studied with so great
advantage in those regions. He insists in that paper on the following
propositions:—“1. Arctic exploration is of the highest importance to
a knowledge of the laws of nature. 2. Geographical discovery in those
regions is of superior importance only in so far as it extends the
field of scientific investigation in its strict sense. 3. Minute Arctic
topography is of secondary importance. 4. The geographical Pole has for
science no greater significance than any other point in high latitude.
5. Observation stations should be selected without reference to the
latitude, but for the advantages they offer for the investigation of the
phenomena to be studied. 6. Interrupted series of observations have only
a relative value.” The suggestions thrown out by Lieutenant Weyprecht
have been taken up by one whose mind seems to rise instinctively to all
high aims and objects. Prince Bismarck forthwith appointed a German
Commission of Arctic Exploration, consisting of some of the most eminent
men of science of whom Germany can boast, who reported to the Bundesrath
in a memoir, the recommendations of which were unanimously adopted. From
_Nature_, November 11, 1875, which we have already quoted, we borrow the
following _résumé_ of that report:—
“1. The exploration of the Arctic regions is of great
importance for all branches of science. The Commission
recommends for such exploration the establishment of fixed
observing stations. From the principal station, and supported
by it, exploring expeditions are to be made by sea and by land.
“The Commission is of opinion that the region to be explored
by organised German Arctic explorers is the great inlet to the
higher Arctic regions situated between the eastern shore of
Greenland and the western shore of Spitzbergen....
“3. It appears desirable, and, so far as scientific
preparations are concerned, possible, to commence these Arctic
expeditions in 1877.”
“4. The Commission is convinced that an exploration of the
Arctic regions, based on such principles, will furnish valuable
results, even if limited to the region between Greenland and
Spitzbergen; but it is also of opinion, that an exhaustive
solution of the problems to be solved can only be expected when
exploration is extended over the whole Arctic zone, and when
other countries take their share in the undertaking.
“The Commission recommends, therefore, that the principles
adopted for the German undertaking be commended to the
governments of the states which take interest in Arctic
inquiry, in order to establish, if possible, a complete circle
of observing stations in the Arctic zones.”
Thus we are brought face to face with two different purposes, which
may be termed, respectively, the romantic and the scientific purposes
of Arctic discovery. To the former the attainment of the Pole has
hitherto been the all in all of a geographical discovery. “The Pole
impracticable,” telegraphed by Captain Nares, as the result of the
expedition which has returned baffled to our shores, is a stern reproof
to all who would still advocate a dash at the Pole as the worthiest
purpose of Arctic discovery. Aims and endeavours not so glaring, nor
appealing in the same degree to the love of the marvellous, are suggested
in the sagacious proposals of Lieutenant Weyprecht, to whom science will
not refuse her calmer and more measured respect, and in whom, as Captain
of the _Tegetthoff_, all who love deeds of daring and energy will find a
congenial spirit.
To Lieutenant Payer has fallen the distinguished honour of being not only
the colleague in command and friend of Weyprecht, but the historian of
their common sufferings and common glory in an enterprise, the fame of
which the world, we believe, will not willingly let die.
CONTENTS.
_INTRODUCTION._
CHAPTER I.
THE FROZEN OCEAN _page_ 1-10
1. The ice-sheet of the Arctic region.—2. “Leads” and “ice-holes”
defined.—3. Pack-ice and drift-ice.—4, 5, 6. Various designations
of ice-forms.—7. Estimate of the thickness of ice.—8. Rate of
its formation.—9. Old ice.—10, 11. Characteristics of young
ice.—12. Results of the unrest in Arctic seas.—13. The snow-sheet
described.—14. Colour of field-ice.—15. Characteristics of
sea-ice.—16. Specific gravity of ice.—17. Irregularity of the
forms of ice.—18. Temperature of the Arctic Sea.—19. Noise
caused by disruption.—20. The ice-blink.—21. The water-sky.—22.
Evaporation.—23. Calmness of the sea beneath the ice.—24.
Overturning of icebergs.—25. Change of the sea’s colour near
ice.—26. Icebergs described.—27. Noise caused by the overturning
of icebergs.
CHAPTER II.
NAVIGATION IN THE FROZEN OCEAN _page_ 11-19
1. Preparatory study necessary for Polar navigators.—2.
Choice of a favourable year necessary.—3. Navigation in
coast-water recommended.—4. Failure often caused by leaving the
coast-water.—5. Distance possible to accomplish in one summer.—6.
The best time of year.—7. Steam-power recommended.—8. The rate
of speed.—9. The build of Arctic ships.—10. Tactics of a ship
in the ice.—11. Small vessels preferred.—12. Iron ships not
suitable.—13. Two vessels to be employed.—14. “Besetment” and
how to avoid it.—15. The use of a balloon recommended.—16. The
“crow’s-nest.”—17. Winds and calms.—18. A winter harbour or
“dock.”
CHAPTER III.
THE PENETRATION OF THE REGIONS WITHIN THE POLAR CIRCLE; THE
PERIOD OF THE NORTH-WEST AND NORTH-EAST PASSAGES _page_ 20-24
1. The Pole.—2. Old fancy of reaching India through the
ice.—3, 4, 5. The first Polar navigators.—6-10. The North-West
and North-East Passages.—11. Strange tales of the old
discoverers.—12. The Polar world becomes the object of scientific
investigation.—13. M’Clintock perfects the art of sledging.
CHAPTER IV.
THE INNER POLAR SEA _page_ 25-31
1. The Arctic Sea compared to the glaciers of the Alps.—2, 3.
Old fancies respecting an Inner Polar Sea.—4. Improbability of
such a sea existing.—5. Influence of the Gulf Stream.—6. The
Polynjii seen by Wrangel.—7. State of the ice in different years
as found by various expeditions.—8. Probability that the most
northerly regions do not differ from those already discovered.—9.
Improbability that the Pole can be reached by a ship.—10. The
English expedition to penetrate Smith’s Sound.
CHAPTER V.
THE FUTURE OF THE POLAR QUESTION _page_ 32-36
1. Material advantage from Arctic voyages.—2. The commercial
value of the North-West and North-East Passages no longer thought
of.—3. The Polar question a problem of science.—4. The increase
of the safety and convenience with which the ice-navigation is
now performed.—5. The means of conducting Polar expeditions
perfected.—6. Sledge expeditions afford the chief hope of
success.—7. Not much more to be expected from ships.—8. The route
by Smith’s Sound recommended.—9. The English expedition.—10.
Lieutenant Weyprecht’s plan for united scientific investigation.
CHAPTER VI.
POLAR EQUIPMENTS _page_ 37-46
1. Past experience to be consulted.—2. The commander.—3.
Selection of the crew.—4. Discipline and pay.—5. The best men to
be obtained.—6. Special qualifications.—7. The medical man.—8. An
artist or photographer desirable.—9. Old ideas of equipment.—10.
The greatest possible comfort necessary.—11. A table of the
sizes of the vessels in various expeditions.—12. The best kind
of ships.—13. The allowance of food.—14. Spirituous liquors.—15.
The ship becomes a house in the winter.—16. The quarters of
the men.—17. Lamps and candles.—18. Clothing of the crew.—19.
Instruments and ammunition.—20. The cost of different expeditions.
_THE PIONEER VOYAGE OF THE ISBJÖRN_ _page_ 49-69
1. A pioneer expedition resolved on.—2, 3. Route to the east
of Spitzbergen.—4. The _Isbjörn_ chartered for the service.—5.
Attempts to gain information on the probable state of the ice.—6.
An unfavourable ice-year predicted.—7. The expedition leaves
Tromsoe.—8. The coast of Norway described.—9. The _Isbjörn_ in
the ice.—10. Seeking a harbour.—11. Cape Look-out.—12. Two ships
met with.—13. In the ice.—14. The return to the ice-barrier.—15.
The geological formation of the western coast.—16. Arrive at Hope
Island.—17. Ice disappeared.—18. Whales abound.—19. Splendid
effects of colour.—20. In a sea.—21. A run along the west coast
of Novaya Zemlya.—22. Storms compel us to keep to sea.—23. Object
of the voyage.—24. The Austro-Hungarian Expedition of 1872.-25.
The plan of the Austro-Hungarian Expedition.
_VOYAGE OF THE “TEGETTHOFF.”_
CHAPTER I.
FROM BREMERHAVEN TO TROMSOE _page_ 73-77
1. The qualities requisite for a Polar navigator.—2. The crew of
the _Tegetthoff_—3. The _Tegetthoff_ lifts her anchor.—4. The
vessel.—5. Crossing the sea.—6. The languages spoken on board the
_Tegetthoff_.—7. The officers and crew of the _Tegetthoff_.—8.
Arrive at Tromsoe.—9. The first and last voyage of the
_Tegetthoff_ begins.
CHAPTER II.
ON THE FROZEN OCEAN _page_ 78-92
1. Within the frozen ocean.—2. The sea of Novaya Zemlya.—3. We
continue our course by steam.—4. The decay of ice.—5. Effects
of light.—6. We meet the _Isbjörn_.—8-10. The Barentz Islands
described by Professor Höfer.—11. Preparations for future
contests with the ice.—12. Inclosed in the land-ice.—13. We
celebrate the birthday of Francis Joseph I.—14. Our prospects do
not improve.—15. The _Tegetthoff_ finally beset.
CHAPTER III.
DRIFTING IN THE NOVAYA ZEMLYA SEAS _page_ 93-100
1. Winter begins.—2. The impossibility of reaching the coast of
Siberia.—3. Unsuccessful efforts to get free.—4. The name-day of
the Emperor Francis Joseph I.—5. Encounters with polar bears.—6.
A “snow-finch” visits the ship.—7. Novaya Zemlya recedes
gradually from our gaze.
CHAPTER IV.
THE “TEGETTHOFF” FAST BESET IN THE ICE _page_ 101-113
1. Signs indicate the insecurity of our position.—2. A dreadful
Sunday.—3. We make ready to abandon the ship.—4. The dogs.—5.
We return to the ship.—6. We drift in the Frozen Sea.—7. Our
alarms.—8. Our constant state of readiness to meet destruction.
CHAPTER V.
OUR FIRST WINTER (1872) IN THE ICE _page_ 114-125
1. Surrounded by deep twilight.—2. Our preparations for
winter.—3. The difficulty of sledge-travelling.—4. Sumbu mistaken
for a fox—5. The rending of the ice.—6. Our short expeditions.—7.
The continual threatening of the ice.—8. A bear shot.—9. The
effect of the long Polar night.—10. The middle of the long
night.—11. Christmas feasts.—12. The first hour of the new
year.—13. The dogs allowed in the cabin.—14. Carlsen writes in
the log-book.
CHAPTER VI.
LIFE ON BOARD THE “TEGETTHOFF” _page_ 126-138
1. The _Tegetthoff_ covered with snow.—2. The excessive
condensation of moisture.—3. The destruction of the snow wall.—4.
The removal of the tent roof.—5. The stove of Meidingen of
Carlsruhe.—6. The arrangements of the officers’ mess-room.—7.
Those who occupied the mess-room.—8. Our meals.—9. Divine service
on deck.—10. After dinner.—11. The monotony of our life.—12.
After supper.—13. Middendorf contrasting the influence of climate
on men.—14. Our sanitary condition.—15. Baths.—16. Passages from
my journal.—17. A school instituted.
CHAPTER VII.
ICE-PRESSURES _page_ 139-142
1. Preparations for leaving the ship.—2. Extracts from journal.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE WANE OF THE LONG POLAR NIGHT _page_ 143-148
1. The light increases.—2. A bear hunt.—3. Table of the course of
the _Tegetthoff_.—4. Throw out bottles inclosing an account of
the events of the expedition.
CHAPTER IX.
THE RETURN OF LIGHT.—THE SPRING OF 1873 _page_ 149-161
1. The sunrise.—2. Our first look at each other.—3. Visits
from bears.—4. The carnival.—5. Continual fall of snow.—6.
Return of birds.—7. Ill health of Dr. Kepes.—8. Bear shot.—9.
A road constructed.—10. Reading without artificial light.—11.
Accumulation of rubbish round the ship.—12. Begin to dig out the
ship.—13. Surprised by bears.—14. Our hopes to reach Siberia.—15.
Snow continues to fall.—16. Visited by birds.—17. The steam
machinery put in working order.—18. A partial eclipse of the
sun.—19. Birth of four Newfoundland puppies.
CHAPTER X.
THE SUMMER OF 1873 _page_ 162-172
1. Decay of the walls of the ice.—2. The blaze of light on clear
days.—3. Our constant digging.—4. Continual sinking of the
ship.—5. Nothing but ice.—6. Short expeditions.—7. Feast on the
birthday of the Emperor.—8. Table showing our change of place.—9.
Some paragraphs from the Admiral’s report of the _Tegetthoff_—10.
Sounding the depth of the sea.
CHAPTER XI.
NEW LANDS _page_ 173-177
1. Seal-hunting.—2. Sunset at midnight.—3. The second summer
gone.—4. Land at last.—5. Kaiser Franz-Josef’s Land.—6.
Hochstetter Island.
CHAPTER XII.
THE AUTUMN OF 1873.—THE STRANGE LAND VISITED _page_ 178-184
1. Autumn of 1873.—2. Resolve to abandon the vessel.—3. Daylight
begins to fail.—4. Everything in readiness to leave the ship.—5.
Wilczek Island.—6. Our joy at reaching land.—7. Exploring the
island.—8. An expedition.—9. The silence of Arctic Regions.—10.
The island continues a mystery.
CHAPTER XIII.
OUR SECOND WINTER IN THE ICE _page_ 185-198
1. Night begins to reign.—2. Leisure for study.—3. Complete
darkness.—4. Continual fall of snow.—5. The middle of the second
Polar night.—6. Ill temper of the dogs.—7. The dogs.—8. Pekel,
Sumbu, and Jubinal.—9. Christmas time.—10. Our life in the
ship.—11. Improvement in health.—12. Scurvy.
CHAPTER XIV.
SUNRISE OF 1874 _page_ 199-201
1. Return of the moon.—2. Sun appears above the horizon.—3.
Lieutenant Weyprecht and I resolve to abandon the ship after the
sledge journeys.
CHAPTER XV.
THE AURORA _page_ 202-210
1. The northern lights.—2-4. The appearance of the aurora.—5. The
influence on the magnetic needle.—6. Description of the aurora by
Lieutenant Weyprecht.
_THE SLEDGE JOURNEYS._
CHAPTER I.
THE EXPLORATION OF KAISER FRANZ-JOSEF LAND RESOLVED ON _page_ 213-215
1. Necessity of exploration.—2. Plan of the sledge journeys.—3.
Eagerness to begin.—4. Illness of Krisch.
CHAPTER II.
OF SLEDGE TRAVELLING IN GENERAL _page_ 216-221
1. The sledge the best means of exploration.—2. The coast line
to be followed.—3. Best season for sledging.—4. State of the
snow-road.—5. The formation of depôts.—6. Sledges dragged by men
and dogs—7. Sledging best performed by dogs.—8. The instruments
required on a sledge journey.
CHAPTER III.
THE EQUIPMENT OF A SLEDGE EXPEDITION _page_ 222-234
1. The equipment of a sledge.—2. Construction of our sledges.—3.
The cooking apparatus.—4. Fuel.—5. Tents used at night.—6.
The sleeping bag.—7. Arms and ammunition.—8. Chest for
instruments, &c.—9, 10, 11. The provisions.—12. Boats in sledge
expeditions.—13. Articles of clothing.—14. Furs.—15. Covering for
the feet.—16. Drawing the sledge.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY _page_ 235-245
1. Qualities of a leader.—2. Object of our first expedition.—3.
My party.—4. We begin our journey.—5. Violent motion of the
ice.—6. Conduct of the dogs.—7. Death of the bear.—8. The driving
snow.—9. Reach the plateau of Cape Tegetthoff.—10. Ascending
the plateau.—11. Night in the sleeping bag.—12. Difficulty of
dragging the sledge.—13. Ascend a mountain, Cape Littrow.
CHAPTER V.
THE COLD _page_ 246-257
1. The Sonklar glacier.—2. Effect of cold.—3. The frightful
cold of North America.—4. Effect of low temperature on the
human frame.—5. The voice in cold weather.—6. Hardness of
everything.—7. Effect of cold on the senses.—8. Protection
against cold.—9. Danger of frost-bite.—10. Thirst.—11. A block of
snow.—12. Return to the ship.—13. Death of Krisch.
CHAPTER VI.
A GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF KAISER FRANZ-JOSEF LAND _page_ 258-270
1. Size of the country.—2. Surface of ice.—3. Map of the
country.—4. Naming of discoveries.—5. Comparison of Arctic
lands.—6. The existence of volcanic formations.—7, 8. Geology
of Franz-Josef Land.—9. Glaciers of Spitzbergen.—10. Ice of
Franz-Josef Land.—11. Temperature of the air.—12. The plasticity
of the glaciers.—13. North-east of Greenland and Siberia.—14.
The vegetation.—15. Finding drift-wood.—16. Impossibility of
inhabiting Franz-Josef Land.—17. The absence of animal life.—18.
Seals abound.—19. Species of fish seen.—20. Birds.—21. The
collection of Dr. Kepes.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SECOND SLEDGE EXPEDITION.—AUSTRIA SOUND _page_ 271-294
1. Plan of second expedition.—2. Danger of leaving the ship.—3.
Visited by bears.—4. Our preparations finished.—5. The sledge
party.—6. Our march.—7. Torossy wounded by a bear.—8. Danger of
frost-bite.—9. Arrive at Cape Frankfurt.—10. The configuration
of the country.—11. We penetrate to Cape Hansa.—12. A bear
killed.—13. I examine the beach.—14. Loss of the dog Sumbu.—15.
Easter Sunday.—16. Approach of a bear.—17. Our canvas boots worn
out.—18. We reach Becker Island.—19. We lose a bear.—20. Direct
our course towards Cape Rath.—21. A bear shot.—22. Difficulty of
advancing.—23. We arrive at Cape Schrötter.
CHAPTER VIII.
IN THE EXTREME NORTH _page_ 295-313
1. We ascend the summit of the Dolerite Rock.—2. Our expedition
to the extreme north.—3. We divide the provisions.—4. The merits
of our dogs.—5. Klotz has to return.—6. Zaninovich and the
sledge fall into a crevasse.—7. Reach Cape Habermann.—8. Cape
Brorock.—9. The enormous flocks of birds.—10. Difficulty of
travelling.—11. Cape Säulen.—12. Reach Cape Germania.—13. Cape
Fligely.—14. We plant the Austro-Hungarian flag.—15. Document
inclosed in a bottle.
CHAPTER IX.
THE RETURN TO THE SHIP _page_ 314-335
1. Our return journey.—2. Observations of temperature.—3.
Snow-blindness.—4. A bear shot.—5. Reach Cape Hellwald.—6.
Orel continues to march southwards.—7. Reach Cape Tyrol.—8.
Grandeur of the scenery.—9. Find our companions.—10. We sink
in the snow.—11. Arrive at open sea.—12. Over the glaciers of
Wilczek Land.—13. Enveloped in whirling snow.—14. Digging out
our depôt.—15. The difficulty of advancing.—16. Reach Schönau
Island.—17. I find the ship.—18. The ship in our absence.
CHAPTER X.
THE THIRD SLEDGE JOURNEY _page_ 336-340
1. Our wish to explore Franz-Josef Land.—2. We leave the
ship.—3. The dogs and the bears.—4. A bear killed.—5. Ascent of
the pyramid-like Cape Brünn.—6. The extreme difficulty of the
ascent.—7. Return to the ship.
_THE “TEGETTHOFF” ABANDONED.—RETURN TO EUROPE._
CHAPTER I.
LAST DAYS ON THE “TEGETTHOFF” _page_ 343-347
1. “Plundering the ship.”—2. Appearance of the ship.—3. Short
expeditions.—4. Rapid decrease of the cold.—5. The boats and
their contents.—6. The dogs, Gillis and Semlja, shot.—7. Our
stock of clothes.—8. Our plan of escape.
CHAPTER II.
ON THE FROZEN SEA _page_ 348-376
1. The day for abandoning the ship comes.—2. We start.—3. The
dogs.—4. We return to the ship to replenish the stores.—5.
Shooting bears.—6. Reach Lamont Island.—7. Return to the ship
for the jolly boat.—8. Impatience to launch our boats.—9. Launch
at last.—10. Shoot a seal.—11. Quotations from the journal.—12.
Crossing fissures.—13. Disheartening efforts.—14. From one floe
to another.—15. Carlsen.—16. Life in the boats.—17. Our dreadful
situation.—18. Our rations diminished.—19. Forcing our way.—20.
Pushing floes asunder.—21. No advance, but great efforts.—22.
Delight caused by an advance of four miles a day.—23. Secure
a bear.—24. Our progress greatly increases.—25. Ice-hummocks
everywhere.—26. Alternate launching and drawing up the boats.—27.
Increased progress.—28. The swell of the ocean.—29. Shut in once
more.—30. Contrivances to pass away the time.—31. Calking the
boats.—32. We reach the open sea.—33. Farewell to the Frozen
Ocean.
CHAPTER III.
ON THE OPEN SEA _page_ 377-389
1. Sight of the open sea.—2. Compelled to kill the dogs.—3. We
take a last look at the ice.—4. Fifty miles from land.—5. We
sight Novaya Zemlya.—6. We hold on our course.—7. Vain attempt to
land on Novaya Zemlya.—8. Difference in the climate in various
years.—9. Land in Gwosdarew Bay.—10. Step on land once more.—11.
Coast of Novaya Zemlya.—12. Look in vain for a sail.—13. Our
provisions nearly exhausted.—14. We divide the remnant of
food.—15. Deliverance at last.—16. The schooner _Nikolai_.—17.
Our reception on board.—18. We hear the news from Europe.—19.
Captain Voronin agrees to take us to Norway.—20. The crew of the
_Nikolai_.—21. We run along the coast of Lapland.—22. Landing at
Vardö.—23. Reception.
APPENDIX.
I. METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS _page_ 391-393
II. DIRECTION AND FORCE OF THE WIND _page_ 394
INDEX _page_ 395
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
TWILIGHT AT MIDDAY—FEBRUARY, 1874 _Frontispiece_
THE FIRST ICE 53
STILL LIFE IN THE FROZEN OCEAN 79
GWOSDAREW INLET 84
FORMATION OF THE DEPÔT AT “THE THREE COFFINS” 89
THE “TEGETTHOFF” AND “ISBJÖRN” SEPARATE 90
THE “TEGETTHOFF” FINALLY BESET 91
ATTEMPTS TO GET FREE IN SEPTEMBER 94
SEAL-HUNTING—SEPTEMBER 1872 96
SHOOTING AT A TARGET, OCTOBER 1872 97
PARHELIA ON THE COAST OF NOVAYA ZEMLYA 99
AN OCTOBER NIGHT IN THE ICE 105
THE MOON WITH ITS HALO 109
OUR COAL-HOUSE ON THE FLOE 111
THE TWILIGHT IN NOVEMBER 1872 115
SUMBU CHASED FOR A FOX 116
WANDERINGS ON THE ICE IN OUR FIRST WINTER 117
ENCOUNTER WITH A POLAR BEAR 120
ICE-HOLE COVERED WITH YOUNG ICE 121
CARLSEN MAKES THE ENTRY IN THE LOG 124
THE “TEGETTHOFF” IN THE FULL MOON 127
DIVINE SERVICE ON DECK 131
ICE-PRESSURE IN THE POLAR NIGHT 140
FRUITLESS ATTEMPT TO RESCUE MATOSCHKIN 145
SUNRISE (1873) 150
THE CARNIVAL ON THE ICE 152
THE “TEGETTHOFF” DRIFTING IN PACK-ICE—MARCH 1873 155
SOUNDING IN THE FROZEN OCEAN 171
APPROACHING THE LAND BY MOONLIGHT 183
DEPARTURE OF THE SUN IN THE SECOND WINTER 187
NOON ON DECEMBER 21, 1873 189
PEKEL, SUMBU, AND JUBINAL 193
IN THE MESS-ROOM 196
THE AURORA DURING THE ICE-PRESSURE 204
KRISCH, THE ENGINEER 215
TEAM OF SEVEN MEN AND THREE DOGS 224
THE COOKING APPARATUS 224
THE SLEDGE WITH ITS LOAD 229
THE DRESS OF THE ARCTIC SLEDGER 231
TOROSSY IN HARNESS 234
CAPE TEGETTHOFF 242
MELTING SNOW DURING A HALT NEAR CAPE BERGHAUS 244
ON THE SONKLAR-GLACIER 247
BLOCK OF SNOW 254
THE BURIAL OF KRISCH 256
LIPARIS GELATINOSUS 266
HIPPOLYTE PAYERI 268
HYALONEMA LONGISSIMUM 268
UMBELLULA 269
KORETHRASTES HISPIDUS 270
NEPHTHYS LONGISETOSA 270
THE DOGS DIFFER AS TO THE TREATMENT OF YOUNG BEARS 273
THE WINTER HOLE OF A BEAR 277
LIFE IN THE TENT 279
CAPE FRANKFURT, AUSTRIA SOUND, AND THE WÜLLERSDORF MOUNTAINS 280
HOW SUMBU WAS LOST 284
CAPE EASTER AND STERNEK SOUND 285
HOW WE RECEIVED BEARS. CAPE TYROL IN THE BACKGROUND 286
DINING ON BEARS’ FLESH 287
CUTTING UP THE BEARS 292
ICEBERGS AT THE BASE OF THE MIDDENDORF GLACIER 298
THE SLEDGE FALLS INTO A CREVASSE ON THE MIDDENDORF GLACIER 300
KLOTZ’S AMAZEMENT 302
THE ALARM OF THE HOHENLOHE PARTY 303
HALT UNDER CROWN-PRINCE RUDOLF’S LAND 305
CAPE AUK 307
CAPE SÄULEN 309
THE AUSTRIAN FLAG PLANTED AT CAPE FLIGELY 311
MELTING SNOW ON CAPE GERMANIA 315
ENCAMPING ON ONE OF THE COBURG ISLANDS 318
THE VIEW FROM CAPE TYROL. COLLINSON FIORD—WIENER NEUSTADT ISLAND 321
BREAKING IN 323
ARRIVAL BEFORE THE OPEN SEA 325
DRAGGING THE SLEDGE UNDER THE GLACIERS OF WILCZEK LAND 326
THE SLEDGE IN A SNOW-STORM 328
DIGGING OUT THE DEPÔT 329
THE MIDNIGHT SUN BETWEEN CAPE BERGHAUS AND KOLDEWEY ISLAND 331
THE “TEGETTHOFF” DESCRIED 332
KLOTZ 333
MARKHAM SOUND, RICHTHOFEN PEAK FROM CAPE BRÜNN 338
FIRST ABANDONMENT OF THE “TEGETTHOFF” 348
IN THE HARBOUR OF AULIS 352
WE LAUNCH AT LAST 355
MARCHING THROUGH ICE-HUMMOCKS 357
HALT AT NOON 358
CROSSING A FISSURE 359
CARLSEN 361
SCENE ON THE ICE 366
BEARS IN THE WATER 371
CALKING THE BOATS 374
FAREWELL TO THE FROZEN OCEAN 375
LANDING ON THE COAST OF NOVAYA ZEMLYA 380
THE BAY OF DUNES. THE RUSSIAN SCHOONERS 385
[Illustration: MAP of the NOVAYA ZEMLYA SEA for the Austro-Hungarian
Expeditions.]
AUSTRIAN ARCTIC VOYAGES.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
THE FROZEN OCEAN.
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, until about 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 of the 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 the uniform 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, especially in 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 transformations are 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 no real 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.
CHAPTER II.
NAVIGATION IN THE FROZEN OCEAN.
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 remote from 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
the South 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. The _Hansa_ was built in this manner, and was crushed by
the first squeeze from the ice; the _Germania_ and the _Tegetthoff_ were
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 the _River Tay_ in 1868, in Baffin’s
Bay, and of the _Sophia_, 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 a
_cul-de-sac_ of 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 a vessel,
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 a rope, 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 the
_Tegetthoff_ the 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.
CHAPTER III.
THE PENETRATION OF THE REGIONS WITHIN THE POLAR CIRCLE; THE PERIOD OF THE
NORTH-WEST AND NORTH-EAST PASSAGES.
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 new worlds. 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 became _the 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 the _North-West_ and _North-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 the
_open Polar Sea_.
7. But who in those days could presuppose that the continents 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 Versailles consumed 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 marvellous_ explains 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 a series 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.
CHAPTER IV.
THE INNER POLAR SEA.
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 the _débris_ and 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 with a 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 the appearance 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 one degree 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, in 1863 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 consider _that 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 high latitudes. 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.
CHAPTER V.
THE FUTURE OF THE POLAR QUESTION.
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-three
Dutch 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, as _a 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 the atmosphere 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 expedition _teaches 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 imperious _ne 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 advisable
to exclude it from Arctic exploration, until, instead of the impotent
vessels of the sea, we can send thither those of the air.
9. Be this as it may, the present English North-Pole Expedition will
essentially contribute to solve the question, whether the Pole can be
reached by the route through Upper Smith’s Sound. This, according to the
views of almost all Polar navigators, holds out the greatest chances for
further advance by sea. Should this expedition, equipped in so effective
a manner, and sent out by a nation of such great experience, not come
nearer to the goal, or, if nearer, only through sledging—which may very
probably be the case—the conviction will then be strengthened, that all
efforts to reach the Pole by navigation in the Frozen Ocean are hopeless,
and witness only to the glorious persistency of human endeavour.
10. But until aërial navigation to the Pole shall be attempted, it
would be advisable to follow the example of the Swedes, and, in the
service of Natural History and Geography, content ourselves with the
exploration of those Arctic lands of which, up to the present moment, we
know only the coast-line, or which, situated on the outermost verge of
our Polar charts, are still untrodden by man; we mean specially Gillis’,
Grinnell’s, Wrangel’s Land, and above all, the interior of Greenland.
The Polar question, hitherto regarded chiefly as a geographical problem,
would thus, for a considerable time, be taken up in the interest of
Natural Science. Lieutenant Weyprecht, after dwelling on the predominance
of exploration in Polar expeditions, expresses a wish, that the great
civilized nations would unite in contemporaneous Arctic expeditions for
magnetical, electrical, and meteorological investigations: “In order to
attain decisive scientific results, a number of expeditions should be
sent to different places in the Arctic regions to make observations, at
the same time, with similar instruments, and in accordance with similar
instructions.” They who think such results too insignificant for the
energies and sacrifices which are expended to achieve them, and who would
rather that such efforts should be transferred to those still unknown
regions of the earth, which may become the dwelling-places of man, will,
of course, give their veto against the further agitation of the Arctic
question.
CHAPTER VI.
POLAR EQUIPMENTS.
1. Every Arctic expedition should be guided by the experience of its
predecessors, both in its plan and its equipment; and hence we have often
to deplore the negligence of almost all Polar navigators in failing to
inform those who follow them of what they actually saw, of their modes
of procedure, or of the mistakes which they committed. It will not,
therefore, be labour thrown away, if we state our own experience and
record our own observations for the guidance of others, in order to show,
with the utmost possible clearness, what future explorers have before
them, and how best to meet it.
2. Undivided command in an expedition is the first of all rules; but
if there be any division of command in a subordinate expedition by sea
or land, the duties and rights of its commander must be clearly and
exactly defined. In recent times the command of a Polar expedition has
sometimes been conferred not on a seaman, but on a man of science,
as in the cases of Kane, Hayes, Nordenskjöld, and Torell. Where the
investigation of questions connected with Natural History is the aim and
object, this precedent is admissible, but it should never be observed
where the commander has an important part to fulfil as a navigator. The
command of an expedition has never been conferred on a man of science
by the English government. In the very commencement, indeed, of Polar
discovery, an English expedition was placed under the command of Sir
Hugh Willoughby, who was not bred a sailor, but down to the seventeenth
century, even in their naval campaigns, such men were appointed to naval
commands. The Dutch expeditions of the sixteenth century generally
adopted a destructive division of command, under supercargoes and pilots,
representing the mercantile and nautical elements: confusion and discord
were the inevitable consequences.
3. Next to the selection of a commander, the selection of the crew
demands the greatest care. This ought to be made some time before the
expedition starts, in order that those unfit for the service may be
discovered, and their places supplied by others; this cautious mode of
procedure, and not a preference for any particular nationality, will
secure the most effective crew. Although seamanlike qualities do not
belong in the same degree to every nation, time and pains only are needed
to secure a picked crew for a North-Pole expedition from almost any
nation. Endurance of cold is not the only test of effectiveness, although
this is a very common assumption; but a sense of duty, perseverance,
and resolution are the virtues of a seaman. Habit soon teaches men to
conquer cold, and inexorable necessity often hardens weaklings into
heroes for Arctic discovery. A certain degree of intelligence is of
high importance in the crew. In many cases resolution in the midst of
dangers depends on their capacity to observe and think, even on their
possessing certain branches of knowledge. The greater part of the crew of
the _Tegetthoff_ had these advantages. But men who, in a heavily-laded
sledge, leave the old and take to recently-formed ice, without noticing
the difference,—who observe a frost-bitten foot several hours after the
mischief has been done,—who lose their cartridges, know nothing of their
rifle, and little more of their compass, or who pass on without observing
the configurations of the land, possess an indifference indeed, but of a
kind very dangerous to themselves and to the whole party, though they may
despise death as much as Achilles is said to have done.
4. An intelligent crew, from their greater feeling of independence,
is, however, more difficult to command than an ignorant one. Devotion
and blind confidence are more rarely found in an educated crew; their
amenability to discipline is dependent on the good example, the kindness
and unalterable calmness of those who may command them. The law of a
Polar expedition is obedience, and its basis morality. Punishments are
in such situations a miserable and depressing means for the preservation
of order, and then employment, especially in a private undertaking,
will tend rather to loosen than to maintain the bonds of discipline.
If Parry, in 1820, caused corporal punishments to be inflicted, this
proves the greater facility with which discipline is maintained on
board of a man-of-war, but not its appropriateness generally. Coercion
and threats produce no effect; and hence the folly of attempting to
secure success by sending out again those who returned without having
achieved anything, which was done last century by the authorities of St.
Petersburg with every unsuccessful enterprise on the Arctic coasts of
Siberia. The regulation that the most meritorious among the crew shall
be specially rewarded, after the return of the expedition, provides
for the recognition of merit, without exciting ill feeling in the less
worthy. For the officers scientific success may be a perfect reward
of their toils, but for the crew the reward should consist of more
material advantages. Money, indeed, seems a feeble motive of action to
men destined to withstand for years the inclemency of Arctic winters,
and uncertain whether they shall ever return; but, notwithstanding, it
is the only form by which men without sympathy for the aims of science
can be gained for the attainment of such objects. The crews of Sir John
Ross received for a martyrdom of four years passed in the ice about £100
a head; in the second German expedition from eight to twelve thalers
were the monthly pay of each sailor. The pay of the sledgers in the
_Tegetthoff_ was, however, nearly four times as much; in some sledge
journeys it amounted to 3,000 gulden a man.
5. Contrary to what might be expected, the re-employment of those who
have served before is not to be recommended as a rule. The very best
only should be re-enlisted. The others are too much disposed to place
their experience on a level with that of their commanders; and in
all cases, where their opinions differ from those of their officers,
they damage by a kind of passive opposition the fundamental law of an
expedition—obedience. Those who enter the Arctic regions for the first
time are wont to receive the orders of an experienced commander with an
attention as unquestioning as it is respectful. Married men also should
be excluded, as they were by Barentz in his second (1596) expedition.
6. Some of the crew should be good shots, good pedestrians and
mountaineers, but all must be of the same nationality, and in perfect
health. The least symptom of rheumatism, of diseases of the lungs and the
eyes, and of certain chronic maladies only too common among seamen, unfit
them for the endurance of the Polar climate, and especially for sledge
expeditions. Those who are addicted to drink are peculiarly liable to the
scurvy.
7. The medical man of an expedition, besides professional skill and
experience, must possess the most imperturbable patience, for to many of
his patients he is not less a physician of the mind than of the body. He
should convince himself of the sanitary condition of the crew before the
expedition starts, although it may have been previously investigated by
medical authorities and declared satisfactory.
8. Since an expedition, in addition to its scientific functions, should
take up the illustration of Nature at the Pole, the employment of a
photographer, but still better of an artist, is very desirable, for the
former is too much confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the ship in
his operations.
9. The records of Arctic adventure in former days tell us of equipments
strangely incompatible with the object pursued. Their commercial purpose
constrained them to fill the hold with bales of silk, instead of
provisions for years; but the letters of recommendation which were given
to the explorers of the North-East passage for the Saracen princes on
the route to Chatai seem peculiarly ludicrous. Some justification may be
discovered for Owczyn taking a priest with him on his Siberian expedition
(1734), but hardly for his wanting fifty-seven men in a vessel only
seventy feet long, and arming it with eight falconets. The employment
of a drummer, twelve privates and a corporal, on Gmelin’s scientific
Siberian expedition, is still more unintelligible; more so than Davis’s
band of music, which was intended to charm the feelings of the Eskimos
and dispose them to peaceful proceedings, his predecessor Frobisher
having had the saddest experience of their barbarism. Other expeditions
by the too plentiful distribution of knives and hatchets among the
Eskimos placed them in a position seriously to threaten the white man,
and even at the present day the so-called “Wilden-kiste” often contains
articles little calculated to inspire the natives with a high opinion of
our moral superiority.
10. In fitting out a Polar expedition, all respect should be paid to the
principle of bestowing on those who are for a time banished, the greatest
possible amount of comfort. The proportions of a ship, and the space at
its disposal, narrow the limits available for this end; and since the
return to the employment, as at the first, of small vessels, even these
limits have been considerably diminished.
11. The following table shows that the employment of small vessels was
the principle at first followed, although the English undertakings
even of this present century never thoroughly adopted the example of a
Fotherby, a Baffin, and a Ross:—
+------------------------+---------------+---------------+-----+
| THE EXPEDITIONS OF |TONNAGE OF THE |PROVISIONED FOR|CREW.|
| | SHIPS. | | |
+------------+-----------+---------------+---------------+-----+
| | | | | |
| | A.D. | | | |
|Willoughby | 1553 |120| 90|160| | 18 months | |
|Frobisher | 1576 | 25| 25| 10| | | |
| ” | 1577 |180| 30| 30| |} | |
|Pett Jackman| 1580 | 40| 20| | |} | 15 |
|Davis | 1585 | 50| 35| | |} | 42 |
| ” |2nd expedn.| 10| 50| 53|120|} | |
|Weymouth | 1604 | 70| 60| | |} | |
|Knight | 1606 | 40| | | |}Mostly for } | |
|Hudson | 1607 | | | | |}one year } | 10 |
| ” | 1608 | | | | |}only. } | 15 |
|James Poole | 1609 | 70| | | |} | 15 |
|Hudson | 1610 | 55| | | |} | |
|Smith | 1610 | 50| | | |} | |
|James Poole | 1611 | 50| | | |} | |
|Fotherby | 1615 | 20| | | |} | |
|Baffin | 1616 | 58| | | |} | |
|Fox | 1631 | 80| | | | 18 months | 20 |
|James | 1631 | 70| | | | 18 ” | |
|Wood | 1676 | | | | | 16 ” | 19 |
|Moor | 1746 |180|140| | | | |
|Ross | 1818 |385|252| | | | |
|Parry | 1819 |375|180| | | 2½ years | |
|Lütke | 1821 |200| | | | | 45 |
|Hayes | 1860 |133| | | | 1½ ” | 15 |
|Koldewey | 1869 |180|200| | | 2 ” | 29 |
+------------+-----------+---+---+---+---+---------------+-----+
12. The inspection of this table shows that it was the practice of the
sixteenth century to send out fleets of ships of a very small size,
that in the seventeenth one small ship was commissioned, and that the
employment of two vessels has been the rule since; and this would have
been still more evident, if the various Franklin expeditions had been
included in the above table. In 1829 Sir John Ross started with a ship
drawing eighteen feet, but changed afterwards to one drawing eight
feet; and from eight to twelve feet is now the recognised draught in
Polar ships. Large vessels require a numerous crew, and if they have
not been built exclusively for the purpose of Polar exploration, their
small economy of space prevents their being fitted out for more than
two years and a half. In 1819 Parry’s ship, the large _Fury_, had, with
a draught of eighteen feet, provisions for only two and a half years,
whereas the _Victory_ (1829) of Ross with only seven feet draught had
on board, besides stores for the same period, a steam-engine and coals
for a thousand hours’ steaming. The Russian Novaya Zemlya navigators of
this century have adopted vessels of a size which must be destructive
of all comfort and convenience. These vessels are thirty or forty feet
long, with a draught of five or six feet, and a crew of nine or ten men.
But Arctic ships must have a crew above the ordinary strength and be
provided with steam-power; so that, allowing for the necessary space for
the quarters of the crew, for the engines and the coalbunkers, little
room will be left for the stowage of stores. But this little should
be reserved for well-chosen provisions stowed away so as to avoid all
empty spaces, and secure the greatest amount of resistance to lateral
pressure. The weakest parts of a ship are always the spaces left for
air in the quarters of the men. A crew, which is exposed to threatening
dangers from the ice, will never regret the strengthening of these
void spaces by heavy horizontal tie-beams, removable when the ship is
in the winter harbour, and so adjusted as not to impede communication.
The mere suspension of heavy beams against the hull of a ship does not
always answer the purpose of protection, since the pressure of the ice
frequently drives away these protecting timbers. The practice, however,
is not absolutely to be rejected.
13. The daily allowance of solid food for the effectives in an Arctic
expedition amounts to about two pounds, and in sledge expeditions to
2¾ pounds, of which half a pound is bread and one pound preserved meat.
Besides the usual provisions, large supplies of preserved vegetables,
of cocoa, of extract of meat, of rice, of preserved peas, of dried
farinaceous food (such as macaroni), are very desirable. Salted meat is
to be avoided as much as possible. The luxury of fresh bread twice a week
instead of the hard ship’s biscuit is an essential means of promoting
health, and the want of yeast for its preparation may be supplied by
“baking powder.” Once a day a ration of lemon-juice should be served out
as a preservative against scurvy, and anti-scorbutic victuals should
be laid in abundantly. Plenty of tea and tobacco is indispensable; the
want of these is painfully felt, especially by the sailors. Cases have
actually occurred, where crews have ground the wooden blocks of the
rigging to powder, to serve as tea, and have used the hoops of casks for
tobacco.
14. The moderate enjoyment of spirituous liquors is much to be
recommended, as their influence on health and sociality is of great
importance. The preservation, however, of a sufficient stock of wine,
especially in winter, is a matter of much difficulty, since most kinds
freeze at 21° F. or 14° F. As long as the ship is afloat, as it generally
is when winters are passed in the ice, it is advisable to preserve the
supply of wine at the bottom of the hold, and to place all other things
most liable to be frozen in layers above it. But if a ship be nearly
or entirely out of water, it is advisable to keep the wine, and other
indispensable liquids, in the empty spaces of the cabin, under the
cabin table, near the stove, below the berths, and under the sky-light
after it has been closed for the winter. Only absolute want of space
justifies the preparation of _chemical wine_,[13] since the volume of
its constituent parts without water is only a fifth of real wine; and
under all circumstances _chemical wine_ is but a miserable shift, and
the beer (even the spruce beer of Sir John Ross) which the English used
to manufacture on board ship from the essence of malt and hops is far
preferable. The rum and cognac, especially for sledge expeditions, in
order to save weight should contain the greatest possible amount of
alcohol, for its dilution before use is a matter of no difficulty.
15. During the winter, residence in the ship itself is preferable to
living in log-houses, because the ship can be more easily heated and
suffers less from the accumulation of ice. But since a ship in the Arctic
Sea ceases for ten months of the year to be a ship and becomes in fact a
house, this should be kept in view when she is being fitted out.
16. The place where the men live is always in the fore-part of the ship,
but their berths should be changed in a certain rotation, because of
the inequality of the condensation. It is not advisable to place the
kitchen in the quarters of the crew in order to diminish the consumption
of coals, because an accumulation of moisture is thereby increased. The
officers and _savans_ occupy a common messroom in the after-part of the
ship, and sleep in little cabins ranged round it. The power to withdraw
occasionally from the presence of those who must be together for years
is an important element of harmony. Sir John Ross and his officers in
1833, even in the miserable hut built on the Fury coast, did not occupy
the common messroom heated by a stove, but preferred separate cabins,
the temperature of which seldom rose above the freezing point, and in
which they had to suffer much from the accumulation of ice. All the
living rooms should be provided with waterproof carpets. Their heating
by means of the common stoves is objectionable, because of the unequal
distribution of warmth. An even temperature is best maintained by the use
of the Meidinger “Fullofen,” which has the further advantage of consuming
only a small quantity of coals. Hot-air flues are, perhaps, preferable
even to these, because they better prevent the freezing of the moisture
in the cabins, and indeed in every part of the ship.
17. An Arctic ship should be provided with an iron-plated washing and
drying closet, without which the washing of linen would be restricted
to the few weeks of summer weather. This closet may also be used as a
bath-room, an important means of promoting health. The lighting of the
living rooms by petroleum sufficiently answers all purposes; in the
cabins, however, stearine candles are to be preferred either to it or any
other oil. The construction of the lamps used in making observations in
the open air during the long Arctic darkness is a matter of the greatest
importance. Those used in the second German North-Pole Expedition were
of peculiar excellence, and never failed in their difficult service.
Massive lamps, with glass globes protected with wire, and burning
petroleum in preference to common oil, should be used on deck, and as
they are employed for so many purposes and exposed to so many risks, a
plentiful supply of them should be provided. In the huts on the deck,
built over the hatchways, train-oil may be used with advantage, if the
lamps are so constructed that the flame may heat the reservoir containing
the oil.
18. So long as the crew remains on board the ship, their clothing, even
in the severest winter, needs but little attention. Thick close-fitting
woollen under-garments, knitted woollen gloves, outer-garments of strong
cloth, are in all cases sufficient on deck, and in all those parts of
the ship which are kept at a certain temperature. Leather boots lined
with fur were long considered an indispensable requisite for Polar
expeditions, but they have not maintained their character, as they are
very heavy, become unpliable in frost, and soon quite useless through its
action and the wearing off of the fur.
19. Before the departure of the expedition, all the instruments should be
thoroughly cleansed from oil by a practical optician, and the fire-arms
should undergo a like operation at the hands of the gunmaker, and
their barrels should be browned to protect them better from rust. The
ammunition, powder and matches to blast the ice, alcohol and petroleum,
should be stowed in the after-part of the ship, and the two latter should
be reached only through a closely-fitting pump. A very ample supply of
alcohol, flannel, buffalo-skins, strong cloth, water-proof canvas, felt,
leather, reindeer shoes, snow boots, shovels, cramp irons, poles, &c.,
articles which are too often overlooked, should be taken, both from their
usefulness on board ship and also on land expeditions.
20. The costs of Polar expeditions have relatively rather diminished than
increased. The expenses of Willoughby’s expedition 300 years ago amounted
to the sum—quite enormous for that day—of £6,000; Moor’s (1746) cost
£10,000; while Back’s difficult but successful undertaking to explore
the great Fish-river (1833-1835), only £5,000. The Siberian expedition
of Middendorf (1844)—costing only 13,300 rubles (£1,717)—was a matchless
example of extraordinary achievements with little expenditure. The costs
of the various Franklin Expeditions from 1848 to 1854 amounted, according
to the statement of the English Admiralty, to twenty million francs
(£833,333); those of the second German North-Pole Expedition to 120,000
thalers (£11,000), and the expenses of our own Austrian-Hungarian North
Pole Expedition to 220,000 gulden (£18,333).
PIONEER VOYAGE OF ISBJÖRN.
_JUNE 20-OCTOBER 4, 1871._
THE PIONEER VOYAGE OF THE “ISBJÖRN.”
1. The failure of the second German Arctic expedition directed the future
efforts of Polar exploration to the seas of Novaya Zemlya. Although the
geographical position and political relations of Austria prevented its
Government from taking any active part in the great geographical problems
and questions of our times, an interest in Polar discovery had been
excited in her statesmen, which gradually ripened into a determination to
send its flag, renowned for its military fame, to consecrate struggles
on the peaceful domain of scientific exploration. The magnanimous act
of Graf Wilczek, contributing 40,000 florins towards the equipment of
an Austro-Hungarian expedition, not only strengthened but also endowed
the resolve. In order, however, to obviate the possibility of spending
large sums on a plan which might be unfeasible, or if feasible, of little
value, it was determined to despatch a pioneer expedition to the seas of
Novaya Zemlya under the joint command of Lieutenant Weyprecht and myself.
The knowledge and experience gained in that voyage—which is described in
the following pages—induced the Austrian Government to send another and
more powerful vessel to those seas, equipped to pass two or more winters
in the ice.
2. It seemed to be established as the result of many expeditions, that
almost invincible difficulties opposed the reaching of the central Arctic
regions by the routes through Baffin’s Bay, Behring’s Straits, along
the coast of Greenland, and from Spitzbergen, mainly because on them
all we are met by the great Arctic currents, which act as channels to
carry off the ice of the Polar basin. These currents carry with them
vast masses of ice, which they deposit on all the coasts which they
strike. On the results of many Norwegian, Russian, and German voyages,
partly in the interests of science, partly in the interests of commerce,
many geographers maintained that the traces of the Gulf Stream did not
disappear at the North Cape, but rather that it exercised a considerable
influence on places and in latitudes not before imagined, as, for
instance, on the north-east coasts of Novaya Zemlya. An expedition,
therefore, which followed the course of the warmer waters of the Gulf
Stream would find fewer and less formidable obstacles, than on the routes
exposed to the Arctic currents, carrying with them colossal masses of
ice towards the south. On the east of Spitzbergen there is a land which
has, indeed, been often seen, but never reached, or even attempted to
be reached—Gillis’ Land—lying in the course of the Gulf Stream; and it
is a probable assumption, that navigable water would be found under its
western coast, as at Spitzbergen, where 80° N. Lat. can be reached every
year without any difficulty. If, then, this stream extends still further
to the north—which is probable according to the soundings taken by the
Swedes—it is reasonable to expect that higher latitudes may be reached on
this than on any other route.
3. It is remarkable, that the seas between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya
were utterly unknown to science. No expedition had ever been sent
thither, though many things seemed to invite and favour the venture,
and Dr. Petermann had long endeavoured to organize a powerful and
well-equipped expedition to explore higher latitudes on this route. At
length Lieutenant Weyprecht and I undertook a voyage of reconnaissance to
those waters, in order to ascertain whether the climate and the state of
the ice were as favourable in reality, as they seemed to be in theory.
No attempt was to be made to reach high latitudes or to make important
geographical discoveries. The small means at our command forbade either.
Our aims were more limited; they referred to the temperature of the
water and the air, to the currents, to the state of the ice, to the
probability of success in the following year (1872), and lastly, to
opportunities for extended sledge journeys. We were to sail from Tromsoe
about the middle of June, and return thither by the middle of September.
4. In order to diminish expenses, we chartered at Tromsoe a small sailing
ship. A steamer would, indeed, have been more serviceable, but the cost
would have been quadrupled, without any adequate advantage. The _Isbjörn_
(i.e., Ice-bear) was a vessel of fifty tons, cutter-rigged, 55 feet long,
17 feet broad, with a draught of 6 feet. Her bows were protected with
sheet-iron, two feet above, and two feet under, water. She was new and
strong, and made with us her first voyage. We had also two small boats,
and a so-called “Fang-boot”—whale-boat. She was commanded by Captain
Kjelsen, and had as a crew a harpooner, four sailors, a carpenter, and
a cook—all Norwegians. We were provided with the requisite instruments
by the Imperial Geographical Institute, and were provisioned for four
or five months. The Austrian Consul Aagaard aided us to the utmost of
his ability in the equipment of the vessel. It must be observed, that
we had no direct command or control over the vessel and its crew; the
responsibility for the ship, and the immediate command over its crew,
belonged to the skipper Kjelsen. Weyprecht was, however, the real
commander.
5. The information we gathered concerning the state of the ice in the
region of our projected exploration, was exceedingly contradictory.
While, for example, Dr. Bessels, in the steamer _Albert_, of Rosendal,
discovered a branch of the Gulf Stream with a temperature of 41° F. at
the ice-barrier on the south of Gillis’ Land, Dr. Petermann sent us a
letter of Lamont, in which he said: “Every year the ice appears to me
more formidable.” The whalers of Tromsoe, who knew the ice of that region
only from hearsay, and could give no positive information as to its
limits, uttered many unfavourable prognostications as to the possibility
of penetrating that frozen sea, or of approaching Gillis’ Land from the
south. The region was utterly unknown, even to many skippers who sailed
from Spitzbergen to Novaya Zemlya. The few attempts to penetrate to that
land, first seen in 1707, and regarded by the Swedes as a continent, had
been unsuccessful. So also their efforts to reach it from the south-west
in 1864 and 1868. Captain Koldewey’s attempt also, which was made from
the “Thousand Isles” three months before the last-named voyage, had been
attended with the same want of success. None of these expeditions had
passed beyond the ice-barrier, and their failures contributed greatly to
strengthen the opinion, that the Novaya Zemlya seas were unnavigable.
6. All our inquiries were met also with the prediction of an exceedingly
unfavourable year for the ice. The spring of 1871 had been unusually
severe, and even to the middle of June the northern parts of Norway were
covered with a mantle of snow reaching down to the sea. It was inferred,
therefore, that there would be an excessive accumulation of ice in the
seas further north. We heard even, that there was ice at the distance
of about twenty (Norwegian) miles from North Cape. And it was certainly
true, that the north winds, which prevailed for some weeks, kept a number
of Norwegian fishing and seal-hunting vessels weatherbound off the
“Scheeren.” All this notwithstanding, we determined to keep to our plan
of sailing to Hope Island, and of following from thence the ice-barrier
towards the east, our progress, of course, being dependent on favourable
conditions of the ice, and perhaps on the influences of the Gulf Stream.
As it was within the verge of possibility to make Gillis’ Land during the
season of our operations, we considered it advisable not to pass beyond
40° E. Long. while we penetrated northward.
7. On the 20th of June we left Tromsoe during a drizzling snow-storm, and
while we were sailing up the “Qualsund” without a pilot, we touched the
ground—a danger we incurred from the desire of our married sailors to put
their wives ashore, after leave-taking, as near the land as possible. At
Rysoe we fell in with the fleet of the Tromsoe fishing-boats at anchor,
waiting for a change of weather, and with them some vessels which, we
thought, would have been by this time in the ice, having left Tromsoe
four weeks before.
[Illustration: THE FIRST ICE]
8. The rocky islands off the coast of Finnmark are surrounded by bleak
cliffs, rising to the height of 2,500 feet, and upwards. Trees cease
to grow there; occasionally the birch appears, but never in sufficient
numbers to form a wood. The numerous islands of a gneiss formation
show the same landscape which characterizes Norway—indescribably bleak
table-lands, deep secluded valleys and gorges, interspersed with lonely
mountain lakes. The bold, picturesque outlines of these islands are
exceedingly striking, though their fertility is meagre in the extreme.
The solitary rocky shores are inhabited by poor families, secluded from
the world, and having little intercourse with each other. They live for
the most part on the fish which they catch. The remains of fish round
these settlements render their approach exceedingly disagreeable; on the
Loffoden Islands a guano manufactory has been established, which turns
this refuse to good account. Tromsoe or Hammerfest appears in their eyes
as the glory and pride of the world. We were detained two days—June 24
and 25—by contrary winds, at Sandoe, an island covered with sea-sand
full of small mussel shells, to the height of 600 feet. Ascending an
elevated peak of this island, 2,000 feet high, we saw a panorama of
countless cliffs of all sizes stretching down to Andeness, and opposite
to us, the gloomy, rugged wastes of Norway, which show iron-bound walls,
waterfalls, and bleak headlands, without woods, meadows, or habitations.
For many hours we were mocked by an eagle, which, now soaring high, now
darting down with rapid flight, gave his unwieldy pursuers a stiff and
exhausting climb. We at last put to sea on the 26th of June, and passed
the enormous rocky pile of Fugloe, down the precipitous face of which the
inhabitants descend by means of ropes to get the down of the Eider-geese.
Next day we were out of sight of land. The breeze freshened, and, as we
sailed further to the north, we saw many whales. On the 28th of June we
came on the _first ice_—a sight which reminds the Polar navigator that he
has reached his home! Driven down by the north wind, its fragments lay
thickly on the misty horizon like gleaming points. We were now south-east
of Bear Island in 73° 40′ N. Lat. and 21° E. Long., and found the ice so
broken up that we did not hesitate to penetrate it, in order to find out
the latitude in which its closed masses would appear. We passed through
forty miles of this loose drift-ice, and then came on the pack in 74° 30′
N. Lat. and 23° E. Long. Already, on the 30th of June, we had experienced
the powerlessness of a small sailing vessel in such circumstances. The
calms which had set in rendered it impossible to steer the ship, just
when the ice was drifting in wild confusion. In spite of all our efforts
to warp, the ship was inclosed by ice—in fact, _beset_. During our
captivity of ten days, there was an alternation of fogs and gales with
heavy sea-swells. The neighbourhood of floes sometimes small, sometimes
large, which constantly shifted their places, kept us in a state of
continual watchfulness. The _Isbjörn_, on some of these days, sustained
such severe pressures from the ice, that her safety was imperilled. On
the 4th of July we had heavy storms from the south-east, which packed
the ice still closer, and, though the sea is generally quite calm within
the ice, it was otherwise on this occasion. In the afternoon we heard
through the dense fog the thunder of the ocean breaking on the outer
edge of the ice, and the roar increased as the sea rose. Our attempts to
haul further into the ice and still-water were fruitless; the ship was
pressed too firmly, and was not to be moved from its place. Our position
became more and more critical as the sea continued to rise. During the
whole night the waves roared and boiled around us. The rudder groaned
under the pressure of the floes, and had to be made fast to prevent its
being broken off. A mass of ice grazing past the davits utterly destroyed
one of our boats. The critical nature of such a situation is simply
the uncertainty as to the amount of pressure which a ship can sustain.
Towards evening the fog lifted and rolled away, presenting a spectacle
of fearful grandeur. All round us lay the open sea dashing against the
ice, which was itself in wild motion. Floes and icebergs were driven
about by the waves, and their fragments strewed in all directions. At
midnight our little ship sustained shock after shock, and her timbers
strained and creaked. The “brash” of the crushed ice, which had gathered
round the ship, prevented her destruction. As the storm abated, the
larger masses of ice moved off to the edge of the horizon, so that in the
morning we could not see open water from the deck. The day broke: what
a change in the ice! The sea was calm, and a long swell died out on its
outer edge. Piles of ice all round us,—a weird and deathlike calm! The
heavens were cloudless; the countless blocks and masses of ice stood out
against the sky in blue neutral shadow, and the more level fields between
them sparkled like silver as they shone in the sun. The movement of the
sea beyond the ice abated, “leads” within the floes, hitherto scarcely
perceptible, widened out. But again the sky was overcast, the sea assumed
the colour of lead, though it continued quite calm and the “ice-blink”
appeared on the northern horizon.
9. On the 10th of July the ship under full sail forced her way through
the floes, which were still somewhat close, and reached open water. The
masses of ice through which we pressed were of considerable size. We now
continued our course, which had been interrupted in the manner described,
along the ice-barrier in a north-easterly direction. After leaving the
Norwegian coast, the depth of the sea decreased considerably. We were
now on the bank of Bear Island, and we found bottom at 90 metres (49·213
fathoms). Our course was impeded by calms, currents and winds from the
east, and even in the middle of July by severe storms. We were sometimes
in drift-ice and sometimes outside of it. We soon discovered that the
ice of these seas was not to be compared with the vast masses of the
Greenland seas. The floes we saw were not more than one year old. As we
sailed eastward, the icebergs were neither so numerous nor so large,
and disappeared almost entirely at 40° E. Long., which we reached on
the 21st of July, after we had followed the ice-barriers from 74° to
75° 30′ N. Lat. Here we penetrated within them. Though drift-ice lay on
every side, a steamer would have found nothing to arrest her progress.
But the prevalence sometimes of east winds, sometimes of calms, the
constant occurrence of fogs, the defects of our vessel, the little
authority we had over the crew when extraordinary labour was demanded,
the great extent of the region to be explored,—all these difficulties
prevented our pressing on in this direction. We therefore turned, July
22, in a westerly direction, in order to explore another opening in the
ice, into which we advanced for about fifteen miles, and found floes
not more than a year old lying so loosely together, that our ship under
full sail seemed to pass over them, much in the same fashion as a sledge
glides over a snow-covered plain. But again our course had to be altered,
and Weyprecht steered the vessel in a south-westerly direction to the
ice-barrier. In 76° 30′ N. Lat. and 29° E. Long. we came on high and
close masses of ice, and escaped with much difficulty (July 29) the
danger of being again “beset.”
10. We had meantime been convinced that, though the state of the ice
was on the whole so favourable, we could not, with the means at our
command and with a crew not trained to habits of obedience, do more
than carry out our original intention. We could not make up for the
defects of our sailing craft by any special exertion on the part of the
crew. Could we have done this, we might have penetrated further in a
northerly direction; though at this late period of the summer we could
not calculate on being able to return, and by the end of October our
provisions would have been exhausted. We could only, therefore, attempt
to reach Gillis’ Land, and ascertain whether it possessed the importance
attributed to it by the Swedes. A safe harbour had therefore to be
sought, in which the ship might be left, while a party in a boat should
make for the mysterious land. Such a harbour we expected to find at Cape
Leigh-Smith. We therefore held to the westward, towards the Stor-Fiord.
It is an extremely hazardous thing, demanding incessant attention, to
tack and cruise at the ice-barrier during the continuance of fogs and
with heavy seas and unfavourable winds. Not unfrequently, the ice-blink
is seen all round the horizon, and we discover that we have come into a
great “ice-hole,” or a calm makes it impossible to steer the ship, just
when a strong current is bearing her into the thickest of the ice-masses.
We had our share of these and other risks till we suddenly beheld, while
sailing in a fog among icebergs a hundred feet high, the long stretching
plateau of Hope Island. According to Weyprecht’s observations, there is
an error of 40′ in latitude in the position of this island on the Swedish
maps. The real position of the south-west cape of Hope Island is 76° 29′
N. Lat., and 25° E. Long. Seduced by a great opening in the ice, and
deviating from our course for a short time, we advanced in a northerly
direction to the east of the island, in the hope of reaching Gillis’ Land
from thence. But after sailing in a fog for a whole day among icebergs
lying close to the cliffs of the island, we were driven further westward,
and coming suddenly on the ice—Lat. 76° 30′—with an exceedingly high
sea, escaped being dashed to pieces as by a miracle. To penetrate
here was an impossibility. We therefore altered our course again for
Walter-Thymen’s Straits. A dense girdle of ice several miles deep, and a
strong current setting towards the south-west, frustrated every attempt
to land on Hope Island. To the west of this we found the ice-barrier in
76° N. Lat., formed of heavy pack-ice, and small icebergs. Our passage
to the South Cape (Cape Look-out) of Spitzbergen (76° 30′ N. Lat.) was
comparatively quick. Numerous cliffs and rocks on which the waves were
breaking, not marked on any chart, rose in the night of August 4 out of
the fog at the distance of a few ships’ lengths from us, and it was with
the utmost difficulty that we could tack with the heavy sea and strong
north-east wind.
11. The day after, when the heavy storm-clouds lifted from the table-land
of Cape Look-out, we made the unpleasant discovery, that we were to the
south-west of it. Hitherto we had been sailing in dense fog, but after
passing this Cape we had almost unbroken sunshine, which illuminated
the whole western side of Spitzbergen up to Prince Charles’s foreland.
A current one or two miles wide, which flows southward, turns at Cape
Look-out and flows in a northerly direction. At this Cape, which is the
apex of the current, besides many rocks on which the waves break, there
are twenty islands, some of them of considerable size. This promontory,
which has been of great importance to navigators for more than 200
years, is erroneously represented in the charts I have seen. Many
ships, therefore, have been wrecked at this place, chiefly those of the
Spitzbergen whalers and sealers, who base their sailing on making this
headland, though they are ignorant of its exact geographical position.
Thrice we tried at the beginning of August to reach the Stor-Fiord from
the western side of Cape Look-out, and thrice we were driven back by this
current, though the wind was in our favour. This, however, gave us an
opportunity we had not expected, of seeing something of the west coast
of Spitzbergen with its fiords and glaciers as far as Horn Sound. A fog,
as dense as coal smoke, floats almost always over “Hornsundstind” (4,500
ft. high) and the pyramid of Haytand. The slopes, clothed in dull green,
running down to the coast, make Spitzbergen seem scarcely an Arctic land
when compared with the cold grandeur of Greenland. The rocky shores of
the northern parts of Norway are more dreary, and wear more the aspect
of Arctic regions than Spitzbergen. Hence General Sabine, comparing
Spitzbergen with Greenland, called it “a true paradise.”
12. On the 10th of August the ice began to move out from the Stor-Fiord.
It pushed on with great velocity from the north-east, turned round Cape
Look-out, and deposited itself along the west coast, covering it with
thick layers in sixteen hours. On the 12th of the month, in consequence
of the fog and strong current, we found ourselves between the heavy
drift-ice and the reefs of Cape Look-out. According to our reckoning we
should have been twenty-five miles to the east of it. It was only by
boldly charging the drift-ice, with the vessel under full sail, that the
_Isbjörn_ escaped the danger of being beset. On the 13th the wind chopped
round, and, standing away to the south, we succeeded, after cruising
about for ten days, in running into Wyde-Jans Water. Our involuntary
detention off Cape Look-out enabled us to land twice. During one of these
visits we built a cairn, in which we deposited a notice of the course we
had steered. The hasty survey we made enabled us to correct some very
gross errors in the maps. On the evening of the 14th we sighted Edge
Island, and cruised in the drift-ice, which was becoming gradually more
dense in that direction. Here we fell in with two ships from Finland,
engaged in the capture of the walrus, and learnt from their skippers some
particulars concerning the state of the ice, which induced us to give up
the direct course to Cape Leigh-Smith, and to prefer coasting along the
west side of the Fiord.
13. The ice was now more packed. The ship, weakened by numerous
ice-pressures and countless shocks, and making much water, was in so bad
a condition, that part of the bows under the water-line was shattered,
and some timbers of the hull were forced in. In order to give some notion
of the force of the shocks to which we had been exposed in forcing our
course through the ice, let it suffice to say, that the iron plating an
inch thick, with which the bows had been strengthened at Tromsoe, had
been broken off like so many chips.
14. Tacking up against the north wind we came, in the night of August
16, on broken ice off Whale’s Bay, in 77° 30′ N. Lat. The expected free
coast-water was not to be found, and the prevailing winds from the north
took away any hope of reaching Cape Leigh-Smith in less than a week.
Our plan of a boat expedition, for which three weeks would have been
necessary, from Cape Leigh-Smith to explore Gillis’ Land, had now to
be renounced; and as the southern extremity of Stor-Fiord is generally
blocked up at the end of August by an accumulation of ice brought from
the east, we were constrained to leave the fiord at once, and return to
the ice-barrier we had left.
15. The geological formation of the western coast of this fiord has never
been explored. From a visit to the land and the ascent of a mountain
2,000 feet high, we learnt some interesting facts concerning its Jurassic
formation, which appeared to extend far to the south. We found traces, at
some distance apart, of the more recent brown coal, and fossil remains
(Bivalves in ferruginous chalk-marl); we gathered also some plants
still in flower, and brought away some red snow. This excursion enabled
us also to examine the beautifully-developed glaciers of Spitzbergen.
Hornsundstind (4,500 feet high) is a most imposing mountain, and viewed
from the east resembles a sugar-loaf. The other mountains on the
coast of the fiord rise to heights varying from 2,000 to 4,000 feet.
Noble glaciers slope down both sides of the main ridge, which runs in
a southerly direction through the island. Some of these, when they
reach the sea, are three or four miles wide, and their terminal fronts
are about 80 feet high. The snow-line of those which debouch on the
Stor-Fiord is at an altitude of 1,000 feet, and their surface is little
broken by crevasses. None of these glaciers are of sufficient size to
shed icebergs, properly speaking. The sea close to the coast is shallow,
and the detachments from the glaciers are merely larger or smaller blocks
of ice.
16. On the evening of August 16, sailing before the wind, we forced our
way through the ice of the Stor-Fiord, and two days afterwards arrived
at Hope Island, the steep, rocky walls of which rose out of the fog just
as we were close under it. We found the icebergs still firmly grounded,
precisely as we had observed them three weeks before. As an unusually
strong current was running towards the south-west at the rate of two
miles an hour, great caution was needed when we landed in the whale-boat
amid rocks and cliffs not marked on any chart. The geological formation
of the island was identical with that of the mountainous region on the
south of Whale’s Bay. We found brown coal, but the shortness of our visit
did not permit us to inspect the beds of it. Drift-wood of Siberian larch
and pine lay in great quantities on the shore.
17. It was surprising to observe the change which meanwhile had taken
place; the ice both to the west and east of us had disappeared. We were
eager to find it, and again penetrated as far as possible into it. We
tacked about on the 19th, 20th, and 21st of August—the weather being
stormy—with little success against the north wind, which had prevailed
for some weeks. A current from the north drove us constantly southwards.
After leaving the Stor-Fiord the temperature of the water exceeded the
temperature of the air. On the 22nd of August, in 76° 45′ N. Lat. and 28°
30′ E. Long. we found very little drift-ice, which standing out but a
few inches above the water-level presented no impediment to navigation.
Nothing but contrary winds stood in the way of our penetrating in a
northerly direction, except, indeed, the doubts and fears raised by
our skipper and his crew at our attempting higher latitudes at so late
a period of the year. König Karl’s Land lay only forty miles to the
north—still invisible on account of the mists. Fresh traces of Polar
bears announced the neighbourhood of land. We therefore bore away to
the east in 32° E. Long. on the 24th of August—the day on which the sun
set for the first time. The number of icebergs constantly increased
from this date, while some weeks previously, in the same region, we had
scarcely seen one. This, perhaps, is to be explained from the fact, that
their appearance is irregular, depending on the varying movement of the
glaciers, and also on the time and manner in which the icebergs clear out
from the bays and fiords. On the 26th we had stormy weather, rain, and
snow. On the 27th, amid a dense fog, and with the sea running high, we
came close to an iceberg, against which the sea was dashing itself in
foam and spray, just in time to avert a collision. On the 29th of August
we perceived that the ship had been carried 1° 30′ eastward in a short
time by a current. The further we sailed in this easterly direction, the
further northward the ice retreated, and we began to hope that we should
come nearer the Pole than any ship ever had in this sea. The southern
limit of the ice-barrier in the Novaya Zemlya seas, towards the end of
summer, is usually placed at 76° N. Lat., but we had reached 78° N. Lat.,
with 42° E. Long., without seeing (August 30th) a fragment of ice. The
_Isbjörn_ had, therefore, penetrated 100 miles in seas hitherto unknown.
There was still a long heavy swell from the north, but the temperature of
the water had fallen 4½° within twenty-four hours, and it was no longer
of an ultramarine, but of a dirty green colour; so that, notwithstanding
the sanguine expectations we had cherished, we expected every moment to
come on pack-ice. Already, too, the “ice-blink” was visible here and
there on the horizon.
18. Whales, secure from persecution in this remote sea, seemed to abound;
we saw many “blowing” and spouting. They came sometimes in pairs close to
the ship. Their chase and capture might have been carried on here with
every hope of success. On the morning of the 31st of August we saw six
Eider-geese, the precursors of near land. A blue shadow on the eastern
sky arrested the attention of us all for a long time. We felt as if we
were on the brink of great discoveries. But, alas! the supposed land
dissolved into mist. The poverty of our equipment prevented us from
penetrating further. We might easily have been driven onwards by unknown
currents, and the ice closing behind us might have cut off return to
Europe. We could not be assured that we had not come upon a bight, or
_cul-de-sac_, stretching far to the north, and which might quickly change
its character. On the night of August 31, in 78° N. Lat., the ice lay in
some places loose and widely dispersed, in others it was more compact,
but nowhere was it in great masses; it scarcely rose above the horizon,
and it was entirely without icebergs. There was nothing to prevent a
vessel with steam power from penetrating further.
19. Still following the ice-barrier as it retreated northwards, we
passed beyond 78° 30′ N. Lat. in the night of August 31. The influence
of the high latitudes we had reached, on the duration of light, was
unmistakable. For some days, however, the temperature had fallen below
32° F., a coating of snow lay on the deck, and the rigging was covered
with ice like glass. The morning of the 1st of September broke; about
half-past three o’clock fresh breezes from the north drove off the mist,
and revealed one of those pictures peculiar to the high north from its
dazzling effects of colour—the beams of the sun in glowing splendour were
piercing through heavy masses of clouds, while the moon shone on the
opposite side of the heavens. An ice-blink resembling an Aurora lay on
the north.
20. We had reached 78° 38′ N. Lat., and yet the ice around us presented
no serious impediment—none at least as far as we could see. Should we
then venture further with our ship in its weakened condition? We might
still follow up an opening within the ice running northward, though, in
doing this, we should expend the time needed for the exploration of the
eastward-lying Novaya Zemlya seas. We determined therefore to bear away
to the east before some currents of loose drift-ice. But fog and a high
sea from the north-west caused us to alter our course more and more to
the south-east. For the first time in these high latitudes we observed
drift-wood, and we found ourselves in a sea, the temperature of which
at the surface did not materially exceed the temperature of the air.
Whenever, however, the temperature of the air rose, a thaw suddenly set
in. The colour of the sea alternated between blue and a dull green. A
few days previously we had passed over a sea extraordinarily rich in the
ribbed Medusæ (Beroë), and where the Rorqual (whale) abounded.
21. The great question now arose, whether the open water found in these
high latitudes were only an accidental bight in the ice or a connected
sea. It seemed bold to assume the latter, since 76° 30′ N. Lat. had never
before been passed in that region. In order, therefore, to arrive at some
positive conclusion on this point, we stood away from the ice at noon
of the 1st of September, and ran down in open water to 75° 52′ N. Lat.
and 51° 44′ E. Long., intending to return to the north again, in order
to explore the state of the ice to the north-east. Overcoming with much
difficulty the opposition of our skipper, we returned to the edge of the
ice, which we found, September 5th, in 78° 5′ N. Lat. and 56° E. Long.
Though there was not much wind, a high sea running on the ice compelled
us to leave it. In our course to the south-east we crossed 77° 30′ N.
Lat. and 59° E. Long.; here, also, to the south of 78°, there was no ice.
To penetrate further to the east formed no part of our plan, and since
another attempt to return to the ice would have been objectless, for the
reasons above stated, we proposed to run into a bight on the west coast
of Novaya Zemlya to take in fuel and water, which we urgently needed. The
longer nights now made it almost impossible to manœuvre a ship in the
ice when the winds were high, though a good steamer might have persisted
for some time longer. The temperature of the sea on the 5th of September
was 39° F. in Lat. 77° 30′, and on the 8th of the month, when we were in
sight of Cape Nassau, it reached 41° F.
22. Storms compelled us to keep to sea. As a current constantly set us
to the north-east, we found it not possible to land on Novaya Zemlya,
scarcely even to see it. On the night of September 12th we came into
the region where the equatorial and Polar air-currents meet, and had an
opportunity of observing the hurricane-like effects of their conjunction.
The barometer fell about two inches, and the sea was so broken that the
ship could hardly be steered, even with a fresh wind. On September 14th
we were off Matoschkin Schar, and could not anchor, a snow-storm from the
north-east completely hiding the coast. The change, which meantime had
taken place in the sky, was strange and remarkable. Heavy thunder-clouds
lay over our heads, just as they do in the region of the trade-winds, and
every moment threatened to discharge themselves. On the 13th of September
we saw the first Aurora, in the shape of an arch, passing through, our
zenith. The want of fuel and water, from which we began to suffer, and
the end of the season for navigation, compelled us to avail ourselves of
the favourable wind which had set in, and begin our voyage home, without
landing on Novaya Zemlya. On this same day three of our crew of seven
men fell ill, one of them with scurvy. A heavy storm from the north-east
compelling us to heave to, we lay close under the coast of Lapland for a
whole day. On the 20th of September we ran into Tana Fiord on the east
of North Cape, the most northerly point of Europe, and took in water.
The gloomy cliffs of Tanahorn and the rocky iron-bound coasts were not
at all behind the lands we had left in their terrible desolation. On the
24th of August the _Isbjörn_ passed North Cape; on the 4th of October
she anchored in Tromsoe. Weyprecht had remained on board while, with a
Lapland sailor who could speak Norwegian, I left the ship in Tana Fiord
and went on to Tromsoe through Lapland, sometimes by means of a small
boat on the shallow rivers and sometimes by means of reindeer sledges.
23. It had formed no part of our plan, either to make discoveries, or to
reach high latitudes. Our object was to investigate whether the Novaya
Zemlya seas offered greater facilities, either from the influence of the
Gulf Stream, or from any other causes, for penetrating the unexplored
Polar regions. Many arguments, derived from the scientific results of
our voyage, would seem to favour this idea, and in contradiction to the
discouraging views of our predecessors, whose failures are explained by
their defective equipment and the choice of the most unfavourable season
for navigation, we ventured to draw the following inferences:
(1.) The Novaya Zemlya Sea is not filled with impenetrable ice, rendering
navigation impossible; on the contrary, it is open every year, probably
up to 78° of N. Lat., and is connected with the Sea of Kara, which is
also free from ice in autumn, and even, it may be, with the “Polynjii,”
in the North of Asia. If this inference should not be admitted, the
following remarks of Lieutenant Weyprecht, in anticipation of objections,
are put forward as worthy of consideration:—“In all probability the
open condition of the ice in 1871 will be ascribed to chance, or to an
especially favourable ice-year. With respect to the latter alternative,
the accounts given by the walrus-hunters of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya
should convince us, that the year 1871 was not only not a favourable,
but a most unfavourable year in the ice. It was almost impossible to
navigate Wyde-Jans Water, and the Sea of Kara could only be reached
through the most southerly straits—the Jugorsky Straits. There remains,
therefore, only the other objection, that the accident of favourable
winds was the cause of our penetrating so far. But our meteorological
journal shows North, or at any rate Northerly winds, and often, too,
blowing freshly, from August 4th to September 5th, with the exception of
twelve watches, _i.e._ two days. But in no case could these winds have
driven the ice to the north. With respect to the loose character of the
ice we encountered, it might be said, that we saw only the outer ice.
But, in the first place, we were often so far within the barrier that it
would be inadmissible to speak of it as the outer ice; and, in the second
place, the ice-barrier shows the state of the ice behind it. Whenever the
wind lies against the ice, there the ice is always the most dense and
packed, and we find open places only when we have worked our way through
the outer ice.”
(2.) The time most favourable for navigation in this sea falls at the end
of August, and lasts—though rendered hazardous by storms, the formation
of young ice, and the darkness which supervenes at that season—till the
end of September, and during this period the ice may be said to be at its
minimum.
(3.) The Novaya Zemlya Sea is a shallow sea—a connection and continuation
of the great plains of Siberia. In the extreme north, its depth was 600
feet, and south-east of Gillis’ Land about 300 feet.
(4.) Gillis’ Land is not a continent, but either an island or a group of
islands. Whereas, from the circumstance that in the highest latitudes—in
79° N. Lat.—we found drift-wood covered with mud, sea-weed, creatures
which live only near the land, decreasing depths of the sea, sweet-water
ice and icebergs laden with dirt, it may be inferred, with great
probability, that there exist masses of land to the north-east of Gillis’
Land.
(5.) The appearance of Siberian drift-wood, only in the most northern
seas reached in our voyage, seems to point to an easterly current there.
(6.) The Russian expeditions in the past and present centuries, which
attempted to penetrate by the north-west coast of Novaya Zemlya,
miscarried, because they sailed before the favourable season for
navigation, and also because they had not the advantage of steam.
(7.) How far the Gulf Stream has any share or influence in the favourable
conditions for the navigation of the Eastern Polar Sea which have been
described, cannot as yet be positively determined. The state of the
ice, the observations which were made on the temperature of the sea,
its colour and the animal life found in it, seem to speak in favour of
the action of this current in that region. It is possible that the Gulf
Stream may exercise its culminating influence on the west coast of Novaya
Zemlya only at the beginning of September; for while the temperature of
the sea in the months of July and August gradually fell from 45° F. to
36° F. in Lat. 75° N., and to zero and below it, still more to the north,
we observed 39° F., September 6, in Lat. 78°, and 41° F., September
10, in Lat. 75° 30′. The temperature of the air was in all these cases
considerably less than that of the water. If the unusually favourable
state of the ice on the east of Spitzbergen should be ascribed to warm
southerly currents of air, it may be replied that our observations
specify the almost uninterrupted occurrence of north winds. It is also
possible, that at the beginning and middle of summer the Gulf Stream may
move slowly in a northerly direction along the coasts of Novaya Zemlya,
and that towards autumn it spreads itself more and more to the west. Our
observations proved the existence, in the eastern Novaya Zemlya seas,
of a band of warm water, from thirty-six to forty feet deep, beneath
which lies, without gradation, a colder stratum. It is evident that the
unequal density of these strata prevents their mingling. This band of
warmer water near North Cape is about 150 feet deep, with a temperature
of nearly 45° F., but diminishes as it flows northward. The frequency
of fogs and mists in the Novaya Zemlya Sea, and the squalls unknown
to other Arctic regions, which are characteristic of a more southerly
region, indicate also a current of warm water. How this warm current
gradually cools towards the north, and becomes shallower, and how
distinctly it divides into those strata of water of equal temperature,
so characteristic of the Gulf Stream, is shown by three series of
observations taken by Weyprecht at different latitudes, with the maximum
and minimum thermometer of Casella:—
72° 30′ lat., 44° long.|77° 26′ lat., 44° long.|76° 40′ lat., 55° long.
12 to 114′ + 4·8° C. | 6′ to 30′ + 2·2° C. | 6′ to 39′ + 2·5° C.
144 + 2·5 | 36 + 1·8 | 48 + 1·0
174 + 2·0 | 45 + 0·3 | 60 - 0·0
204 + 1·5 | 60 + 0·3 | 72 - 0·6
234 + 1·3 | 75 - 0·9 | 90 - 0·6
264 + 1·0 | 90 - 0·8 | 120 - 1·3
294 + 0·5 | 120 - 1·6 | 180 - 1·2
360 + 0·5 | 180 - 1·8 | 300 - 1·2
450 + 0·0 | 360 - 1·6 |
600 - 0·4 | |
800 - 1·3 | |
24. These inferences rendered the despatch of a well-equipped expedition
to the Novaya Zemlya seas very desirable, either to penetrate towards
the north, or to pursue the direction of the north-east passage. To this
idea a most gracious reception was given by the Emperor of Austria.
Hence arose the Austro-Hungarian expedition of 1872. The promoters of
this undertaking assumed neither the existence of an open Polar Sea,
nor the possibility of reaching the Pole by sledge or boat expeditions.
Their object, simply and broadly stated, was the exploration of the
still unknown Arctic regions, and it was their belief, that a vessel
could penetrate further into this region by the route between Novaya
Zemlya and Spitzbergen, where the _Isbjörn_ in her pioneer voyage found
the ice more loose and navigable than had been imagined possible. But
in addition to the causes already specified, the influence of the warm
currents, produced by the great rivers of Siberia discharging themselves
into a shallow sea, was also supposed to co-operate in producing this
phenomenon. Of these rivers, the Obi and Jenisej alone discharge
into that shallow sea a body of water as great as the waters of the
Mediterranean or the waters of the Mississippi. The course of the current
produced by these mighty rivers is as yet unknown; but it was natural
to suppose, that old and heavy pack-ice could not be formed on a coast
submitted to such an influence. This is confirmed by the observations
of the Russians, who in the coldest period of the year always find
open water in the Siberian seas. Middendorf, August 26, 1844, found the
Gulf of Taimyr quite free from ice; our own observations, made in 60°
E. Long., and those of the Norwegian Mack, who advanced to 81° E. Long.
(75° 45′ N. Lat.), support the supposition of a still navigable sea. Of
the region between Cape Tscheljuskin and the ice-free spaces asserted
to exist by Wrangel, and others, we know but little; but it is probable
that the character of the ice in those seas does not greatly differ from
the character of the ice in contiguous seas. Of the seas between Novaya
Zemlya and Behring’s Straits, at the distance of a few miles from the
Asiatic coast, nothing is known. No ship has ever navigated this enormous
Eastern Polar Sea.
25. It was the plan of the Austro-Hungarian expedition to penetrate in
an E.N.E. direction, in the latter half of August, when the north coast
of Novaya Zemlya is generally free from ice. The places at which the
expedition was to winter were left undetermined; these might, possibly,
be Cape Tscheljuskin, the new Siberian islands, or any lands which might
be discovered. A return to Europe through Behring’s Straits, however
improbable it might be, lay among the possibilities of the venture.
Minor details were left to circumstances. In the event of the loss of
the ship, the expedition was to endeavour to reach the coast of Siberia
by boats, and, on one of the gigantic water-courses of Northern Asia,
penetrate into more southern regions. The depôt of provisions and coals
which it was Graf Wilczek’s intention to deposit on the north coast of
Novaya Zemlya, was to be the nearest refuge for the crew in the event of
disaster to the ship. Stone cairns were to be erected on all prominent
localities, and in these were to be laid accounts of the course of the
expedition. Till its return at the end of the autumn of 1874, its members
were to be cut off from all intercourse with Europe. The motives of an
undertaking so long and so laborious cannot be found in the mere love
of distinction or of adventure. Next to the wish to serve the interests
of science by going beyond the footsteps of our predecessors, we were
influenced by the duty of confirming and fulfilling the hopes which we
ourselves had excited.
VOYAGE OF THE “TEGETTHOFF.”
_JUNE, 1872-SEPTEMBER, 1874._
I.
FROM BREMERHAVEN TO KAISER FRANZ-JOSEF LAND.
CHAPTER I.
FROM BREMERHAVEN TO TROMSOE.
1. He who seeks to penetrate the recesses of the Polar world chooses a
path beset with toils and dangers. The explorer of that region has to
devote every energy of mind and body to extort a slender fragment of
knowledge from the silence and mystery of the realm of ice. He must be
prepared to confront disappointments and disasters with inexhaustible
patience, and pursue devotedly his object, even when he himself becomes
the sport of accident. That object must not be the admiration of men,
but the extension of the domain of knowledge. He spends long years in
the most dreadful of all banishments, far from his friends, from all
the enjoyments of life, surrounded by manifold perils, and bearing the
burden of utter loneliness. The grandeur therefore of his object can
alone support him,—for otherwise the dreary void of things without can
only be an image of the void within. How many are the preconceptions with
which the novice begins the voyage to the rugged, inclement north! Books
can tell him little of the stern life to which he dooms himself, as soon
as he crosses the threshold of the ice, thinking perhaps to measure the
evils that await him by the physical miseries of cold instead of by the
moral deprivations in store for him.
2. In the year 1868, while employed on the survey of the Orteler Alps, a
newspaper with an account of Koldewey’s first expedition one day found
its way into my tent on the mountain side. In the evening I held forth on
the North Pole to the herdsmen and _Jägers_ of my party as we sat round
the fire, no one more filled with astonishment than myself, that there
should be men endued with such capacity to endure cold and darkness.
No presentiment had I then that the very next year I should myself have
joined an expedition to the North Pole; and as little could Haller, one
of my _Jägers_ at that time, foresee that he would accompany me on my
third expedition. And much the same was it with the three-and-twenty men
who early in the morning of June 13, 1872, came on board the vessel in
Bremerhaven, to cast in their lot with the ship _Tegetthoff_, whatever
that lot might be; for we had all bound ourselves by a formal deed,
renouncing every claim to an expedition for our rescue, in case we should
be unable to return. Our ideal aim was the north-east passage, our
immediate and definite object was the exploration of the seas and lands
on the north-east of Novaya Zemlya.
3. A bright day rose with us, and no augur’s voice could have heightened
the glad hopes which animated every one of us. Friends from Austria and
Germany had come to bid us a last farewell; but, as every venture should
be, so our departure that morning was, quiet and without pretension.
About six o’clock in the morning the _Tegetthoff_ lifted her anchor and
dropped down the Schleusen and the Weser, towed by a steamer. Down the
broad stream we calmly glided, full of satisfaction at the fulfilment
of long-cherished plans. There lay the same pastures, the same trees
and meadows which had so delighted us on our return from Greenland. Yet
unmoved we saw all the charms of nature grow young under the morning
sun and then fade away in the evening twilight—as the land gradually
disappeared behind us, and the coasts of Germany were lost to view. With
the feeling that we were leaving them for so long a time, our thoughts
turned to our new life in the narrow limits of a ship, and the resolve
to live and labour in harmony animated each breast. How often we should
be liable to casualties which no eye could foresee, we were soon to find
out, when in almost dead calm and without steam we came on the shallow
waters of Heligoland. What would have become of the expedition, had we
not discovered in time, that we had only a few feet of water under the
keel!
4. The vessel, 220 tons burden, was fitted out for two years and a half,
but was over-freighted by about thirty tons, so that our available space
was much curtailed. Yet the cabin, which Weyprecht, Brosch, Orel, Kepes,
Krisch, and I occupied, was far more commodious than the miserable
hole in which eight of us had been crowded together on our Greenland
expedition. Our supply of coals, 130 tons, was large in proportion to
the size of the ship, being calculated not only for our daily wants, but
to enable us to keep up steam for about sixty days. But to economise
this store we used our sails, as much as possible, even in the ice. Both
ship and engine—of 100 horse power—tested in the trial trip of June 8,
sustained their character during the expedition, and did great credit to
the Tecklenborg firm.
5. The wind being unfavourable, it took us some time to cross the North
Sea and reach the coast of Norway. My journal describes this part of
our voyage. “Light winds from the south carried the _Tegetthoff_ on her
lonely course over the North Sea. In undimmed brightness the blue sky
stretched overhead, the air was balmy and mild. In the grey distance
frowns the iron rampart of countless cliffs encircling the barren wastes
of Norway. Occasionally a sea-gull comes near us, or some bird rests
on the mast-head; now and then a sail is seen on the horizon,—but save
this, no life—no event. Every one feels, though no one utters it, that a
grave future lies before him; each may hope what he wishes, for over the
future there is drawn an impenetrable veil. All, however, are animated
with the consciousness, that while serving science, we are also serving
our Fatherland, and that all our doings will be watched at home with the
liveliest sympathy.
6. “On board the _Tegetthoff_ are heard all the languages of our
country, German, Italian, Slavonic, and Hungarian; Italian, however, is
the language in which all orders are given. The crew is lighthearted
and merry: in the evening a gentle breeze carries the lively songs of
the Italians over the blue sea, glowing under the midnight sun, or the
monotonous cadence of the _Ludro_ of the Dalmatians recalls the sunny
home which they are so soon to exchange for its very opposite, which
remains a sort of mystery to all their powers of fancy. Thus begins
so peacefully our long voyage into the frozen ocean of the north. In
a few weeks the ice will grate on the bows of the _Tegetthoff_, the
crystal icebergs will surround her, and with many a strain will the good
ship force her way through the icy wastes, sometimes inclosed on every
side, sometimes free in coast-water, or threatened by the ‘ice-blink’
foreboding danger.”
7. The officers and crew of the _Tegetthoff_ amounted in all to
twenty-four souls.
Lieutenant Carl Weyprecht, }
Lieutenant Julius Payer, } _Commanders of the Expedition._
Lieutenant Gustav Brosch,[14] }
Midshipman Edward Orel, } _Officers of the Ship._
Dr. Julius Kepes, _Physician to the Expedition_.
Otto Krisch, _Engineer_.
Pietro Lusina,[15] _Boatswain_.
Antonio Vecerina, _Carpenter_.
Josef Pospischill, _Stoker_.
Johann Orasch, _Cook_.
Johann Haller, }
Alexander Klotz, } _Jägers_, from Tyrol.
Antonio Zaninovich, _Seaman_.
Antonio Catarinich, ditto.
Antonio Scarpa, ditto.
Antonio Lukinovich, ditto.
Giuseppe Latkovich, ditto.
Pietro Fallesich, ditto.
George Stiglich, ditto.
Vincenzo Palmich, ditto.
Lorenzo Marola, ditto.
Francesco Lettis, ditto.
Giacomo Sussich, ditto.
Captain Olaf Carlsen, _Icemaster and Harpooner_.
We had eight dogs on board; two we got in Lapland, the rest were
brought from Vienna.
8. Stormy weather detained us for some time among the Loffoden Isles,
so that we made Tromsoe only on July 3. Here we were received most
courteously by the Austro-Hungarian Consul, Aagaard, who invited us to
a banquet. We remained here a week, in order to complete our equipment.
The ship, which had leaked considerably ever since we left Bremerhaven,
was thoroughly examined by divers, the stores were landed, the ship
repaired and reladen. Our supply of coals was replenished, a Norwegian
whale-boat added to our equipment, and, lastly, the harpooner, Captain
Olaf Carlsen, was taken on board. On July 6 we received our last news
from Austria, letters and newspapers. The Ukase granted by the Russian
Government also arrived, drawn up both for Weyprecht and myself in case
of our being separated, a document of great importance, if the ship
should be lost and we had to return through Siberia; an issue only too
probable when the vast length and enormous difficulties of the north-east
passage were considered. While Lieutenant Weyprecht was engaged in
stopping the leak of the ship, some of us ascended—a Lapp of the name
of Dilkoa being our guide—a pinnacle of rock, 4,000 feet high, towering
over Tromsoe’s labyrinth of fiords, in order to compare our aneroid and
mercurial barometers. From the summit we beheld an enormous dark column
of smoke rising perpendicularly to the height of about 1,500 feet in the
still air—the northern extremity of Tromsoe was in flames. Most gladly
would we have learned something of the state of the ice this year; but as
yet this was impracticable, for none of the walrus hunters had returned
from their grounds in the north.
9. On the morning of Saturday, July 13, officers and crew heard mass from
a French priest, and bidding adieu to our Tromsoe friends, we left the
quiet little city, the most northerly of Europe, early on Sunday morning.
The passengers of the Hamburg mail steamer, entering the harbour as we
left it, greeted us with loud and long cheers, and steaming through the
narrow Grötsound, close under the cliffs of Sandoe and Rysoe we came into
the open sea, Captain Carlsen acting as our pilot. As we issued from
the _Scheeren_, a mist arose which covered and obscured the huge rock
of Fingloe. Here the engine fires were put out and the sails set, and
the first and last voyage, which the _Tegetthoff_ was destined to make,
began. On July 15 we steered towards the north, the Norwegian coast with
its many glaciers in full view, and on the 16th we sighted the North Cape
in the blue distance.