ICE-PRESSURES.
1. When compared with the tortures we endured from the thought that
we were captives in the ice, little to us seemed the dangers which
threatened our existence, though these assumed the appalling form of
ice-pressures. Daily almost the ship had to sustain the attacks of our
old enemy, and when the ice seemed to repose, threatening indications
were not wanting to warn us how short that repose might be. My journal
records a long series of commotions in the ice on almost every day
of January 1873, and even during the pauses the timbers of the ship
continually shook and trembled and creaked. The pressures accompanied by
a low grumbling noise were very great on the 3rd, and lasted till the
oldest ice was shattered, during which our hatchways were displaced. On
the 4th the pressures continued without intermission during the whole
day. But on the 22nd they exceeded all we had hitherto experienced. When
we awoke in the morning, the crashing of the masses of ice was dreadful.
In the messroom we heard a deep, grumbling, rumbling noise—the ship
trembled like a steam-vessel under very high pressure. When we hastened
on deck we were greeted by the long howls which issued from the ice, and
we were soon convinced of the exceedingly formidable character of this
special onset! Ten paces astern of the ship, the ice had been heaved
up in a moment into mountains. With the greatest difficulty, amid the
profound darkness that prevailed, the boats were got on board, and many
stores re-shipped, though some of our coals had to be sacrificed. A tent
formed of sails was engulfed, and our water-hole utterly displaced
by the pressures; it was only after many attempts that we succeeded
in finding a thinner ice-table, which we pierced till we found water.
January 26, again tremendous pressures roused us from sleep. In half an
hour every preparation was made to leave the ship, and I believe that
many of us, while waiting the issue amid the fearful din heard from the
deck, longed that the ship might be crushed, in order to escape from the
torture of continually preparing to depart.
[Illustration: ICE-PRESSURE IN THE POLAR NIGHT.]
2. I will not, however, fatigue the reader with the monotonous rehearsal
of our ever-recurring daily dangers, but will here insert a few passages
from my journal of that date, which will suffice to explain our position:—
“Scarcely asleep after the exhaustion and cares of the day, the timbers
of the ship begin to moan and groan close by our ear, and we awake and
lie listening to the onset of the ice. We hear the step of the watch
on deck crackling on the ice as he paces to and fro; as long as it
is measured and steady we know there is nothing to be feared. Again
that uncanny creaking in the timbers, and the watch comes to announce
to those below that the terrible movement in the ice has begun, and
once more we all spring from our beds, put on our fur clothes, seize
our ready-filled bags, and amid the darkness stand ready on deck, and
listen to the war between the ice and the elements. In autumn, when the
ice-fields were not nearly so large as in the winter, their collision was
accompanied by a deep dull sound; but now, rendered hard and brittle by
the extreme cold, a sound as of a howl of rage[19] was emitted as they
crashed together. Ever nearer come the rushing, rattling sounds, as if
a thousand heavy waggons were driving over a plain. Close under us the
ice begins to tremble, to moan and wail in every key;—as the fury of the
conflict increases, the grumbling becomes deeper and deeper, concentric
fissures open themselves round the ship, and the shattered portions
of the floes are rolled up into heaps. The intermitting howls become
fearfully rapid, announcing the acme of the conflict, and anxiously we
listen to the sound which we know too well. Then follows a crash and
crack, and many dark lines wander over the ice: these are for a moment
narrow fissures, the next moment they yawn asunder like abysses. Often
with such a crash the force of the pressure seems broken; the piles of
ice collapse, like the undermined walls of a fortress, and calm is again
restored. But to-day this was but the commencement, and with renewed
violence a second assault of the ice begins,—then a third, yea a fourth.
Tables of ice broken off from the floes around us rise perpendicularly
from the sea; some are bent under the enormous pressure, and their curved
shapes attest the elasticity of ice. Like a giant in the conflict, a
veteran floe, many winters old, crushes in its rotations its feeble
neighbours, and in turn succumbs to the mighty iceberg—the leviathan of
all ice-forms, which forces its way through a phalanx of opposing masses,
crushing them to pieces as it advances. And in this wild and fearful
tumult a ship—squeezed, pressed, all but crushed, by the ice; her crew
on deck, ready to leave her at a moment’s notice. Boats and sledges,
tents, provisions, arms and ammunition, everything prepared, if the ship
should at last be destroyed—but for what?—for an escape? No one really
thought this possible, though all were ready for the attempt. But again
the conflict ceases, and once more we breathe freely, and can contemplate
the wonderful change that has come on everything round us. A few minutes
have sufficed to create a maze of mountain chains from a plain of ice.
The flat surfaces covered with snow, which we saw yesterday, are gone.
Ice ruins are visible on every side. Abysses gape between the shattered
masses, and show the dark sea beneath. Gradually a calm has crept
over all; equilibrium is reinstated in the desolate realm of ice; new
‘leads’ and ‘ice-holes’ have been opened up, but for the _Tegetthoff_ no
liberation.”