A Voyage to the Arctic in the Whaler Aurora

by David Moore Lindsay

CHAPTER XIII—CAREY ISLANDS TO LANCASTER SOUND

"Here winter holds his unrejoicing court;

And through his airy hall the loud misrule

Of driving tempest is forever heard.

Here the grim tyrant meditates his wrath,

Here arms his winds and all-subduing frost.

Moulds his fierce hail and treasures up his snows

With which he now oppresses half the globe."

June 22nd. Sunday. It was blowing very hard from the south, and there was much ice, so we had a difficult time picking our way. The weather was also bitterly cold. Again birds were very numerous. We were making our way to Princess Charlotte's Monument on the west side, and it was slow work. The Arctic was ahead of us and not moving on any faster. We felt the loss of the relief ships. They were always a cause of some excitement, and there was a chance of finding Greely so long as we kept going north. Now that that interest was removed, I consoled myself with the knowledge that we were nearing the magnetic pole, and would soon be steaming up Lancaster Sound, the highway to the northwest along which so many brave men had gone never to return. During the afternoon it became more squally, and when I turned in we were making little headway, but the wind was going down.

June 23rd. Monday. We were steaming in tolerably open water when I came on deck. The Arctic was ahead. Birds were numerous—some geese with hundreds of eider and guillemot. After breakfast we saw land ahead, that is, to the west, and during the afternoon were within a mile or so of it,—Princess Charlotte's Monument. There was much loose ice to the south and a straight floe edge to the north of us, and to this we hooked on two hundred yards to the east of the Arctic. We did not care to go closer to the rocks lest the ice should come in on us. I saw Dr. Crawford take the Arctic's launch and go ashore to look for eggs. Returning a couple of hours after, steam went down and the Arctic was obliged to unhook and go after them. It appeared that the boiler was too exposed and the cold so intense that they simply could not keep steam up. The launch had been keeping under the lee of the floe as much as possible, and when steam went down she began to drift away from this into rough water. For a few minutes things looked bad for her, as she was a wretched sea boat with her heavy boiler and engine. During the night we unhooked and worked our way towards the south.

June 24th. Tuesday. Day fine, but blowing from the south. A lot of ice on the coast, and to the south and east all was white. We were now where whales might be seen and preparations were made. Foregoers and lines were tested, harpoons examined, guns cleaned and fired to make sure they would work, lines coiled away in boats, and every one was on the lookout. We never heard of Disco or Cape York now. All was Lancaster Sound and Pond's Bay, with weird tales of cold days spent rock-nosing off Cape Kater and in Cumberland Gulf. All these preparations did not hurry matters in the least. The king of this country decided that we should remain for a day or two where we were, and so in the evening we were hooked on almost where the morning found us.

June 25th. Wednesday. About noon the wind died down and the currents, setting south, took the ice off the coast so that we were able to crawl along a little; but a few hours later we made fast to the land floe off Cape Horsburgh, as the pack was drifting in again. We saw many walrus here, but did not like to spend time at them, as we wanted to be the first ship up the Sound. At tea time we moved along a little further and by bedtime we tied up again. Some of our tanks were pumped out and cleaned, ready for the anticipated oil. There were a number of seals in sight, but they were left alone, as the time was precious.

June 26th. Thursday. As the ship was hard and fast I took a rifle and went after some seals which were to be seen a mile away. Before going very far I found myself climbing over hummocks of old ice which had drifted down Jones Sound, and it was very difficult walking. On one side of a hummock the snow would be perfectly smooth and frozen hard, while on the other side it would be so soft that one at once went through the surface and had to clamber along in several feet of it.

Again, one would come to a perfectly rotten and honeycombed piece of ice underneath which there was a foot or two of water, and below the water could be seen the solid old floe; this made walking so difficult that I returned to the ship without getting a shot.

June 27th and 28th were uneventful. We moved little, and Cape Horsburgh was in sight all the time, but on:

June 29th, Sunday, we had a good lead along the shore floe and were steaming fast through it when I came on deck. A number of bears were seen about noon, but the wind was from the south and the ice was coming in, so we hurried along. As there were a number of them, they were probably attracted by some dead beast.

Barron tells of seeing once about one hundred bears around a dead whale. He also tells of men being devoured by these creatures.

In the days of muzzle-loaders there was more risk than there is now, because if one came suddenly upon a bear with cubs and missed his shot, there might not be time to load again.

Late in the evening we were off: Cape Warrender and were steaming amongst loose ice at bedtime. Several narwhals were seen during the afternoon, but we paid no attention to them.

June 30th. Monday. Steaming up the Sound towards a solid floe at breakfast time with many white whales in sight. We steered south along the ice edge, and seeing an Eskimo standing on it, we sailed up to him. He was a very uncouth looking individual after the smartly dressed gentlemen on the Greenland side. His clothes did not fit and he was otherwise careless about his appearance. He had in his hand a narwhal's tusk, and as we came close we heard him singing "Bonny Laddie—Highland Laddie." This he had probably learned from his parents, they having learned it from the whalers in sailing-ship days. In old times it was customary to lower the boats and tow the ship through the leads to the above tune. I was told this, so it may be true. The native came on board. He was much more like an American Indian than a Greenland Eskimo. Before he had been many minutes on board he was taken aft and relieved of his tusk by the second mate, getting in return some trifle: the gentleman belonged to Navy Board Inlet, on the south side, and not far away.

The Captain had had a lot of paddles made for some of the boats. It was possible to approach whales with very little noise when the paddles were used, so we tried them frequently for narwhal hunting. As there were numbers of these creatures in sight, we had a couple of boats out after them. A sharp lookout was kept from the crow's nest for whales coming up the Sound. We hooked on to the ice about two miles from the south shore, and put a boat out on either side of the ship and about a hundred yards away. These boats were hooked on by laying the long steering oar on the ice. Our narwhal hunters had no luck, so they came on board.

July 1st. Tuesday. We were fast to the ice with a boat on each side all day. The Captain had a long interview with the native on the subject of whales. He seemed to understand maps well, and was able to point out where he had seen fish; from what I could make out, a good number had been in the Sound. I spent the afternoon in a boat with the Captain trying to get a narwhal. We saw dozens and came pretty close to several lots, but did not get one good shot, although we fired several times.

The harpoons we used for this work were much smaller than the regular whaling harpoon and were made of the same tough Swedish iron.

Before turning in I spent an hour on deck and heard narwhals and white whales breathing about us all the time. Everything looked propitious.

July 2nd. Wednesday. I had a dream during the night that we had succeeded in killing a narwhal and that our youngest harpooner, Gyles, had killed it. Dreams were often recounted at the breakfast table, so I told this, and, as luck would have it, before dinner Gyles killed our first narwhal. My night visions were subsequently treated with great respect, except by the steward, who felt, no doubt, that I was infringing a little on his rights. A coldness sprang up between us such as only professional jealousy can create, and which evinced itself the following day when he did not ask me to help him to pick the raisins for the duff—Thursday being duff day. The forenoon success gave quite an impetus to the narwhal fishing, but no more were captured, as the elusive beasts always went down just as we were almost within shot.

The narwhal (Monodon Monoceros) is to me the most beautiful of the whale species. The one captured by us was twelve feet long without the tusk. This measured four feet in length and about four inches around the base. It ended in a rather sharp point and had a spiral groove running from right to left. The horn, or rather tooth, protrudes from the upper jaw of the male, generally on the left side. It only protrudes from the female head as a freak. On the right side a small undeveloped horn is found embedded in the skull of the male, but two undeveloped teeth are found in the female. The narwhal is the only vertebrate animal in which bilateral symmetry is not the rule. The body is whitish, marbled with blackish brown, and about four of them yield a ton of oil. With an axe I easily split the cancellous skull and removed the embedded tusk. We saw hundreds of white whales this day (Delphinapterus leucas). These are cousins of the narwhals, but generally a little larger. The Aurora had great luck the previous year up Prince Regent's Inlet in getting a good catch of them. This was managed by driving them ashore. They were skinned and the skin made into leather. Each side counted as one skin.

They go in schools like porpoises, but generally only three or four abreast, therefore, it takes a large school a considerable time to go past. They are peculiar in having no dorsal fin, and their yellowish white colour makes them rather conspicuous.

July 3rd. Thursday. 'Before breakfast a bear was seen in the water and shot by McLean from a boat. Bears are always lucky and we knew that something better would soon come. While at breakfast a female narwhal was killed. It must have been fourteen feet long. I removed the two little embedded horns. Narwhals were very difficult to capture with the appliances in use at this time, the harpoon gun being only effective at ten or fifteen yards. As the beast generally went down when one was about twenty yards away, a long shot had to be taken with a very clumsy gun. Very little of the narwhal showed above water, just the top of its head and back. Of course there was a good sized animal immediately under the water, so that a harpoon might miss the back and still lodge in the whale. It was very cold and we had several snow showers. The bear was skinned and the skin salted and put in a barrel, no attempt being made to dry or otherwise cure any of the bear skins taken during the voyage. They were kept green.

July 4th. Friday. During the night there was a fall of snow and a breeze from the east had driven some loose ice up the Sound, and pieces were constantly breaking off the floe. These drifted down the Sound with the current; but when there was wind from the east much of this broken ice would drift up and surround us. We were dodging about under canvas in the morning, and the wind, which was bitterly cold, was going down. During the forenoon we sailed up to the floe edge and hooked on about eight miles from the south side, putting two boats on the bran, that is, one on each side of the ship. The loose ice had drifted away, and as the afternoon was very fine the Captain decided to try the unies, as the narwhals were called, and I went with him. One does not generally see very many unies together, but they were in fours and fives all over the place this afternoon and very shy. Just as the boat would get within twenty-five yards or so, off they would go. The Captain made a long shot at one and got fast. For a few minutes the line ran out rapidly, but the shot had been a long one and the harpoon drew, so we came on board disappointed.

Paddles were used instead of oars, as they made less noise. On the fishing ground we avoided noise as much as possible and for this reason the ship seldom steamed, but kept her fires banked and moved about under canvas.

---