A Voyage to the Arctic in the Whaler Aurora

by David Moore Lindsay

All hands were employed making off when I came up and we had a busy day getting two whales into our tanks. Although they were not very large, it took many hours and every one was tired when it was over.

The Sound being frozen over was a great disappointment to me as it prevented our going up Barrow Strait, or visiting Beechy Island, where Sir John Franklin spent his last winter. There I was, within a few miles of the place consecrated to the memory of those heroes and doomed to return home without seeing it. Up this waterway, Sir James Ross and McClure had passed to make their great discoveries of the magnetic polar area and the northwest passage. There had been, at one time or another, nearly all the Arctic explorers, of whom I had ever heard.

As the clock in the companion had been moved about so much lately, and as there was not a watch, on the ship, going, our ideas of time were vague in the extreme.

July 11th. Friday. The weather was fine, and during the afternoon, positively warm. The boats spent the day on the bran, but there were no whales in sight. An interesting phenomenon was, however, in evidence, namely, refraction. Byam Martin's Mountains looked wild and precipitous, and the coast line appeared as a continuous high cliff, quite unlike the land we had been beside for the past week. What I found most interesting was to watch the Narwhal, which was lying not far off. At one moment her hull stretched up, making her look like an old line of battle ship, while her masts shrank down, then the hull would close down like a concertina and the masts would stretch up to the sky. Pieces of ice and little hummocks became great white chimneys and big icy mountains. I saw a row of white masses far above the ice. They looked like puffs of smoke from a battery, the guns being pointed up. Presently a white lump would appear on the ice underneath each puff and in a minute they would become connected and look like a row of top-heavy white pillars. The middle part would then become attenuated until it resembled a white thread and then the tops of the pillars would settle down and disappear. The changes were kaleidoscopic and one could watch them by the hour. When the sun was warm, we often had this phenomenon, owing to the different densities of the various atmospheric strata.

July 12th. Saturday. Hearing "All hands" during the night, I tumbled out of bed, picked up my bundle of clothes, ran on deck and got into a lower quarter boat that was being lowered. Probably within sixty seconds after being asleep I was pulling for dear life towards some loose ice north of us, beyond which a whale had been seen. When we reached the ice, we rested and put on some clothes. The fish was just as likely to come up where we were as at any other place, so we did not want to frighten him by disturbing the ice. After a wait of ten minutes, we saw and heard the blast of a fish to the northeast. It had turned and was going out again. We pulled through the ice with difficulty; it cannot be pushed about by a whale boat, but we kept on in the direction in which the whale was last seen. However it did not come up again where we could see it, and so we returned to the ship. It was very cold coming back and had begun to blow.

The sky was much overcast during the afternoon, and as it was blowing hard, the boats were taken in before bedtime.

July 13th. Sunday. There was a regular little gale this day, so we kept in open water, with the main yard aback and the fires banked. We received news of the Greely party from the Arctic as she had spoken some of the slower ships and heard it from them.

During the afternoon quite a choppy sea was on and ice was coming in as the wind was blowing up the Sound. We dodged out through this ice and then sailed north, sighting nearly all the other ships of the fleet. Sundays were stormy days in this place, and to sit on a ship all day, listening to her strain, and to the wind howling through the shrouds, was not pleasant, especially when we were only killing time and accomplishing nothing. When I turned in, we were still under canvas.

July 14th, Monday, was a gloomy day. We were hooked to the ice, with a boat out on each side. The crew were busy filling the bunkers and then cleaning up, also overhauling some fishing gear. The blacksmith was employed straightening out harpoons. The iron of which they are made is soft and tough. It bends and twists every way but does not break.

I amused myself polishing little tusks which I had taken out of the female narwhals' heads. We were very restless, knowing that the Arctic had more whales than we had. We heard from her that all the ships had fish a few days before.