Adrift in the Arctic ice pack

by Elisha Kent Kane

But the sun was now gradually coming up toward the horizon: every day at meridian, and for an hour before and after, we were able to trace our progress eastward by some known headland. We had passed Cape Castlereagh and Cape Warrender in succession, and were close on the meridian of Cape Osborn. The disruptions of the ice which we had encountered so far, had always been at the periods of spring-tide. The sun and moon were in conjunction on the 21st of December; and, adopting Captain Parry’s observation, that the greatest efflux was always within five days after the new moon, we had looked with some anxiety to the closing weeks of that month. But they had gone by without any unusual movement; and there needed only an equally kind visitation of the January moon to give us our final struggle with the Baffin’s Bay ice by daylight.

Yet I had remarked that the southern shore of Lancaster Sound extended much further out to the eastward than the northern did; and I had argued that we might begin to feel the current of Baffin’s Bay in a very few days, though we were still considerably to the west of a line drawn from one cape to the other. The question received its solution without waiting for the moon.

I give from my journal our position in the ice on the 11th of January:

“January 11, Saturday. The floe in which we are now imbedded has been steadily increasing in solidity for more than a month. Since the 8th of December, not a fracture or collision has occurred to mar its growth. The eye can not embrace its extent. Even from the mast-head you look over an unbounded expanse of naked ice, bristling with contorted spires, and ridged by elevated axes of hummocks. The land on either side rises above our icy horizon; but to the east and west, there is no such interception to our winteryness.

“The brig remains as she was tossed at our providential escape of last month, her nose burrowing in the snow, and her stern perched high above the rubbish. Walking deck is an up and down hill work. She retains, too, her list to starboard. Her bare sides have been banked over again with snow to increase the warmth, and a formidable flight of nine ice-block steps admits us to the door-way of her winter cover. The stores, hastily thrown out from the vessel when we expected her to go to pieces, are still upon the little remnant of old floe on our port or northern side. The Rescue is some hundred yards off to the south of east."

The next day things underwent a change. The morning was a misty one, giving us just light enough to make out objects that were near the ship; the wind westerly, as it had been for some time, freshening perhaps to a breeze. The day went on quietly till noon, when a sudden shock brought us all up to the deck. Running out upon the ice, we found that a crack had opened between us and the Rescue, and was extending in a zigzag course from the northward and eastward to the southward and westward. At one o’clock it had become a chasm eight feet in width; and as it continued to widen, we observed a distinct undulation of the water about its edges. At three, it had expanded into a broad sheet of water, filmed over by young ice, through which the portions of the floe that bore our two vessels began to move obliquely toward each other. Night closed round us, with the chasm reduced to forty yards and still narrowing; the Rescue on her port-bow, two hundred yards from her late position; the wind increasing, and the thermometer at -19°.

My journal for the next day was written at broken intervals; but I give it without change of form:

“January 13, 4 A.M. All hands have been on deck since one o’clock, strapped and harnessed for a farewell march. The water-lane of yesterday is covered by four-inch ice; the floes at its margin more than three feet thick. These have been closing for some time by a sliding, grinding movement, one upon the other; but every now and then coming together more directly, the thinner ice clattering between them, and marking their new outline with hummock ridges. They have been fairly in contact for the last hour: we feel their pressure extending to us through the elastic floe in which we are cradled. There is a quivering, vibratory hum about the timbers of the brig, and every now and then a harsh rubbing creak along her sides, like waxed cork on a mahogany table. The hummocks are driven to within four feet of our counter, and stand there looming fourteen feet high through the darkness. It has been a horrible commotion so far, with one wild, booming, agonized note, made up of a thousand discords; and now comes the deep stillness after it, the mysterious ice-pulse, as if the energies were gathering for another strife.

“6½ A.M. Another pulse! the vibration greater than we have ever yet had it. If our little brig had an animated centre of sensation, and some rude force had torn a nerve-trunk, she could not feel it more—she fairly shudders. Looking out to the north, this ice seems to heave up slowly against the sky in black hills; and as we watch them rolling toward us, the hills sink again, and a distorted plain of rubbish melts before us into the night. Ours is the contrast of utter helplessness with illimitable power.