Photo: Wilkins

FROZEN SPRAY

Sea ice, although salt, has the peculiar property that if piled up for two or three days, either naturally as pressure ridges or artificially by heaping up a number of frozen slabs, the salt leaves the upper pieces, which can be melted down and freely used as drinking water. Physicists have not been able to explain fully the phenomenon. It is, however, an easily demonstrable fact, and it is by this property of the ice alone that ships have been able to winter in the pack. In the height of summer, when the sun beats down strongly upon the ice, pools of water form on the surface of the floes. They are fresh and can be used for drinking. It is necessary, however, if water is being taken from this source, to see that the floe is a good solid one, not “rotted” underneath, in which case it may be brackish. During some of our marches over the ice of the Weddell Sea after the loss of the Endurance the going was very bad and the work tremendously hard on account of soft snow, which let the men down to the hips and the dogs to their bellies, and we suffered severely from thirst. When we encountered any of these pools they were freely used by men and dogs for drinking, and we never noticed any salty flavour.

The track of the Quest as compared with the tracks of Biscoe and Bellingshausen.

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