WINTER QUARTERS OF THE “DISCOVERY.”
The Alert on her northward passage had many a severe tussle with the ice, but passed through all dangers successfully. On August 31st Captain Nares had the great satisfaction of having carried his vessel into latitude 82° 24′ N., a higher point than ever attained before. The ensign was hoisted at the peak, and there was universal rejoicing on [pg 101]board at this early achievement. It was doubtless regarded as a happy omen of future successes.
At the northern entrance of Robeson Channel the breadth of navigable water became much contracted, until off Cape Sheridan the ice was observed to be touching the shore. In Robeson Channel, except where the cliffs rose precipitously from the sea, and afforded no ledge or step on which the ice could lodge, the shore-line was noted to be fronted, at a few paces distance, by a nearly continuous ragged-topped “ice-wall,” from fifteen to thirty-five feet high. It was broken only off the larger ravines. After proceeding some distance north it became evident that their sailing season was rapidly coming to an end. Captain Nares, after a thorough investigation, found that he had to winter in a somewhat exposed place, no harbour being available. He had rounded the north-east point of Grant Land, but instead of finding a continuous coast-line, leading far towards the north, as expected, found himself on the border of an apparently extensive sea, with impenetrable ice on every side. The ice was of most unusual age and thickness, resembling in a marked degree, both in appearance and formation, low floating icebergs rather than ordinary salt-water ice. It has now been termed the “Sea of Ancient Ice.” Whereas ordinary ice is usually from two feet to ten feet in thickness, that in the Polar Sea, in consequence of having so few outlets by which to escape to the southward in any appreciable quantity, [pg 102]gradually increases in age and thickness until it measures from 80 to 120 feet, floating with its surface at the lowest part fifteen feet above the water-line.
Strange as it may appear, the extraordinary thickness of the ice saved the ship from being driven on shore, for, owing to its great depth of flotation, on nearing the shallow beach it grounded, and formed a barrier, inside which the ship was comparatively safe. When two pieces of ordinary ice are driven one against the other and the edges broken up, the crushed pieces are raised by the pressure into a high, long, wall-like hedge of ice. When two of the ancient floes of the Polar Sea meet, the intermediate, lighter, broken-up ice which may happen to be floating about between them alone suffers; it is pressed up between the two closing masses to a great height, producing a chaotic wilderness of angular blocks of all shapes and sizes, varying in height up to fifty feet above water, and frequently covering an area of upwards of a mile in diameter. Captain Nares mentions pieces being raised by outward pressure and crashing together which must have weighed 30,000 tons! A ship between such opposing masses would be annihilated in an instant.
As soon as the shore ice was sufficiently strong Commander A. H. Markham, with Lieutenants A. A. C. Parr and W. H. May under his orders, started on the 25th September with three sledges to establish a depôt of provisions as far in advance to the north-westward as possible. Lieutenant P. Aldrich left four days previously, with two lightly-equipped dog-sledges, to pioneer the road round Cape Joseph Henry for the larger party. He returned on board on the 5th of October, after an absence of thirteen days, having, accompanied by Adam Ayles, on the 27th September, from the summit of a mountain 2,000 feet high situated in latitude 82° 48′ North—somewhat further north than the most northern latitude attained by their gallant predecessor, Sir Edward Parry, in his celebrated boat and sledge journey towards the North Pole—discovered land extending to the north-westward for a distance of sixty miles to latitude 83° 7′, with lofty mountains in the interior to the southward.
On the 14th October, two days after the sun had left them for its long winter’s absence, Commander Markham’s party returned, after a journey of nineteen days, having with very severe labour succeeded in placing a depôt of provisions in latitude 82° 44′ north, and of tracing the coast-line nearly two miles further north, thus reaching the exact latitude attained by Sir Edward Parry.
Being anxious to inform Captain Stephenson of his position, and the good prospects before his travelling parties in the following spring in exploring the north-west coast of Greenland, Captain Nares despatched Lieutenant Rawson to again attempt to open communication between the two vessels, although he had grave doubts of his succeeding. Rawson was absent from the 2nd to the 12th of October, returning unsuccessful on the latter day, having found his road again stopped by unsafe ice within a distance of nine miles of the ship. The broken masses of pressed up ice resting against the cliffs, in many places more than thirty feet high, and the accumulated deep snow-drifts in the valleys, caused very laborious and slow travelling.
During these autumn sledging journeys, with the temperature ranging between 15° above to 22° below zero, the heavy labour, hardships, and discomforts inseparable from [pg 103]Arctic travelling, caused by the wet soft snow, weak ice, and water spaces, which obliged the sledges to be dragged over the hills, combined with constant strong winds and misty weather, were, if anything, much greater than those usually experienced. Out of the northern party of twenty-one men and three officers, no less than seven men and one officer returned to the ship badly frost-bitten, three of these so severely as to render amputation necessary, the patients being confined to their beds for the greater part of the winter.
During the winter Captain Nares, assisted by his officers, did his very best to keep the crew not merely employed, but amused. A school was organised; and Captain Markham states, to the credit of the Royal Navy, that out of fifty-five men on the Alert there were only two who could not read when they came on board. On both vessels there were small printing presses, which were used specially for printing the programmes of their entertainments, and occasionally even for striking off bills of fare. Each Thursday[15] was devoted to lectures, concerts, readings, and occasional theatrical performances. On the opening night—if any such distinction could be made when all was night—the programme commenced as follows:—“The Royal Arctic Theatre will be re-opened on Thursday next, the 18th inst. (18th November), by the powerful Dramatic Company of the Hyperboreans, under the distinguished patronage of Captain Nares, the Members of the Arctic Exploring Expedition, and all the Nobility and Gentry of the neighbourhood.”