MAGDALEN BAY, SPITZBERGEN.
On May 28th, the weather being severe, with heavy fogs, the ships separated, to rejoin at Magdalena Bay, Spitzbergen, a few days later. The harbour was full of ice in a rapidly decaying state. This bay is remarkable for four glaciers, the smallest of which, called the Hanging Iceberg, is 200 feet above the sea-level at its termination. The largest extends several miles inland, and, owing to the immense rents in its surface, was called the Waggon Way. In the vicinity of the icebergs, which had become detached from these glaciers, the observance of strict silence was necessary, and the concussion produced by the discharge of a gun (not its “explosion,” as Sir John Barrow says) would often detach large masses. Beechey notes the effects of such a discharge: A musket had been fired at half a mile distance, which not merely brought down an immense piece of [pg 167]ice, but which was the cause of a ship’s launch being carried ninety-six feet by the wave produced, filled with water, and landed on a beach, where it was badly stove, the men barely escaping with their lives. They also had the rare opportunity of noting the creation of an iceberg. An immense piece of the front of a glacier was observed sliding down from the height of at least 200 feet into the sea, dispersing the water in every direction. This discharge was accompanied by a loud grinding noise, and the ice was followed by quantities of water, which, being previously lodged in the fissures, now made its escape in numberless small cataracts from the face of the glacier. Some idea may be formed of the disturbance caused by its plunge and the rollers which agitated the bay when we learn that the Dorothea, then careening on her side at a distance of four miles, righted herself. This mass dived wholly under water, and then reappeared, rearing its head a hundred feet high, accompanied by the boiling of the sea and clouds of spray. Its circumference was found to be nearly a quarter of a mile, while its weight was computed at over 400,000 tons.
In summer the coasts of Spitzbergen were found perfectly alive with animated nature. The shores reverberated with the cries of the little auks, cormorants, divers, and gulls. Walruses were basking in the sun, mingling their roar with the bark of the seal. Beechey describes an uninterrupted line of little auks flying in the air three miles in length, and so close together that thirty fell at one shot. He estimated their number at 4,000,000, allowing sixteen to a cubic yard. This number appears very large; yet Audubon, in describing the passenger-pigeons on the banks of the Ohio, speaks of one single flock of 1,115,000,000. Audubon’s character for veracity is too unquestioned for us to inquire how he made the calculation.
The surrounding islands were thick with reindeer, Vogel Sang, in particular, yielding the expedition forty carcases. The king eider-ducks were found in such numbers that it was impossible almost to walk without treading on their nests, which they defended with determined resolution; but, in fact, all nature was alive at this time, and birds of many kinds, foxes, and bears, were everywhere found on the shore and on the ice, while amphibious animals, from whales downwards, abounded in the water.
On the 7th of June the ships left Magdalena Bay, and were greatly hampered in the ice. Indeed, they learned from several whale-ships that the ice to the westward was very thick, and that fifteen vessels were beset in it. Proceeding northward themselves, they became entangled in a floe of ice, where they had to remain thirteen days, after which the field broke up, and they got into an open sea. Several attempts were made to prosecute their voyage in a northerly direction, but without success; and Captain Buchan, being satisfied that he had given the ice a fair trial in the vicinity of Spitzbergen, resolved on bearing for the coast of Greenland. Having arrived at the edge of the pack, a gale came on so suddenly that they were at once reduced to storm staysails. The vessels were reduced to take refuge among the ice, a proceeding often rendered necessary in those latitudes, though extremely dangerous. The Trent, following the Dorothea, dashed into the unbroken line of furious breakers, in which immense masses of ice were crashing, heaving, and subsiding with the waves. The noise was so great that the officers could scarcely be heard by the crew. “If ever the fortitude of seamen was fairly tried it was assuredly not less so on this occasion; and I would not,” says Beechey, “conceal the pride I felt in wit[pg 168]nessing the bold and decisive tone in which the orders were issued by the commander of our little vessel (Franklin), and the promptitude and steadiness with which they were executed by the crew. Each person instinctively secured his own hold, and, with his eyes fixed upon the masts, awaited in breathless anxiety the moment of the concussion. It soon arrived; the brig, cutting her way through the light ice, came in violent contact with the main body. In an instant we all lost our footing, the masts bent with the impetus, and the cracking timbers from below bespoke a pressure which was calculated to awaken our serious apprehensions.” So great was the motion of the vessel that the ship’s bells tolled continually, and they were ordered to be muffled; the heaviest gale of wind had never before made them strike. After many dangers from the ice the pack broke up sufficiently to release the ships, both of which were greatly disabled, while the Dorothea was in a foundering condition. They proceeded as well as they could to Fair Haven, Spitzbergen, where the damages were in some sort repaired, and they sailed for home.
The character of Sir William Edward Parry, who carried the Union Jack nearer the Pole than any explorer prior to Markham and Parr, was truly admirable, while his services to his country were as brilliant as they were numerous. In every way he was an honour to the British navy, such a union of lofty heroism, consummate nautical skill, and calm daring, is almost without parallel. The amiability and benevolence of his manners endeared him to all ranks of the service, and made him the idol of his men, whom he never failed to encourage by all the means in his power. His name, though written in snow and ice, is imperishable, for his heart was in his work, and he always believed in its future success. In the four voyages made under his command to the Arctic seas he was most careful of the health and comfort of his followers, and lost fewer hands than any other commander in these parts; and when we remember the kind of vessels he sometimes sailed in (the Griper, in particular, being about as unseaworthy a ship as could well be sent out of dock), we can only wonder at his patience under difficulties and the persevering energy which kept him “pegging away.”
The son of a celebrated physician, Dr. Caleb Hillier Parry, he was born at Bath on the 19th of December, 1760, and was intended originally for his father’s profession; but circumstances having occurred to alter his determination, he was appointed to the Ville de Paris, the flagship of Admiral Cornwallis’s Channel Fleet, as a volunteer of the first class. Here he remained for three years, during which period he was engaged in an action off Brest Harbour. Fortunate in making his first essay of a seaman’s life under officers who were desirous of winning the esteem and affection of those beneath them, he soon became a favourite, and the admiral, on his leaving the ship, thus records his opinion of him:—“Parry is a fine, steady lad. I never knew any one so generally approved of. He will receive civility and kindness from all while he continues to conduct himself as he has done, which, I dare believe, will be as long as he lives.” He was afterwards appointed to the Tribune frigate and to the Vanguard, and was frequently engaged with the Danish gun-boats in the Baltic.
In 1810 he gained his epaulet, and joined the Alexandria frigate, in which, after serving in the Baltic, he made his first acquaintance with polar ice between North Cape and Bear Island; and he subsequently joined the La Hogue at Halifax. In 1814 he [pg 169]commanded a boat in a successful expedition up the Connecticut river, for which service he received a medal. Three years later he was recalled to England in consequence of the severe illness of his father, who had been seized with a paralytic stroke. His father’s illness and his own despair of promotion made this the gloomiest period of our young hero’s life. But dark is the hour before the dawn, and an incident occurred which threw a gleam of hope upon his professional prospects, and proved the forerunner to his future success. At the close of 1817 he wrote to a friend on the subject of an expedition that was about starting to explore the River Congo. The letter was written, but not posted, when his eye fell on a paragraph in the newspaper relative to an expedition about to be fitted out to the northern regions. He seized the pen, and added, by way of postscript, that, as far as he was concerned, “hot or cold it was all one to him, Africa or the Pole.” This letter was shown to Mr. Barrow, the then Secretary of the Admiralty, and in a few days he was appointed to the command of the Alexander, discovery ship, under the orders of Commander John Ross, as recorded in the first voyage of the present series.
