Many coasts, many groups of islands scattered over the vast bosom of the ocean, awaited a more accurate survey, and would no doubt have remained unexplored, if gold, as in former times, had still been the sole magnet which attracted the seafarer to distant parts of the world. But fortunately science had now become a power which induced man, without any prospect of immediate profit, to spare no expense and to shrink from no danger, that he might become better and better acquainted with his dwelling-place the earth.
It cannot be denied that our century has laboured at the solution of all these various geographical questions with an energy and perseverance unexampled in the history of civilisation; and the prominent part she has taken in their investigation is undoubtedly one of the great glories of England. At no other time have more voyages of discovery and more scientific expeditions been undertaken; never have more courageous Argonauts gone forth to conquer the golden fleece of knowledge. It will be the pleasing task of this closing chapter to follow these noble mariners in their adventurous course; and, to avoid confusion, I shall begin with a short history of Arctic discovery up to the present day, and afterwards treat of the efforts made to extend our knowledge towards the South Pole. In spite of the unsuccessful efforts of a Frobisher, a Davis, a Hudson, and a Baffin, England had never given up the hope of discovering a northern passage to India, either direct across the Pole, or round the north coast of America. It had been one of the chief objects of Cook's third voyage to find a sea-path from Behring's Straits to Baffin's or Hudson's Bay; and some years before, while the illustrious navigator was busy exploring the Southern Pacific, we see Captain Phipps renewing the old attempt to sail direct to the Pole (1773). But, like his predecessor Hudson, he reached no farther than the northern extremity of Spitzbergen, where his vessel, surrounded by mighty ice-blocks, would have perished but for a timely change of wind. This repulse damped for a time the spirit of discovery; but hope revived again when it became known that Scoresby, on a whaling expedition in the Greenland seas (1806), had attained 81° N. lat. and thus approached the Pole to within 540 miles. No one before him had ever reached so far to the north, and an open sea tempted him mightily to proceed, but as the object of his voyage was strictly commercial, and he himself answerable to the owners of his vessel, Scoresby felt obliged to sacrifice his inclinations to his duty and to steer again to the south.
During the continental war, England indeed had little leisure to prosecute discoveries in the Arctic Ocean; but not long after the conclusion of peace (1818) two expeditions were sent out for that purpose.
Captain Buchan, with the ships "Dorothea" and "Trent," sailed with instructions to proceed in a direction as due north as might be practicable through the Spitzbergen Sea; but, having after much difficulty gained lat. 80° 34′ north in that polar archipelago, he was obliged speedily to withdraw and try his fortune off the western edge of the pack. Here however a tremendous gale, threatening every moment to crush the ships between the large ice-blocks heaving and sinking in the roaring billows, induced the bold experiment of dashing right into the body of the ice; a practice which has been resorted to by whalers in extreme cases, as their only chance of escaping destruction.
"While we were yet a few fathoms from the ice," says Admiral Beechey, the eloquent eye-witness and narrator of the dreadful scene, "we searched with much anxiety for a place that was more open than the general line of the pack, but in vain; all parts appeared to be equally impenetrable, and to present one unbroken line of furious breakers, in which immense pieces of ice were heaving and subsiding with the waves.
"No language, I am convinced, can convey an adequate idea of the terrific grandeur of the effect now produced by the collision of the ice and the tempestuous ocean. The sea violently agitated, and rolling its mountainous waves against an opposing body, is at all times a sublime and awful sight; but when, in addition, it encounters immense masses, which it has set in motion with a violence equal to its own, its effect is prodigiously increased. At one moment it bursts upon these icy fragments, and buries them many feet beneath its wave, and the next, as the buoyancy of the depressed body struggles for reascendency, the water rushes in foaming cataracts over its edges; whilst every individual mass, rocking and labouring in its bed, grinds against and contends with its opponent until one is either split with the shock or upheaved upon the surface of the other. Nor is this collision confined to one particular spot, it is going on as far as the sight can reach; and when, from this convulsive scene below, the eye is turned to the extraordinary appearance of the blink in the sky above, where the unnatural clearness of a calm and silvery atmosphere presents itself bounded by a dark hard line of stormy clouds, such as at this moment lowered over our masts, as if to mark the confines within which the efforts of man would be of no avail, the reader may imagine the sensation of awe which must accompany that of grandeur in the mind of the beholder.
"At this instant, when we were about to put the strength of our little vessel in competition with that of the great icy continent, and when it seemed almost presumption to reckon on the possibility of her surviving the unequal conflict, it was gratifying in the extreme to observe in all our crew the greatest calmness and resolution. If ever the fortitude of seamen was fairly tried, it was on this occasion; and I will not conceal the pride I felt in witnessing the bold and decisive tone in which the orders were issued by the commander of our little vessel (the since so far-famed and lamented Franklin), and the promptitude and steadiness with which they were executed by the crew.
"We were now so near the scene of danger as to render necessary the immediate execution of our plan, and in an instant the labouring vessel flew before the gale. Each person instinctively secured his own hold and with his eyes fixed upon the masts, awaited in breathless anxiety the moment of 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. The vessel staggered under the shock, and for a moment seemed to recoil; but the next wave, curling up under her counter, drove her about her own length within the margin of the ice, where she gave one roll and was immediately thrown broadside to the wind by the succeeding wave. This unfortunate occurrence prevented the vessel from penetrating sufficiently far into the ice to escape the effect of the gale, and placed her in a situation where she was assailed on all sides by battering rams, if I may use the expression, every one of which contested the small space, which she occupied, and dealt such unrelenting blows that there appeared to be scarcely any possibility of saving her from foundering. Literally tossed from piece to piece, we had nothing left but patiently to abide the issue, for we could scarcely keep our feet, much less render any assistance to the vessel. The motion indeed was so great, that the ship's bell, which in the heaviest gale of wind had never struck of itself, now tolled so continually that it was ordered to be muffled, for the purpose of escaping the unpleasant association it was calculated to produce."
By setting more head-sail, though at the risk of the masts, already tottering with the pressure of that which was spread, the vessels, splitting the ice and thus effecting a passage between the pieces, were at length released from their perilous situation, but the "Dorothea" was found to be completely disabled. A short time at Fairhaven in Spitsbergen was spent in necessary repairs, and even then she was unfit for any farther service than the voyage to England. Franklin volunteered to prosecute the enterprise with the "Trent" alone, but the Admiralty Orders opposed such a proceeding, and the vessels returned home in company.
Meanwhile Captain John Ross, with the "Isabella" and "Alexander," had proceeded to Baffin's Bay, but instead of exploring Smith's, Jones's, and Lancaster Sounds, which recent voyages have proved to be each and all grand open channels to the Polar Sea, he contented himself with Baffin's assertion that they were enclosed by land, and, after having thus fruitlessly accomplished the circuit of the bay, returned to England.