It will be convenient here to go back to Rawson’s journey to Polaris Bay after leaving Beaumont. Owing to two more of his crew breaking down, leaving only himself and one man, E. Rayner, strong enough to drag the sledge, they did not succeed in reaching Polaris Bay till the 3rd of June, after a most arduous journey on reduced rations, and during several days of which Rawson was himself so badly affected with snow-blindness that he had to pull the sledge while blindfold. James Hand expired a few hours after their arrival at Polaris Bay.
On the 8th August, Beaumont with his companions started on their perilous journey across Hall’s Basin to Discovery Bay. After two hours on the ice, they came to a large space of water 3 miles broad, and launched their boat, which had previously been taken across from the Discovery. They had repeatedly to draw the boat on the ice, haul it on their sledge till water was again met, and then launch. While crossing they found themselves drifting south, and were in the greatest danger of being swept into Kennedy Channel; fortunately, a wind from the south-east set in, and they eventually reached land between Cape Lieber and Cape Baird on the 12th, and arrived at Discovery Bay on 14th August.
After the return of the northern and western sledge-parties so completely broken down, Captain Nares determined to give up all further exploration, and to proceed to the southward with both ships as soon as the ice should break up and release them. On the 31st July the Alert succeeded in escaping from the ice at Floeberg Beach, and after meeting many difficulties reached Discovery Bay on 12th August.
Nares writes: “On the 16th, the weather still remaining distressingly fine and calm, an excursion was made to the coal-beds near Cape Murchison. This deposit of coal, or, more correctly, lignite, is exposed in a ravine near Watercourse Bay, for a distance of over 200 yards. At its greatest exposure the thickness of the seam is 25 feet, but we had no means of ascertaining how much deeper it descended below the level of the stream. Above the coal are beds of shale and sandstones. The coal was pronounced after trial by our engineers to be equal to the best Welsh. The seam where exposed is at an elevation of about 200 feet above the sea-level, and at a distance of about a mile from the shore of Watercourse Bay, in Robeson Channel. Unfortunately, very little shelter is obtainable for a large vessel among the small floebergs stranded in this indentation. The distance between the coal-seam and Discovery Bay is about 4 miles, and the track leads over the brow of a hill about 800 feet high.
“A short distance above the quarry, in a narrow part of the ravine where a large quantity of snow, collected in a shaded part, remains unmelted during the summer, the mountain torrent has melted away a watercourse for itself through the snow-bank. In winter this ice grotto, with a trifling expense of labour, could be readily formed into a convenient Arctic residence.”
On the 18th August, Captain Stephenson deposited an account of their proceedings in a cairn which had been constructed out of the empty preserved meat-tins, refilled with gravel. A post-office box was placed in the centre of the pile.
On the 20th August the ice opened sufficiently to allow the two ships to leave for the south. At Cape Isabella they found a package of letters and newspapers left there by Sir Allen Young a few weeks previously.
Nares writes: “After our long sojourn within the Polar ice it was a strange transition to feel the ship rise and fall once more on the ‘north water’ of Baffin’s Bay, and to look astern and see Cape Isabella, one of the massive portals of Smith Sound, fading away in an obscurity of snow and midnight darkness; whilst an ice-blink stretching across the northern horizon reminded us forcibly of the perils, dangers, and anxieties that we had contended against for so many months.
“In comparing the voyage of the Polaris and that of the Alert and Discovery, it is evident that the navigation of the ice which is to be met with every year in Kane Sea is entirely dependent on the westerly winds. Both in 1875 and 1876 we met navigable water off Cape Victoria in latitude 79° 12′ with only a narrow pack 15 miles in breadth between it and Grinnell Land, which a westerly wind of a few hours’ duration would certainly have driven to the eastward. The same wind would have opened a channel along the shore, and any vessel waiting her opportunity at Payer Harbour could under those circumstances have passed up the channel with as little difficulty as the Polaris experienced in 1871.
“The quantity of one season’s ice met with in the bays on the south-east coast of Grinnell Land in 1876 proves that on the final setting in of the frost, after we passed north in 1875, the pack had been driven from the shore, leaving a navigable channel along the land. Nevertheless, I do not recommend future navigators who wish to obtain a high northern latitude by this route to wait for such a favourable occurrence. Certainly no one could have made a passage through the ice in 1876 before the 10th September by doing so. At that date the season had advanced so far that the attainment of sheltered winter-quarters would have been extremely problematical.”