The Open Polar Sea / A narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States"

by I. I. Hayes

ICE NAVIGATION.

The efforts to break through the belt, with the expectation of finding clear water about the Pole, have been very numerous, and they have been made through every opening from the southern waters to the Polar Sea. To follow the history of those various attempts would not fall within my present purpose. It is but a long record of defeat, so far as concerned the single object of getting to the Pole. Cook, and all who have come after him, have failed to find the ice sufficiently open to admit of navigation northward from Behring Strait, as Hudson and his followers have through the Spitzbergen Sea; and all the efforts through Baffin Bay have been equally futile. The most persevering attempts to break through the ice-belt have been made to the west of Spitzbergen, and in this quarter ships have approached nearer to the Pole than in any other. The highest well-authenticated position achieved by any navigator was that of Scorsby, who reached latitude 81° 30´, although it is claimed that Hudson had gone still further; and if the stories which Daines Barrington picked up from the fishermen of Amsterdam and Hull are to be relied on, then the old Dutch and English voyagers have gone even beyond this, seeking new fishing-grounds and finding everywhere an open sea. There is, however, as before observed, no well-authenticated record of any ship having attained a higher latitude than that of Scorsby.

WRANGEL'S OPEN SEA.

Failing to get through the ice, explorers have next tried to cross it with sledges. In this the Russians have done most. Many enterprising officers of the Russian service, using the dog-sledges of the native tribes inhabiting the Siberian coast, have, in the early spring, boldly struck out upon the Polar Sea. Most conspicuous among them was Admiral Wrangel, then a young lieutenant of the Russian Navy, whose explorations, continued through several years, showed that, at all seasons of the year, the same condition of the sea existed to the northward. The travelers were invariably arrested by open water; and the existence of a Polynia or open sea above the New Siberian Islands, became a fact as well established as that the rivers flow downward to the sea.

Sir Edward Parry tried the same method above Spitzbergen, using, however, men instead of dogs for draft, and carrying boats for safety in the event of the ice breaking up. Parry traveled northward until the ice, becoming loosened by the advancing season, carried him south faster than he was traveling north; and after a while it broke up under him, and set him adrift in the open sea.

KANE'S OPEN SEA.

Next came Captain Inglefield's attempt to get into this circumpolar water through Smith Sound; and then Dr. Kane's. The latter's vessel could not be forced further into the ice than Van Rensselaer Harbor; and, like the Russians, he continued the work with sledges. After many embarrassments and failures in his attempts to surmount the difficulties presented by hummocked ice of the Sound, one of his parties succeeded finally in reaching the predicted open water; and, to quote Dr. Kane's words, "from an elevation of five hundred and eighty feet, this water was still without a limit, moved by a heavy swell, free of ice, and dashing in surf against a rock-bound shore." This shore was the shore of the land which he named Washington Land.

Next, after Dr. Kane's, came my own undertaking; and the last chapter leaves me with my sledge upon the shores of that same sea which Dr. Kane describes, about one hundred miles to the north and west of the point from which one of his parties looked out upon the iceless waters. My own opinion of what I saw and of the condition of this sea, which Wrangel found open on the opposite side from where I stood, and which Kane's party had found open to my right, and which Parry's journey showed to be open above Spitzbergen, may be inferred from what I have already briefly stated, and may be more briefly concluded.

EXPANSION OF SMITH SOUND.

The boundaries of the Polar Basin are sufficiently well defined to enable us to form a rational estimate of the unknown coast-lines of Greenland and Grinnell Land,—the only parts of the extensive circuit remaining unexplored. The trend of the northern coast-line of Greenland is approximately defined by the reasonable analogies of physical geography; and the same process of reasoning forbids the conclusion that Grinnell Land extends beyond the limit of my explorations. I hold, as Inglefield did before me, that Smith Sound expands into the Polar Basin. Beyond the narrow passage between Cape Alexander and Cape Isabella, the water widens steadily up to Cape Frazer, where it expands abruptly. On the Greenland side the coast trends regularly to the eastward, until it reaches Cape Agassiz, where it dips under the glacier and is lost to observation. That cape is composed of primitive rock, and is the end of a mountain spur. This same rock is visible at many places along the coast, but is mostly covered with the deposit of sandstone and greenstone, which forms the tall cliffs of the coast-line, until it crops out about thirty miles in the interior into a mountain chain, which, (in company with Mr. Wilson), I crossed, in 1853, to find the mer de glace hemmed in behind it. Further to the north the mer de glace has poured down into the Polar Sea, and pushing its way onward through the water, it has at length reached Washington Land, and swelled southward into Smith Sound. That the face of Humboldt Glacier trends more to the eastward than is exhibited on Dr. Kane's chart, I have shown; and that Washington Land will be found to lie much farther in the same direction, I have sufficient grounds for believing. According to the report of Morton, it is to be inferred that this island is but a continuation of the same granitic ridge which breaks off abruptly at Cape Agassiz, and appears again above the sea at Cape Forbes, in a line conformable with the Greenland range. It is probable then that at some remote period this Washington Land stood in the expansion of Smith Sound, washed by water on every side,—that lying to the eastward being now supplanted by the great glacier of Humboldt; that lying to the westward now bearing the name of Kennedy Channel.