It has happened at night that I have seen the ice-blink as far off as eight miles, and then there is nothing to fear; but sometimes in the middle of the day we have sailed close to icebergs that have only been seen a few minutes before we were right on them. As the voyage was long, we sailed as fast as we could, as a rule; but on two or three nights we had to reduce our way to a minimum, as we could not see much farther than the end of the bowsprit.
After two or three weeks' sailing the icebergs began gradually to decrease, and I hoped we should soon come to the end of them; but on Sunday, March 5, when it was fairly clear, we saw about midday a whole lot of big bergs ahead. One of the watch below, who had just come on deck, exclaimed: "What the devil is this beastly mess you fellows have got into?" He might well ask, for in the course of that afternoon we passed no less than about a hundred bergs. They were big tabular bergs, all of the same height, about 100 feet, or about as high as the crow's-nest of the Fram. The bergs were not the least worn, but looked as if they had calved quite recently. As I said, it was clear enough, we even got an observation that day (lat. 61º S., long. 150º W.), and as we had a west wind, we twisted quite elegantly past one iceberg after another. The sea, which during the morning had been high enough for the spray to dash over the tops of the bergs, gradually went down, and in the evening, when we were well to leeward of them all, it was as smooth as if we had been in harbour. In the course of the night we passed a good many more bergs, and the next day we only saw about twenty.
In the various descriptions of voyages in these waters, opinions are divided as to the temperature of the water falling in the neighbourhood of icebergs. That it falls steadily as one approaches the pack-ice is certain enough, but whether it falls for one or a few scattered icebergs, no doubt depends on circumstances.
One night at 12 o'clock we had a temperature in the water of 34.1º F., at 4 a.m. 33.8º F., and at 8 a.m. 33.6º F.; at 6 a.m. we passed an iceberg. At 12 noon the temperature had risen to 33.9º F. In this case one might say that the temperature gave warning, but, as a rule, in high latitudes it has been constant both before and after passing an iceberg.
On Christmas Eve, 1911, when on our second trip southward we saw the first real iceberg, the temperature of the water fell in four hours from 35.6º F. to 32.7º F., which was the temperature when the bergs were passed, after which it rose rather rapidly to 35º F.
In the west wind belt I believe one can tell with some degree of certainty when one is approaching ice. In the middle of November, 1911, between Prince Edward Island and the Crozet Islands (about lat. 47º S.) the temperature fell. Towards morning I remarked to someone: "The temperature of the water is falling as if we were getting near the ice." On the forenoon of the same day we sailed past a very small berg; the temperature again rose to the normal, and we met no more ice until Christmas Eve.
On Saturday, March 4, the day before we met that large collection of bergs, the temperature fell pretty rapidly from 33.9º F. to 32.5º F. We had not then seen ice for nearly twenty-four hours. At the same time the colour of the water became unusually green, and it is possible that we had come into a cold current. The temperature remained as low as this till Sunday morning, when at 8 a. m. it rose to 32.7º F.; at 12 noon, close to a berg, to 32.9º F., and a mile to lee of it, to 33º F. It continued to rise, and at 4 p.m., when the bergs were thickest, it was 33.4º F.; at 8 p.m. 33.6º F., and at midnight 33.8º F. If there had been a fog, we should certainly have thought we were leaving the ice instead of approaching it; it is very curious, too, that the temperature of the water should not be more constant in the presence of such a great quantity of ice; but, as I have said, it may have been a current.
In the course of the week following March 5 the bergs became rarer, but the same kind of weather prevailed. Our speed was irreproachable, and in one day's work (from noon to noon) we covered a distance of 200 nautical miles, or an average of about 82 knots an hour, which was the best day's work the Fram had done up to that time. The wind; which had been westerly and north-westerly, went by degrees to the north, and ended in a hurricane from the north-east on Sunday, March 12. I shall quote here what I wrote about this in my diary on the 13th:
"Well, now we have experienced the first hurricane on the Fram. On Saturday afternoon, the 11th, the wind went to the north-east, as an ordinary breeze with rain. The barometer had been steady between 29.29 inches (744 millimetres) and 29.33 inches (745 millimetres). During the afternoon it began to fall, and at 8 p.m. it was 29.25 inches (743 millimetres) without the wind having freshened at all. The outer jib was taken in, however. By midnight the barometer had fallen to 29.0 inches (737 millimetres), while the wind had increased to a stiff breeze. We took in the foresail, mainsail, and inner jib, and had now only the topsail and a storm-trysail left. The wind gradually increased to a gale. At 4 a.m. on Sunday the barometer had fallen again to 28.66 inches (728 millimetres), and at 6 a.m. the topsail was made fast.[3]
The wind increased and the seas ran higher, but we did not ship much water. At 8 a.m. the barometer was 28.30 inches (719 millimetres), and at 9 a.m. 28.26 inches (718 millimetres), when at last it stopped going down and remained steady till about noon, during which time a furious hurricane was blowing. The clouds were brown, the colour of chocolate; I cannot remember ever having seen such an ugly sky. Little by little the wind went to the north, and we sailed large under two storm-trysails. Finally, we had the seas on our beam, and now the Fram showed herself in all her glory as the best sea-boat in the world. It was extraordinary to watch how she behaved. Enormous seas came surging high to windward, and we, who were standing on the bridge, turned our backs to receive them, with some such remark as: 'Ugh, that's a nasty one coming.' But the sea never came. A few yards from the ship it looked over the bulwarks and got ready to hurl itself upon her. But at the last moment the Fram gave a wriggle of her body and was instantly at the top of the wave, which slipped under the vessel. Can anyone be surprised if one gets fond of such a ship? Then she went down with the speed of lightning from the top of the wave into the trough, a fall of fourteen or fifteen yards. When we sank like this, it gave one the same feeling as dropping from the twelfth to the ground-floor in an American express elevator, 'as if everything inside you was coming up.' It was so quick that we seemed to be lifted off the deck. We went up and down like this all the afternoon and evening, till during the night the wind gradually dropped and it became calm. That the storm would not be of long duration might almost be assumed from its suddenness, and the English rule --