FLOE IN LADY FRANKLIN BAY THAT LIFTED THE “ROOSEVELT” NEARLY CLEAR OF WATER
There is one phenomenon in this region which is certain to cause the leader of an expedition temporary palpitation of the heart the first time it occurs. When the ice-floes come together, and the edges crush and pile up in great ridges of ice-blocks, other pieces of ice are forced down, and in the deeper portions of Kennedy Channel large granite-like blocks are held down undoubtedly one hundred or more feet below the water. When the ice pressure relaxes, these start for the surface, gathering momentum, as they rise, and leap half their bigness above water, then settle back.
Two or three times blocks of this kind on their way up struck the bottom of the Roosevelt a resounding thump just as she was released from the strain of ice pressure and had settled back into the water. The shock is different from the tense vibrations of ice pressure or the crash of butting ice at full speed, or the grinding crunch of running on a rock. It is an upward shock as from the blow of a great hammer, that jars every timber in the ship. Its first occurrence usually forces the involuntary exclamation, “My God! what has happened now?” After the first time, one is always ready for it, and so is not disturbed.
No attempt should ever be made to anchor in this kind of navigation unless one wishes to present the ice deities with his anchor and much or all of his cable.
Just as sure as the anchor is put down a big floe will come along and squat on it; then there is nothing to do but unshackle your cable and let it go. It cost me two anchors and two cables one summer’s trip to learn this lesson thoroughly. On another voyage in a usually safe position a big floe compelled me to drop an anchor and all of its cable, though I recovered it the next season.
Whenever the ship is to be made fast, it should be done with lines and hawsers made fast to ice pinnacles, holes in the ice, or ice anchors.
It is well also to bring the end of line or hawser on board, so that it can be cast loose without sending a man off the ship. Movements of ship and ice are sometimes too rapid to risk a man.
To a ship built as sturdily as the Roosevelt, with no greater speed and with a lively helm, icebergs are no bugbear. During the upward voyage it is continuous daylight, so that even in thick weather there should be no difficulty, with ordinary care, in detecting the proximity of bergs along the Labrador coast and in Greenland, waters in time to avoid them. North of Kane Basin real icebergs are rarely seen, and these only small ones. In the polar ocean there is nothing that can be dignified by the name. On the return voyage, in the long, dark nights and short, dull days of late autumn, in Melville Bay, Davis Straits, and along the Labrador coast, they compel a careful lookout. With all lights shut off, a reliable man way forward, and two officers on the bridge, we never had serious trouble even in the darkest nights in detecting the “loom” of a berg in time to shift the wheel and avoid it. “Growlers”—that is, translucent fragments of bergs as hard as granite, of the same color as the water, and just barely floating—are the kind of ice that succeeds most completely in rendering itself invisible. My ships have bumped these more than once in brilliantly clear weather, with no other ice in sight and the lookout gone below.
I recall coming home across Melville Bay in one of my earlier auxiliary ships. It was a brilliant moonlit September night, not a piece of ice in sight anywhere, a fresh following breeze, and the ship making about ten knots. It was the mate’s watch, and the other officers and members of the expedition were below in the cabin when suddenly there was a terrific bump. The ship seemed to stop completely for an instant; then, after a vicious lurch or two, went on her way. Every one in the cabin except the captain went in a mess against the bottom of the forward bulkhead. The captain, sitting on the after locker, was nearly cut in two against the cabin table, and went about for a day or two like a man who had been kicked below the belt by an army mule. We had made a bull’s-eye shot at what appeared to be the only growler in the bay. Of course these growlers are not a source of danger to a ship like the Roosevelt, though they would be to a weaker ship.