The younger Scoresby went to the fishery for three years in the Resolution and in 1813 was transferred to the Esk, a larger ship. The dangers from the ice were far more serious than those to which men were exposed in capturing whales. Many ships were lost in this way, and the risks run are well exemplified in Scoresby’s account of the perilous position of the Esk in 1816. It was blowing hard with a heavy sea when the vessel came upon the ice on the 30th April. It freshened to a furious gale, the sea mountains high with huge blocks of ice tossing in the foam. Scoresby tried to wear ship, but she failed to go round, and fell off to leeward with terrible force. She continued to beat against the ice wall, threatened with destruction every moment. All the time Scoresby was in the crow’s-nest.
When the gale subsided it was found that there were 8½ feet of water in the hold. At first an attempt was made at fothering, passing a thrummed sail under the leak. But it was found that 22 feet of the keel and 9 feet of the garboard strake were broken and turned at right angles, so that the sail could not be passed under the leak. Then an attempt was made to heave the ship down alongside the ice-floe. Stores were landed on the ice, scuttles were caulked and hatches closed. Hawsers were passed under the bottom, clenched to the mainmast, and then led to purchases on the ice. The keel was in this way drawn to the edge of the floe, while anchors were suspended from the tops on the other side. The crews of other ships came to help. But the attempt had to be given up, though an effort to cut off the broken parts of the keel and garboard strake was successful, and it became possible to pass the thrummed sail under the leak. Half the cargo was given to another whaler, as the price of staying by the Esk on the way home; and Captain Scoresby was welcomed and rewarded on his return for his splendid seamanship in saving the good ship under his command.
In 1820 the Baffin was specially built at Liverpool, and Scoresby made commercial profit in her, as well as discovering and surveying part of the east coast of Greenland. In the same year he published his great work on the Arctic regions. He was devoted to science and corresponded with Sir Joseph Banks and Professor Jameson of Edinburgh. His book on the Arctic regions immediately became the standard work on the subject, and has not been superseded by anything of equal merit down to the present day. A few years after its publication Scoresby resolved to terminate his successful career as a whaling captain and take holy orders. With this object in view he went to Queens’ College, Cambridge, took his degree, was ordained, and became D.D. in 1839. For seven years, from 1840 to 1847, he was Vicar of Bradford, and after his retirement he lived chiefly at Torquay. He specially worked at terrestrial magnetism, but other branches of science received attention from him and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His last work was a most interesting life of the elder Scoresby entitled My Father. Dr Scoresby died at Torquay on March 21st, 1857[112].
The Scoresbys stand in the front rank, combining most able and efficient work as seamen and whaling captains with zealous promotion of discovery and scientific research. At the same time Captain Marshall of Hull held a like position in the Davis Strait fishery.
By these fisheries, due to the discoveries of our earlier Arctic worthies, several communities in England and Scotland were enriched during a long series of years, and the welfare of the whole kingdom was advanced. Further discovery received advocacy through the reports of whaling captains, and an unequalled nursery for British seamen was securely established.
CHAPTER XXII
BUCHAN AND ROSS
Polar exploration had been neglected since the return of Captain Phipps owing to the protracted European war, which came to an end in 1815. But the duty of prosecuting it had never been forgotten, and the authorities, being educated and patriotic men, were quite ready to consider suggestions favourably. The country is indebted for those suggestions to William Scoresby. In 1817 he found that the Spitsbergen seas were unusually clear of ice between 74° and 80° N., and he represented to Sir Joseph Banks what a favourable time there appeared to be for expeditions of discovery. Sir Joseph brought Scoresby’s letter to the notice of Sir John Barrow, the Secretary of the Admiralty, who strongly represented the advisability of despatching expeditions to discover the connection of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans north of the American continent. One was to proceed by way of Spitsbergen and the North Pole, the other by Davis Strait and the bay supposed to have been discovered by Baffin.
Four whalers were purchased by the Admiralty and strengthened for special service in the ice—the Isabella, 385 tons, and Alexander, 252 tons, for Baffin’s Bay; the Dorothea, 370 tons, and Trent, 250 tons, for the North Pole. Captain Buchan, R.N., who had recently been employed on the Newfoundland coast and had made an important journey into the interior of that island, received command of the Dorothea in the Spitsbergen and North Pole expedition, with Lieutenant John Franklin as his second, on board the Trent. Buchan’s first Lieutenant was Arthur Morell, with Charles Palmer and William J. Dealy as mates, George Fisher as astronomer, and Cyrus Wakeman as clerk. In the Trent with Franklin were Lieutenant F. W. Beechey, son of the artist Sir William Beechey, Andrew Reid and George Back, mates, and Alexander Gilfillan as surgeon.
This expedition left the Thames in April, 1818, and was at Lerwick on the 1st of May. The Trent was leaking badly, and every effort to find the place, while they were at Lerwick, failed. It was a serious matter, as half the watches were occupied in pumping, which entailed a great amount of extra labour, when the ordinary work was almost as much as they could do.
On entering the icy region Buchan’s expedition was met by a furious gale, and took refuge in Magdalena Bay. The expedition was fortunate in its historian, for Morell, the first Lieutenant of the Trent, was a man of high literary attainments as well as an accomplished artist. The attack on one of the boats of the Trent by walrus is as admirably described by his pen as it is portrayed by his pencil. He also relates the ascent of “Rotche Hill,” 2000 feet high, and describes the little-auks or ‘rotches’ flying in such crowds that thirty came down in one shot. It was calculated that 4,000,000 were on the wing.