Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, Volume 1

by Sir William Edward Parry

The wind still blowing fresh from the northward and westward, the ice continued to drift out slowly from the harbour, till, at eight A.M., August 1st, it had left the whole space between the ships and Cape Hearne completely clear, and at eleven o'clock there appeared to be water round the hummocks of ice which lie aground off that point. In the mean time, our boats were employed in embarking the clocks, tents, and observatory, while I sounded the entrance of the harbour in order to complete the survey, which no opportunity had offered of doing before this time. At one P.M., having got everything on board, and the ice appearing to be still leaving the shore, we weighed, and ran out of Winter Harbour, in which we had actually, as had been predicted, passed ten whole months, and a part of the two remaining ones, September and August.

In running along shore towards Cape Hearne, generally at the distance of half a mile from the land, we had from ten to sixteen fathoms' water, and rounded the hummocks off the point in six and a half fathoms by three P.M. As we opened the point, it was pleasing to see that the coast to the westward of it was more clear of ice (excepting the loose pieces which lay scattered about in every direction, but which would not very materially have impeded the navigation with a fair wind) than it had been when we first arrived off it, a month later in the foregoing year; the main ice having been blown off by the late westerly and northwesterly winds to the distance of four or five miles from the shore, which, from all we have seen on this part of the coast, appears to be its utmost limit. The navigable channel, with a beating wind between the ice and the land, was here from one to two, or two miles and a half in width; and this seemed, from the masthead, to continue as far as the eye could reach along shore to the westward.

We found the wind much more westerly after we rounded the point, which made our progress slow and tedious; the more so, as we had every minute to luff for one piece of ice and to bear up for another, by which much ground was unavoidably lost.

After a very few tacks, we had the mortification to perceive that the Griper sailed and worked much worse than before, notwithstanding every endeavour which Lieutenant Liddon had been anxiously making, during her re-equipment, to improve those qualities in which she had been found deficient. She missed stays several times in the course of the evening, with smooth water and a fine working breeze, and by midnight the Hecla had gained eight miles to windward of her, which obliged me to heave to, notwithstanding the increased width of the navigable channel, the weather having become hazy, so as to endanger our parting company.

Soon after noon on the 2d, a breeze sprung up from the S.S.W., which, being rather upon the shore, made it likely that the ice would soon begin to close it; we therefore began to look out for a situation where the ships might be secured in-shore, behind some of the heavy grounded ice which had so often before afforded us shelter under similar circumstances. At one o'clock we perceived that a heavy floe had already closed completely in with the land, at a point a little to the westward of us, preventing all hope of farther progress for the present in that direction. A boat was therefore sent to examine the ice in-shore, and a favourable place having been found for our purpose, the ships were hauled in and secured there, the Griper's bow resting on the beach, in order to allow the Hecla to lie in security without her. This place was so completely sheltered from the access of the main body of the ice, that I began to think seriously of taking advantage of this situation to remove the Griper's crew on board the Hecla, in order to prosecute the voyage in the latter vessel singly, and had consulted the officers upon the subject. The circumstances, however, which subsequently occurred rendering such a measure inexpedient, because no longer necessary to the accomplishment of the object in view, by which alone it could be justified, I was induced to give it up, adopting the best means in our power to remedy the evil in question.

Shortly after our anchoring the Griper's people heard the growling of a bear among the ice near them, but the animal did not appear; and this was the only instance of our meeting with a bear during our stay at Melville Island, except that which followed one of our men to the ships soon after our arrival in Winter Harbour. Both crews were sent on shore to pick sorrel, which was here not less abundant than at our old quarters, but it was now almost too old to be palatable, having nearly lost its acidity and juice.

At one A.M. on the 4th, the loose ice was observed to be drifting in upon us, the wind having veered to the eastward of north; and soon after a floe, of not less than five miles in length and a mile and a half across, was found to be approaching the shore at a quick rate. The ships were immediately hauled as near the shore as possible, and preparation made for unshipping the rudders, if necessary. The floe was brought up, however, by the masses of ice aground outside of us, with which it successively came in contact, and the ships remained in perfect security; the floe, as usual after the first violence is over, moved off again to a little distance from the shore.

At noon the heavy floe at the point near us began to quit the land, and at half past one P.M., there being a narrow passage between them, the breadth of which the breeze was constantly increasing, we cast off and stretched to the westward. The channel which opened to us as we proceeded varied in its general breadth from one to two miles; in some places it was not more than half a mile. The wind was variable and squally, but we made great progress, along the land to the S.W.b.W., and the Griper, by keeping up tolerably with the Hecla, in some measure redeemed her character with us. Having arrived off Cape Providence at eleven P.M., the wind became light and baffling, so that we had just got far enough to see that there was a free and open channel beyond the westernmost point visible of Melville Island, when our progress was almost entirely stopped for want of a breeze to enable us to take advantage of it. The anxiety which such a detention occasions in a sea where, without any apparent cause, the ice frequently closes the shore in the most sudden manner, can perhaps only be conceived by those who have experienced it. We remarked, in sailing near the ice this evening, while the wind was blowing a fresh breeze off the land, and therefore directly towards the ice, that it remained constantly calm within three or four hundred yards of the latter; this effect I do not remember to have observed before upon the windward side of any collection of ice, though it invariably happens, in a remarkable degree, to leeward of it. I may here mention, as a striking proof of the accuracy with which astronomical bearings of objects may be taken for marine surveys, that the relative bearing of Capes Providence and Hay, as obtained this evening when the two headlands were opening, differed only one minute from that entered in the surveying-book, and found in the same manner the preceding year.

At one P.M. on the 5th, the weather continuing quite calm, and being desirous of examining the ice in-shore, that we might be ready for the floes closing upon us, I left the ship, accompanied by Captain Sabine and Mr. Edwards, and landed near one of the numerous deep and broad ravines with which the whole of this part of the island is indented. We were ascending the hill, which was found by trigonometrical measurement to be eight hundred and forty-seven feet above the level of the sea, and on which we found no mineral production but sandstone and clay iron-stone, when a breeze sprung up from the eastward, bringing up the Griper, which had been left several miles astern. We only stopped, therefore, to obtain observations for the longitude and the variation of the magnetic needle; the former of which was 112° 53' 32", and the latter 110° 56' 11" easterly, and then immediately returned on board and made all sail to the westward. After running for two hours without obstruction, we were once more mortified in perceiving that the ice, in very extensive and unusually heavy floes, closed in with the land a little to the westward of Cape Hay, and our channel of clear water between the ice and the land gradually diminished in breadth, till at length it became necessary to take in the studding sails, and to haul to the wind to look about us. I immediately left the ship, and went in a boat to examine the grounded ice off a small point of land, such as always occurs on this coast at the outlet of each ravine. I found that this point offered the only possible shelter which could be obtained in case of the ice coming in; and I therefore determined to take the Hecla in-shore immediately, and to pick out the best berth which circumstances would admit. As I was returning on board with this intention, I found that the ice was already rapidly approaching the shore; no time was to be lost, therefore, in getting the Hecla to her intended station, which was effected by half past eight P.M., being in nine to seven fathoms water, at the distance of twenty yards from the beach, which was lined all round the point with very heavy masses of ice that had been forced by some tremendous pressure into the ground. Our situation was a dangerous one, having no shelter from ice coming from the westward, the whole of which, being distant from us less than half a mile, was composed of floes infinitely more heavy than any we had elsewhere met with during the voyage. The Griper was three or four miles astern of us at the time when the ice began to close, and I therefore directed Lieutenant Liddon, by signal, to secure his ship in the best manner he could, without attempting to join the Hecla; he accordingly made her fast at eleven P.M., near a point like that at which we were lying, and two or three miles to the eastward.

On the whole of this steep coast, wherever we approached the shore, we found a thick stratum of blue and solid ice, firmly imbedded in the beach, at the depth of from six to ten feet under the surface of the water. This ice has probably been the lower part of heavy masses forced aground by the pressure of the floes from without, and still adhering to the viscous mud of which the beach is composed, after the upper part has, in course of time, dissolved. From the tops of the hills in this part of Melville Island a continuous line of this submarine ice could be distinctly traced for miles along the coast.