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 2

by Sir William Edward Parry

In order to try what our chances were, at the present low temperature, of procuring water upon the ice without expense of fuel, we laid a black painted canvass cloth, and also a piece of black felt, upon the surface of the snow; the temperature of the atmosphere being from 18° to 23°. These substances had, in a couple of hours, sunk half an inch into the snow, but no water could be collected. I was desirous, also, of ascertaining whether any part of the real sea-ice was so entirely fresh when melted as to be drunk without injury or inconvenience. For this purpose we cut a block of ice from a large hummock, about ten feet high above the sea; and having broken, pounded, and melted it, without any previous washing, we found it, both by the hydrometer and by the chemical test (nitrate of silver), more free from salt than any which we had in our tanks, and which was procured from Hammerfest. I considered this satisfactory, because, in the autumn, the pools of water met with upon the ice generally become very brackish, in consequence of the sea-water being drawn up into them by capillary action as the ice becomes more "rotten" and porous; and we might, therefore, have to depend chiefly on melted ice for our daily supply.

No change took place till the 21st, when, on the weather clearing up, we found that the open water we had left to the westward was now wholly closed up, and that there was none whatever in sight. It was now also so close in-shore, that on the 22d, Lieutenant Ross, with a party of officers and men, succeeded in landing without difficulty. They found a small floe of level ice close to the beach, which appeared very lately formed. Walking up to a little conspicuous eminence near the eastern end of the beach, they found it to be composed of clay-slate, tinged of a brownish red colour. The few uncovered parts of the beach were strewed with smooth schistose fragments of the same mineral, and in some parts a quantity of thin slates of it lay closely disposed together in a vertical position. On the little hillock were two graves, bearing the dates of 1741 and 1762 on some of the stones which marked them, and a considerable quantity of fir driftwood lay upon the beach.

I now clearly saw that there was, for the present, no reasonable prospect of our getting towards any harbour; and I could not but feel confident that, even if we did get to the entrance of any, some time must be occupied in securing the ship. It may be well imagined how anxious I had now become to delay no longer in setting out upon the main object of the expedition. I felt that a few days at the commencement of the season, short as it is in these regions, might be of great importance as to the result of our enterprise, while the ship seemed to be so far secure from any immediate danger as to justify my leaving her, with a reduced crew, in her present situation. The nature of the ice was, beyond all comparison, the most unfavourable for our purpose that I remember to have ever seen. It consisted only of loose pieces, scarcely any of them fifteen or twenty yards square; and when any so large did occur, their, margins were surrounded by the smaller ones, thrown up by the recent pressure into ten thousand various shapes, and presenting high and sharp angular masses at every other step. The men compared it to a stone-mason's yard, which, except that the stones were of ten times the usual dimensions, it indeed very much resembled. The only inducement to set out over such a road was the certainty that floes and fields lay beyond it, and the hope that they were not far beyond it. In this respect, indeed, I considered our present easterly position as a probable advantage, since the ice was much less likely to have been disturbed to any great extent northward in this meridian than to the westward clear of the land, where every southerly breeze was sure to be making havoc among it. Another very important advantage in setting off on this meridian appeared to me to be, that, the land of Spitzbergen lying immediately over against the ice, the latter could never drift so much or so fast to the southward as it might farther to the westward.

Upon these grounds it was that I was anxious to make an attempt, at least, as soon as our arrangements could be completed; and the officers being of the same opinion as myself, we hoisted out the boats early in the morning of the 27th, and, having put the things into one of them, endeavoured, by way of experiment, to get her to a little distance from the ship. Such however, were the irregularities of the ice, that, even with the assistance of an additional party of men, it was obvious that we could not have gained a single mile in a day, and, what was still more important, not without almost certain and serious injury to the boats by their striking against the angular masses. Under these circumstances, it was but too evident to every one that it would have been highly imprudent to persist in setting out, since, if the ice, after all, should clear away, even in a week, so as to allow us to get a few miles nearer the main body, time would be ultimately saved by our delay, to say nothing of the wear and tear, and expense of our provisions. I was, therefore, very reluctantly compelled to yield to this necessity, and to order the things to be got on board again.

Immediately after we had, on the 27th, proved experimentally the extreme difficulty of transporting our boats and stores over the ice which now surrounded us, I made up my mind to the very great probability there seemed to be of the necessity of adopting such alterations in our original plans as would accommodate them to these untoward circumstances at the outset. The boats forming the main impediment, not so much on account of their absolute weight as from the difficulty of managing so large a body upon a road of this nature, I made preparations for the possible contingency of our having to take only one, continuing the same number of men in our whole party. All that I saw reason to apprehend from having only a single boat on our outward journey, was some occasional delay in ferrying over spaces of water in two trips instead of one; but we considered that this would be much more than compensated by the increased rate at which we should go whenever we were upon the ice, as we expected to be nine days out of ten. The principal disadvantage, therefore, consisted in our not all being able to sleep in the boat, and this we proposed to obviate in the following manner.

We constructed out of the Lapland snow-shoes fourteen sledges, each sledge consisting of two pairs well fastened together. Upon these we proposed dragging almost all the weight, so as to keep the boat nearly without any cargo in her, as we found by experiment that a man could drag about three hundred pounds on one of the sledges with more facility than he could drag the boat when his proportion did not exceed one hundred pounds. Upon these sledges we proposed lodging half our party alternately each night, placing them under the lee of the boat, and then stretching over them, as a sloped roof, a second awning, which we fitted for the purpose. Upon this plan we likewise could afford to make our boat considerably stronger, adding some stout iron knees to the supports of her runners, and increasing our store of materials for repairing her. The weight reduced by this arrangement would have been above two thousand pounds, without taking away any article conducive to our comfort, except the boat and her gear. I proposed to the officers and men who had been selected to accompany me this change in our equipment; and I need scarcely say that they all clearly saw the probable necessity of it, and cheerfully acquiesced in its adoption, if requisite.

On the 29th I sent Lieutenants Foster and Crozier, with the greater part of the ship's company, and with a third or spare travelling-boat, to endeavour to land her on Red Beach, together with a quantity of stores, including provisions, as a deposite for us on our return from the northward, should it so happen, as was not improbable, that we should return to the eastward. It is impossible to describe the labour attending this attempt. Suffice it to say, that, after working for fourteen hours, they returned on board at midnight, having accomplished about four miles out of the six. The next day they returned to the boat, and, after several hours' exertion, landed her on the beach with the stores. What added to the fatigue of this service was the necessity of taking a small boat to cross pools of water on their return, so that they had to drag this boat both ways, besides that which they went to convey. Having, however, had an opportunity of trying what could be done upon a regular and level floe which lay close to the beach, everybody was of opinion, as I had always been, that we could easily travel twenty miles a day on ice of that kind.

It will not be wondered at if the apparent hopelessness of getting the ship free for the present again suggested the necessity of my own setting out: and I had once more, on the 1st of June, after an anxious consultation with my officers, resolved on making a second attempt, when the ice near us, which had opened at regular hours with the tide for three or four days past, began to set us much more rapidly than usual to the eastward, and towards a low point which runs off from Red Beach, near its western end, causing us to shoal the water in a few hours from fifty-two to twenty fathoms, and on the following morning to fourteen and a half. By sending a lead-line over the ice a few hundred yards beyond us, we found ten fathoms water. However unfavourable the aspect of our affairs seemed before, this new change could not fail to alter it for the worse. The situation of the ship now, indeed, required my whole attention; for the ice occasionally opened and shut within twenty or twenty-five yards of us on the in-shore side, the ship herself was still very firmly imbedded by the turned up masses which pressed upon her on the 19th, and which, on the other side, as well as ahead and astern, were of considerable extent. Thus she formed, as it were, part of a floe, which went drifting about in the manner above described. This was of little importance while she was in sixty fathoms of water, as she was for the first fourteen days of our besetment, and a distance of five or six miles from the land; but now that she had shoaled the water so considerably, and approached the low point within two or three miles, it became a matter of importance to try whether any labour we could bestow upon it would liberate the ship from her present imbedded state, so as to be at least ready to take advantage of slack water, should any occur, to keep her off the shore. All hands were therefore set to work with handspikes, capstan-bars, and axes, it being necessary to detach every separate mass, however small, before the larger ones could be moved. The harassing and laborious nature of this operation is such as nothing but experience can possibly give an idea of, especially when, as in this case, we had only a small pool of clear water near the margin in which the detached pieces could be floated out. However, we continued at work, with only the necessary intermissions for rest and meals, during this and the two following days, and on the evening of the 3d had accomplished all that the closeness of the ice would permit; but the ship was still by no means free, numberless masses of ice being doubled under her, even below her keel, which could not be moved without more space for working.

Painful as was this protracted delay in setting out upon the principal object of the expedition, the absolute necessity of it will scarcely, I think, be doubted by any person conversant in such matters. So long as the ship continued undisturbed by the ice, nearly stationary, and in deep water, for several days together, I had, in my anxiety to lose not a moment's time, ventured to flatter myself with the hope that, in a case of such unlooked-for emergency, when every moment of our short and uncertain season was of importance, I might be justified in quitting my ship at sea; and in this opinion the zeal of my officers, both those who were to accompany me and those who were to remain on board, induced them unanimously to concur. But the case was now materially altered; for it had become plain to every seaman in the ship, first, that the safety of the Hecla, if thus left with less than half her working hands, could not be reckoned upon for an hour; and, secondly, that no human foresight could enable us to conjecture, should we set out while she was thus situated, when or where we should find her on our return. In fact, it appeared to us at this time, as indeed it was, a very providential circumstance, that the impracticable nature of the ice for travelling had offered no encouragement to persevere in my original intention of setting out a week before this time.

For the two following days we continued closely beset, but still driving to the eastward across the mouth of Weyde Bay, which is here six or seven miles in breadth, and appeared to be very deep, the land in the centre receding to a distance of full eight leagues. In the afternoon of the 6th, we had driven within five miles of a point of land, beyond which, to the eastward, it seemed to recede considerably; and this appearing to answer tolerably to the situation of Muscle or Mussel Bay, as laid down in most of the charts, I was very anxious to discover whether we could here find shelter for the ship. A lane of water leading towards the land at no great distance from us, I hauled a boat over the ice and then rowed on shore, accompanied by Lieutenant Foster and some of the other officers, taking with me another small store of provisions, to be deposited here, as a future resource for my party, should we approach this part of the coast.