Finding the Bear had commenced to discharge her stores and materials, all of our facilities were at once used in tending her assistance, our steam launch Achilles (now, as of yore, the child of the Thetis) being busily at work towing boats to and fro, while our men and mechanics, with officers, were busily engaged in aiding the construction of the house of refuge.
Our arrival at Cape Smyth and vicinity of Point Barrow was on the 29th of July, the Bear having arrived on the 27th, the Saturday previous. While we were lying at anchor engaged in the erection of the house of refuge, the rest of the whaling fleet, both sail and steam, gradually arrived and came to anchor off the coast, reaching from Cape Smyth to Point Barrow. After a short stay the steamers went on to the eastward of Point Barrow, following along the ice-pack, which was in sight from Point Barrow, until they reached the heavier ice off Point Tangent. When the last of the whaling vessels had arrived, a fleet of forty-seven vessels carrying the American flag had assembled within sight of the most northerly point of the United States, composed of steamers, barks, brigantines and schooners. These vessels, manned by about twelve hundred men, I venture to say formed the largest assemblage of vessels and men under the American flag to be found anywhere during that year. I cannot speak too highly of the skill, seamanship, courage, and endurance of the whaling masters. They are a fine body of American seamen.
The scene on shore was one of abnormal activity for this region, the erection of the house of refuge, the hasty landing and transportation of stores (in which the whalers assisted), the movements of the Eskimos about their village (which was dotted with the white summer tents of the residents and the visiting inland Eskimos), and the clustering and trading about the Whaling Company's station (Ray's old station), gave a life and movement which was as shortlived as the season. Fortunately the weather proved most favorable and the heavy ice kept off shore while the stores were landed; the wind then freshened, but communication could still be kept up and the work of erection went on.
The site of the house of refuge is within a few hundred yards of Ray's old house and near the village, and its keeper, Captain Borden (an old New Bedford whaler) was busy in putting his house in order before the autumn should come on. During our stay at this place we were enabled to make a hydrographic survey of the anchorage, which demonstrated that the contour of the bottom is constantly changed by the ploughing and planing done by the heavy ice grounded and driven up by the pressure of the mighty ice-pack, under the influence of northerly winds and gales.
And here let me say a word about the ice of this part of the Arctic ocean. The ice in summer consists of floes and fields of various sizes, which are cemented together in winter by the young or newly frozen ice. No icebergs exist in this part of the Arctic, as there are no glaciers near the sea coast to form them. The shore along the entire Arctic coast of Alaska shows evidence of former glacial action, but the only glaciers to be found are in the southeastern part of the territory.
The Arctic pack, which never melts, consists of hard blue ice, made up of fields and floes of comparatively level ice, which are surrounded and interspersed with hummocks varying from ten to forty feet in height. These hummocks are formed by the broken and telescoped ice resulting from the collision and grinding together of heavy ice-floes, the hummocks being often rounded and smoothed in outline by heavy falls of snow.
In the spring, under the influence of the prevailing southerly winds and northerly currents, the packs break off from the shore and move to the north, the position of the southern edge varying in latitude with the season and the winds.
The shore-ice, which remains fast to the coast line after the pack moves off, gradually breaks up as the season advances, and, becoming scattered, is taken to the northeastward from the vicinity of Point Barrow and northwestward from the vicinity of Herald island and Wrangel land.
Sometimes a long line of heavy floe-ice from the pack grounds in the shallow water near the shore during northerly winds, pressed from behind by the force and weight of the entire northern pack. It is gradually forced up, ploughing its way through the bottom, at the same time rising gradually along the ascent of the bottom toward the land. The effect of this solid wall of cold and relentless blue ice slowly rising and advancing upon those imprisoned between the ice and the shore is one of the most sublime and terrible things that can be experienced.
The normal current running north through Bering strait forks a short distance to the north, one branch going through Kotzebue Sound and thence along the mainland by Cape Seppings, Point Hope, and Icy cape, to Point Barrow, at which point it goes off to the unknown northeast; the other branch, to the northwestward along the Siberian coast, and thence to the northward toward Herald island. The whalers burned by the Confederate vessel Shenandoah near Bering strait were found in the vicinity of Herald island.