Their scientific duties were divided like those of the officers of the Alert. HM steamship Valorous was at the same time commissioned by Captain Loftus Jones to accompany the exploring ships up Davis’ Straits as far as Disco, where she was to fill them up with the coals and provisions which she carried for the purpose. She was an old paddle-wheel steamer of 1200 tons, and was but ill fitted to withstand the ice she was likely to encounter in those seas. Loud cheers from thousands of spectators rose in the air, as, on the 29th of May 1875, the three ships steamed out of Portsmouth harbour and proceeded towards Bantry Bay, which they left on the 2nd of June for their voyage across the Atlantic. Heavy gales were met with, which tried the gear of the ships, the Alert and the Discovery each losing a valuable whale-boat, besides receiving other damage. The Valorous reached Godhaven on the 4th of July, and the Alert and Discovery arrived there on the 6th. Some days were spent here in transferring the coals and stores brought out by the Valorous to the two exploring ships—the Alert receiving also twenty-four dogs, which had been provided by the Danish Government. The ships then proceeded, accompanied by the Valorous, to Riltenbenk, where the Discovery received her twenty dogs, and an Eskimo named Frederik, who came on board with his kayak.
On the 17th of July the Alert and Discovery steamed northward on their adventurous expedition, while the Valorous proceeded towards the Disco shore, where, from its coal cliffs, she was to supply herself with fuel.
A fog coming on hid the ships from each other. After running through a perfectly clear sea for some distance, the weather being fine, Captain Nares determined to take his ships through the middle ice of Baffin’s Bay, instead of passing round by Melville Bay. On the 24th of July the pack was entered, but the floes were rotten, and at first not more than 250 yards in diameter. As the ships advanced, the ice became closer, and the floes of much larger circumference, making it necessary to look out for channels. The commanders were constantly in the crow’s nests, and succeeded at length in carrying their ships through, in the space of thirty-four hours, although not without some scratches, and having to put on full steam.
They found the entrance to Smith’s Sound perfectly clear of ice, none drifting southward, although there was a fresh northerly breeze. The scene of the wreck of the Polaris was visited, and either the log, or a copy, of the ill-fated vessel discovered. The next point touched at was Cape Isabella, on the 29th of July. Here a cairn with a small depot of provisions was erected, at an elevation of 700 feet from the water, by the crew of the Alert, while the Discovery pushed forward. On the 30th of July the Discovery was beset off Cape Sabine, by a close pack five or six miles broad. The Alert, having bored through it, joined her, and both ships spent three days, sometimes getting under weigh and attempting to escape, until the 4th of August, when the pack moving forward enabled them to round Cape Sabine. Proceeding twenty miles farther along the south side of Hayes Sound, they put into a snug harbour, near which was discovered a valley with abundance of vegetation, and traces of musk oxen. Finding, however, that there was no channel in that direction, they bore away to the eastward, towards Cape Albert. Here a clear space of water appeared along the shore of the mainland; but the coast affording no protection, they ran into the pack, with the expectation of forcing their way through. In this they were disappointed, and, unable to extricate themselves, they were drifting at a fearful rate towards an iceberg. The Discovery seemed to be in the greatest danger, but suddenly the floe wheeled round, and the icy mountain was seen tearing its way through the surface ice directly down on the Alert. Her destruction seemed inevitable, when, at the distance of scarcely a hundred yards, the iceberg turned over, the floe splitting up, when the ship, although nipped, made her escape. They both then got round in the wake of the iceberg. For the next twenty-four hours they were struggling towards the shore, through ice four feet thick, amidst bergs of 300 feet in diameter, although only from twenty to forty high. At length successful, they reached, on the 8th of August, the land of Victoria. Thus they pushed forward, sometimes struggling with the ice, and boring their way through the packs, at others making progress by an open space near the shore. So closely-packed was the ice, that the channel by which the ships advanced was often immediately closed astern, so that they would have found it as difficult to return as to proceed northward.
On the 25th August, after many hairbreadth escapes, a sheltered harbour was reached on the west side of the channel in Hall’s Basin, north of Lady Franklin’s Sound, in latitude 81 degrees 44 minutes north. Here the Discovery was secured for the winter, while the Alert, as it had been arranged, pushed onwards, for the purpose of proceeding as far as possible through the supposed open Polar Sea, and reaching, some might have vainly hoped, the Pole itself.
After rounding the north-east point of Grant’s Land, instead of discovering, as had been expected, a continuous coast leading a hundred miles farther towards the north, the Alert found herself on the confines of what was evidently a very extensive sea, but covered as far as the eye could reach by closely-packed ice of prodigious thickness. Through this ice it was at once seen that it would be impossible to penetrate. The ship, indeed, herself was placed in the greatest peril, for the ice was seen bearing down upon her while she lay unable to escape, with a rock-bound coast to the southward, and no harbour in which to seek for refuge.
Happily she was saved by the extraordinary depth to which the ice sank; for the mass grounding on the beach, formed a barrier inside of which she was tolerably safe. We can well enter into the disappointment of those who expected to have found the long-talked-of open Polar Sea, instead of which ice, evidently of great age and thickness, the accumulation, it might be, of centuries, and resembling rather low floating icebergs massed together, than the ordinary appearance of salt-water. When two vast floes meet, the lighter portions floating between the closing masses are broken up and thrown over their surface, sometimes to the height of fifty feet above the water, forming a succession of ice-hills of the most rugged description.
Although Captain Nares saw at once the almost impracticable character of the ice in the direction of the Pole, and which there was every probability would prove continuous, he resolved, as soon as the weather would allow, to despatch a sledge party in the desired direction. The supposed Polar Sea was appropriately named the “Palaeocrystic Sea,” or “Sea of Ancient Ice.”
The ice hitherto met with was seldom more than from two to ten feet in thickness; that which was now stretched before them was found to measure from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet in depth, its lowest part being fifteen feet above the water-line. This enormous thickness was produced in consequence of its being shut up in the Polar Sea, with few outlets by which it could escape to the southward, the ice of one season being added in succession to that of the previous year.
The two ships were now in their winter quarters,—the Alert off the coast of Grant’s Land, with a bleak shore to the southward, and to the north a vast wilderness of rugged ice, extending in all probability to the Pole, in latitude 82 degrees 27 minutes, many miles farther than any ship had ever attained; while the Discovery was seventy miles off, in a harbour on the coast of Greenland, inside Smith’s Sound, in latitude 81 degrees 45 minutes. Lieutenant Rawson, with a party of men, had come on board the Alert in order to convey notice of her position to the Discovery. He made two determined attempts to perform the journey between the two ships without success, owing to the ice remaining unfrozen till late in the autumn in Robson’s Channel. He and his men had therefore to pass the winter on board the Alert. As soon as the safety of the Alert was secured, sledge parties were sent on along the shore to the southward and westward, with boats and provisions for the use of the travelling parties in the spring, under the command of Commander Markham and Lieutenant Aldrich. The latter advanced three miles beyond Sir Edward Parry’s most northward position, and from a mountain 2000 feet high sighted land towards the west-north-west; but no land was seen to the northward. On their return journey, which lasted for twenty days, most of the people were frost-bitten in the feet.