The Resolution was moored to a flat sheet of ice, surrounded by streams and open drift ice, on the 30th of April, 1808. It blew fresh, and the weather was cold. In the evening a whale was harpooned, which ran out about the length of a mile and a half of line from the fast-boat. Other harpoons, and several lances, were then struck, and no doubt remained with the pursuers but that it would speedily become their prize. But this expectation signally failed. A tremendous and convulsive throe of the whale produced an extraordinary effect: one of the lines, and also a harpoon were broken, and the other two harpoons drawn out simultaneously, when, to the astonishment of the beholders, the imagined capture was found, in one moment, to have become free. It dived and escaped!
A storm meanwhile had commenced. Five boats, with their crews, remained for the getting in of the long length of line run out from the first fast-boat, whilst two, myself in one of them, returned to the ship, in aid of the inadequate residue of men—for any nautical operation—left on board.
Thick snow set in, the storm increased, and the ship, being fast to a light piece of ice, drifted rapidly to leeward, and away from the boats. We became distressfully anxious about the safety of the absent men. At one the next morning the mooring was cut, and the ship being got under way, was worked on short tacks to windward, in the supposed direction of the boats. At three we were rejoiced by the appearance of three of the boats, which, with crews unharmed, we got safely on board. The remainder, they reported, might be expected by the same track in half an hour.
Cheered by this hope, we continued making every effort to get the ship to windward. But, long after the time of their expected return, no other boat appeared. Hour after hour of anxiety and distress passed over whilst we navigated, off and on, among troublesome and dangerous ices. Guns were fired occasionally, and at every unoccupied interval all hands were engaged in the one object which sympathy urged—the straining of their eyes in the hope of discerning the boats of their comrades through the obscurity of the snow. The obscurity was not attenuated; the storm raged, and the sea increased, whilst a foreboding gloom appeared in every countenance, darkening and keeping pace with the dismalness of the night. The loss of one-half of the Ipswich’s crew on a similar occasion was yet fresh on our minds, and low whisperings of expressions of fear, and shuddering responses, indicated a prevailing dread of a similar fate to their comrades.
At length, happy moment! a little after eight in the morning, a sudden shout of joy announced the discovery of the boats, and in a few minutes we had the undescribable satisfaction of seeing them alongside. Aided by those on board with ropes and hands, they were all, twelve to fourteen in number, received safe on board, and welcomed with the most heartfelt greeting by their truly exulting shipmates.
The natural desire and effort to get below, into a place of genial warmth, both with the shivering sailors and the sympathising people on board, was, with most judicious consideration on the part of my Father, restrained. The men had been suffering from more than a twelve hours’ exposure, without food or adequate extra clothing, to cold and storm,—the thermometer, which had been as low as 13 degrees, being still 8 or 10 degrees below freezing,—and many were partially frost-bitten, and some stiff and half-paralyzed with the severity of the weather. In this case, he wisely considered, that sudden transition to the warm galley, and proximity to the blazing fire of the cabouse below, might be productive of dangerous, possibly of fatal, effects. He felt it was needful for their safety that means should be previously adopted for restoring, in some measure, the arrested or retarded circulation.
Stimulants, in a case of this kind, moderately administered, were considered advantageous; but friction, and muscular exercise, much more essential to safety. Those, therefore, whose hands or feet, or faces or ears, had become white (like the appearance of a tallow candle) by the utter abstraction of the blood, had their frost-bitten parts actively and perseveringly rubbed with the open hands of others, and the worst cases with snow, until the endurance of the severe, or even agonizing pain usually attending the recovery, when the repelled circulation begins to be restored in the affected parts, had removed the risk of mortification taking place. Others were variously exercised, as they were able to make muscular efforts of themselves, or with the assistance of others. Those who were capable of the exertion were made to run about the deck, chasing, or being chased, one by another. And soon apprehending, as most of them did, the wisdom of the measures adopted, they not only entered into them heartily, but those who had been the most affected, as soon as their limbs obtained power for the exertion, were ready to join, or to attempt to join, in the exercise and race, until some glow of warmth, and consciousness of restored sensation, had taken place of the pre-existing chilliness or insensibility. They were then, under strict cautions against approaching at first too near the fire, suffered to go below; and, happily, under this wise and effective treatment, all escaped without any permanent injury.
A stout Shetland boy had well nigh fallen a sacrifice to the severity of the exposure. He expressed a great desire, whilst abroad in one of the boats, for sleep, and earnestly entreated the men, who objected to the indulgence of the inclination, to allow him to compose himself for half an hour, “for he was sure,” he said, “that he should dream of the situation of the ship.” After a few minutes’ repose, which they were induced to permit, he was awoke, but with difficulty, and it required considerable attention on the part of his companions to keep him from a sleep which, under such circumstances, they well knew must be the harbinger of death.
Other instances of the happy exercise of good judgment in the treatment of men who had suffered long exposure to cold and hunger, might have been adduced had I particularly noted them. One other case, though of no real danger, (occurring May 29th, 1809,) may be briefly mentioned, in which I was personally a participator.
It was blowing a fresh gale from the north-east, with strong frost, thermometer 20°, but the sea was not very considerable because of the sheltering influence of surrounding ice. Two whales were captured; but one of them dying at a great depth under water, had to be hauled up by the united crews of two or three boats, which proved a tedious and severe labour. We were absent from the ship from fourteen to sixteen hours, without food or shelter from the inclement gale, sometimes lying inertly on our oars waiting for the rising of the harpooned whales, or for the hauling up of the sunken one to the surface; and sometimes we were engaged in pulling about, hauling in lines, or in “towing” the dead fish to the ship. By the time we got on board we were mostly in a state of considerable exhaustion, and all were painfully suffering from cold and hunger.