Now this is mainly erroneous. Instead of 81° 50′, the highest latitude observed was only 81° 12′ 42″, and the statements as to the nature and position of the ice, are equally diverse from what those circumstances actually were.
My Father’s notable enterprise in the attainment, probably, of the highest latitude that had ever been reached by man was made in the ship Resolution, in the voyage of 1806. Occupying, young as I was, the responsible office of chief-mate in the ship, I have the records of the adventure preserved in my journal in all their essential or important details.
The entrance into the ordinary fishing-stations on the western side of Spitzbergen was, on this occasion, occupied by ice of extraordinary breadth and compactness. We entered it on the 28th of April, in the latitude of 76° N., and, pressing northward at every available opening, we reached the latitude of 77° on the 7th of May. Several ships were then in sight. On the 10th, a gale setting in from the S.E., we were enabled to make considerable progress through the encumbering ice, and soon left all our associate whalers fairly out of sight; and from that time until the 19th of June (after we had retraced much of our progress southward) we never saw a sail.
Up to the 13th of May, indeed, there was nothing unusual, as to the practice of my Father, in the nature of the adventure. But on that day, being in latitude about 78° 46′, within sight of Charles Island, on the western coast of Spitzbergen, he entered upon a new and apparently dangerous enterprise,—the attempt to find, whilst the sea was apparently filled with ice, in this high latitude, a navigable sea still nearer the Pole.
The ice around was singularly compact, and, to ordinary apprehension, impenetrable. Northward of us it consisted, as far as our view extended, of scattered masses of heavy drift-ice, closely cemented into a compact body by recently formed bay-ice. To attempt a passage herein, if such were possible, must, in any case, be a most difficult and laborious undertaking; but if the compact body were entered, and not successfully penetrated and passed beyond, it might involve a risk, which a considerable fleet actually fell into, of the loss of the fishing season by a helpless besetment. There were indications, however, which my Father’s experienced eye alone discerned,—of open water to the northward. The bright reflection of the snow-covered ices in the sky, constituting the phenomenon of the “ice blink,” most certainly pointed out the continuous encumbering of the navigation for a considerable way in advance; but, when elevated to the very top of the mast, he could perceive a bluish grey streak below the ice-blink, parallel to and skirting the horizon, which he deemed a sure indication of “clear water,” beyond the proximate “pack.” Yet this grey reflection, or “water-sky,” might not be of any great extent? It might arise from a transient vein of water capable of being obliterated on the first change of wind? Were such the nature of the opening, it might prove, even if reached, the more dangerous trap, as its position was more advanced northward?
These considerations, of very serious import, were settled, happily, by another sign which the watchful navigator got sight of. He discerned, for short intervals, occasionally, a very slight motion, as he conceived, of the water in contact with some of the large lumps of ice near the ship. His careful scrutiny of the masses, under an anxiously watchful eye, at length assured him that there was a movement. Experience then certified that the movement could only arise from a swell, and that the swell must proceed either from the main ocean, southward, or else from some immense interglacial lake, or what is technically called “a sea of water,” northward. That it did not come from the southern ocean, the distance to which he had penetrated, and the unmixed brightness of the ice-blink in each of the southern quarters, convinced him; and that it did come from the northward he was able to satisfy himself, by carefully observing the points or places on the masses of ice where the alteration of level in the water was the greatest; for this scrutiny sufficed to show, that the axial position of the ice, which the motion pointed out, was in strict parallelism with a wave coming directly from the place of the “water-sky” to the northward.
Encouraged by these indications, he determined on leaving a position recently attained, where the ship had some little room, and pushing, at all risks, into the formidable body of consolidated ices still beyond him. This arduous and adventurous purpose was commenced on the 13th of May, with a moderate breeze (favourable to our advance) from the south-west. Little progress was, indeed, then made; but laborious perseverance, rendered effective by a consummate application of all the means and resources available for our furtherance, ultimately yielded the desired, and I might add, deserved success. During five successive days, a series of labours were carried on of the most energetic and persevering description. The transit through the intervening ice,—which consisted, as we have intimated, of extensive sheets of bay-ice, with heavy lumps and masses consolidated therein,—was urged by all the variety of aids that were known to be applicable. These aids, beyond the available force of occasional favourable winds, consisted in the cutting of tracks or channels with ice-saws, where the thickness was too great to be broken, or, where thinner, in breaking the ice under the bows by boats suspended beneath the bowsprit, whilst their crews rolled them violently, from side to side, as in “sallying;” in making canals, by well-laden boats being run across extensive planes of ice, where their weight, with that of their crews, might be sufficient to break the resisting surface; in “warping” through encumbered channels, or amid lumps of more ponderous ices; in “towing” with boats, or “tracking” by men on the ice, during calms, along any clear channels of water which might have been opened out a-head; and, finally, by sallying the ship, in aid of any of these resources, for widening the space in which she floated, so as to leave her free to move, where room might exist in advance. And here, I think it due to my Father to notice, in regard to the sallying of the ship,—an oscillating or rolling motion accomplished by the running of the crew, simultaneously, from side to side across the deck,—that the application of this most important auxiliary process was original with him, and, as far as I can remember, now for the first time employed. It is a process, I may add, which has subsequently been adopted by fishermen and discoverers in general, as a mean which may often be made effective when, under all other means for the promotion of progress, the wedged-up or ice-bound ship has become utterly immoveable.
The manner in which these various operations were carried on was laborious in an extreme degree. Whilst the crew were allowed but limited and distant periods for rest, my Father’s exertions were such as, except under the pressure of circumstances involving the alternative of life or death, I think I never saw equalled. Not only was he always at his post directing, instructing, stimulating his men when progress was being made or attempted, but often looking out when the hands in general slept, or continuing his superintending toils, watch after watch, when portions of the crew had, alternately, their intervals of rest. In that severe service, indeed, few men could have so persevered. An extraordinary vigour and strength of constitution enabled him to accomplish, in labours of this kind, for which he had so high capabilities, what most men would have broken down in attempting.
His exertions and talents, as we have indeed anticipated, had their due recompense in the most successful results of the enterprise. After passing an icy barrier of extraordinary tenaceousness and compactness, as well as of formidable extent, we reached a region, in the 80th parallel, of incomparably greater openness than we could have anticipated,—“a sea of water,”—to which we could see no bounds, but the ice we had passed through on the south side, and the land to the eastward.
Under a brisk gale of wind and with fine clear weather, we were enabled rapidly to explore through a considerable portion of its extent, the immense interglacial sea upon which we had entered. It was found to stretch east and west, or E.N.E. and W.S.W. more nearly, to an extraordinary extent, and to be bounded to the northward as well as to the southward by packed ice of undeterminable extent,—the two bodies of ice being ten to twenty leagues apart. And within this vast opening, though not till after the northern and southern ices had closed together and joined to the westward, we made the principal part of our fishery.