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Updated: June 24, 2025
Onward, but a few knots an hour, the Dipsey moved like a fish in the midst of the sea. The projectors of the enterprise had a firm belief that there was a channel from Baffin's Bay into an open polar sea, which would be navigable if its entrance were not blocked up by ice, and on this belief were based all their hopes of success.
The rest of the company on the Dipsey took no very great interest in the whaling cruise, but, on consultation with Mr. Clewe and Mrs. Raleigh at Sardis, it was decided that they ought by no means to leave the polar sea until they had explored it as thoroughly as circumstances would allow.
Consequently he determined, so long as he was able to proceed, to keep the Dipsey as near as possible at a median distance between the ice and the bottom. This was an anxious time.
The Dipsey was a comparatively small vessel, but it afforded comfortable accommodations for a dozen or more people, and there was room for all the stores which would be needed for a year. She was furnished, besides, with books and every useful and convenient contrivance which had been thought desirable for her peculiar expedition.
When Margaret Raleigh parted with Clewe on the deck of the Go Lightly, the large electric vessel which was to tow the Dipsey up to the limits of navigable Northern waters, she knew he must make a long journey, nearly twice as far as the voyage to England, before she could hear from him; but when he arrived at Cape Tariff, a point far up on the northwestern coast of Greenland, she would hear from him; for from this point there was telegraphic communication with the rest of the world.
Now the anchor of the Dipsey was weighed, and our party bade farewell to the polar sea. The great ball buoy, with its tall pole and weathervane, floated proudly over the northern end of the earth's axis.
When the Dipsey started, everybody on board looked over the stern to see if they could catch a glimpse of their old companion, the whale. Nearly all of them were sorry that it was necessary to go away and desert this living being in his lonely solitude. They had not entered the canal when they saw the whale.
A climbing party, larger than the previous one, set out for the iceberg, carrying with them, on several sledges, a long and heavy iron rod, which was a piece of the extra machinery on the Dipsey, and some explosives of a special kind.
Gibbs had announced the exact location of the north pole, all the students of geography had known where it was; before the eyes of the party on the Dipsey had rested upon the spot pointed out by Mr. Gibbs, it was well understood that the north pole was either an invisible point on the surface of ice or an invisible point on the surface of water.
The Dipsey did not go at full speed; there was no hurry, and as he was in absolutely unknown waters, Captain Hubbell wished to take no risks of sunken reefs or barely submerged islands. Soundings were frequent, and they found that the polar sea at least that part over which they were sailingwas a comparatively shallow body of water.
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