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Updated: June 4, 2025
The 'Endurance' encountered the ice again at 1 a.m. on the 10th. Loose pack stretched to east and south, with open water to the west and a good watersky. It consisted partly of heavy hummocky ice showing evidence of great pressure, but contained also many thick, flat floes evidently formed in some sheltered bay and never subjected to pressure or to much motion.
On a sudden these vast masses were seen in motion, slowly moving round and round, without any apparent cause. The captain hailed from the crow's-nest, ordering the ice-saws to be got ready, and the ship to be steered towards one of the largest floes close on the larboard bow.
On the morning of the 10th the nearest berg was within three cables of the ship. But the pack had opened and by 9.30 a.m. the ship was out of the danger zone and headed north-north-east. The pack continued to open during the afternoon, and the 'Aurora' passed through wide stretches of small loose floes and brash. Progress was good until darkness made a stop necessary.
Those exceeding two feet in thickness are termed "heavy floes," being generally hummocked, and in the Antarctic, at any rate, covered by fairly deep snow. "Field". A sheet of ice of such extent that its limits cannot be seen from the masthead. "Hummocking". Includes all the processes of pressure formation whereby level young ice becomes broken up and built up into
The swirl of the ship's wash brought diatomaceous scum from the sides of this ice. The water became thick with diatoms at 9 a.m., and I ordered a cast to be made. No bottom was found at 210 fathoms. The 'Endurance' continued to advance southward through loose pack that morning. We saw the spouts of numerous whales and noticed some hundreds of crab-eaters lying on the floes.
The floes have water pools as described this afternoon, and none average more than 2 feet in thickness. We have two or three bergs in sight. Saturday, December 24, Christmas Eve. 69° 1' S., 178° 29' W. S. 22 E. 29'; C. Crozier 551'. Alas! alas! at 7 A.M. this morning we were brought up with a solid sheet of pack extending in all directions, save that from which we had come.
The bergs had absolutely duplicated and inverted themselves by reflection, so that the sunlit pinnacles became submarine fires, and refraction stepped in to reverse, and as it were shatter, the floes on the horizon, while three mock suns glowed in the heavens at the same time thus making the beautiful confusion still more exquisitely confounded.
The morning of the 29th of March, 1909, a heavy and dense fog of frost spicules overhung the camp. At four A. M., the Captain left camp to make as far a northing as possible. I with my Esquimos followed later. On our way we passed over very rough ice alternating with small floes, young ice of a few months' duration, and one old floe.
Snow ceased to fall, the sky cleared, and the temperature rose until the air became quite balmy. The ice of the floes eased off, narrow openings grew into lanes and leads and wide pools, until water predominated, and the ice finally resolved itself into innumerable islets.
Some tale of the southern seas, and the wild tropic islands, of coral reefs and pearl-fisheries, sharks and devil-fish; or else a whaling story, fresh and breezy as the north, full of icebergs, and seal-hunts over the cracking floes, polar bears, and all the wild delights of whale-fishing.
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