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Updated: June 4, 2025
Now every mile which they drifted increased the sweep of the sea, and in the centre of the wide Gulf, the southerly winds would scarcely fail to open, at least, the outer sections of the floes. As they concluded their brief Sabbath exercises, La Salle drew from his vest pocket a stump of lead pencil, and seemed at a loss for something on which to write.
Rennick got a sounding again to-day, 1843 fathoms. One is much struck by our inability to find a cause for the periodic opening and closing of the floes. One wonders whether there is a reason to be found in tidal movement. In general, however, it seems to show that our conditions are governed by remote causes.
On proceeding on, however, the explorers discovered, to their sorrow, that this ice was joined to a compact and impenetrable body of floes, completely crossing the channel. They had therefore to haul their wind and stand away from it, for fear of being caught in the ice, along the edges of which a violent surf was beating.
At dinner time Franz Joseph Land was far behind them, and they were sailing over the dark blue waters of the Arctic Ocean, more or less filled with great floes and icebergs, illustrating to the voyagers the terrible perils and hardships through which Arctic explorers had passed, and amidst which so many of them had died.
In late autumn, when storms rage over the land and break the icy fetters by which the frozen sea is as yet but slightly bound, when the loosened floes are driven against each other and break with loud crashes, and when the cakes of ice are piled in wild disorder one upon another, the Esquimaux of Baffin Land fancy they hear the voices of the spirits who people the mischief-laden air.
Accordingly, away they went making a pretty long detour in order to gain the shore, and come upon it under the shelter of the grounded floes, behind which they might approach without being seen.
On August 16 pack was observed on the horizon, and next day the bay was filled with loose ice, which soon consolidated. Soon afterwards huge old floes and many bergs drifted in. "The pack appears as dense as we have ever seen it. No open water is visible, and 'ice-blink' girdles the horizon.
Suddenly the tall masts fell with a crash, and the whole upper part of the ship was cast in fragments on to the ice. For several minutes the seamen stood aghast, till the floes having accomplished their work, remained at rest. Andrew was the first to speak.
During the time we were shut up at our last station near the Fury, one or two floes of very large dimensions drifted past us; and these were of that heavy “hummocky” kind which we saw off Cape Kater in the beginning of August, 1819. On the whole, however, Mr. Allison and myself had constant occasion to remark the total absence of floes, and the unusual lightness of the other ice.
Cherry-Garrard stayed with Bowers at his request, for this undaunted little seaman would never give up his charge while a gleam of hope remained. For a whole day these two were afloat on a floe about 150 ft. square, all the ice around was broken up into similar floes, which were rising and falling at least a foot to the heavy swell.
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