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Updated: September 5, 2025
The first 200 yds. took us about five hours to cross, owing to the amount of breaking down of pressure-ridges and filling in of leads that was required. The surface, too, was now very soft, so our progress was slow and tiring. We managed to get another three-quarters of a mile before lunch, and a further mile due west over a very hummocky floe before we camped at 5.30 a.m.
The photographs were some of those that Dennison had made of the expedition the Freja nipped in the ice, a group of the officers and crew upon the forward deck, the coast of Wrangel Island, Cape Kammeni, peculiar ice formations, views of the pack under different conditions and temperatures, pressure-ridges and scenes of the expedition's daily life in the arctic, bear-hunts, the manufacture of sledges, dog-teams, Bennett taking soundings and reading the wind-gauge, and one, the last view of the Freja, taken just as the ship her ice-sheathed dripping bows heaved high in the air, the flag still at the peak sank from sight.
In spite of the wet, deep snow and the halts occasioned by thus having to cut our road through the pressure-ridges, we managed to march the best part of a mile towards our goal, though the relays and the deviations again made the actual distance travelled nearer six miles.
"July 9. At noon the sky to the northward had cleared sufficiently to allow of seeing Mount Melbourne, which appears now as a low peak to the north-west. Ship's position is twenty-eight miles north-north-east of Franklin Island. On the port bow and ahead of the ship there are some enormous pressure-ridges; they seem to be the results of the recent and present ice-movements.
In the engine- room, the weakest point, loud groans, crashes, and hammering sounds were heard. The iron plates on the floor buckled up and overrode with loud clangs. Meanwhile the floes were grinding off each other's projecting points and throwing up pressure-ridges. The ship stood the strain well for nearly an hour and then, to my great relief, began to rise with heavy jerks and jars.
The hummocky ice and pressure-ridges that Bennett had foreseen had at last been met with, and, though camp had been broken at six o'clock and though men and dogs had hauled and tugged and wrestled with the heavy sledges until five o'clock in the afternoon, only a mile and a half had been covered. But though the progress was slow, it was yet progress.
The pioneer sledge party, consisting of Wordie, Hussey, Hudson, and myself, carrying picks and shovels, started to break a road through the pressure-ridges for the sledges carrying the boats. The boats, with their gear and the sledges beneath them, weighed each more than a ton. The cutter was smaller than the whaler, but weighed more and was a much more strongly built boat.
The 23rd brought a strong north- westerly wind, and the movement of the floes and pressure-ridges became more formidable. Then on Sunday, October 24, there came what for the 'Endurance' was the beginning of the end. The position was lat. 69° 11´ S., long. 51° 5´ W. We had now twenty-two and a half hours of daylight, and throughout the day we watched the threatening advance of the floes.
"This plan would avoid the grave dangers we are now incurring of getting entangled in impassable pressure-ridges and possibly irretrievably damaging the boats, which are bound to suffer in rough ice; it would also minimize the peril of the ice splitting under us, as it did twice during the night at our first camp.
The weather cleared a little, and after lunch we struck camp. I took Rickenson, Kerr, Wordie, and Hudson as a breakdown gang to pioneer a path among the pressure-ridges. Five dog teams followed. Wild's and Hurley's teams were hitched on to the cutter and they started off in splendid style. They needed to be helped only once; indeed fourteen dogs did as well or even better than eighteen men.
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