William Spiers Bruce

“ At the beginning of such a voyage of exploration there are apt to be smiles at the eager zoologist emerging pale from his laboratory, but after the first time the trawl comes on board with its wonderful burden of living things of every colour and shape, each more quaint or beautiful than its neighbour, everybody on board becomes almost as enthusiastic as the zoologist who, now that he has got his sea-legs, feels himself more on an equal footing with his breezy seaman companions. ”

“ The most frequent form is a low arch of more or less elliptical form, rising not many degrees above the horizon to the north-west. On more than one occasion I have seen perfect coronas with their waving bands of streamers darting out from the zenith at times almost to the horizon. All the displays that I have seen on Ben Nevis had the streamers lighted with that lurid pale yellowish-green colour that every Arctic explorer is familiar with, but on one occasion at least there were mingled with it flashes of rosy red, which passed along the living bands. ”

“ Penguins in the south and guillemots and puffins in the north dart like torpedoes in the narrow lanes of water, only coming to the surface for a breath. Every living thing seems bright and gay, stimulated by the brilliant conditions of the weather, which seems to throw crispness and life into the very ice itself, and makes the saddest think that there is joy in living. ”

“ To the south, in the centre of the floe, some bergs lie cold and grey in the shadow of the bank of clouds. They look like Greek temples imprisoned for ever in a field of snow. A faint cold air comes stealing to us over the floe: it ripples the yellow sky reflection at the ice-edge for a moment, and falls away. ”

“ Then the scene changes, as the sun, skirting the horizon, paints the white ice world with colour, with tints that are absolutely beyond conception if you have not seen them, and that no Ruskin can describe. These beautiful scenes so—soft and so delicate—produce impressions that can never be obliterated; different altogether from the effect produced by the brilliant scene described above. Soothing—not stimulating! Making one think of the world as kind and gentle, recalling the past, picturing the future. Making one think what a lonely unit one is in this world ”

“ One thing is perfectly clear, and that is that there is an immense field for most interesting exploration of the most useful kind open to those who wish to explore in the South Polar Regions. There is no form of exploration more fascinating and more important than oceanography—physical and biological—in any part of the world, and in no region is it more interesting and important to carry on these investigations than in the seas round about the South Pole. Interesting as is the exploration of Antarctic lands, the exploration of Antarctic seas is not less so. ”

“ A dreamy stillness fills the air. To the south the sun has dipped behind a bank of pale grey cloud, and the sky above is touched with primrose light. Far to the north the dark, smooth sea is bounded by two low bergs, that stretch across the horizon. The nearest is cold violet white, and the sunlight strikes the farthest, making it shine like a wall of gold. ”

“ Fresh snow is all the while falling, and adding to the whole. Blizzards come and drive the powdery loose snow from one place to another, and the hard-driving wind binds the powder into solid ice. Imagine all this on an enormous scale! Not over an area of a dozen or a hundred, or even a thousand square miles, but over an area as large as Europe and Australia combined, then we have a picture of what is happening over the length and breadth of Antarctica! The ice thus accumulated from snowfall, thus consolidated from loose snow into solid ice by pressure, gets pushed ultimately into the sea. ”

“ In the distance a seal is barking—a low muffled sound that travels far over the calm water, and occasionally a slight splash breaks the silence, as a piece of snow separates from the field and joins its companion pieces that are floating quietly past our stern to the north—a mysterious, silent procession of soft, white spirits, each perfectly reflected in the lavender sea. ”

“ One striking feature is, that no matter how far north the explorer goes, no matter how desolate a region he visits, he is sure to come across one or more species of flowering plants. A poppy, buttercup, or saxifrage is almost certain to be met with, and of all these the Arctic poppy (Papaver radicatum) is perhaps the most persistent. There is no place that I have visited in Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, or elsewhere, however barren, desolate, and wind-swept, where I have not found the Arctic poppy growing, stunted it may be, yet growing and even flowering ”

“ Such is the mammalian life of Arctic lands: think of the contrast in Antarctica, where, in an area of five and a half million square miles, or a continent the size of Europe and Australia combined, there is not a single mammal! Nor, as far as we know, did mammals ever exist in that mighty continent at any time! ”

“ Magnify your roof, magnify your ice covering which has slipped off the roof and floated off into the water, magnify your snowfall of a single night into that of more than a thousand years, make every inch of thickness 100 feet, and you have models on a scale of 1 to 1,200 of Antarctic icebergs, at least as far as shape is concerned. ”

“ In many ways, in spite of an increasing number of scientific ships sailing over the ocean, we tend not only to care less and less about the sea, but actually in some ways to know less about it. To the great 20,000-ton leviathan going twenty to twenty-five knots, weather conditions, currents, etc., of vital importance to smaller and less powerful craft are of little significance—these monsters race through everything. The thousands of passengers in these ships make a voyage and know no more about the sea over which they have travelled than if they had been staying in a palatial hotel ashore. ”

“ I have undertaken arduous sledging and other land work within the Arctic and Antarctic Regions, but I know of no work that is more difficult or more dangerous than trawling in the greatest depths of the ocean in a sea closely packed with ice. The great increase of strain on the cable when it is caught by the ice, which is unavoidable, and the sudden release of strain, it may be to the extent of even 3 or 4 tons, tells to the utmost on all the gear, and it is not unlikely that something may give way with disastrous results. ”

“ The bear seldom comes to the land as long as he can get plenty of seals on the sea ice; he will only come if he knows of a short cut across some land or glacier to get from one feeding-ground to another, or he will come to eat grass as a dog does when he is not feeling well. He may also come to land if there is a human encampment, being attracted by the smell; and this habit is so well known that hunters when ashore or on board a ship will burn seal or bear fat, and if there is a bear to leeward he is sure to come up to the encampment or ship. ”

“ That is the accomplishment of an athletic feat only to be carried out by those who have splendid physical development. But if it refers to expeditions well equipped with every means for the scientific survey of a definite section of the world—be it land or sea—then the answer is different. To add to the store of human knowledge means increased power of adding to human comfort. It also means making another step into the forever unfathomable unknown, and it is the duty of the scientific explorer as a pioneer to investigate a definite area of the unknown with a staff of competent specialists. ”

“ A ship may be lying against a floe, perhaps fastened to a land floe, when the pack drives down upon it and it is caught; or, more deadly still, between two floes, when the pack drives down upon the outer one, drives it on, and the ship is crushed to matchwood between the two, unless—as happened with the Scotia off Coats Land—she is so constructed that when the "nip" comes she rises to it, and is heaved out on the top of the ice, the floe and pack driving under her, leaving her high and dry, but safe and sound. ”

“ While it is melting it takes all the heat available and so preserves the fresh-water ice, which melts after all the salt-water ice is gone. In old hummocky ice this process of purification has been going on intermittently whenever the weather was warm enough. I trust I have made these matters plain, but it is impossible by words to give a true idea of the marvellous colour and beauty of the ice in polar seas, or of its irresistible power when driven hither and thither by sea and wind. There can be no more terrific experience than a storm in a living polar pack. ”

“ To know that there is always in readiness a perfect supply of the most excellent fresh water is one of the greatest boons to ships navigating in the Arctic Regions, and a luxury which is forbidden to ships navigating in other seas. In the Antarctic, since one seldom or never meets with such pools, one has to pick out a nice old hummocky piece of sea ice or a bergy bit that has been chipped off one of the great bergs, and take some boat-loads of this ice on board. The ice is put into large tubs or barrels, and steam is blown through. ”

“ Scurvy has been the deadliest enemy of Polar expeditions, whether they have been for hunting or for exploration. Spitsbergen and other Arctic lands are one huge cemetery containing the remains of scurvy-stricken men and women who have died through ignorance and obstinacy, and even within the last few years many hunters have died because they have preferred to eat badly-cured fish and badly-prepared animal foods, instead of feeding on the food that the Almighty had placed at the very doors of their miserable and filthy huts. ”

“ Looking at the map we will find that the outline of the south of South America is almost the same as that part of the Antarctic continent known as Graham Land; each terminates in a pointed extremity which is largely broken up into clusters of islands and tends to turn towards the eastward; each has a group of islands lying to the eastward South America the Falkland Islands, and Graham Land the South Orkneys. We notice also that whereas the west coast of South America is rugged and broken up into many islets and channels, the east coast is of simpler outline. ”

“ It is very difficult to analyse properly Arctic observations, owing, as before stated, to the more complex distribution of land and water in that region. But there is no doubt that one of the difficulties is the desultory fashion in which meteorological investigation has been carried out in the North Polar Regions, the international co-operation of 1881 and 1882 being the only instance where a systematic attempt was made to study the meteorology of the Arctic Regions as a whole, and even these stations were not in existence for a long enough period. ”

“ Wind and weather may pack it closer together, the plastic new ice giving way with the old ice embedded in its matrix. The whole becomes a solid floe, and many floes unite and form great "fields" of ice. This field ice is more formidable than the fields and floes of new ice that are formed during a single winter, and which during the following summer are known by polar voyagers as "one-year ice." At the beginning of winter they may show a thickness of possibly five or perhaps ten feet, and in places there will be even thicker pieces. ”

“ A proper conception of the bathymetry of Polar seas is necessary for an adequate discussion of physical problems connected with the temperature, salinity, specific gravity and circulation, and the effect of wind, air-temperature and other phenomena that affect these seas. The physical problems of ice-covered seas are much more complicated than in seas where there is no ice, because, as we have seen previously, when the surface of the sea is being frozen over, the salt in that part of the water which is changed into ice is thrown out and must therefore make the neighbouring water more saline ”

“ With the large fine tow-nets there is no danger, but the apparatus—winch, wire, and net itself—are all of such a light description that, if the wire or net gets entangled on pieces of pack ice, they are apt to get damaged or carried away. Consequently the greatest vigilance has to be used: long poles have to be in readiness to push the heavier pieces of ice away from the place where the net is expected to come to the surface by the people on the ship and on the ice itself. The winch-man has constantly to be on the alert to "heave gently!" ”

“ All day in such weather we would approach the land cautiously, looking in vain to find a safe harbour where the Scotia might winter; and at night, to prevent being driven ashore, we would steam out to sea. To the north of the South Orkneys at this time the sea was clear of pack ice, but it was full of bergs, and the greatest vigilance had to be shown. On the afternoon of Sunday, March the 22nd, while endeavouring to discover Lethewaite Strait, the squalls became exceedingly violent, accompanied by snow and very heavy, blinding drift from the high mountains of Coronation Island. ”

“ The zoological collections of that expedition were most important and furnished the first evidence that a rich fauna existed in Antarctic seas at all depths from the surface to the bottom. The deep-sea exploration of the Challenger in relatively high southern latitudes furnished further concrete evidence that there existed in Antarctic seas a very rich fauna of fishes and invertebrates, and also indicated to us that great results might be obtained by an exploring ship equipped for deep-sea work that was also fitted out for doing that work well within the Antarctic ice-pack. ”

“ But from my experience in the Polar Regions during twenty years I cannot conceive of these Antarctic bergs being built up from a base of sea ice.
There appears to be little doubt, however, that the Ross Barrier is to a great extent afloat. But Sir George Darwin's "guess" "that the bay behind the barrier stretches past the South Pole and to the east of it as far as latitude 80°" is dangerous. All the evidence at our disposal from observations taken in the region of the Weddell Sea condemns the idea that there is "an arm of the sea through to Weddell's Sea." ”

“ This ice cliff, varying in height from almost sea-level to about 100 feet above the sea, stretches in an east and west direction between Mounts Erebus and Terror and Edward Land for a distance of nearly 300 miles. It is quite easy to imagine that pieces many miles in length and breadth might break off and float out to sea, as well as almost innumerable smaller pieces from a mile or two in length and breadth to only a few feet. This is exactly what does happen, and it certainly must occur in other parts of the Antarctic Regions besides the Ross Sea. ”