Polar Sea

“ 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 ”

“ The closeness and quantity of the ice in the Polar Seas vary much in different years; but, should it be in the same state that we found it, I would not recommend a ship's leaving Icy Cape earlier than the middle of August, for after that period the ice was not only broken up within the sphere of our vision, but a heavy swell rolling from the northward, indicated a sea unsheltered by islands, and not much encumbered by ice. ”

“ We can well enter into the disappointment of those who expected to have found the long-talked-of open Polar Sea, instead of which ice, evidently of great age and thickness, the accumulation, it might be, of centuries, and resembling rather low floating icebergs massed together, than the ordinary appearance of salt-water. ”

“ We thus fix the character of the arctic polar lands to be a close drawing together. Europe has, fortunately for itself, the least share in those inhospitable regions; only her pointed northern shores fringe the shores of the polar sea, leaving the great bulk of the great land-mass of the north to the broad shores of Asia and North America, with their neighboring island groups.
This polar world, as we may call it, in contradistinction to the Orient and the Occident, is not separated from more southerly regions by any great physical line of demarkation. ”

“ I was the more inclined to make this attempt, from its having long become evident to us that the navigation of this part of the Polar Sea is only to be performed by watching the occasional openings between the ice and the shore; and that, therefore, a continuity of land is essential, if not absolutely necessary, for this purpose. Such a continuity of land, which was here about to fail us, must necessarily be furnished by the northern coast of America, in whatsoever latitude it may be found ”

“ Men of my nation have been in these regions before now, and some of them have said that the Polar Sea is open, others that it is covered always with ice so thick that it never melts. Some have said it is a ‘sea of ancient ice’ so rough that no man can travel over it, and that it is not possible to reach the North Pole. ”

“ All these and various other similar accounts of north-east, north-west, or Polar passages achieved by vessels in former times have this in common, that navigation from the one ocean to the other across the Polar Sea is said to have gone on as easily as drawing a line on the map, that meeting with ice and northern animals of the chase is never spoken of, and finally that every particular which is noted is in conflict with the known geographical, climatal, and natural conditions of the Arctic seas. ”

“ But however variable the conditions of the ice may be, the impediments, even under the most favourable circumstances, are so very great, that we have never been able to penetrate the innermost Polar regions,—penetrate, that is, to where, according to the views of an earlier time, the open Polar Sea should be found. ”

“ Now, turning our attention to the South Polar Regions, we find the most interesting field in the world for exploration, especially with modern methods. Almost everything south of 40° S. requires thorough investigation and overhauling, and vast stores of information are to be gathered both from sea and land. And let us not neglect too much the sea, more especially since we are a sea-faring and sea-loving nation. The pride and glory of our past is largely due to the intrepidity and alertness of our seamen. ”

“ Enough, however, has been learned to justify the belief, that a continuous mass of ice, many thousand feet deep, loads the whole of Greenland, from the land’s end near Cape Farewell, to far north beyond Petermann’s fiord, where our Expedition traced its outline behind the coast hills on the shores of the Polar Sea. ”

“ And it is heightened in no small degree by the mystery of a residence in the midst of the sea, where all ties with the adjacent continent would seem to be dissevered. But if the open Polar Sea be a fact and not a myth, the continents are themselves but larger islands with more expanded horizons. ”

“ Thus, by a most beautiful contrivance, a large portion of the surface of the globe is rendered habitable, which would otherwise be a solid mass of ice, and the Polar Sea affords a dwelling-place for many tribes of animals most useful in supplying the wants, and contributing to the comfort, of man. ”

“ The ice of the Polar Sea may be compared to the ice of a mighty glacier: the surplus of both moves on until it finds an outlet, and moves in the path of least resistance. The chief and almost only outlet from the Polar Sea is between Greenland and Norway. A comparatively small amount of ice finds its way through Robeson Channel or Behring Strait. ”

“ When two of the ancient floes of the Polar Sea meet, the intermediate lighter broken-up ice which may happen to be floating about between them alone suffers; it is pressed up between the two closing masses to a great height, producing a chaotic wilderness of angular blocks of all shapes and sizes, varying in height up to fifty feet above water, and frequently covering an area upwards of a mile in diameter. ”

“ In the Arctic basin the clouds, the melted snow, and the great rivers, which have their mouths on the north of both continents, produce considerable quantities of fresh water, which, mixing with the waves of the Polar Sea, form a bed of mean density light enough to maintain itself and flow off towards the Atlantic Ocean. ”

“ Another expedition following in my steps and profiting by my experience cannot only attain the Pole; but can secure the remaining principal desiderata in the Arctic regions, namely, a line of deep-sea soundings through the central Polar Ocean, and the delineation of the unknown gap in the northeast coast line of Greenland from Cape Morris Jesup to Cape Bismarck. And this work can be done in a single season. ”

“ Is it probable that they go, at the close of the autumn, to a warmer climate? or can the sea be less closely covered with ice in the high northern latitudes? The situation of our encampment was observed to be, latitude 69° 19' N.; longitude 138° 101⁄2' W.; variation 46 ° 16' E.; and a rise and fall of nine inches in the water. The wind blew from the west during the night, and drove much ice near the boats; but as the masses took ground a little way from the shore, we were spared the trouble of removing the boats higher up the beach. ”

“ During the winter, frost and snow thicken them, and wind piles them into hummocks. Sometimes part of the ice lasts for more than one year—thus whalers talk of ice of one or more seasons old. But the floes of the Polar Sea are perennial. They bear the plainest evidences of great age. They grow from above, and are stratified by seasonal deposits of snow slowly converted into ice. Excepting in insignificant spots along shore, the surface of the Polar Sea never freezes into new floe; it is never long enough exposed. ”

“ If this comparison between the phenomena of high latitudes and great altitudes be just, then we should have as much reason to believe in the existence of the so-called open Polar Sea, as we should have to maintain, that in our glacier ranges ice ceases to be formed above a certain altitude. ”

“ Having reached the end of Nansen Sound, with Svartevoeg on my left, and the tall, scowling cliffs of Lands-Lokk on [Pg 196] my right, I viewed for the first time the rough and heavy ice of the untracked Polar sea, over which, knowing the conditions of the sea ice, I anticipated the most difficult part of our journey lay. Imagine before you fields of crushed ice, glimmering in the rising sunlight with shooting fires of sapphire and green; fields which have been slowly forced downward by strong currents from the north, and pounded and piled in jagged mountainous heaps for miles about the land. ”

“ The height to which the drift-timber is thrown up on the shores at the western entrance of the Dolphin and Union Straits is, I think, an indication of an occasional great rise in the sea, which, as the tides are in comparison so insignificant, I can ascribe only to the north-west winds driving the waters of an open sea towards the funnel-shaped entrance of the straits. ”

“ Accepting the deductions of many learned physicists that the sea about the North Pole cannot be frozen, that an open area of varying extent must be found within the Ice-belt which is known to invest it, I desired to add to the proofs which had already been - 2 - accumulated by the early Dutch and English voyagers, and, more recently, by the researches of Scoresby, Wrangel, and Parry, and still later by Dr. Kane's expedition. ”

“ With the warm flood of the Gulf Stream pouring northward, and keeping the waters of the Polar Sea at a temperature above the freezing point, while the winds, blowing as constantly under the Arctic as under the Tropic sky, and the ceaseless currents of the sea and the tide-flow of the surface, keep the waters ever in movement, it is not possible, as I have before observed, that even any considerable portion of this extensive sea can be frozen over. ”

“ Modern Polar exploration must be conducted in this manner. Having decided whether one's energies are to be applied to the Arctic or Antarctic Regions, the explorer has to make up his mind whether it be land or sea that he is about to explore, and, having determined that, and being well acquainted with the literature of his subject, and having had previous practical training in the work he is about to undertake, he chooses his definite area. ”

“ THE OPEN POLAR SEA.—WIDTH OF THE POLAR BASIN.—BOUNDARIES OF THE POLAR BASIN.—POLAR CURRENTS.—POLAR ICE.—THE ICE-BELT.—ARCTIC NAVIGATION AND DISCOVERY.—THE RUSSIAN SLEDGE EXPLORATIONS.—WRANGEL'S OPEN SEA.—PARRY'S BOAT EXPEDITION.—DR. KANE'S DISCOVERIES.—EXPANSION OF SMITH SOUND.—GENERAL CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM MY OWN DISCOVERIES AND THOSE OF MY PREDECESSORS.
Let us pause here a few moments, in order that we may take a brief survey of the Polar Basin and arrive at a correct understanding of what is meant by the term, "Open Polar Sea," so often used. ”

“ Geology.—Although much remains to be done in the exploration of the North Polar area, the main features of the physical geography of the region have been determined beyond any reasonable doubt. Within the Arctic Circle the northern portions of Europe, Asia, America and Greenland surround a central area of deep sea, the southern margin of which forms a broad continental shelf bearing many islands. The ring of land and shallow sea is broken only by the broad channel between Greenland and Europe through which Atlantic water gains an entrance to the Arctic Sea. ”

“ It has been fashionable to speak of an open polar sea, but no one has yet penetrated into it. The impression derived from the latest Arctic voyages of the American, English, Austrian, and Swedish expeditions is unfavorable to the existence of permanent open water. ”

“ He who expects with a ship of the present construction to reach the Pole in a single summer, necessarily believes in an ocean at the Pole. But even if an expedition should penetrate to 84° in Smith’s Sound, or should reach Cape Tcheljuskin on the north-east route, it would not follow that such an ocean exists, but only that the Polar Sea presents at different times and in different places open water-ways, which may enable a ship to advance beyond a point hitherto reached ”

“ It is known that they must come frequently to the surface to breathe, and the following questions naturally arise:—Are there at all seasons large spaces of open water in the Arctic Seas? or do these animals travel from the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans immediately on the breaking up of the ice off Cape Bathurst, and so early in the season as the middle of July; while the sea, to the eastward and westward, is still covered with ice? ”

“ I had in my cabin a good arctic library—absolutely complete as regards the work of later years. This [180] included Abruzzi's "On the Polar Star in the Arctic Sea," Nansen's "Farthest North," Nares' "Voyage to the Polar Sea," Markham's two volumes on arctic explorations, the narratives of Greely, Hall, Hayes, Kane, Inglefield—in fact, all the stories of the navigators of the Smith Sound region, as well as those who have attempted the Pole from other directions, such as the Austrian expedition under Payer and Weyprecht, Koldewey's East Greenland expedition, and so forth. ”

“ Just as we were endeavouring to double a bold cape the fog partially cleared away and allowed us an imperfect view of a chain of islands on the outside, and of much heavy ice which was pressing down upon us. The coast near us was so steep and rugged that no landing of the cargoes could be effected and we were preserved only by some men jumping on the rocks and thrusting the ice off with poles. There was no alternative but to continue along this dreary shore seeking a channel between the different masses of ice which had accumulated at the various points. ”

“ Twenty hours’ steam at this rate would take us beyond where ship had ever sailed. But, alas! “open seas” inside the Polar ice are disappointingly limited. Fragments of pack increase in masses, and at length stretch across the channel in a long white line from shore to shore. But a degree and a-half of latitude has been gained, and the 81° parallel lies five miles behind us as the ships are secured between Hannah Island and the grey cliffs of Bessels Bay. The island is merely a number of gravel mounds forming a convex breakwater in the entrance of the narrow fiord. ”