Ross Sea

“ Having clearly determined the general outline of the land, although, from the want of good observations, being unable to give its exact position, we bore away to the south, along a coast-line of icy cliffs, in a sea thickly studded with grounded bergs: a strong tide or current amongst them forming whirlpools, rendered the steerage of our ships at times difficult, and hurried us onwards to the southward, until at length numerous low rocky islets appeared amongst heavy fragments of ice, by which they were completely concealed until we were nearly down upon them. ”

“ The shore was strewn with molluscs, little mussels, and limpets. I also saw myriads of northern clios, one-and-a-quarter inches long, of which a whale would swallow a whole world at a mouthful; and some perfect sea-butterflies, animating the waters on the skirts of the shore.
There appeared on the high bottoms some coral shrubs, of the kind which, according to James Ross, live in the Antarctic seas to the depth of more than 1,000 yards. Then there were little kingfishers and starfish studding the soil. But where life abounded most was in the air. ”

“ August 5.A perfect calm in the morning, and the flowing tide, prevented our sailing so early as I wished; but a westerly wind springing up on the turn of tide at 11 a.m., we weighed, and made sail out of the harbour. At noon we were at sea, running with all sail before a favourable and freshening breeze. At 4 p.m., the light-house on the South Head bore E. by S, distant 20 miles, from which we took our departure, and shaped our course for the north end of New Zealand, distant rather more than a thousand miles. ”

“ The wind gradually moderated as we got farther into the pack, and had declined to quite a gentle air at midnight, by which time we were between sixty and seventy miles from the pack edge; there was, however, still so much motion amongst the ice, that I have no doubt it was blowing a strong gale in the open sea to the northward; the clouds drifted swiftly over our heads, and thick showers of snow fell, but we had, at intervals, an extensive view from the crow's nest, which enabled us to pursue our southerly course with confidence, though under diminished sail, throughout the night. ”

“ Should there be sufficient funds, it would be well to have a second ship for the express purpose of carrying an extra supply of stores and a house, rather than lumber up the oceanographical ship with all this material. If the lie of the land be found to be as expected, a serious attempt would be made to cross the Antarctic Continent and to emerge somewhere along the coast of the Ross Sea, the journey being made more or less along the meridian of Greenwich on the Atlantic side, and continuing on about the 180th meridian on the Pacific side. ”

“ Soon after noon it fell quite calm; and, after firing a few guns, we observed a white flag hoisted on a pole by the party in America Bay: we were, at this time, about five miles from the shore and directly between Possession and East Islands; the weather was still too unsettled for a boat to come off to us. While lying becalmed in this passage we obtained soundings in eighty-five fathoms, on a bank of sand, shells, and corallines. At dusk, on a breeze springing up from the north-west, we stood off to sea for the night. ”

“ Large floes are not very common, but there is a great deal of drifting ice, broken off from fixed land ice, which forms closely packed or sailing ice according to the winds. In December this pack ice is usually 300 miles across from 66° to 71° S. in front of the Ross Sea, but it lies further south in the King George IV Sea of Weddell. In February the Ross Sea is navigable, and the pack is scattered. ”

“ We found the shores of the mainland completely covered with ice projecting into the sea, and the heavy surf along its edge forbade any attempt to land upon it; a strong tide carried us rapidly along between this ice-bound coast and the islands amongst heavy masses of ice, so that our situation was for some time most critical; for all the exertions our people could use were insufficient to stem the tide. ”

“ By noon we were fairly at sea again, the Seal rocks bearing N. 69° W., distant four miles; and, favoured by a smart breeze from the westward, we soon lost sight of the land—not one individual in either ship, I believe, feeling the smallest regret on leaving the Falkland Islands; every one rather rejoicing in the prospect before us, of again resuming the more important business of our voyage. Steering to the S. by E. in order to pass to the eastward of Clarence Island, one of the South Shetland group, we crossed the line of equal temperature of the ocean throughout its entire depth, Dec. ”

“ Still, however, we were not entirely free from anxiety; the wind blowing a strong breeze, directly on to the pack, obliged us to keep a heavy press of sail on the ships to prevent their being again driven down upon it. The thick-falling snow limiting our view to a distance of half a mile, we were uncertain of the result for some hours; but, on the weather clearing up, we had the satisfaction of finding ourselves in an almost perfectly clear sea, a few heavy straggling pieces, and two or three small bergs being the only ice in sight. ”

“ With what a thrill, then, one stands upon the very deck upon which he trod during one the most brilliant sea fights in the annals of history, to go upon the gun decks where he commanded his gallant sailors. With what feeling of sadness one stands on the spot where he stood when the deadly leaden ball of a French sharpshooter gave him his death wound, and with uncovered head bows before the spot where the soul of the greatest, bravest sailor the world ever knew, winged its way amid the smoke and horror of battle to the peaceful haven of the great hereafter. ”

“ It presents an imposing appearance,—a tall peak burying itself in the clouds and often peering out above them. Its base is surrounded with a dazzling girdle of snow and ice, which extends, though sapped and excavated by the action of the waves, some nine hundred feet into the sea.
In 1836, the English Government appointed Captain George Back—who had lately been upon a land-expedition in the American Arctic regions in search of Captain and Commander Ross—to the since celebrated ship Terror, for the purpose of determining the western coast-line of Prince Regent's Inlet. ”

“ At daylight we bore away before the gale, the sea heavy, our ships scudding well, seldom shipping any water; for, although from their construction they sailed slowly, they possessed the advantage of being admirable sea boats, whether lying to or running before a storm. Our position at noon, by observation, was latitude 59° 21′ S., longitude 114° 57′ W. By steering more to the northward, we might have got out of the region of icebergs ”

“ Our latitude was then 69° S., longitude 175.5° E.
It is very curious to find such calm weather in Ross Sea; in the two months we have been here we have hardly had a strong breeze. Thus, when I was relieved at 2 a.m. on the 25th, I wrote in my diary `. . . It is calm, not a ripple on the water. The three men forming the watch walk up and down the deck. Now and then one hears the penguins' cry, kva, kva, but except these there is no other sound than the tuff, tuff of the motor, 220 times a minute. Ah, that motor! it goes unweariedly. ”

“ Long lines of sea-weed extended two or three miles from the shore beyond the East Cape, whilst strong eddies of tide, occasioned probably by their meeting at this point, seeming to indicate concealed dangers, and darkness now coming on, we hauled off for the night, having first seen a small cove a short distance to the northward, where we hoped to be able to land the next morning. This part of the coast was populated by vast numbers of penguins, in groups of many thousands each, and other kinds of sea-birds were abundant. ”

“ At noon we were in latitude 66° 55′ S., and longitude 174° 34′ E. The clear sea was no longer discernible from the masthead; with nothing but ice around, and fortunately a clear sky above us, we pursued our way through the pack, choosing the clearest "leads," and forcing the interposing barriers as they occurred; the way continued, if not to open before us, still sufficiently so to enable us to navigate freely amongst the ice, without danger or difficulty as we proceeded, at times sustaining violent shocks, which nothing but ships so strengthened could have withstood. ”

“ At 8 p.m. we were in latitude 54° 8′., and longitude 4° 36′ E.; only fifty-eight miles from the island, as placed on the Admiralty chart. We hove to for the night under a close-reefed main-top-sail, the sea running very high, and many bergs about us. Every two hours we tried for, but did not obtain soundings, with 400 fathoms. ”

“ Captain John Ross employed, during his Arctic voyage of 1818, one of the earliest satisfactory instruments for bringing up a considerable quantity of the bottom mud in deep water, with which he was able to ascertain the temperature at any depth.
A contemporary of Ross, the younger Scoresby, observed that, when in sounding at great depths the ordinary deep-sea line and lead are used, the increasing weight of line, in proportion as more of it is required, renders less certain the determination of the moment when bottom is reached. ”

“ From the interior of the cave we looked out over the tangled mass of shrubs, wild flowers, and waving grass in front, and saw that the sea was covered with foam, and the surf beat against the point beyond the cove, and flew up in the air to a prodigious height in white clouds of spray. Large birds wheeled about over the rocky heights, sometimes diving suddenly into the water, from which they rose again flecked with foam, and, soaring upward in the sunlight, their wings seemed to sparkle with jewels out of the ocean. ”

“ By a careful examination of the above experiments it will be manifest that the distance to which the cold water extends from the coast depends materially upon the depth of the soundings. It barely reaches forty miles from the shore, where the sea is more than three hundred fathoms deep, but spreads over double that distance in the shallower parts. At forty-five miles from the land, and at a depth of one hundred and twenty fathoms, the temperature was found to be 45°, that of the surface being 56° ”

“ Ross as a very unfit person for an exploring expedition, or he would not have returned without ascertaining where those men came from, or how a great sea could exist to the northward of the ‘icy hoop,’ through fear of wintering in a climate where he saw men in existence who had passed all their lives there. ”

“ In the calms it is true you are less likely to meet with dangers, on account of passing over less space during their continuance, but in the event of drifting down upon the pack or a chain of bergs, you are left totally at the mercy of the waves, the high sea generally preventing the use of boats to tow you clear of them, and defeating every effort to take advantage of any feeble air of wind that in smooth water might prove effectual; and it is this constant heavy swell that renders the navigation of the antarctic seas so much more hazardous than that of the arctic ocean. ”

“ At noon our latitude was 68° 14′ S., longitude 12° 20′ W., magnetic dip 63° 28′ S., and variation 6° 3′ W. Numerous fragments of bergs were passed, from which we might have replenished our almost exhausted store of water, but the sea was running so high, although there was only little wind, that I could not venture to lower the boats.
At 3 p.m. clouds rose slowly from the eastward, and concealed from our view the blue vault of heaven, excepting only a space of about twenty degrees, in which the sun went down more gorgeously than he arose. ”

“ See the immense equatorial flow to the east of Australia, and which I have called the Polynesian Drift. It is bound for the icy barriers of that unknown sea, there to temper climates, grow cool, and return again, refreshing man and beast by the way, either as the Humboldt current, or the ice-bearing current which enters the Atlantic around Cape Horn, and changes into warm again as it enters the Gulf of Guinea. It was owing to this great southern flow from the coral regions that Captain Ross was enabled to penetrate so much farther south than Captain Wilkes on his voyage to the Antarctic. ”

“ Our object now was to trace the pack edge to Feb. 5.the eastward, in the hope that by the time we reached the meridian of 40°, on which Weddell penetrated so far to the southward, we also should find the sea there so clear, as to admit of our yet attaining a high latitude: but the weather continuing thick, and a fresh breeze blowing from the east, we made only small progress, beating to windward—the loose ice near the pack edge always gave us timely notice of our approach to it: and the temperature of the sea was another sure guide. ”

“ After a long and heavy pull we regained our ships only a short time before so thick a fog came on, with a strong northerly breeze, that to have been a few minutes later, would have rendered our return to the ships impossible, and compelled us to have borne away for the shore again, to take up our quarters with the penguins, until the ships could have again approached it with safety. The weather obliged us now to stand out to sea. At night we had high winds with constant snow, and not meeting with any icebergs or loose ice, we kept the ships under easy sail, waiting a change of weather. ”

“ This arm of the sea is terminated at about twenty miles from its entrance by a glacier, which seems to connect the opposite shores; beneath this, as in the fiords of Greenland, it is not improbable its waters unite with those of the ocean to the southward. ”