Ice navigation

“ The gradual advance by means of ships, from the Polar Circle to 73°, 75°, 79°, or even to 82° N.L., has been the result and is the reward of the labours of three centuries. But to reach higher degrees, from 82° to 90°, depends on other conditions than mere time. That increased experience and boldness have removed many of the inconveniences and dangers attendant on Arctic navigation is undoubtedly true, but it is also as true, that, upon the whole, the safely and convenience of ice-navigation have more steadily increased than its successes. ”

“ The difficulties of ice navigation increase with higher latitude. Any vessel navigating in polar waters may at any time be crushed so suddenly that nothing below can be saved. At Etah I have always made preparations for such an emergency, and had all the pemmican, tea, coffee, biscuits, sugar, oil, ammunition,—in fact, all the essentials necessary to sustain life and health,—placed on deck close to the rail, where it could easily be thrown off to the ice. In addition to this, the whale-boats, fully equipped for a week or ten-days’ voyage, were ready at a moment’s notice to be lowered. ”

“ It is ice navigation which puts an expedition where it can do its work, puts it within striking distance of its objective, and without this key the knowledge which the world now has of polar conditions and geography would be comparatively little. ”

“ Good judgment and a knowledge of ice conditions are required in ice navigation on the part of the man aloft, and the helmsman must possess the ability to follow orders rapidly and efficiently and be able to keep the ship from brushing the sides of narrow passages. Spinning that wheel frequently and for all one is worth is no joke, and even in that cold, stripped down to my underwear, I sweated like a pack mule before I had been at it for long.
All day we ploughed through the pack with the Peary near by. ”

“ Daily Motion of the Heavens as seen at the North Pole.
There are but two seasons in the Arctic regions—a [5] long, cold winter and a short, dry summer. It is during the summer that the explorers do their work. Throughout the dark winter they can do nothing. Even in the summer, navigators meet with many perils, for Arctic navigation is not an easy matter. Besides the danger that the vessel may be frozen in an ice pack, or crushed between icebergs, the navigator is often blinded by fogs and snows, and has to face unknown tides and currents. ”

“ If a piece of ice gets under the screw, it will be inevitably smashed like glass, and the consequences of such an accident might be fatal.
The little English schooner follows us bravely; bounding in our track, and avoiding only by a constant watchfulness and incessant attention to the helm the icebergs that we have cleared.
But the difficulties of this navigation are nothing in clear weather, as compared to what they are in a fog. Then, notwithstanding the slowness of the speed, it requires as much luck as skill to avoid collisions. ”

“ This is one of the many instances in which our small vessel labors under very great disadvantages in ice-navigation—we have neither sufficient manual power, steam power, nor impetus to force the floes asunder. I am convinced that a steamer of moderate size and power, with a crew of forty or fifty men, would have got through a hundred miles of such ice in less time than we have been beset. ”

“ Ice is of direct concern to the navigator because it restricts and sometimes controls his movements; it affects his dead reckoning by forcing frequent changes of course and speed; it affects piloting by altering the appearance or obliterating the features of landmarks; it hinders the establishment and maintenance of aids to navigation; it affects the use of electronic equipment by affecting propagation of radio waves; it produces changes in surface features and in radar returns from these features ”

“ Land-ice often remains on the coasts even during summer, and in this case there is nothing to be done but to find the open navigable waters between the extreme edge of the fast-ice and the drift-ice. Should the drift become pack-ice, the moment must be awaited when winds setting in from the land carry off the masses of ice blocking the navigation, and open a passage free from ice, or at least only partially covered with drift-ice. It is evident that navigation in coast-waters must be slow and gradual, though it has always been attended with the greatest advantages. ”

“ A week later, the course was altered, and the Fram was headed for the North. The ice became heavier and closer as she advanced towards the limit of the ice-floes, and as the sun was sinking nearer and nearer the horizon, the cold became more intense at every mile. As long as there was open water ahead the energetic crew kept working their vessel so as to get her as high up as possible into the area affected by the current; but when they had passed the line which marks the limit of the floes, they soon found that further navigation was impossible. ”

“ Such, however, was the nature of this navigation, as regarded the combined difficulties arising from ice and a large extent of shoal and unsurveyed ground, that, even with our full complement of officers and men on board, all our strength and exertions might scarcely have sufficed, in a single gale of wind, to keep the ship tolerably secure, and much less could I have ensured placing her ultimately in any proper situation for picking up an absent party; for, if once again beset, she must, of course, be at the mercy of the ice. ”

“ The most careful navigation could not prevent an occasional bump against ice too thick to be broken or pushed aside. The southerly breeze strengthened to a moderate south-westerly gale during the afternoon, and at 8 p.m. we hove to, stem against a floe, it being impossible to proceed without serious risk of damage to rudder or propeller. I was interested to notice that, although we had been steaming through the pack for three days, the north-westerly swell still held with us. It added to the difficulties of navigation in the lanes, since the ice was constantly in movement. ”

“ Nothing could be more trying to the explorers than the navigation in which they were now engaged, day after day tacking off and on among large fields of ice, through which they in vain endeavoured to find a passage to the southward, with the constant risk, in thick weather, of running foul of icebergs, or of getting fast in the packed ice which might any moment enclose them, while all the time they were exposed to storms of snow and sleet, with a constant frost, although it was the middle of summer. ”

“ Unfortunately, the climate puts serious obstructions in the way of navigation. For nearly half of the year the rivers are covered with ice, and during a great part of the open season navigation is difficult. ”

“ Ice two feet in thickness is sufficient to close navigation to the most powerful of ordinary surface ships, and great power is required to crush or break a lane through it by the specially equipped ice-breakers now used in northern latitudes. ”

“ This was precisely the case on the present occasion; the ships might certainly have been pushed into the ice a day or two, or even a week beforehand, and thus preserved from all risk of being forced on shore; but where they would have been drifted, and when they would have been again disengaged from the ice, or at liberty to take advantage of the occasional openings in-shore (by which alone the navigation of these seas is to be performed with any degree of certainty) , I believe it impossible for any one to form the most distant idea. ”

“ Field-ice, covering a surface of many square miles, with a thickness of from ten to twenty feet, is frequently fallen in with off the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland. Though less dangerous to navigation than the iceberg, it is often a serious [Pg 188] obstruction. Vessels that incautiously run into a pack of ice of this kind, or have drifted into it, have often found themselves in a maze, and have been detained for weeks at a time, and not without some risk to their safety in heavy weather. ”

“ When to the ordinary difficulties which the navigation of the Polar Seas presents were superadded the disadvantages of a temperature at or near zero, its necessary concomitant the young ice, and twelve hours of darkness daily, it was impossible any longer to entertain a doubt of the expediency of immediately placing the ships in the best security that could be found for them during the winter, rather than run the risk of being permanently detached from the land by an endeavour to regain the continent. ”

“ The floes sometimes close up and float together as a pack, squeezing in everything between them. Sometimes they separate, leaving channels of water between. The pack floats with the wind and the current, and there is little chance of escape from it. If a ship is caught in the ice pack, it must float with it until a storm or some other change of weather breaks up the pack. When a ship is strong enough to resist the pressure of the ice pack, there is some chance of escape in the spring, but so tremendous is the power of the ice that Arctic voyagers avoid the pack if possible. ”

“ This movement of the ice varies with each accumulation of floes, as its rate of motion depends on the height of the ice-field, which then acts as a sail. It is ascertained by experience that calms, on the other hand, have the remarkable property of breaking up the ice. The knowledge and application of these circumstances are essential to the Arctic navigator. If the course of a ship lies across or against a current, it is constantly deflected. ”

“ That on which lay our depôt of provisions was floating in the midst of them; and here we were, without a boat, almost without provisions, and fifty-five miles distant from the ship! A strong current was running southwards at the rate of three or four miles an hour; fragments of ice were driving before the wind, as if they meant to delight us by their movements, and as if there were no change for the worse to a handful of men, who stood in reality before an impassable abyss. ”

“ But on the 22nd they exceeded all we had hitherto experienced. When we awoke in the morning, the crashing of the masses of ice was dreadful. In the messroom we heard a deep, grumbling, rumbling noise—the ship trembled like a steam-vessel under very high pressure. When we hastened on deck we were greeted by the long howls which issued from the ice, and we were soon convinced of the exceedingly formidable character of this special onset! Ten paces astern of the ship, the ice had been heaved up in a moment into mountains. ”

“ A change of tide or wind, perhaps three or four hours later or perhaps twenty-four hours later, causes the ice to slacken, and, without any effort, the ship steams through what was only a short time before an impenetrable part of the pack. Long experience of ice, good judgment, cool-headedness, and indomitable patience are the leading qualities of a good ice-navigator. ”

“ Then comes a whole winter's intense frost, snow falls and adds to the weight and thickness, and when this ice breaks up the following spring we have a really formidable pack to encounter. When such pack ice is not very open, but still open enough for a protected ship to work its way through, the ship has to be handled with the greatest care even when navigating through it in fine weather. This ice cannot be charged indiscriminately like one-year ice, and one must be able to distinguish between one piece of ice and another. ”

“ The Arctic navigators have given various names to these movable shoals,46 which are the cause of so much delay and danger. They are icebergs when they tower to a considerable height above the waters, and ice-fields when they have a vast horizontal extension. A floe is a detached portion of a field; pack-ice, a large area of floes or smaller fragments closely driven together so as to oppose a firm barrier to the progress of a ship; and drift-ice, loose ice in motion, but not so firmly packed as to prevent a vessel from making her way through its yielding masses. ”

“ I was bound otherwise to remain on board and assist in managing the ship while they were away. Frequently we had enough to do, as we floated among the bergs and floes, to escape those which came drifting towards us, driven on by some under-current, more than by the wind. The broken state of the ice induced our captain to believe that we should as easily get out of it as we had made our way into its midst. He was more inclined to this opinion, when we suddenly found ourselves in the open sea with scarcely a floe or berg in sight. ”

“ A fair breeze at length sprung up, which, bringing warmer weather, and enabling us to spread our canvas with effect, we cut away the ice round the ship, and then she, with her strong bows, forced a passage through it. While the wind lasted, with every yard of canvas alow and aloft the ship could carry, we pressed our onward way—sometimes among floes, threatening every instant to close in and nip us; at other times with drift and brash-ice surrounding us; and at others amid open ice, with here and there floating icebergs appearing near us. ”

“ The icebergs may be crowded by easterly winds upon the shores of Greenland, or by westerly winds upon the shores of Spitzbergen, or, lastly, the central passage may be the most encumbered, through the effects of winds blowing now from the east and now from the west. Thus the arctic voyager has not merely to take his chance as to the route along which he shall adventure northwards, but often, after forcing his way successfully for a considerable distance, he finds the ice-fields suddenly closing in upon him on every side, and threatening to crush his ship into fragments. ”