Pack ice

“ When ice is seen floating in small detached pieces and scattered masses, it is called “floe” ice, and men speak of getting among the floes. When these floes close up, so that the whole sea seems to be covered with them, and little water can be seen, it is called “pack” ice. When the pack is squeezed together, so that lumps of it are forced up in the form of rugged mounds, these mounds are called “hummocks.” ”

“ All young ice, such as bay-ice and light-ice, which form a considerable part of drift and pack-ice in general, is considered by Greenland sailors salt-water-ice; while fields, floes, bergs, and heavy-ice, chiefly consist of fresh-water-ice. Brash-ice likewise affords fine specimens of the latter, which, when taken out of the sea, are always found crowded on the surface with sharp points and conchoidal excavations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A floe is a detached portion of a field; a large area of floes, closely compact together, is known as pack-ice; while drift-ice is loose ice in motion, and not so firmly welded as to prevent a ship from forcing her way through the yielding fragments.
IN AN ICE-PACK, MELVILLE BAY.
This “pack-ice,” however, is the great obstacle to Arctic exploration; and frequently it presents a barrier which no human enterprise or skill can overpass. At times, it has been found possible to cut a channel through it, or it breaks up and opens a water-way through which the bold adventurer steers. ”

“ The strong floe of ice-table under ice-table, and hummock upon hummock, makes our position one of nearly complete solidity. We are glued up in ice; and to liberate us, some fearful disruption must take place. Twenty-five feet of solid ice is no feeble matrix, for a brig drawing but ten. Yet the water is wider, and still widening around us; so that now we hold on—that is, our floe holds on, to the great mass to the north of us, like a little peninsular cape.
“To the south every thing is in drifting motion—water, sludge, frost-smoke—but no seals. ”

“ After sailing along the Siberian coast for a short distance, the Jeannette bade farewell to land and started on her perilous journey.
In the Arctic regions the ice is divided into what is known as young ice and the pack. Young ice is that which is forming all the time. It is thin at first, and vessels can usually cut their way through. The pack is the old ice which has been formed for many years, and is composed of large pieces, called floes, which are often thirty or forty feet thick and extend over a great surface both above and below the water. ”

“ If any of you had been in these regions before, you would have learned that nothing is so uncertain as the action of pack ice. At one time you may be hard and fast, so that you couldn’t move an inch. A few hours after, the set of the currents may loosen the pack, and open up lanes of water through which you may easily make your escape. ”

“ In the course of a tramp to-day about noon, the thermometer standing at -18°, I came across a wonderful instance of the yielding elasticity of ice under intense pressure. About two hundred yards from the brig, on her starboard quarter, was an unbroken plain of level ice, which before our recent break-up used to form one of my daily walks. It measured one hundred and thirty paces in its longer diameter and eighty-five in its shorter, and its thickness I ascertained this morning was over five feet. ”

“ Some new ice, a thin film only, made around the ship during the night, the weather being calm and the surface of our lead therefore undisturbed and free to freeze, but it was insignificant in thickness compared to the pack ice surrounding us, which seemed everywhere to be at least seven feet in depth, of which thickness some two feet were above water and the rest below, with some hummocks here and there pushed up above the smooth pack to a height of six feet perhaps. ”

“ A water ice is a mixture of water, fruit and sugar, frozen without much stirring; in fact, a water ice can be made in an ordinary tin kettle packed in a bucket. If an ice cream freezer is used, the stirring should be done occasionally. Personally, I prefer to pack the can, put on the lid and fasten the hole with a cork rather than to use the dasher, stirring now and then with a paddle. ”

“ No bird with a well-regulated mind would possibly trust himself out in this temperature.”
On the debit side, the temperatures reached unbelievable depths. 57° below zero was recorded by our thermometers (the spirit ones, for the mercurial bulbs froze solidly at around -40°) . The pack ice reached thicknesses of thirty-five and forty feet below the water where underrunning floes, freezing together, consolidated into a kind of glacial layer cake. ”

“ Young ice formed so quickly in this sheltered position, and the whole space between the barrier and the main pack which was driving down upon us being occupied by pancake ice, we found ourselves in a situation of much difficulty, the ice becoming so thick from being pressed fold over fold, as to render it for some hours a question of doubt whether we should be able to force our way through it to the open water which we could not at this time see from the mast-head ”

“ Daily the sun got lower; so did the mercury in the thermometer; and often for days there was no sight of the former because of flying snow and the deep haze of frost-fog. The ice set more and more firmly about the Bowhead, and the pack which ground and crushed against the edge of the shore ice outside the headland no longer made any answering movement in the frozen stretch about her. The winter was upon them, and there were times when their ice igloo was put to severe tests as a frost defender. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pound the ice in a large bag with a mallet, or use an ordinary ice shaver. The finer the ice, the less time it takes to freeze the cream. A four quart freezer will require ten pounds of ice, and a quart and a pint of coarse rock salt. You may pack the freezer with a layer of ice three inches thick, then a layer of salt one inch thick, or mix the ice and salt in the tub and shovel it around the freezer. Before beginning to pack the freezer, turn the crank to see that all the machinery is in working order. Then open the can and turn in the mixture that is to be frozen. ”

“ Sometimes a long line of heavy floe-ice from the pack grounds in the shallow water near the shore during northerly winds, pressed from behind by the force and weight of the entire northern pack. It is gradually forced up, ploughing its way through the bottom, at the same time rising gradually along the ascent of the bottom toward the land. The effect of this solid wall of cold and relentless blue ice slowly rising and advancing upon those imprisoned between the ice and the shore is one of the most sublime and terrible things that can be experienced. ”

“ The ice was tenacious, but not strong enough for safety. As I was moving along over the tickly-benders, my ice-pole drove a hole, and came very near dropping through into the water.
“September 27. This evening the thermometer gave 3° above zero. A bit of ice, which I took into my mouth to suck, fastened on to my tongue and carried away the skin. When we open the cabin hatch now, a cloud of steam, visible only as the two currents meet, gives evidence of the Arctic condensation.
“Afar off, skipping from hummock to hummock, I saw a black fox. Poor desolate devil! ”

“ First, we cut two parallel tracks, four feet asunder, through six and five feet ice, with a ten-foot saw; then lozenged diagonals; then straps (ropes) are passed around the fragments, and a block and line, nautice jigger, or watch tackle, made fast to the bowsprit, hauls the lumps upon the floe, where they are broken up by the ice bars. A formidable barricade of dirty ice, about the size and shape of gneiss building stones, is already inclosing our vessel. Many a poor fellow has « 326 » had an involuntary slide-bath into the freezing mixture alongside ”

“ The thermometer had been at 21° and 23° for several nights, and scarcely rose above 32° in the daytime. Our little harbor at Barlow’s Inlet was completely blocked in by heavy masses; the new ice gave plenty of sport to the skaters; but on shipboard it was « 70 » uncomfortably cold. As yet we had no fires below; and, after drawing around me the India-rubber curtains of my berth, with my lamp burning inside, I frequently wrote my journal in a freezing temperature. “This is not very cold, no doubt”—I quote from an entry of the 8th—“not very cold to your forty-five minus men of Arctic winters ”

“ Edward Everett, then our minister to England, met in London a wealthy and eminent Hindoo, who cordially thanked the American people whom he represented for the great service they had done to his countrymen in shipping cargoes of ice to India. It is obvious that, in our zone of alternate heat and cold, ice is one of Winter's great benefactions. In the healthy preservation of food it is indispensable during summer's heat. In regions where little ice forms, the mountain-snows are economized. ”

“ The origin of the shelf ice is believed to be a sea-ice which because not easily detached at the time of the spring “break-up” is thickened in succeeding seasons chiefly by the deposition of precipitated and drifted snow upon its surface, so that it is bowed down under the weight and sunk to greater and greater depths in the water. To some extent, also, it is fed upon its inner margin by overflow of glacier ice from the inland ice masses. ”

“ The weather now determines the lot of the ice dealer. As the cold breezes whistle over the water, stirring it into ripples, and breaking its surface into waves, a wonderful change is rapidly transforming its liquid pearls into flinty diamonds. Gradually the heat in the water is radiated into the air. As fast as the surface water is cooled, it is condensed, and sinks to the bottom, its place being taken by the warmer and lighter water from beneath. ”

“ Ices can be made at home without a machine with a little trouble, and, to explain how to do this, it is necessary to explain the theory of ice-making, which is exceedingly simple. We will not allude to machines dependent on freezing-powders, but to those which rely for their cold simply on ice and salt mixed. We will suppose we want a lemon-water ice, i.e., we have made some very strong and sweet lemonade, and we want to freeze it. ”

“ Large boarding houses are often found included in the ice harvester’s inventory. This is a necessity where the storage houses are situated any distance from towns or cities. Several hundred men are sometimes thus accommodated.
Filling the House.—Ice should be housed during freezing weather, if possible, as the cakes will then enter the ice house dry and hard. In soft weather the ice is soft, and contains some water; the cakes, being chilled in the house, are frozen together, causing an increase of labor and breakage in getting the ice out for shipment during the summer. ”

“ If it is deep it can be readily handled, by cutting holes through the ice, or tapping the ice field in a number of places; the water, being heavier than the ice, will sink and raise the ice, if it has opportunity of so doing. Tapping should have prompt attention, and the water removed without delay. Even if the water freezes on top, the ice is not of good quality and is not part of the ice below. It forms a layer which is attached to the old ice, but yet is not solidly a part of it, and gives trouble by splitting out in barring off. ”

“ Our lady friends, often inveterate iced-tea drinkers, when they find a lump of ice too large for their glass, will, with a common toilet-pin between thumb and finger, press its point into the ice, tap its head with the handle of a case-knife, or give it a click with a thimble. The cohesion is destroyed and the ice splits with just such a fracture as is made by impulsive point pressure on the more tenacious and refractory chert. ”

“ In the long and almost perpetual summers of the South, ice is a luxury of the first order. Every morning the ice cart comes round as regularly as milkman or baker: it is seen on every table. Stored in great warehouses, built with double walls, filled in with spent tanbark or sawdust, it is made to last from year to year, even in a climate where the thermometer ranges for weeks at nearly a hundred degrees. ”

“ It can be seen that this ice is much more plastic than fresh-water ice. Fresh-water ice is relatively brittle, even in thin layers. Fresh-water ice, of the thickness of about 21⁄2 or 3 inches, will bear the weight of a man, but a child's foot would sink through sea ice of similar thickness, as if going through a layer of tough glue. ”