Many routes to the North Pole had now been tried and found wanting. Expeditions had started out by Behring Strait, through Smith Sound, up the eastern coast of Greenland and from Spitzbergen, but they had one and all been frustrated by those great Arctic currents, which, rushing down from the Polar basin, carried with them such quantities of ice that real progress towards the Pole was practically impossible. There still remained one route, however, which had scarcely been tried at all, namely that which lay round the north-east shores of Nova Zembla. Many noted geographers held that the Gulf Stream did not disappear at the North Cape, and that by following its warmer waters it might be possible to avoid the Arctic currents and the difficulties which followed in their train. It was with a view to testing this theory that the Austrian expedition of 1872-74 set out in the _Tegetthoff_, under the joint command of Lieutenant Carl Weyprecht, to whom was entrusted all matters connected with navigation, and Lieutenant Julius Payer, who was to be responsible for the conduct of the sledging operations. In June 1871 Weyprecht and Payer sailed in the _Isbjörn_ on a preliminary excursion to spy out the land, or rather, perhaps, the sea, and, the result of their observations being entirely satisfactory, it was definitely decided that they should adventure in that direction in the following year. The _Tegetthoff_, a steamer of 220 tons burden, was accordingly put in a state of thorough repair and fitted out for two years and a half. Her crew numbered twenty-two, so that, with her commanders, she carried twenty-four souls, as well as eight dogs. The expedition sailed from Tromsö on July 14, and eleven days later ice was sighted. At first it afforded them no serious difficulties, for the _Tegetthoff_ was enabled by her steam power to charge the floes and so to force her way through those round which she could not sail. On August 20, however, she was brought to a dead stop by a barrier of ice in lat. 76° 22´ N., long. 63° 3´ E. “Ominous were the events of that day,” says Payer, “for immediately after we had made the _Tegetthoff_ fast to that floe, the ice closed in upon us from all sides, and we became close prisoners in its grasp. No water was to be seen around us, and never again were we destined to see our vessel in water.... We were, in fact, no longer discoverers, but passengers against our will on the ice. From day to day we hoped for the hour of our deliverance! At first we expected it hourly, then daily, then from week to week; then at the seasons of the year and changes of the weather, then in the chances of new years! But that hour never came.”