“In so far as the _Tegetthoff_ with her hull and masts presented a greater surface to the wind, the floe, on which it was imprisoned, would necessarily receive an excess of movement in the direction of the wind. If this excess formed an angle with the direction of the movement of the ice, the ship’s floe would deviate to the side of the least resistance, and drift according to the resultant between wind and resistance. Thus it might be that the ship’s course deviated from the wind, even in a direction opposed to it. But these anomalies certainly were not great, and could not well be estimated, because the deviations which thus arose depended on the direction of the wind, on the density and mass of the ice, on causes, in fact, which could not be exhibited under numerical relations. “If we compare the statements, as given in the _Meteorological Journal_,[21] concerning the ice-drift and ice-pressures, it is seen that the maximum of both occurred in those parts of the sea in which the ship was within the action of the ice coming from the Sea of Kara, and that the greatest deviations in the ship’s course necessarily happened there. “With respect to another abnormal deviation in the ship’s course, it cannot be doubted that this depended on the vicinity of Franz-Josef Land, towards which the masses of ice drifted under the action of continuous south-west winds; and were again driven back, thus forming a circle in their movement. It would seem natural to assume the existence of a sea-current in order to explain this peculiarity; but the configuration of that land and its coasts, or the greater or lesser amount of immovable ice, or, lastly, the prevailing winds in those regions, may have influenced the direction of the movement of the ice, and consequently of the ship’s course. “If we consider the prevalence of winds, as furnished by Weyprecht’s observations for more than two years, we find south-west winds prevailing in the southern part of the seas that were navigated, and north-east winds in the northern part of those seas.