Round About the North PoleGordon, W. J. (William John)
History
Round About the North Pole
Gordon, W. J. (William John)
Arctic regions; North Pole
The _Victory_ in the short summer of 1830 sailed a few miles further
south and spent the winter in Victoria Harbour, to be there abandoned in
May, 1832. Ross in his boats made for Fury Beach, where, at Somerset
House, as he called it, he passed the following winter. On the 26th of
August, 1833, when in his boats off the eastern mouth of Lancaster
Sound, he was picked up by the _Isabella_, his old ship, and in her he
reached the Humber in October of that year after four successive winters
in the ice, having been enabled to make so long a stay by his fortunate
find of the stores left by Parry.
[Illustration: H.M.S. "TERROR" LIFTED BY ICE]
In 1824 Captain Lyon was sent out in the _Griper_ to winter at Repulse
Bay, and thence crossing the isthmus described by the Eskimos continue
along to Franklin's Point Turnagain; but the _Griper_ was nearly wrecked
in Rowe's Welcome and did not reach Wager River. The discoveries of Ross
led to the renewal of this attempt by Captain Back in the _Terror_ in
1836. He was to go to Wager River or Repulse Bay, and then make his way
into Prince Regent Inlet, and so west; but he became imprisoned in the
ice off Cape Comfort during one of the severest winters known. Drifting
up Frozen Strait amid most perilous experiences, the ship, lifted high
above sea-level by pressure, lay at times almost horizontal. Once "they
beheld," he says, "the strange and appalling spectacle of what may be
fitly termed a submerged berg, fixed low down, with one end to the
ship's side, while the other, with the purchase of a long lever
advantageously placed at a right angle with the keel, was slowly rising
towards the surface. Meanwhile, those who happened to be below, finding
everything falling, rushed or clambered on deck, where they saw the ship
on her beam-ends, with the lee boats touching the water, and felt that a
few moments only trembled between them and eternity."
Day after day the _Terror_ defied the persistent effort of the ice to
smash her, but suffering much in almost every timber she withstood it
sufficiently to keep together. For four months she was entirely out of
water, and when at last she was free, Back wrapped her up as best he
could, and brought her home with the water pouring into her so that the
men were so wearied out that they could hardly have continued at the
pumps another day; and he ran her ashore in Lough Swilly only just in
time. Upwards of twenty feet of her keel, together with ten feet of the
stern-post, were driven over more than three and a half feet on one
side, leaving a frightful opening astern for the free ingress of water.
The forefoot was entirely gone; numbers of bolts were either loosened or
broken; and when, besides this, the strained and twisted state of the
ship's frame was considered, there was not one on board who did not
express astonishment that they had ever floated across the Atlantic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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