Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal: Or, Eighteen Months in the Polar Regions, in Search of Sir John Franklin's Expedition, in the Years 1850-51Osborn, Sherard
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Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal: Or, Eighteen Months in the Polar Regions, in Search of Sir John Franklin's Expedition, in the Years 1850-51
Osborn, Sherard
Arctic regions; Franklin, John, 1786-1847
Lieutenant Cator has himself told the trials to which the "Intrepid's"
qualities were subjected that night and day; how she was pushed up the
iceberg high and dry; and how the bonnie screw came down again right
and tight. We meanwhile drifted away, cradled in floe-pieces, and
perfectly helpless, shaving past icebergs, in close proximity, but
safely, until the gale as suddenly abated, and we found ourselves some
six miles north of the "Intrepid," and off the Sound, which, for want
of a name, we will call "Hat Sound." Steaming and sailing up a head of
water back towards our consort, we soon saw that she was all right and
afloat again, though beset in the pack. We therefore took advantage of
an opening in the ice to run to the northward alone. About midnight,
the Whale Sound of Baffin being then open to our view, but filled with
broken ice, and our farther progress impeded by the pack, we again made
fast at this, the farthest northern latitude reached by any of our
squadron, viz., 77 deg. north latitude.
* * * * *
_Friday, August 29th._--Finding progress in this direction hopeless, we
rejoined the "Intrepid" as close as the ice would allow us, and learnt
that she had injured her rudder and screw-framing. It was now decided
to rejoin the "Resolute" and "Assistance" at their rendezvous off Cape
Dudley Digges; and as the winter snow was fast covering the land, and
pancake-ice forming on the sea, there was little time to be lost in
doing so.
The 30th and 31st, the "Pioneer" made fruitless attempts to reach the
"Intrepid." The leads of water were evidently separating us more and
more: she was working in for Wolstenholme Sound, whilst we were obliged
to edge to the westward.
September 1st, 1851, came in on us. From the crow's nest one
interminable barrier of ice spread itself around; and as the
imprisonment of our vessels would have entailed starvation upon us, it
was necessary to make a push, and endeavour, by one of us at any rate
reaching supplies, to secure the means of rescue to both.
[Headnote: _FORCING THROUGH THE PACK._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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