WILLIAM SCORESBY 31 



inboard to a boom fitted to the foot, used by every 

 whaler, by which, in fact, you may know them. He 

 also, long before the A mcrica, discovered the advantage 

 of flat sails, and, in order to get his weights well down, 

 he filled his casks with water as ballast and packed 

 them with shingle, so that, instead of going out light, 

 he was in the best of trim, with a power of beating 

 to windward that took him to the fishing ground in 

 double quick time and further into the ice, when he 

 chose, than any of his competitors. 



Out in the Resolution in 1806 he saw from his crow's 

 nest, in which he often spent a dozen hours at a stretch, 

 that below the ice-blink the white line in the sky 

 which betokens the presence of ice there was a blue- 

 grey streak denoting open water, and that the motion 

 of the sea around the ship must be due to a swell, 

 which could only come from open water to the north- 

 ward. On the 13th of May he started for this. By 

 sawing the ice, hammering at it, dropping his boats on 

 to it from the bow, sallying the ship that is, rolling 

 her by running the crew backwards and forwards 

 across her deck and, in fact, using every means he 

 could think of, he passed the barrier in the eightieth 

 parallel, and, on the 24th of June, attained 81 30', the 

 farthest north ever reached by a sailing vessel in these 

 seas. On that day there was not a ship within three 

 hundred and fifty miles of the Resolution. The bold 

 venture proved a thorough success ; in thirty-two days 

 he filled up with twenty-four whales, two seals, two 

 walruses, and a narwhal one of the most profitable 

 of his thirty voyages. 



In this voyage the chief officer was his son, William 



