302 SAD DISAPPOINTMENT. Chap. XVII. 



harbour, or Godhavn. Although Friday night was dark, we 

 managed to find out the harbour's mouth, and slowly- 

 steamed into it. The inhabitants were awoke by Petersen 

 demanding our letters, but great indeed was our disappoint- 

 ment at finding only a very few letters and two or three 

 papers, and these for the officers only ! It appears that 

 on the arrival of the whalers in early spring, the ice 

 prevented their usual communication with the settlement, 

 therefore the letters on board of them were unavoidably 

 carried northward. Some few, however, which came out 

 in the ' Truelove,' 1 were landed at the neighbouring settle- 

 ment of Noursoak, and from thence were sent back to 

 Godhavn. 



It is rather a nervous thing opening the first letters after 

 a lapse of more than two years ! We received them in our 

 beds at three o'clock in the morning, and, when we met at 

 breakfast, were able, thank God ! to congratulate each other 

 upon the receipt of cheering home news. Lady Franklin 



1 The history of the old 'Truelove,' of Hull, is a very remarkable 

 one. In 1764, before the question of American Independence was 

 raised, she was built at Philadelphia, of the famous live-oak. This 

 wood was plentiful and cheap in those days, and was used without stint 

 in her construction, so much so that, although originally a packet, and 

 possessing rather superior sailing qualities, yet her massive beams and 

 unusual strength rendered her so peculiarly adapted for battling with the 

 arctic ice, that she was converted into a Greenland whaler. For more 

 than forty years she plied those dangerous seas, escaping by innumer- 

 able hair-breadths the destruction which overwhelmed numberless other 

 vessels, and eventually she was only driven from the trade by the intro- 

 duction of steam. 



Yet still (1869) she plies the northern seas, under some icy spell, it 

 would seem, conveying to us cargoes of Norwegian ice ; and steered 

 by a compass which dates back to 1818. 



Her stout timbers are quite sound, and as the original planking is 

 doubled over with African oak, it is not impossible that she may con- 

 tinue for another century to defy the storms of ocean, and set at nought 

 the adage which her name suggests. 



