196 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



dreaded fate of all was to be frozen in through a long Arctic 

 winter. 



One of the few vessels which ever returned from such a 

 captivity was the English whaleship Diana, which left the 

 Shetland Islands in 1866. When about to start for home 

 after a season's whaling, the ice closed in and both vessel and 

 crew were imprisoned for the entire winter. Cold, hunger, 

 scurvy, and dysentery were responsible for such ravages that 

 when the ice finally broke up in April, 1867, only five mem- 

 bers of the original crew of fifty were able to aid in navigating 

 the ship. Ten had died, and the remaining thirty-five were 

 so weakened by cold, starvation, and disease as to be unable to 

 walk. The vessel itself was reduced to a mere shell, for 

 boats, spars, and every loose piece of timber had been used as 

 fuel. Consequently the partially dismantled hulk, laden 

 with weakened and diseased like a hospital ship, was barely 

 able to creep back to civilization. 



A still more gruesome tale is one which, in its tragic, ghostly 

 outlines, can be matched only in the "Ancient Mariner." In 

 August, 1775, the master of a Greenland whaler sighted a 

 strange vessel in a lane which had opened in an ice-field. Up- 

 on going aboard he discovered that it was abandoned and drift- 

 ing. A closer inspection revealed, too, the frozen bodies of 

 the master and his wife, the mate, and a number of seamen. 

 The log-book, which was well preserved, contained this final 

 entry: "Nov. 11, 1762. We have now been inclosed in the 

 ice seventeen days. The fire went out yesterday, and our 

 master has been trying ever since to kindle it again without suc- 

 cess. His wife died this morning. There is no relief." La- 

 ter, upon returning to England, it was discovered that the ves- 

 sel had sailed in 1762 and had never been heard of again. 

 Thus it seemed to be established that this floating sepulcher, 

 with its corpses embalmed by the cold, had been held ice- 

 bound, through some curious trick of fate, for thirteen years.^ 



In 1 871 the entire American Arctic fleet, with the exception 

 of five vessels, was similarly caught in the ice at the end of the 

 season. Fortunately, however, the nature of the loss was re- 

 versed j for this time it was the crews, and not the ships, which 



2 See Cheever, H. T., "The Whale and His Captors," pp. 175-80. 



