Afternoon by the Ice ijy 



then it was the Scots who solved the problem by applying an alto- 

 gether new factor to the technique, as we shall see later. 



During this period, whaling continued in the Greenland seas with 

 varying fortunes. Several times the British fleet sustained tremendous 

 losses — as in 182 1, and again in 1830 when nineteen were lost and 

 twenty-one others returned completely empty — and these failures 

 were nearly always due to the ice. Reference to the map on page 

 139 will disclose the principal danger point for the whalers. This was 

 in the narrows between the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay. The ice in 

 Baffin Bay is seasonal and is not a part of the Arctic Ice-raft. It 

 spreads down from the north in autumn and, becoming jammed 

 into these narrows, performs there most horrendous tricks. It may 

 suddenly congeal or just as suddenly break up and then rush about 

 in a manner that can truly be described as mad. When a storm 

 sweeps into the strait, the ice blocks appear to become seized with 

 the frenzy of things possessed and actually leap right over each other 

 like ten billion multi-ton battering rams, among which it is hard 

 for any ship to survive. Yet the old saihng whalers did survive such 

 conditions year after year, for the route they followed was in- 

 variably from Resolution Island at the south of Baffin Island to 

 Melville Bay in northwestern Greenland, thence over to Lancaster 

 Sound, and on into the Gulf of Boothia (see map), then back south, 

 down the east coast of Baffin Island to Home Bay, and finally round 

 into Cumberland Sound. Thus, the fleet had to pass through the 

 narrows twice each season, and sometimes they missed their weather 

 and got caught there. Out in the East Greenland Sea they had to 

 contend with the true Ice-raft and a plethora of icebergs to boot, and 

 both seem to have been much worse in those days than they are at 

 present. 



A new type of vessel was developed for this northern fishery. 

 This combined certain features deemed advantageous in the per- 

 petual fight with the ice with other more general changes that were 

 taking place in ship design. While the southern whalers clung to 

 the tublike, blunt-prowed, high-sided, barque-rigged construction 

 of the typical Yankee spermers, the northerners, and particularly the 

 builders of Hull and the Scots, moved steadily towards clipper lines, 

 lowering the freeboard, slimming the whole design, adding length, 



