Afternoon by the Ice 279 



steamer with side paddle wheels was launched on the Clyde. In the 

 meantime, Robert Fulton had built his famous steamboat on the 

 Hudson River, which operated commercially between New York 

 and Albany. It was from these practical demonstrations that certain 

 Scots engineers got the idea of augmenting the sails of ocean-going 

 ships with steam power. Moreover, it was, to a considerable extent, 

 the problem of the northern ice that prompted these experiments 

 and led to the exercise of the most vigorous efforts to perfect them. 



The first two steamers to prove their worth in the Arctic were 

 named the Pioneer and the Intrepid, and they steamed north to- 

 gether in 1850 in search of the British explorer Franklin, who had 

 disappeared in 1845 somewhere north of Canada trying to find the 

 northwest passage to Asia. The first steam whaler sailed from Hull 

 in 1857 and several more were ready the following season. The next 

 year the British whaling firms tried to reorganize the whole industry 

 around steamships, and a vessel named the Empress of India, built of 

 iron at Peterhead, and with bows reinforced to a thickness of twelve 

 feet to withstand the ice pressure, joined the fleet, but the first ice it 

 encountered penetrated it and the whole plan was a signal failure. 

 However, the engineers were undaunted and continued to experi- 

 ment. 



It was an English master of an English ship who turned the scales 

 in the favor of steam. His name was Barron and he had got his sailer, 

 the Truelove, firmly stuck in the ice of Baffin Bay. Although the 

 ship was in sight of open water, her crew had toiled all day, warping 

 her only a mile, when one of the new steamers, the S.S. Naruohal, 

 hove in sight, banged her way straight through the ice to the True- 

 love, took her in tow, and pulled her out in an hour. Captain Barron 

 wrote: "After toiling all day we succeeded in getting only a mile. 

 The S.S. Narwhal came to our relief, and towed us into clear water 

 without the least difficulty." There was prejudice against steam in 

 many quarters, but the British whalers were quick to appreciate its 

 advantages. It had taken them an average of sixty days to get through 

 the Middle Ice in the narrows twice a year; the earliest steamers went 

 straight through it in sixty hours! 



In 1830 there were ninety-one registered Scottish whalers, all sail, 

 of course; in 1857 there were sixty, out of seven ports, and still all 

 sailers; but by 1873 the entire fleet out of Dundee were steamers, 



