THE ARCTIC DISASTERS 259 



That voyage, the first in pursuit of whales beyond Bering 

 Strait, occurred fifty-seven years after those earlier explorers 

 had gone sperm whaling round the Horn. Excited by news of 

 the Superior's good fortune in the Arctic, the masters of other 

 whalers sailed thither the next March; and the Arctic whaling 

 fleet grew in numbers and in relative importance, until, in 

 1865, the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah raided the Pacific 

 and destroyed twenty-five whalers. Then, six years later, to 

 cap the damage done by the Shenandoah, came this even greater 

 disaster. 



Of course men had hunted whales off Spitzbergen and Green- 

 land and the St. Lawrence for hundreds of years before the little 

 Superior thrust her blunt nose through Bering Strait, and had 

 bitterly learned the terrors of the ice-pack; the story of that 

 lost fleet of 1871 is, nevertheless, one of the notable stories of 

 Arctic whaling. Sometimes long reaches of open water extend 

 far into the pack, when one wind or another drives the cakes 

 apart; sometimes open pools appear in it. At a distance, it ap- 

 pears to be as smooth as a graded park, for few peaks rise 

 higher than ten or a dozen feet from the water; but a closer 

 view reveals a surface rough almost beyond belief. It has 

 none of the grandeur of huge icebergs — there are no glaciers 

 thereabouts to produce them — and it moves so slowly — floating 

 deep and showing a mere fraction of its bulk above water — as to 

 hide the danger that is present wherever it goes. But it swings 

 deliberately and ponderously, for a month this way and over- 

 night the other, with an almost inconceivable pressure. 



It was the practice of the whaling fleet to arrive at the edge 

 of the ice in Bering Sea about the middle of April, and to drift 

 north with the pack, watching for the bowheads that migrate 

 every spring to the Arctic Ocean. The vessels would stretch 

 out for miles along the edge of the ice-field. Most of the time 

 several were in sight of one another; and often two were so near 

 together that, to exchange visits, the crews would risk a trip 

 across the shifting ice, where lanes of open water, constantly 

 appearing, made it necessary to travel slowly and circuitously. 



To lower boats and chase whales, after the manner of whaling 



