42 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



Cape Smythe in a few days and was a vessel known to all of us, 

 would have been able to steam through the ice easily. The Bear is 

 a powerful wooden vessel of the old Scotch whaler type and a very 

 good ice ship. This discussion has been settled since, for the Bear 

 arrived at a point southwest of Cape Smythe a few days after us, 

 was caught in the ice near where the Karluk was caught, and 

 like the Karluk was carried helpless, stern foremost, past Cape 

 Smythe. She was even less lucky, for the Karluk gave no worry 

 beyond some ominous creaking, but the sides of the Bear were 

 squeezed so that her decks bulged noticeably.* 



When in our slow grinding movement we finally got opposite 

 the northwest tip of the continent at Point Barrow, the pressure 

 was relieved. We were not out of the grip of the ice, however, 

 and for some hours things looked pretty bad, for as soon as we got 

 beyond the Point our ice started off to the northwest at a speed 

 about four times as great as before, or about two miles per hour. 



This we had expected. The summer of 1912 when I spent sev- 

 eral weeks at Cape Smythe, the whaling bark John and Winthrop 

 lay at anchor about a mile from the coast for two or three weeks. 

 During most of that time the wind blew from the northeast with a 

 force running as high as what sailors call a "strong breeze"; and 

 still the current, coming from the southwest and running against 

 the wind, was so strong that not once do I remember seeing the 

 ship swinging at her anchor before the wind, as might have been 

 expected, but always either broadside to the wind or with her stern 

 into the wind. During that same time, however, the condition east 

 of Point Barrow had been different. Then the current was running 

 with the wind, and when the two currents met in the vicinity of 

 the Point they took a course which was a resultant of the motion 

 and strength of both, and after joining forces ran off to the north- 

 west. The Karluk was now in the tail of this Y. But according 

 to theory, the current ought soon to spread and spend itself, and 

 we were not a great deal worried. 



*".... The chief work of a polar ship is to push and pry and wedge its 

 way in and out among cakes and floes ranging from three to twenty or fifty 

 and even up to one hundred and twenty feet thick. A passage cannot be 

 smashed through such ice, and nothing remains but to squeeze and twist and 

 dodge through it. A hundred Yermaks (the powerful Russian ice breaker) 

 merged in one could accomplish nothing in such ice. 



"Many qualities are necessarj^ in a first-class polar ice-fighter. First, there 

 must be such a generally rounded model as will rise readily when squeezed, 

 and thus escape the death-crush of the ice. Then there must be no projection 

 of keel or other part to give the ice an opportunity to get a grip, or to hold 

 the ship from rising." — "Secrets of Polar Travel," by R. E. Peary, pp. 6-7. 



