CHAPTER XXXVI 



HISTORIC MERCY BAY 



THE landing was made on the east side of Mercy Bay because 

 that way the route was shorter. According to the maps 

 Mercy Bay ought to be only some ten or fifteen degrees west 

 of south from Cape Russell, and we had made a course so as to land 

 on the west side when we should have taken a course twenty or 

 thirty degrees west of south. Cape Russell is either placed too far 

 west on the maps or Mercy Bay too far east. We later came to the 

 conclusion that the trouble is with Mercy Bay. July 15th we crossed 

 the bay and landed and camped about a mile from the monument 

 erected in 1853 by McClure. We intended to land exactly at 

 the monument but were prevented by very bad conditions of mud 

 and water. 



Mercy Bay is one of the historic places of the North. It was dis- 

 covered by McClure in the Investigator the fall of 1851. The pre- 

 vious winter had been spent in Prince of Wales Straits near the 

 Princess Royal Islands. After a vain attempt in the spring to get 

 north through the straits into Melville Sound the Investigator had 

 proceeded south around Nelson Head, up the west coast of Banks 

 Island and east along the north coast. It was especially on the 

 north coast that she got in close touch with the ice, being repeatedly 

 in extreme danger between the heavy pack and the precipitous cliffs. 

 These dangers had so impressed themselves on the ship's company 

 that when they came to a bay to which they could escape from the 

 open coast, they named it "the Bay of God's Mercy." It was free 

 of ice then and promised well as a winter harbor, but the following 

 summer the ice never left it and they were compelled to spend a 

 second winter. The amount of game secured was only enough to 

 give a little variety to the diet, the crew had already been for 

 a considerable time on short rations, and plans had been made for 

 a retreat by most of them to the mainland. This retreat would 

 almost certainly have ended like the Franklin retreat farther south, 

 indeed with greater cause. But just in time a message came from 

 Melville Island saying that Kellett and McClintock were wintering 



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