124 CETJISE OF STEAMER COBWIN IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 



in a northwesterly direction. Unlike the drift of the Resolute through Barrow Strait and Lancaster 

 Sound, or the Polaris party in Smith's Sound and Baffin Bay, the Jeanuette drifted in the open 

 sea, where she was subject in a much greater degree to the varying influence of the wind, and 

 where the strength of the current would naturally be less than if confined within the narrow limits 

 of a strait or sound. 



Then we have the formation of shoals on the north side of all points on the American coast 

 from Bering Strait'to Point Barrow. Beginning at Cape Prince of Wales, we find that although 

 the water to the southward shoals gradually to the shore, the detached shoal lies wholly to the 

 northward of the cape. 



At Poiut Hope we find the detached shoal, with 4J of water on it, lying entirely to the north- 

 ward of the point. The same is true at Cape Lisburne; a shoal with 5 fathoms of water lies 

 wholly to the northward of the cape. The Blossom Shoals, off Icy Cape, are also to the northward. 

 These differ from the other shoals along this coast in that there are several of them lying parallel 

 with each other and with the coast line, with deep water between them and inshore of them. 



At Point Barrow the detached shoal lies entirely to the northward, although shoal water exists 

 along the shore to the southward. The drift of the Bering Sea ice through the straits into the 

 Arctic Ocean each year, and the fact that the southern limit of the Arctic pack retreats to the 

 northward with well-closed edges during the summer until brought south again by the fall gales, 

 cannot but be regarded as another evidence of the northerly direction of the current ; also the fact 

 that of all the whale ships lost north of Bering Strait but one has been found south of where 

 wrecked. 



The discovery near Herald Island of part of a vessel burned south of Bering Strait must also 

 be regarded as evidence pointing in the same direction. We have also the testimony of the 

 whalers, the only men who navigate these seas regularly, not oue of whom, so far as I can learn, 

 doubts the existence of this current. Then comes the testimony of the natives living on the shores 

 of Bering Strait to the same effect. But in all this evidence there is nothing inconsistent with 

 a regular tidal current in Bering Strait. 



In Smith's Sound, near where the men from the Polaris commenced their remarkable ice- 

 drift, Dr. Bessels observed a tidal current, and determined its characteristics. In Melville Sound, 

 where the Eesolute commenced her drift of over 1,200 miles, Parry found a regular tidal current, 

 with the flood setting to the eastward. 



In the case of the wrecked whaling bark Vigilant, it has been claimed that, although beset 

 near Herald Island, the Vigilant had drifted down to, and been seen by the natives on, the coast 

 of Asia. From the information gained by the Corwiu at Cape Waukerem, there seems little doubt 

 that the wreck boarded by the inhabitants of that place about October, 1880, was the Vigilant. 

 The last seen of that vessel previous to the discovery of the wreck was on October 10, 1879. At 

 that time she was cruising in company with the bark Mount Wollaston, between Herald Shoal 

 and Herald Island, in an opening between the northern and western ice-packs, with a large body 

 of heavy ice to the southward, stretching almost entirely across the Arctic Basin. Of this large 

 body of ice to the southward, a few words of explanation are necessary, as to this may be 

 attributed the loss of the two vessels in question. By the accounts of masters of other vessels 

 we learn that this body of ice extended from the Asiatic shore to near Point Hope, and northward 

 nearly to Herald Shoal, leaving a passage but a few miles in width between it and a point of ice 

 from the northern pack which extended down in that direction. In what are called " icy seasons," 

 this filling in of the sea is no unusual occurrence. The loose ice along the edge of the pack is 

 driven down by the northeast wind, following the western ice until it strikes the coast of Asia, 

 and is deflected to the eastward until coming into the influence of the Bering Strait current its 

 eastern limit is carried to the northward not far from the American coast. In leaving the Arctic 

 Ocean in the fall it is not unusual for the whalers to be compelled to pass inside of the shoal off 

 Point Hope to keep clear of this ice ; many of them make it a rule to sight Point Hope before 

 steering a course for the straits, to avoid coming in contact with these fields in case of thick 

 weather. 



While steering a course from the vicinity of Herald Island to the coast of Asia in August, 

 1880, the Corwin encountered ice in latitude 68° 10', and working to the eastward near the sixty- 



