POLAR REGIONS. 



I'oiar pieces of huge dimensions, and of the weight of many 

 Uvgioni. hundreds, sometuiu-s thousands of tons, are piled ujxni 

 *"" "*<"' the top, while similar masues are forced underneath. 

 All intervening substances are, of course, cither crush* 

 ed to atoms, or buried in the ruins of the opposing 

 fields. When the ships of the whale-fishers, who, for 

 weeks and months together, during storms and the 

 densest fogs, brave continually these dangers, get un- 

 fortunately involved between these opposing fields, their 

 destruction is inevitable. Sometimes they are crushed 

 to pieces, occasionally they are divided in two, the 

 deck and masts from the hold perhaps they are cast, 

 like one of the hummocks, upon the surface of the 

 field or sunk and forced beneath, and carried imme- 

 diately out of sight. By such irresistible pressure, 

 ships to the amount of 15 or 20 have been crushed in 

 one season. As it will tend to illustrate the subject, 

 we shall give a description of one of these calamities 

 which overtook the whale-fishers who were pressing 

 into Baffin's Bay in the year 1819- 



These ships, endeavouring to penetrate betwixt the 

 land ice and contiguous floes to the westward, were 

 enveloped by the closing of the ice. For their securi- 

 ty, they were all lodged in the land ice in docks, or 

 lanes, sawed out of the ice. The Samuels, of Hull, 

 among several others, was thus situated, in a dock 340 

 yards from, the edge, which had been cut with im- 

 mense labour out of ice 5 to 9 feet in thickness. The 

 Ocean, another Hull whaler, was near the Samuels. 

 The wind had been a moderate breeze from the 

 W. S. W. in the morning of the 16th of July, the wea- 

 ther hazy. The exterior edge of the Samuels dock 

 was yet unbroken ; and, though heavy crushes had 

 occurred to the southward, no alarming pressure had 

 been experienced by this ship. Towards noon the wind 

 freshened, and soon blew a very hard gale. About half 

 past eleven in the forenoon, the captain, (with the chief 

 mate and second mate of the Samuels) went down to 

 breakfast, the ice being at rest, and no appearance of 

 danger any more than there was from the beginning. 

 As the second mate went upon deck, the officer on watch 

 called down the companion, " I am afraid there is go- 

 ing to be a very heavy press." On which the captain 

 and mate hastened on deck, and found that the western 

 floes had joined the land ice, and were rapidly making 

 an impression on them. The stern rope was let go, and 

 an attempt made to force the ship out into a small basin 

 of water to the northward. But before she was half 

 way out, the floes were in contact with the exterior of 

 the dock. In about ten minutes from leaving the ca- 

 bin, the floes had over-lapped the land ice, and come 

 in contact with the vessel. The pressure broke away the 

 leeside of the dock, forming an angle in the ice just in 

 the midships of the vessel, which at once penetrated the 

 side of the ship with a hole of thirty feet ; the ship 

 then forging a-head, being under all sails, fell into the 

 basin of water to leeward, and then heeled down on 

 one side. On this the mate ran into the cabin with 

 the hope of saving the papers, along with the master 

 of the Ocean, who was on board. They seized on 

 some trifling articles, and Captain Cousins escaped 

 with the assistance of a rope, handed by some men on 

 deck out of the companion. But on the mate's at- 

 tempting to get up, the ship being on her broad-side, 

 the water pouring down forced him back ; he then ran 

 to the cabin window, and forcing it out with his feet, 

 crawled up on the quarter or side of the ship, where 

 he found his master just climbing the bulwark to the 

 same position. Here they remained some time; the 



rest of the crew in general having left the ship in the !> v ur 

 boats. The ship was a quarter of an hour from being K*gioo. 

 tove to the time of her falling over. v 



The ice had now stopped running ; but in about 

 three quarters of an hour afterwards a fresh crush ensu- 

 ed. The first run was at the rate of three or four knots ; 

 the second was nearly as fast. In a few minute* it 

 again reached the ship, filled up the hole of water, and 

 forced her out of fight under the land ice. In the 

 course of ten or fifteen minutes after this, the Ocean 

 was caught by the crush, and pressed on the broadside 

 and on the bow, so that she burst open ; the masts fell, 

 and in twenty minutes after the first of her receiving 

 the crush, she was overrun by the ice, and, for the 

 time, totally disappeared. Both of these ships crews 

 all escaped and took refuge in some ships that were 

 preserved. This was on Friday ; some of the people 

 were in tents until the Sunday following before they 

 got on board any ship. 



On the llth of the same month the Equestris and 

 Sisters, lying in the same dock in the land ice, a little 

 to the southward of the Samuels, were wrecked. 

 About four o'clock in the afternoon the press took 

 place, and never stopped until the Equestris passed fair- 

 ly over the Sisters, and buried her in the waters. The 

 crush then ceasing, the Equestris righted ; but, in a 

 very few minutes, the run recommenced, and the sea- 

 ward floe penetrated her broadside, carried away all 

 her masts, and actually forced the cables and other 

 stores out of the gunroom, through the side of the ship 

 upon the ice. She was, in fact, completely crushed to 

 pieces. 



Out of all the ships that were wrecked, only one man, 

 lost his life ; and he did so in consequence of exposure, 

 in a fit of drunkenness, after the ship was lost. 



The fatal error with these ships seems to have been 

 their adhering to the land ice, and relying on their 

 docks cut in it ; as all the ships that kept to the west- 

 ward, among the loose ice and distant floes, were pre- 

 served. One old vessel, capable of sustaining no con- 

 siderable pressure, had never a dock cut out at all ; she 

 was driven about almost entirely at the caprice of the 

 winds, and at the mercy of the ice, and sustained no 

 damage. She indeed appeared to be in such danger 

 that the crew left her, and took their clothes to the ice ; 

 but, in doing so, some of them lost their property the 

 ship drifting so fast from them, as to oblige them to 

 desert their clothes to regain her. 



Hard and impenetrable as the ice of fields is, it is 

 incapable of sustaining, without fracture, the operation 

 of a grown swell. A considerable Upper, or even short 

 sea, may act against a field without producing any ef- 

 fect upon it; but a grown swell, though so low as 

 scarcely to be perceptible in open water, frequently 

 breaks up the largest fields, and converts them into floes 

 and drift ice, in the space of a few hours ; while fields 

 composed of bay-ice or light ice, which is more flexible, 

 endure the same swell without any destructive effect. 



The invariable tendency of the ice of the Greenland 

 sea to drift to the south-westward, is the occasion of 

 great numbers of fields being annually destroyed. 

 They have frequently been observed to advance a hun- 

 dred miles in this direction, within the space of a 

 month; and sometimes under strong northerly gales 

 they have been known to perform the same distance 

 in a week. On emerging from amidst the smaller ice, 

 which before sheltered them, they are soon broken up 

 by the swell, converted into drift ice and eventually 

 dissolved. The places of such are uniformly filled up 



