DANGERS AND UNCERTAINTIES OF SEALING VOYAGES. 543 



Dangers and Uncertainties of Ice-Hunting. The dan- 

 gers and uncertainties attending ice-hunting have to some extent 

 been already indicated. The chief hindrances arise from en- 

 countering field-ice, within which not only single vessels, but 

 whole fleets, are sometimes held prisoners for weeks, constantly 

 subject to danger from the shifting and grinding of the pack- 

 ice. Among the many dangers to which the ice-hunter is sub- 

 jected none is greater than that arising from the "rafting" of 

 the ice, which is especially disastrous to steamships. While 

 some vessels, owing to the form of the hull, will " heave out " 

 uninjured, in other cases they will be crushed by the ice pass- 

 ing over them. In general, steamships are said to be in far 

 greater peril when jammed in the ice than sailing-vessels, there 

 being in such cases " no chance whatever " of extricating the 

 former, while the latter usually escape with slight injury. Great 

 danger is said to also arise from large masses of ice being car- 

 ried by currents against the wind, when, despite every exer- 

 tion to avert disaster, steamships as well as sailing-vessels are 

 wrecked against the floating islands of ice. 



In illustration of the danger from drifting ice I transcribe 

 the following: "In the spring of 1871," says Mr. Carroll, "that 

 splendid new brig, the ' Confederate,' with an experienced cap- 

 tain and seventy-five men, as fine as any country under the sun 

 could produce, left Harbour Grace for the sealing voyage. The 

 brig was driven into Bonavista Bay, jammed in the drift-ice, 

 until it struck the land, seven miles to the westward of Cape 

 Bonavista. There the brig remained for ten days, and not a 

 wag in the water or amongst the ice, the men in anxious wait- 

 ing for an off-shore wind, when, without any apparent cause, a 

 large flat pan of ice a short distance from the brig moved slowly 

 onwards until it struck the after part of the keel and whip^ied 

 ten feet of it away. So keen was the cut that it was not observed 

 until the brig began to make water", and the master and men 

 were obliged to abandon her. " Many, in ajl probability", con- 

 tinues the same writer, "of the steamshijjs at present [1873] 

 engaged in the prosecution of the Seal fishery on the coast of 

 IsTewfoundland will, without doubt, sooner or later meet with a 

 fate similar to that of the brig ' Confederate.' Sailing vessels 

 will ' heave out' when jammed in the ice and escape uninjured 

 when steamships would be squeezed to atoms." * 



Not only are the sealers exijosed to dangers from floating ice, 



* Seal and Herring Fisheries of Newfoundland, p. 22. 



