156 



PLATE LXXIX. WINTER QUARTERS BAY. 



From a photograph by L. C. BEKNACCHI (Be. 39, ^-plate), Mar. 1, 1902 ; showing 

 the ice breaking up on our arrival. 



The release of our ship by the break-up of the two-year-old ice which had held 

 her in this bay for so long, was a happy contradiction of Captain Cook's surmise, 

 that a ship once frozen into such a bay would never be released. The fate that he 

 predicted was indeed very nearly the fate that met the ship's boats, which silently 

 and with extraordinary rapidity disappeared from sight beneath the snow and 

 water-logged themselves in rotten ice. 



The greatest thickness of sea-ice ulone where snow was not deposited, reached 

 8 feet 5| inches ; but compacted snow-drifts to 20 and 30 feet were also formed 

 about the ship. 



The picture represents the ice breaking up in Winter-quarters Bay on our 

 arrival in 190'2, allowing the ship to take up the position in which she eventually 

 was held for two years. 



