1876 SOUTH-WEST GALE. 151 



le to subside and to save coal. We could not, 

 however, have advanced more than a mile farther 

 south as the pack was nipping heavily against Cape 

 Frazer, while it drifted fast to the northward before 

 the wind. During the gale the temperature rose to 42 ; 

 the frozen pools of water on the surface of the ice were 

 consequently melted. 



We remarked at the time that in all probability 

 the gale extended over a large area. On our return 

 to England we learnt that it was on this day that 

 several vessels of the whaling fleet at Behring's Straits, 

 1,300 miles to the south-westward of our position, 

 were so greatly damaged by the ice as to oblige 

 them to be abandoned, causing a considerable loss of 

 life. 



As the strong November gales of the previous year 

 are known to have extended for an equal distance, from 

 near Cape Desolation in South Greenland to Floeberg 

 Beach, and as each disturbance in the atmosphere at 

 the Bay of Mercy in Banks Island in 1853 was felt at 

 Eensselaer Bay, 800 miles distant to the eastward, I 

 see no reason to doubt that this gale extended through- 

 out the whole region between Behring's Straits and 

 Smith Sound. 



At 8 A.M., the gale having subsided, and the wind, 

 by coming more off the land, giving promise of the ice 

 opening off Cape Frazer, we weighed and proceeded 

 south, and secured the ships to a large floe near the 

 cape, about a mile from the shore, ready to take 

 advantage of any change in the ice. With the excep- 

 tion of the navigable channel, about a mile in breadth, 

 between the pack and the Grinnell shore north of Cape 



