430 POLAR PROBLEMS 



also mean fewer men to carry along. The design of a polar ship 

 should be changed a little from the earlier type. Modern inventions 

 and labor-saving devices are required, and also deck space to erect 

 hoisting apparatus to do scientific work that needs machinery. The 

 Diesel engine would be necessary. The engine room should and could 

 be made strong enough to resist pressure just like any other part 

 of the ship. 



The Training Grounds for Ice Navigation 



Thirty-five years of experience have I had in ice navigation, 

 beginning as a lad with my father, who was mate of the steamer 

 Panther, the same Panther that in 1869 took Dr. Isaac Hayes and 

 the artist Bradford to South Greenland and then north to Melville 

 Bay. My uncle, John Bartlett, was captain; my uncle Sam, mate; 

 my father, second mate. The two uncles later were for years captains 

 of the Peary ships and of Canadian Government vessels when the 

 Newfoundland seal hunters were employed for Arctic work. 



Seal hunting in March and April in the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 can give one as much excitement as pushing a ship to Cape Sheridan. 

 The ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is of course one season's growth. 

 It starts making in December in the St. Lawrence River. Then, as 

 it drifts down the river and into the Gulf, the water on the lee side 

 of the drift ice becomes calm, and in a few hours the surface of the 

 water is covered with young ice for many miles. In fact, on a calm 

 night and with a low temperature, say io°-i2° F. below zero, the 

 whole Gulf and Cabot Straits are frozen over. Sometimes forty-eight 

 hours of calm during frosty weather prevails. Or the wind may 

 continue blowing from the northwest for days with low temperatures. 

 In that case in a week or two the ice drifts to the south and east, and 

 from the eastern edge of St. Pierre Bank to Sable Island and to the 

 Newfoundland and Nova Scotia shore there is nothing but ice moving 

 to the east and south with winds and currents. After a few days of 

 this, many of the large level sheets become rafted against the land and 

 piled up twenty to one hundred feet high. Heaven help the ship 

 caught on the weather side of Cape North or about the Magdalen 

 Islands, Byron Island, Bird Rocks, St. Paul's Island, or along the 

 shore ice from Cape Anguille eastward along the Newfoundland 

 coast. 



Once in a while steamers are lost by getting caught between the 

 running ice and the land ice. I remember an experience of many nar- 

 row escapes we had on the Panther. In three days we killed our load 

 of seals, but, owing to the ice being heavy and in large sheets, we 

 couldn't get around in the ship to pick them up. When seals are 

 killed they are skinned and the pelts piled up in heaps with "markers, " 



