ICE NAVIGATION 43 1 



that is, poles with flags. When the ice opens, the ship steams around 

 and picks them up. After the load was killed we cleaned out the hold, 

 which held our coal, and kept out what was left after the bunkers 

 were filled. This coal, about 70 tons, was piled up on the deck aft. 

 It was a beautiful moonlight night, not a breath of wind stirring, 

 when almost as if by magic the big ice sheet on which many of our 

 flags, or markers, lay was split open. We steamed in the fast widening 

 crack to our pans, and had about six hundred seals on board when 

 the crack came together so quickly that we had no time to make a 

 "dock" to put the ship in. From the main mast forward the vessel 

 was light, but aft of this she had the deck load of coal and the bunkers 

 filled. This with the weight of boiler and engine kept her well down by 

 the stern. The nip came in the wake of the main hatch. She didn't 

 rise to the first onslaught. By this time nearly all hands were over- 

 board with hatchets, cutting a trench about ten feet from the ship, 

 but cutting it parallel with the ship. Many hatchets were kept going, 

 in the hope that when the trench was made the ice would double up and 

 pass under her bottom, thereby making a cushion or bed. The ice 

 was fully four to five feet thick. Then the beams in the wake of the 

 main hatch, where the nip was, began to buckle, her sides began to 

 cave in, and the orders were to throw overboard the deck load of coal. 

 In fifteen minutes it was off the deck, and up she came. It all happened 

 in twenty to twenty-five minutes. At that time she had a two-bladed 

 propeller fitted with a banjo frame. In the squeezing of the ice as it 

 passed under her bottom the propeller blades were torn off and the 

 holdings ruptured where the boss of the propeller fitted in the brackets 

 or couplings. This after a time was hoisted on deck and repaired. 

 We had several spare propellers, so we were all right in that respect; 

 but she hove out so much that I could put my hand on the end of 

 the propeller shaft where it came out of the stern post. Here was the 

 advantage of a wooden ship. With shores and wedges her bent-in sides 

 were wedged out to their former shape, caulked, and made as tight as 

 ever. With other ships when master I had similar experiences, for 

 one doesn't need to go into the Arctic to see sights like these. 



The sealing grounds are the gridiron for Arctic experiences; and 

 so, when in 1897 I went first into the Arctic as mate on the Wind- 

 ward, Melville Bay and Smith Sound^ and Kane Basin ice were nothing 



1 Speaking of Smith Sound ice reminds me of the loss of the Proteus in 1881 off Cape Sabine. The 

 previous year the Proteus, a Newfoundland sealer, brought the Greely party to within 12 miles of Fort 

 Conger. Twelve days was the length of this trip, and the passage across Melville Bay through Smith 

 Sound, Kane Basin, and Kennedy Channel to, as I say, 12 miles off Fort Conger was made without see- 

 ing any ice. The next season the Proteus came north again bound for Fort Conger but found conditions 

 very different from the preceding season. Shortly after leaving Payer Harbor, Cape Sabine, she was 

 crushed in the ice, sinking quickly with nearly all her provisions. That winter a naval court convened 

 in Washington, D. C. The captain, who was a Newfoundland sealing master, was examined. He was 

 asked this question: Did you ever in your experience of sealing off the Newfoundland coast see such 

 ice as you were in when the Proteus sank? He said that he hadn't. Here he was mistaken. Probably 

 the surroundings of the court for the time rattled him, for had he stopped to think he should have 



