ICE NAVIGATION 435 



length drawn out through Robeson Channel anywhere from 20 to 150 

 feet under the water. The surface of some of these floes has the area 

 of Manhattan Island. With a current running one to three knots and 

 a gale of wind, force 6 to 7, striking against that 20 to 150 foot surface of 

 many square miles of floes, a ship, no matter how well she was put 

 together, when caught between the hard points, cannot rise unless 

 she is of the right shape and is not heavily laden. But should she get 

 hove up against the face of the ice foot and find no niche to run into she 

 would have about the same chance as a man under the wheels of an 

 express train, in a subway. A short beamy ship with not too much 

 draft and not too heavily laden has the best chance to escape. In 

 building a ship it is a mistake to put in heavy wood when a lighter 

 wood that is just as strong will do. 



Varying Ice Conditions from Year to Year 



Seasons in the Arctic vary from year to year. I crossed Melville 

 Bay twice in the Roosevelt around the middle of July and saw no 

 drift ice. But when I went north in the Neptune in 191 7 it was a 

 constant fight with ice from Sanderson's Hope to Cape Alexander. 

 From Cape Alexander to Cape Sabine it was clear water. My destina- 

 tion was Etah, North Greenland. There I was to pick up the Crocker 

 Land party and bring them home. I thought with such a ship as the 

 Neptune I could do the job in six weeks ; instead it took me two months. 



In all my many experiences up to that time in that section of the 

 country I never saw anything to equal the terrible ice conditions I 

 encountered. Putting the ship in the ice a few miles off Sanderson's 

 Hope was a constant struggle. Every foot of the distance north to 

 Cape Alexander the ice ran from Greenland to Baffin Island and 

 remained so all that summer and fall. Reading earlier accounts of 

 whalers I find one similar year in over a hundred years of whaling. 

 I used 800 tons of coal on the Neptune. Usually, in the time we were 

 going from Sanderson's Hope to Etah and return, one would burn 

 about 70 tons of coal. And only by the skin of my teeth did I get 

 her out of the ice. Had I ten miles more to go in it I should have had 

 to abandon her, for all her bow plates were gone and she was worn 

 into the wooden ends, and the two deck pumps and several in the 

 engine room could barely keep her free. 



In the summer of 1926 the conditions were as follows. The first 

 week of July I was at the Duck Islands (74° N.) ; there was not a sign 

 of drift ice there, and by the look of the shore around the islands the 

 ice had gone out of there at least ten or fifteen days earlier. In going 

 across Melville Bay to Cape York no ice was seen, and by the tem- 

 perature and color of the surface water of the bay it would appear that 

 ice had moved out many days previous to our crossing. So it is — no 



