ICE NAVIGATION 439 



the Atlantic and that the flow of the Polar Current has on several 

 occasions been demonstrated by the drift of vessels beset in the pack 

 east of Greenland; also by driftwood from America and Siberia, the 

 wreck of the Jeannette, etc. This current flows close to the southern 

 tip of Greenland, Cape Farewell carrying on its bosom the ice from 

 the Polar Basin itself. The flow is north and west along the Greenland 

 coast in a belt perhaps 30 to 50 miles wide. Near the Arctic Circle 

 it ceases, here meeting the current that flows south out of Baffin Bay. 

 This is not far north of the narrowest part of Davis Strait. I believe 

 the great number of bergs seen off Newfoundland and the Grand 

 Banks come from Melville Bay and from the parent glaciers north to 

 the Humboldt Glacier (Kane Basin). With the southwest winds and 

 calms there are seasons when the surface ice is late moving out of 

 Melville Bay, consequently the bergs move slowly also. When this 

 happens we have a congestion of ice along the whole west side of 

 Baffin Bay and Davis Strait. And with so much southerly trend to 

 the winds the northward flowing current that I have mentioned along 

 the west coast of Greenland is accelerated and the Baffin Bay or 

 Labrador Current retarded. Then you find the hardest ice conditions, 

 as I found them in 191 7. Sometimes we get fewer bergs. I have come 

 south from Cape York in August and twice in September and found 

 no visible pack, and in 1926 I took particular notice from hour to 

 hour crossing to Holsteinsborg from a point twenty miles east of 

 Cape Aston, Baffin Island (70° N.). We saw little or no drift ice, and 

 what I saw was to the southwest in strings, though we had bergs until 

 we were about 55 miles west of Holsteinsborg. Ten to fourteen miles 

 farther west, or about 70 miles from the Greenland coast, bergs were 

 scarce. In other words, in a belt between 55 and 70 miles from Green- 

 land only three bergs (one of them large) were seen. 



One year with the other it takes a Melville Bay berg a year and 

 sometimes a year and a half to get to the Grand Banks. Field ice often 

 checks the speed of an iceberg. In the days of sailing vessels, when 

 there was a strong southerly current and calm weather the ship would 

 make fast to a berg and if the berg was aground it would shift a lot 

 of ice and enable the vessel to hold her own. Then, again, in strong 

 wind a ship may be made fast stern on with the two ends of the line 

 on board and the topsails all ready to loosen should the wind drop and 

 the tide change. In this way a vessel can shift many, many miles 

 of ice. Again, a vessel may be in danger of being crushed in a gale of 

 wind when carried by the ice on to the weather side of a berg. Many 

 ships and crews have been lost in this way. Steamers always make 

 use of the lee of a berg to shift ice and save coal. With steam up you 

 can cast off at any minute and make a lee on any side of the berg, 

 should your first lee be closed up by ice closing in on you. By means 

 of a berg many of the sealers would be carried into the seals. 



