ICE NAVIGATION 



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of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and between the Magdalens and the 

 Rimouski Peninsula. I have seen floes fifty feet out of the water 

 and drifting out of the Gulf. Of course many of the bays and inlets 

 of the far north remain frozen for years, melting only in places with 

 the sun of June and July. These berg pieces and old floes as they drift 

 south become frozen together, and then a swell from the ocean breaks 

 them up and the icebergs plow through, impinge upon heavy floes, 

 butt the land ice, and thus destroy the acreage of the floes. Farther 

 and farther south the ocean swell diminishes them still further, and 

 they form dark, indigo-colored masses so low as to seem almost awash 

 and rounded on top like a whale's back. These are the growlers. When 

 the ice is spotted with growlers but is loose enough for a vessel to work 

 through it there is danger. This war dance of the growlers has de- 

 stroyed and crippled more vessels than anything else. A skirt of 

 growlers is a terrible place. It's seldom you come out of it without 

 at least a very severe pommeling, and lucky you are not to lose your ' 

 ship. The weather edge of heavy ice in a gale of wind with a rough sea 

 and swell is exactly the same as a line of breakers on a coral reef. Un- 

 less a ship is fitted for ice she has no right to enter the pack, although 

 it is very tempting, for only a hundred yards or so inside the edge 

 it is as smooth as a duck pond. Then, again, the edge may have many 

 detached pans which labor and tumble menacingly. With a good 

 strong Arctic ship you might get in between the rotating pieces un- 

 scathed, but care must be taken to watch the propeller, and one must 

 be careful to judge the distance and time before passing between the 

 pieces. 



I had a very close call in the Roosevelt on the way home in 1909. 

 We had an easterly gale; so I ran it out, but the wind hauled south- 

 east with a big sea running. It was thick and I made the weather 

 edge of ice. We were light with little or no coal. From aloft I saw 

 one place that I thought I might enter, so I kept away, and on getting 

 near the edge she rolled so that at times her quarter boats, although 

 high up in the davits, often hit the tops of the waves. As I got near the 

 two pieces where the entrance was it began to close. I couldn't haul 

 by the wind; so when her stem entered I stopped the engine. The 

 sails and momentum took her through, but she got an awful jar on the 

 quarter. It shook her as if she had struck a reef. Only a few times her 

 length, and we were in smooth water, though we could watch the sea 

 breaking over the pieces of ice where we came in and the white-topped 

 waves breaking still farther beyond. At length the outside edge began to 

 wear away, so we had to move farther in, and so on till the wind and sea 

 went down; and then after a few hours we pulled out again. In sailing- 

 vessel days this would be a terrible experience, because the ice inside 

 was too close-set to get through, but with steam we could push through. 

 With a sailing vessel the only thing to do would be to carry along lumps 



