34fi CAPTAIN BACK IN THE "TEEBOH"— 1836-37. 



the north, and blowing fresh, jammed up the seaward ice upon the land with 

 more force than had ever yet been displayed. Shortly after nine A. m. a floe piece 

 split in two, and the tremendous violencs of the pressure from the north 

 curled and crushed up the windward ice, and piled it eighteen feet high 

 against the beam of the "Terror." "The ship creaked as if she were in 

 agony," says Back, " and, strong as she was, must have been stove and 

 crushed, had not some of the smaller masses been forced under her bottom, 

 and so diminished the strain by lifting her bow nearly two feet out of the 

 water." There was some reason to believe that the ice, besides being sunk 

 under the vessel, was also finding its way under the rampart of ice now 

 threatening the beam of the "Terror;" "for," says Back, "the uplifted 

 ruins (of this ice rampart), within fifty paces of the weather beam, were 

 advancing slowly towards us like an immense wave fraught with destruction. 

 Resistance would not, could not, have been effectual beyond a few seconds ; 

 for what, of human construction, could withstand the impact of an icy 

 continent, driven onward by a furious storm ? In the meantime, symptoms 

 too unequivocal to be misunderstood, demonstrated the intensity of the 

 pressure. The butt-ends began to start, and the copper, in which the galley 

 apparatus was fixed, became crushed; sliding doors refused to shut, and 

 leaks found access through the bulk-heads and bulls-eyes." The crisis 

 appeared to be impending, and in order to meet it in the only way possible. 

 Back ordered the preserved meats and provisions to be put up from below 

 and stowed on the deck ready for immediate transference to the ice, when 

 the final crush should come. On the 21st a motion was felt in the surround- 

 ing ice ; a number of astounding thumps were heard against the bottom of 

 the vessel under water, and then the ship, which had been heaved high 

 above her line of flotation and thrown over to port, came swinging round 

 and righted. Back, on beholding the walls of ice on either side between 

 which the "Terror" had been nipped, was astonished at the tremendous 

 force which she must have sustained. " Her mould," he says, "was stamped 

 as perfectly as in a die " in the ice. The old Greenland seamen aboard said 

 that no ship they had ever sailed in before, or ever seen, could have with- 

 stood such a pressure. 



The winter had now commenced in this region, and Back was fully 

 aware that if his enterprise was to be saved from failure, and his ship and 

 men saved from destruction, he must find some sufficient shelter for the 

 "Terror" during the winter months. Accordingly he despatched an ex- 

 ploring party under Lieutenant Smyth to examine the rocks and headlands 

 of the neighbouring coast in search of some available harbour. . But the 

 search for the desired harbour was fruitless, and, from the circumstances in 

 which Back now found himself, it was impossible at any subsequent period 

 to resume it. 



Digitized by IVIicrosoft® 



