August 11, Following Leads

August 11—My apologies, the last few days have been very hard and I have not been of a mind to write. On the 9th, we met ice solidly packed from shore to shore. For a time we imagined that we might be trapped for the season, uncommonly early, dangerously exposed in the open channel and a great disappointment after splendid good luck till now. Reid appeared unconcerned, however, saying, “Just you wait Mister Jems, she’ll no be solid yet, one of they leads’ll come for us afore long.” And sure enough, around 4 p.m. we heard a loud crack not unlike the report of a large artillery piece, but sharper. I was aft with the instruments and rushed forward thinking the worst had happened but not being able to imagine what it might be. I was met by Reid wearing a large crooked grin, saying, “Ah Mister Jems, there she be arl right,” and pointing to a wide lead which had appeared almost magically not twenty feet from the bow. It was little wider than the Erebus’s beam and snaked about in all directions, but seemed to be heading approximately to our bearing. Then the hard work began. We opened the ice saws, each twelve feet long, rough bladed, and weighted at one end, and I ordered the crew over the side. 

The procedure when making way through ice is to have the men cut a channel to the nearest lead. This is done by digging two holes in the ice with axes, the width of the ship apart. The ice saws are dropped through the holes, weighted ends first. The upper ends are roped to pulleys which are attached to tripods of ship’s spars. The saws are raised and lowered by pulling on ropes running through the pulleys and thus the ice is cut. The tripods and saws are gradually moved forward as the cuts are made and the separated ice broken and either hauled up onto the surface or, if the underside of the ice is smooth enough, pushed underwater and to each side. It is a laborious process, but one which there appears to be no avoiding if we are to progress through the ice. I was timing the men, and the best they managed was to cut through three feet of six-inch-thick ice in one minute, fair going I thought. 

We have brought much gunpowder with us in order to make charges to break the ice before us, but this method needs thicker, strong ice to be effective (not the soft thin stuff we encounter this early in the season where the charge simply blows a hole through and does not break the ice up). While the ice is being cut, the remainder of the crew must take to the ropes and manhaul the ship through the new passage toward the open water. It is hard, slow, backbreaking work, but the men take to it with a will, many having performed just such feats on previous whaling voyages. There were a number of injuries, most minor and due to men slipping on the smooth ice which has not acquired a covering of snow, and Surgeon Stanley had no difficulty in patching them up.

In three hours we had reached the open lead and set to firing up the steam engines. We had to sit some considerable time and wait for the Terror which was farther from the lead and had more work to do. At last, around nine in the evening, she too was in the lead and we proceeded under steam power with some caution. Fortunately the sky was clear and we had a full moon, so even when the sun was below the horizon, it was still light enough on deck to read by, and we continued to make progress. The engine seemed at first to perform well, although it made a noise rather like some huge hissing mechanical dragon, and we made some progress parallel with the coast. At about 5 a.m., by which time it was already fully light, Gregory the Engineer came on deck to report that there was a failure in one of the valves and that steam was escaping in a dangerous manner. I immediately ordered the fire damped and we resorted to sail and teams of men on the ice hauling. This is how we proceeded these last two days, alternately steaming when the boilers were working, sailing when the wind was fair, and hauling at the other times. 

Our path has been a zigzag through a bewildering array of leads which open and close at the whim of some undersea current or the pressures of ice being driven from some unknown channel. The main difficulty is that the ice is being driven back along Barrow Strait, so that at the times we are trapped in the ice, we are going back the way we have come and must struggle to even stand still. This ice work is strange, and not at all like what I am used to. Even the Euphrates, with its continually shifting sandbanks, treacherous shallows, and false channels, was nothing like our struggle through this always moving ice. At times, the leads are no wider than the ship, and I can hear the sound as it grinds past the hull, and already our black and yellow paint, which looked so splendid in the May sunshine of England, is looking sadly worn and chipped. The noise of the ice is worrisome to hear, but we have not yet, thank God, been in any ice under pressure. The men take to the work with good heart and Reid remains ever cheerful, merely regarding the ice as a minor inconvenience.

This a.m. we followed a lead which was taking us almost directly to shore in the lee of a stubby point of land. As the sky was blackening, or I should say greying since it was laden heavy with rain, and the wind was freshening against us, we kept on in and are now lying at anchor in its shelter. It will not do us as a winter bay, but Reid is convinced that the wind is good at this time of year and will open the ice in the channel and allow us to proceed at a better rate in a day or two. At present, rain is falling heavily and the wind is fresh. The sky is low and the clouds speed past above us just above mast height. In breaks we get glimpses of the ice in the channel which appears to be moving at a rapid speed past us and which firmly closed our lead long past, but the ice in our shelter is calm and we sit close in to the shore which is composed of rough, jagged rock leading up to towering cliffs of which we have only seen the lowest 100 feet beneath the rushing clouds. 

The Terror sits close beside us and Crozier and Hodgson came over for dinner. Crozier too is of the opinion that this wind will do us good and clear at least some of the ice out of the channel. Osmer and I managed a game of chess, the first for several days. He beat me soundly.