Lost Words

August 1 & 2—All yesterday it blew very hard, with so much sea that we shipped one or two over the quarter-deck, by which I got a good drenching once. The sea was of the most perfect transparency—a beautiful, delicate, cold-looking green, or ultramarine. Long rollers, as if carved out of the essence of bottle glass, came rolling toward us; now and then topped with a beautiful pot-of-porter head. By evening the wind moderated, and was calm at night. This morning the wind was quite fair, but instead of having clear weather as with the northeast wind, it came to the southeast, and brought hard rain and thick fogs all day. We are now, however, (11 p.m.), going three knots and a quarter in a fog with the Terror close in on one side for fear of losing sight of us. Sir John will not cut sail and we are having fun navigating the bergs which loom at us out of the fog like huge, ghostly mountains. I calculate we are some forty miles off Cape Horsburgh, the most western extremity of Devon ...

July 28—We have a fair wind! Around noontime it turned to the northwest and we got in such a rush to bring the magnetic equipment on board, cast off and make the most of it, that for two hours or so you would have thought our friendly berg was home to a colony of black ants busily going about their business.  Around 3 p.m. we finally cast off and, with a final wave to the Enterprise, set course for Lancaster Sound. I am sorry we did not have the chance to return the hospitality of those stout men and, more important, pass on to them a short letter for delivery to you, but we must take what the fates offer and make the most of it, and if they suddenly give us a fair wind we cannot turn it down.  There is a feeling amongst some that, if we make Lancaster Sound by the first or second day of August, and if the ice remains as open as it is we may complete the passage this year and set through Behring’s Strait before it becomes blocked for the winter. I hope not.  I ha...

July 27—This morning we came upon a further whaler, the Enterprise from Peterhead captained by Robert Martin. This evening a few of us accepted the kind gentleman’s offer and dined aboard his vessel. It was a most enjoyable occasion much given over to talk of our prospects which were universally spoken of in a sanguine manner. The whalers are fine hearty fellows from the north country and they regaled us with tales of the whaling fleets. It is a most adventurous and interesting profession, but not one which I could take to, the whaling boat carrying such a disagreeable odour with her as I have ever smelled. It comes from the barrels she carries which are full of oil rendered from the whale fat, or blubber, heated over large fires on some suitable beach. Captain Martin laughed at our sensibilities and invited us to visit one of his rendering stations on the Greenland coast where, he assured us, the smell is one hundred times worse. We used the urgency of our passage to excuse ourselves...

July 26— Today around noon we were met by a whaler, the Prince of Wales out of Hull, with Captain Dannet commanding. We exchanged pleasantries and offered an invitation to supper on board but, unfortunately for our social agenda, a favourable wind came up (favourable for the whaler), and Captain Dannet felt he could not let it go so we parted company. Our island of ice has become quite homey with our observation huts scattered over it and men walking everywhere for exercise, but I wish for a fair wind to speed us on our way also.

July 25—The wind does not hold steady for long in these waters and we are making poor progress. We lie about sixty miles south of Cape York and can go no farther until a favourable wind comes to push us across the bay. It is frustrating as the season is moving on, however, we are making good use of the time.  This morning we got under the lee of a huge berg and made fast with the ice anchors. It was an undertaking I did not relish since, at Disco, I had witnessed one about 200 feet high topple over and come down with a crash like an avalanche, but in fact this berg seems as solid as if it were rock anchored to the sea bed. It is a large, irregular mountain of ice, upwards of 150 feet high and some 600 feet across. The ice, where it is shewing on a vertical face, is a deep blue, like thick coloured glass in some places. But the surface is not smooth and the ground is quite easy to walk on, being rough and a dull opaque white. There is a wave-cut ledge on the lee side which mak...

July 24—A clear, fine sunset at nine, and Goodsir examining ‘mollusca,’ in the microscope. He is in ecstasies about a bag full of blubber-like stuff, which he has just hauled up in a net, and which turns out to be whales’ food and other animals. It is all part of Sir John’s instructions on the necessity of observing everything from flea to whale in the unknown regions we are to visit. This afternoon, seven or eight large grampuses came shooting past us to the southwest, which Mister Goodsir declared delightful animals. Last evening a shoal of porpoises bounded about the bows of the vessel as she plunged into the sea, and a bird called a mullimauk, a sort of peterel, wheeled over us. The Arctic folk say the bird, when seen in open water, is a sign of approaching ice. We need no such indicators. Today I counted 180 icebergs within sight of the masthead, and yet they are widely spaced and as long as a secure watch is kept, pose no threat. It is but a month since I saw my first iceberg,...

July 23—A fine sunny day, quite warm and the air clear. Ice glistening in all directions. The only problem is the complete contrariness of wind, so we can make no headway. “But you have your steam engines,” I hear you say. Indeed we have, but the decision has been made to save our irreplaceable coal supplies for the tighter work of pushing us through the ice, rather than burning it as we drudge along making precious little headway toward our goal.