Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean<br />From Authentic Accounts Of Modern Voyagers And Travellers; Desig by Marmaduke Park (reading the story of the txt) π
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- Author: Marmaduke Park
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Captain Scoresby relates a similar narrow escape from destruction owing to the same cause. "In the year 1804," he observes, "I had an opportunity of witnessing the effects produced by the lesser masses in motion. Passing between two fields of ice newly formed, about a foot in thickness, they were observed rapidly to approach each other, and, before our ship could pass the strait, they met with a velocity of three or four miles per hour. The one overlaid the other, and presently covered many acres of surface. The ship proving an obstacle to the course of the ice, it squeezed up on both sides, shaking her in a dreadful manner, and producing a loud grinding or lengthened acute trembling noise, according as the degree of pressure was diminished or increased, until it had risen as high as the deck. After about two hours the motion ceased, and soon afterwards the two sheets of ice receded from each other nearly as rapidly as they had before advanced. The ship in this case did not receive any injury; but, had the ice only been half a foot thicker, she might have been wrecked." Other navigators have not been so fortunate; and the annual loss of whaling vessels in the polar seas is considerable, the Dutch having had as many as seventy-three sail of ships wrecked in one season. Between the years 1669 and 1778, both inclusive, or a period of one hundred and seven years, they sent to the Greenland fishery fourteen thousand one hundred and sixty-seven ships, of which five hundred and sixty-one, or about four in the hundred, were lost.
[pg 155]Every one will remember the intense and mournful interest occasioned by the loss of the President steamer which left New York in the year 1841 to cross the Atlantic, but perished in the passage, without leaving a survivor to tell the story of her fate. It has been deemed highly probable that this vessel got entangled in the ice, and was destroyed by collision with its masses; for during that year, in the month of April, the Great Western steamer encountered a field extending upwards of a hundred miles in one direction, surrounded with an immense number of floes and bergs, and had great difficulty in effecting its passage by this floating continent in safety.
[pg 156]Another form under which the ice appears in the ocean is that of bergs, which differ from the ice-fields in shape and origin. They are masses projecting to a great height above the surface of the water, and have the appearance of chalk or marble cliffs and mountains upon the deep. They have been seen with an elevation of two hundred feetβa circumference of two miles: and it has been shown by experiments on the buoyancy of ice floating in sea water, that the proportion above the surface is only about one-seventh of the thickness of the whole mass. During the first expedition of Ross, he found an ice berg in Baffin's Bay, at a distance of seven leagues from the land, which was measured by a party under Lieutenant Parry. Considerable difficulty was experienced in the attempt to land, as, in rowing round the berg, they found it perpendicular in every place but one. When they had ascended to the [pg 157] top, which was perfectly flat, they discovered a white bear in quiet possession of the mass, who plunged into the sea without hesitation, and effected his escape. The party found the ice berg to be four thousand one hundred and sixty-nine yards long, three thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine yards broad, and fifty-one feet high, being aground in sixty-one fathoms. Its appearance was like that of the back of the Isle of Wight, and the cliffs resembled those of the chalk range to the west of Dover. The weight of this mass was calculated to amount to one billion two hundred and ninety two millions three hundred and ninety seven thousand six hundred and seventy-three tons.
A White Bear.
[pg 158]An ice berg examined by Captain Graah, on the east coast of Greenland, rose one hundred and twenty feet out of the water, had a circumference of four thousand feet at the base, and its solid contents were estimated to be upwards of nine hundred millions of cubic feet. When viewed at a distance, nothing can be more interesting than the appearance of a considerable number of these formations, exhibiting an infinite variety of shape, and requiring no stretch of imagination to convert them into a series of floating towers, castles, churches, obelisks, and pyramids, or a snowy range of Alpine heights. No pencil, an observer has remarked, has ever given any thing like the true effect of an ice berg. In a picture they are huge, uncouth masses, stuck in the sea; while their chief beauty and grandeurβtheir slow stately motion, the whirling of the snow about their summits, and the fearful crackling of their partsβthey cannot give. The ice of the bergs is compact and solid, or of a fine green tint verging to blue; and large pieces may be frequently obtained, equal to the most beautiful crystal in transparency. It is stated by Scoresby, that with a portion of this ice, of by no means regular convexity, used as a burning lens, he has frequently burnt wood, fired gunpowder, melted lead, and lit the sailors' pipes, to their no small astonishment, the ice itself remaining in the mean while perfectly fixed and pellucid.
[pg 159]The Atahualpa, of Boston, left that port in August, 1803, bound to the north-west coast of America, for the purpose of trading with the natives. She arrived on the coast in the month of January, 1804; and, after visiting the several islands, and purchasing skins, on the 5th of June, 1805, weighed anchor from Chockokee, on the north-west coast, and made sail. On the 8th, arrived at Millbank sound, and came to an anchor within musket-shot of the village. Soon after her arrival, the chief of the Indians, by the name of Keite, came off to the ship, with some of his tribe, and informed the captain that the Caroline, Captain Sturgess, had sailed from thence ten days before.
[pg 161]On the 11th, the chief came off again, with his tribe, and another tribe that was there, and traded very briskly till towards night, when becoming very insolent, they were all turned out of the ship.
On the 13th, Keite and his tribe came on board in the morning, and seemed much more desirous to trade than before, which Captain Porter was very glad to see. The chief mate and two of the ship's company, were then engaged in ripping the main-sail in pieces, on the quarter-deck; the second mate with two hands was repairing the top-sail; two on the starboard side of the main-deck, spinning spun yarn; two more on the forecastle, making sinnet; two more on the larboard side of the main-deck, running shot in the armorer's forge; the cooper was making tubs; the cook, and captain's steward in the galley, at their duty; and all hands, as usual, employed on the ship's duty; the armorer was in the steerage, and the boatswain in the cabin; Captain Porter, Mr. Ratstraw, his clerk, and Mr. Lyman Plummer, (nephew of Theodore Lyman, Esq. of Boston, ship owner,) were standing on the larboard side of the quarter-deck, abreast of the cabin hatchway.
[pg 162]The chief, Keite, stood leaning on the rail, and called Captain Porter to look at the skins that were in the canoe, alongside the ship; the captain accordingly went to look over the side, when the chief, with some more Indians, laid hold of him, and gave a shout. Immediately all the Indians alongside of the canoe, and those on board, armed with daggers, pistols, pikes, and other weapons, seized every man on deck, who were totally unprepared for so sudden an attack. A most dreadful and sanguinary contest immediately took place; when, after a short but bloody engagement of about five minutes, the deck was immediately cleared of them.
[pg 163]There were about two hundred Indians, it is supposed, on board at this time; they first daggered Captain Porter several times in the back, put him in a canoe alongside, and carried him on shore; and, as we were afterwards informed by Captain Smith, of the ship Mary, of Boston, who was informed by the New Hecta tribe, was by them
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