The Ocean and its Wonders by Robert Michael Ballantyne (latest novels to read txt) 📕

clothes they saved--some with only what they had on. The ship now began to sink fast, and from the time her bowsprit touched the ice until her mast-heads were out of sight, did not occupy above one minute and a half!

"It was a very sad and unceremonious way of being turned out of our ship. From the time the first nip took her, until her disappearance, did not occupy more than fifteen minutes."

Such is the account of the fate of the _Breadalbane_. While we read it, we cannot help feeling that many arctic ships must have perished in a similar manner. It is wonderful, nevertheless, how many of those that dare the dangers of the ice survive the conflict. Undoubtedly this is owing, to a large extent, to the fact that ships' bottoms are rounded; so that when a severe nip takes place, there is a tendency in the ice to slip under their rounded bottoms, and squeeze the vessels up out of the water. Were it not for this, few ships that have gone to those seas would ever have returned.

A catastrophe such as that which befell the _Breadalbane_ shows the immense power of field-ice. Hundreds of somewhat similar incidents might be cited to illustrate this power; but we content ourselves with the selection of one instance, which exhibits it in a remarkable manner, and at the same time shows the way in which heavy vessels are sometimes forced out of the water.

In the year 1836, Captain Back commanded the _Terror_, which was sent out to make geographical discoveries in the polar regions, and spent the winter of that year in the ice. Few ships have undergone severer tests than did the _Terror_ on that voyage. The severest treatment she experienced was in the spring, when the disruption of the winter ice began to take place. The evening of the 7th of March was specially fraught with danger. We quote the gallant commander's graphic account:--

"Ominous rushing sounds were heard far off to the north-east and north-west. These gradually drew nearer as the flood made its way, either under the compact bodies that withstood the shock, or along the cracks and openings--gaining in these latter a furious velocity, to which everything seemed to yield.

"It happened that there were several of these around the ship; and when they opened on us like so many conduits pouring their contents to a common centre, the concussion was absolutely appalling, rending the lining and bulkheads in every part, loosening some shores and stanchions, so that the slightest effort would have thrown them down, and compressing others with such force as to make the turpentine ooze out of their extremities. One fir plank, placed horizontally between the beams and the shores actually glittered with globules. At the same time the pressure was going on from the larboard side, where the three heaviest parts of the ruin of the floe remained, cracked here and there, but yet adhering in firm and solid bodies. These, of course, were irresistible; and after much groaning, splitting, and cracking, accompanied by sounds like the explosion of cannon, the ship rose fore and aft, and heeled over about ten degrees to starboard."

Again, on the 11th, Back says: "At this time she showed symptoms of suffering in the hull, which was evidently undergoing a severe ordeal. Inexplicable noises, in which the sharp sounds of splitting and the harsher ones of grinding were most distinct, came in quick succession, and then again stopped suddenly, leaving all so still that not even a breath was heard.

"In an instant the ship was felt to rise under our feet, and the roaring and rushing commenced with a deafening din alongside, abeam and astern, at one and the same instant. Alongside, the grinding masses held the ship tight as in a vice; while the overwhelming pressure of the entire body, advancing from the west, so wedged the stern and starboard quarter, that the greatest apprehensions were entertained for the stern-post and framework abaft.

"Some idea of the power exerted on this occasion may be gathered from this:--At the moment which I am now describing, the fore-part of the ship was literally buried as high as the flukes of the anchors in a dock of perpendicular walls of ice; so that, in that part, she might well have been thought immovable. Still, such was the force applied to her abaft, that after much cracking and perceptible yielding of the beams, which seemed to curve upwards, she actually rose by sheer pressure above the dock forward; and then, with sudden jerks, did the same abaft. During these convulsions, many of the carpenters and others stationed below were violently thrown down on the deck, as people are in an earthquake. It was a moment of intense suspense.

"On the 16th, another rush drove irresistibly on the larboard quarter and stern, and forcing the ship ahead, raised her on the ice. A chaotic ruin followed... The ship was careened fully four streaks, and sprang a leak as before. Scarcely were ten minutes left us for the expression of our astonishment that anything of human build could outlive such assaults, when another equally violent rush succeeded; and in its way toward the starboard quarter threw up a rolling wave thirty feet high, crowned by a blue square mass of many tons, resembling the entire side of a house, which, after hanging for some time in doubtful poise on the ridge, at length fell with a crash into the hollow, in which, as in a cavern, the after-part of the ship seemed embedded. It was, indeed, an awful crisis, rendered more frightful from the mistiness of the night and dimness of the moon.

"The poor ship cracked and trembled violently, and no one could say that the next minute would not be her last--and, indeed, his own too, for with her our means of safety would probably perish."

It is unnecessary to give additional instances of this kind, in order to show the terrible power of field-ice. Indeed, it requires little in the way of illumination to prove that masses of solid matter, many thousands of tons in weight, can, when in motion, utterly destroy the most powerful engines of human construction.

We shall now turn our attention to another, and a very prominent form, in which arctic ice presents itself--namely, that of icebergs.


CHAPTER TEN.


ICEBERGS--THEIR APPEARANCE AND FORMS--THEIR CAUSE--GLACIERS--THEIR NATURE AND ORIGIN--ANECDOTE OF SCORESBY--RISK AMONG ICEBERGS--MCCLURE'S EXPERIENCE.

There are not only ice-fields, ice-floes, etcetera, in the polar seas, but there are ice-mountains, or bergs.

It was long a matter of uncertainty as to where and how those immense mountains, that are met with occasionally at sea, were formed. We are now in a position to tell definitely where they originate, and how they are produced. They are not masses of frozen sea water. Their birth-place is in the valleys of the far north, and they are formed by the accumulation of the snows and ice of ages. This is a somewhat general way of stating the matter; but our subsequent explanations will, we trust, make our meaning abundantly clear.

Icebergs are found floating in great numbers in the arctic seas. They drift southward each spring with the general body of polar ice, and frequently travel pretty far south in the Atlantic before the heat of the water and atmosphere united accomplishes their dissolution. They sometimes travel as far south as Florida with the southerly current that flows along that coast; but the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, together with its northerly flow, form an impassable barrier between these ice-mountains and Europe.

Icebergs assume every variety of form, and almost every size. They sometimes resemble castles, sometimes churches with glittering spires, and sometimes the peaked and jagged mountains of Norway. They are also frequently seen in the form of immense misshapen and top-heavy masses.

In size they vary from one hundred to seven or eight hundred feet in height. One iceberg, seen by Ross in Baffin's Bay, was above two miles in length, nearly the same in width, and fifty feet high. But in stating this, we have not given the reader any idea of its vast proportions; for it is well known that all icebergs, or masses of ice, have a much greater proportion of their bulk under than above water--in other words, they sink very deep. The relative proportion that sinks depends on the nature of the ice. Of some kinds, there is usually ten times as much below as there is above water; of other kinds, there may be eight or five parts below. In all cases there is much more below than above so that a mountain of a hundred feet high--if afloat--may be safely calculated to be a mass of ice not far short of a thousand feet thick.

As these bergs float southward with the currents, they melt very rapidly. The heat of the sun and the action of the waves gradually round off the sharp angles and topple down the spires that characterised them in the land of their birth. The process of dissolution, too, is carried on internally; for rain and melted water on the surface percolates through the mass, rendering it porous. As the waves cut away the base, the centre of gravity is thrown out, and the whole berg turns over with a terrible crash. Sometimes loud reports like cannon-shots are heard, and the huge mountain splits asunder; while, not unfrequently, the whole berg falls into a heap of chaotic ruins, and floats away in a mass of smaller pieces which disappear gradually in their parent sea.

The formation of icebergs has, as we have said, puzzled mankind for many years. Their existence has long been known: for, even before men dared to venture their lives in the polar regions, navigators, in crossing the Atlantic Ocean, frequently met with these marble-like mountains; and, what is worse, sometimes ran at full speed against them, and were sunk with all on board. Bergs are frequently enveloped in dense fogs, caused by the cold atmosphere by which they are surrounded condensing the moisture of the warmer atmosphere which they encounter on their voyage southward; hence they are exceedingly dangerous to navigation. But now to speak of their formation.

Many of the great valleys of the far north are completely filled up with solid ice. Observe, we do not say that they are merely covered over with ice; they are absolutely filled up with it from top to bottom. Those ice-masses are known by the name of glaciers; and they are found in most of the elevated regions of the Earth,--on the Alps and the mountains of Norway, for instance,--but they exist in greater abundance about the poles than elsewhere.

Glaciers _never_ melt. They have existed for unknown ages, probably since the world began; and they will, in all likelihood, continue to exist until the world comes to an end,--at least until the present economy of the world terminates. They began with the first fall of snow, and as falls of snow during the long winters of the polar regions are frequent and heavy, the accumulated masses are many feet deep, especially in places where drifts are gathered--sometimes fifteen, twenty, thirty, and even forty feet deep. The summer sun could not melt such drifts entirely. New snow was added each winter, until the valleys of the far north were filled up; and so they remain filled up to this day.

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