Winter in the Arctic Regions (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1846. Excerpt: ... PART I. WINTER IN THE OPEN SEA. THE ADVENTURES OF H.M.S. TERROR BESET BY ICE IN HUDSONS STRAIT. It sometimes happens when the summer is unusually cold and short, that the ice of an Arctic winter is not broken up during the following summer; so that the second summer would find the accumulated ice of two winters. Such appears to have been the case in the summer of 1836; when on the 14th of June, H.M. ship Terror left Chatham and proceeded at once on her voyage to Hudson's Strait, where a contest commenced between the ship and the ice, which was destined to last more than fourteen months. The drift ice in the strait was very heavy, and it was not without difficulty, and at a great sacrifice of distance, that the immense masses could be steered clear of; and even with the greatest caution, the ship would sometimes drive on them with a concussion that made all the bells ring, and nearly threw those below from their chairs. Every attempt to reach Southampton Island was thwarted by immense bodies of ice. It soon became apparent, that the ice of the previous year, 1835, had not been broken up at all, and that, having, with the accumulations of the following season, been detached from its bands by the storms of spring, it had been driven by the winds and the currents from the bays and harbours of the north, to the place where the ship encountered it. The two distinct kinds of ice, the old and the new, could readily be distinguished, the one being massive, irregular and dirty, with huge piles tossed up in picturesque confusion, --the other light, clean, and comparatively smooth. The ship was commanded by Captain Back; his lieutenants were Smyth, Stanley, and M'Murdo; Gore, M'Clure, and Fisher, mates; Marcuard, extra mate; Donovan, Surgeon; Mould, assistant surgeon...