July 10th: “we could not but enjoy the peculiar features of our imprisonment”
In today’s entry, we find ourselves on a ship in the Arctic Ocean.
Josephine Diebitsch Peary (1863-1955) was an author and explorer. She grew up in a family who encouraged her to develop her inquisitive side, and after she married admiral-to-be Robert Edwin Peary in 1888, she would accompany him on an expedition to Greenland in 1891-1892. It was on that expedition that she wrote the journal she would later publish as My Arctic Journal.
Today’s entry, from the 10th of July, 1891, was written early on in the exhibition, still on the way to Greenland.
This morning the rigging was covered with hoar-frost, making the “Kite” look like a “phantom ship.” The fog hung heavily about us, shutting out the land completely. In the forenoon a sounding was made, but no bottom was found at 343 fathoms. While we were at dinner, without any warning the “Kite” began to move, steam was immediately gotten up, and for an hour and a half we cut our way through the ice, which had become very rotten, large floes* splitting into several pieces as soon as they were struck by the “Kite.” We made about three knots, when we were again obliged to halt on account of a lowering fog. Our little move was made just in time to keep up the courage of some of the West Greenland party, who were beginning to believe that we should be nipped and kept here for the winter.
Although we realized that we were still ice-bound in the great and much-dreaded Melville Bay pack, we could not but enjoy at times the peculiar features of our forced imprisonment. Efforts to escape, with full promise of success, followed by a condition of impotency and absolute relaxation, would alternately elevate and depress our spirits to the extent of casting joy and gloom into the little household. The novelty of the situation, however, helped greatly to keep up a good feeling, and all despondency was immediately dispelled by the sound of the order to “fire up,” and the dull rumbling of the bell-metal propeller. We never tired of watching our little craft cut her way through the unbroken pans of ice. The great masses of ice were thrust aside very readily; sometimes a piece was split from a large floe and wedged under a still larger one, pushing this out of the way, the commotion causing the ice in the immediate vicinity fairly to boil. Then we would run against an unusually hard, solid floe that would not move when the “Kite” struck it, but let her ride right up on it and then allow her gradually to slide off and along the edge until she struck a weak place, when the floe would be shivered just as a sheet of glass is shivered when struck a sharp, hard blow. The pieces were hurled against and on top of other pieces, crashing and splashing about until it seemed as though the ice must be as thick again as it was before the break-up; but the good old “Kite” pushed them aside, leaving them in the distance groaning and creaking at having been disturbed. The day has been pleasant, in spite of an average temperature of 27½°.
* Maybe this is common knowledge, but just in case you, like me, don’t know what a ‘floe’ is, it’s a sheet of floating ice.
My Arctic Journey can be read in full here on Project Gutenberg.
Also, stay tuned for more from this journal!