This entry contains remarks related to the following subject: Sea Ice

Published Journals of George W. DeLong

See full digitized page provided by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Excerpt:

Mr. Dunbar started out this morning with the dingy to go ducking, intending to go to the lane of 
water about one mile N.W. of us, and try luck. He came back about four p.m. with thirteen ducks, and 
informed me that he followed the lane (which he thought ran north) for nearly fifteen miles without 
coming to its end. The ice on each side (at times two thirds of a mile wide) was very old and heavy, five 
and six feet out of water, and so deep under water that he could not see the bottom of it. I began to look 
upon this as an avenue of escape, and ran over in my mind how I could get the ship through the mile of 
intervening ice into the lane and push on for something. But I need not have exercised my slumbering 
brain tissue, for toward midnight the lane commenced to close, and I had the melancholy satisfaction of 
realizing that had the ship been there she would in all probability have had a fine squeezing. 
...
The ice right around us is wasting very fast, and we still continue to rise, bringing our cradle with 
us. To-day the water-line is at nine feet four inches on our stem. We are heeling 4° to starboard (3° 
all winter), and our doubling on the starboard side is about four inches above the water. The 
surface of our floe is dotted here and there with small lakes, which enable us to get water readily 
for our tank, and present so many excellent laundries for washing clothes. How disgusting it is to 
see ice form on the surface of our little lakes at the end of June.

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Jeannette Ship's Journal

See digitized manuscript page provided by NOAA PMEL.