Entry Index: 712
Position: 77.17, no longitude
Date by Position: 7 June 1881
Logbook Volume: 4 of 4
Logbook Metadata: Volume 4
Latitude by observation at Noon N. 77° 11' 10" Longitude by chronometer from afternoon observations No observations Water expended during the preceding 24 hours: 35 gallons Water distilled during the preceding 24 hours: 35 gallons Coal consumed during the preceding 24 hours: 255 lbs Coal remaining on hand at noon: 15 tons 448 lbs Max. temperature = 22° Min. temperature = 13° The pumping throughout the day is done by the wind mill pump. The steam cutter's boiler is used for distilling. Sounded in 38 fathoms. Muddy bottom. A moderate drift S.S.W. being indicated by the lead line. Weather generally dull and gloomy. Toward 6pm it commenced to clear a little, but from thence to midnight much fog prevailed. Large ponds of water in sight in all directions and great activity in the ice. Lanes of water opening and closing during the forenoon, and wherever edges of ice fields come together, large ridges and confused heaps of floe pieces are thrown up. The ship and her surrounding floe are drifting to the S'd and W'd, and sometimes due west, and are going to pass across the north face of Henrietta Island. The floe surrounding the ship (and it is an irregular island whose greatest diameter is about 1 mile, and least diameter about 1/2 mile) seems to be the firmest ice in the neighborhood of the island; but beyond our floe there is nothing but a chaotic mass of rubble ice, grinding and crashing and piling up whenever it meets resistance, and settling down and spreading apart when the impeding obstacle is removed. This, seemingly, continues from the edge of our surrounding floe to the shores and cliffs of Henrietta Island and is no doubt occasioned by the passage of the ice fields across the north face of that island. There are no connected lanes or ponds giving an egress in any direction. In anticipation of our floe breaking up and our being launched into the confusion reigning about us, hoisted the steam cutter, brought aboard the kayaks and oomiak, and removed from the ice such of our belongings as could not be secured at a few moments notice. Moon 10° S. First quarter
See full digitized page provided by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Excerpt:
While the ocean around us has been alive all day we have remained perfectly calm and undisturbed. This morning we found that such a disruption of the ice-fields had occurred as to leave us on the western side of a floe island, about one hundred yards from its edge, and that the whole of the outside ice was broken up into a terribly confused heap of rolling, tumbling, and grinding floebergs, forcibly reminding us of our experiences of November, 1879. We were evidently in transit across the north face of Henrietta Island, and bound westward ho! Our ice-island was irregular in shape, with its longer diameter about a mile in extent, and its shorter diameter about half that amount. Close to us we had plenty of water, but it was in disconnected spots, and we should have been infinitely worse off had we been in one of them. No lead making toward Henrietta Island was to be seen, and in fact the changes going on all over, except in our isolated spot, were so kaleidoscopic that it would have been impossible to detect such a lead if it had existed. Lanes and openings were forming and closing during all the forenoon, and every once in a while the sudden rearing up of some ridge of broken floe pieces, twenty and thirty feet high, showed where a lane had closed, or the sudden tumbling of a mound showed where a lane was opening. In all this confusion worse confounded we remained as quiet as ever. We were moving along slowly and grandly, a dignified figure in the midst of a howling wilderness. Had our floe broken up and hurled us adrift we should have had the liveliest time in our cruise, for to have escaped destruction would have been a miracle, and to have got anything or any person out of the ship in case of accident an impossibility. One can hardly fall back upon yawning chasms for launching boats or depositing provisions.
See digitized manuscript page provided by NOAA PMEL.
Hour |
Wind |
Pressure |
Att'd |
Dry |
Wet |
Sea |
Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | nne | 30.16 | 53.0 | 21.5 | — | — | bc |
| 12 | ene | 30.16 | 53.0 | 21.5 | — | — | oc |
| 15 | ene | 30.17 | 59.0 | 22.0 | — | — | oc |
| 18 | e | 30.18 | 60.0 | 20.5 | — | — | oc |
| 21 | ene | 30.2 | 60.0 | 16.0 | — | — | bcfm |
| 24 | ene | 30.2 | 60.0 | 13.0 | — | — | bcf |
