Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. Vol. 13, no. 3.

Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. Vol. 13, no. 3. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    36/128 (page 166)
    attaining to latitude 81° 42, which the Swedes, with very pardonable pride, considered was the highest degree of latitude ever reached by a ship. Scoresby, however, whose object was not scientific investigation, but the capture of whales, attained in a most favourable season to 82°. There was another lesemblance between the Swedish expedition and the expedition of 1818. The Sofia got thrown upon a heavy mass of ice and was seriously injured, and had it not been for the power of steam, she might have been lost; but her steam enabled her to go to Amsterdam Island, and subsequently to Smerem- berg Harbour, where she was repaired. It was to that very place the Dorothea and the Trent went in 1818—the Dorothea to be hove down to repair damages brought about by having been crushed in “ taking the pack ” during a furious gale. Well, these gallant Swedes, nothing daunted by all those serious circumstances, tried again and again; but the ice became thicker and more compact, and they were less able to advance against it. Ultimately, late in October, they bore up for their own country, and arrived at Tromso on the 20th of October—the very same thing which the Dorothea and Trent did, and at the same period of the year, just half a century ago. The parallel showed how very little the circumstances of Polar navigation were altered in the direction of Spitzbergen. He was not going to give an opinion whether the route by Smith Sound, by Nova Zembla, or Spitzbergen, or by that between Spitzbergen and Greenland, was the best to attempt. It seemed to him that it was only by a repetition of small expeditions that the approach to the Pole might be successfully made, namely, by being on the spot when Nature, in some of her favourable moods, might open out the ice and leave a passage clear for an adventurous explorer. He could not sit down without expressing his unqualified admiration of the perseverance and steadiness which characterised the Swedish expedition. Admiral Ommanney said he could not extol too much the courage which animated the Swedes in carrying out this expedition. But he should like to have heard something more about the construction of the Sofia. He had heard that she was constructed of iron. Success in penetrating the Polar sea depended a great deal upon the way in which the vessel was constructed. If the Sofia had been of more substantial construction she would not have succumbed to the first blow of the ice, as she appears to have done. The masses of ice met with, covered with stones and earth, was to him a hopeful indication of our being able to reach the North Pole by way of Spitzbergen, of which he had always been an advocate. He hoped the failure of the present expedition would not discourage those who urere in favour of that route. He was happy to see that the point reached by Parry still stood far to the north, and he hoped it would never be surpassed by any other country but England. Staff-Commander Davis was of opinion that the most important part of the communication just read was the fact of masses of ice being seen bearing stones and earth ; but Professor Nordenskiold had omitted a singular tact, also observed by the same expedition, and which was recorded in Petermanu's ‘ Mittheilungen,’ viz., that in the spring of the year large flocks of birds take flight, going due north from the northern parts of Spitzbergen. This, taken in conjunction with the first-named circumstance, would lead to the belief that land existed to the north. Admiral Sir Edward Belcher said from what he had heard in this paper, and from what he had collected from Parry and Sir James Boss, he believed the ice which came down, always southerly, on the western side ot Spitz- bergen, and in such quantities, must cause a vacuum to the northward; and in that vacant space he felt perfectly satisfied vessels might winter, as, for instance, on the north-west of Spitzbergen, and in one of these open seasons find their way to the north. Parry, in his last observations in 1827, alter having tried