Hunters on the Track by W. Gillies Ross;

Author:W. Gillies Ross;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

Into Winter Quarters

Perfectly fixed in the ice…1

While De Haven’s ships were being carried northward and southward in Wellington Channel, those of Penny and Ross were securely in the ice of Assistance Bay. A mere three weeks had passed since arriving in Lancaster Sound, and the navigation season was already over. “It was painful to reflect upon how little had been accomplished by the best endeavours of so many ships and willing crews,”2 Sutherland remarked. For everyone on the mission, it was enormously distressing to think that somewhere in the treeless, wind-blasted landscape some surviving members of Franklin’s missing expedition, with slowly ebbing strength and will, might be looking hopelessly at the approach of their sixth dismal winter, knowing nothing of the efforts being made to save them.

For searchers as well as the sought-after sailors, the harsh, unfamiliar environment imposed strict limits on human activities. The arctic winter was a long interlude separating one brief navigation season from the next. It was a time to retreat from the threatening elements, take shelter on board ice-encased, snow-banked ships, and endure the approaching cold and darkness – in short, a time for human hibernation. The search for Franklin would have to be suspended until sledge parties could set out over the natural highways of ice and hard-packed snow in late winter and spring.

Up to this point, Penny, Stewart, and their crews had been facing challenges familiar to whalemen. Navigating among ice floes and bergs, with all the concomitant threats to the safety of the ship and the survival of the men, was part of their experience. Spending an arctic winter frozen into the ice, on the other hand, was new and therefore intimidating. No whaling crews had ever wintered intentionally on their ships in the Arctic, and on the few occasions that ships had been trapped in drifting pack ice for several winter months, their crews had suffered badly from cold, hunger, and scurvy, and many men had died. Tales of those dreadful events still circulated within the whaling fraternity. But those tragic episodes had been accidental, the ships and crews not adequately prepared for such a contingency. In 1850, on the other hand, wintering was part of the plan. Penny had made careful preparations for it, benefiting from the published narratives of discovery expeditions that had wintered in the Arctic since 1818. His ships had enough food to last three years, a supply of winter clothing, and coal for heating. If necessary, he could seek advice from veterans on other ships: Sir John Ross and his ice master Thomas Abernethy, Penny’s next-door neighbours, had passed four consecutive winters together in the Arctic; and Austin’s ships, if they could be found, had at least five officers who had previously served on wintering expeditions.

It would much colder than they had ever experienced during the severest winters in Scotland, they knew. This was clear from the narratives of previous commanders. When Parry and his men had wintered at the same latitude in 1819–20, the thermometer

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