Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1876 — Where Is the English Arctic Exploration Party? [ARTICLE]

Where Is the English Arctic Exploration Party?

When the two vessels wire last seen, open water lay before them, and they were bearing straight up 'northward for Prudhoe Land and Cape Isabella. The season was in all respects eminently favorable, and there was every reason for hoping that a very high latitude tyould be reached. Unfortunately, as the recent voyage of the Pandora abundantly demonstrates, there is nothing more treacherous than Arctic seas and Arctic skies. In the morning there may be a fresh rolling sea, without a glint or ice, and a watery sky stretching round the whole circle of the horizon. By the afternoon the wind will spring up, great lioes will drift steadily in, and before night closes the vessel will be hopelessly beset. It is consequently possible that the Alert may have been stopped at Cape Barrow, in latitude eighty degrees, or even* as far south as Cape Isabella and Cadogan inlet. On the other hand, when we remember how Hall, in the little Polaris, a mere river steamer of s*iall power and ill adapted for ice navigation, with a company, all told, of thirty men, women and children, including eight Esquimaux, steamed up Smith Soupd and Kennedy Channel in one working season, a distance of 250 miles, we cannot but

venture to hope that Capt. Nares may have been able to push the Alert through the hitherto unexplored Waters of Lincoln Sea up to the shadowy nnd far-off President’s Land, or even, it may be, to the eighty-fifth parallel. The Polaris, without the slightest let or impediment, reached as high a latitude as eighty-two degrees sixteen minutes north, and at this point saw northward of her a navigable sea with a water sky. She was a mere wooden gunboat of 387 tons, and had been in no way strengthened or specially fitted out for her work; while the Alert was originally a powerful vessel of 1,045 tons, and has been overhauled and fortified for her encounters with the ice, and furnished with new and powerful engines and boilers. We know from Mr. Lamont’s experience how a steamer, if her bows are properly ironed for the work, can charge and crush her way through tlie ice which would hopelessly stop the progress of another vessel, and there is consequently some reason for believing that the sledging party, which must now be well on its way, has possibly not got more than four, or at the outside five, degrees to cover before it reaches that extreme apex of the earth which is, to use Mr. Markham’s words, “ a spot where the sun’s altitude is equal to its declination, and where bearings have to be taken by reference to tithe and not tp the magnet,” but which yet is tlie Ultima Thule of all arctic discovery and the express goal of the present expedition. Remembering the achievements of Parry in 1827, when he left his vessel on the Spitzbergen coast and made his way over the great polar pack as firr as eighty-two forty-five minutes north, we can see no cause to despair of the success of the sledging parties which at this moment should be pressing northward. Parry, it may be recollected, found that the vast sea of ice over which he was traveling drifted to the south faster than his sledges were able to move toward the north. He traveled, as far as actual distance went, 172 miles from his vessel, but near the end of his journey he perceived that be was losing more by the southerly movement than he was gaining by the day’s work. To this difficulty the present sledge company are not likely to be exposed. In all probability the ice between Lincoln sea and the pole is no portion of the polar pack, and its southward drift, even if perceptible, will not prove a serious hindrance.— Loudon Daily Telegraph.