Ilatsiak - 19

David was not among the crew that went to the Terror’s assistance, but it soon became apparent that she was fairly hard aground on a falling tide. To make matters worse, a thick fog and pans of heavy ice began drifting in from the north-west together with a rising breeze. However, Sir John was confident she would float off on the high tide later in the evening, and so took the opportunity to call a conference in his cabin of the two Captains together with Misters Reid and Blanky, the ships’ Ice Masters. He was particularly interested in the advice of Mr Blanky of the Terror who had some knowledge of the coast gathered when he had sailed with Sir John Ross’s Victory in the 1830’s.
As usual, David served the evening meal in Sir John’s cabin, this time to the five men. It was obvious that very serious dicussions where being held and not without some considerable disagreement. Maps and charts were spread about, even on the floor which was not Sir John’s usual style. As well, David was frequently asked to search the ship’s library for various books and reports of earlier explorers who had had some familiarity with this region and whose journals might lend some advice to the ship’s predictament about exactly in which direction to head.
It was finally resolved that the ships would be unable to continue in the present southeasterly direction into what seemed to be a narrow and increasingly shallow channel which in any event probably ended in the low lying land seen by Ross to the southeast. Crozier argued forceably that the strong tidal flow passing the hull of the Terror could only be the result of a passageway into the straits discovered by Simpson and Dease. Mr Blanky was pressed over and over again to give a firm answer to the problem of whether a waterway could exist to the south. He could not be sure. He had only seen the country during the winter when all was frozen and snow covered. It was almost impossible to tell when one stood on ice covered sea or low lying land. Only by actually digging into the snow could one tell for sure. All the same, if there was a passage, he felt, it would be difficult for the two ships to traverse on account of the low lying islands and no doubt more of the shallows such as they had already encountered. He reminded both captains that their deep drafts of 17 feet or so and the difficulty of manuovering such large ships as the Erebus and Terror could easily get them into difficulty in such shallow and confining waters.
Relectantly, especially on the part of Crozier, it was agreed that in spite of the obvious difficulties it would present, the only practical solution would be to try and drive the ships through the old, heavy ice in the larger channel to the west of King Willand Land. It was still early in the season and there was reason to assume the ice would continue to melt during the month of August and probably loosen sufficently in the next few weeks to permit them to advance southward just as it had earlier at the entrance to Peel Sound. If they were unable to make it through this season using the engines, then surely they would be flushed out the following Spring. Crozier had argued strongly for a second attempt to enter the eastern Inlet, his main argument being the fact that the engines were nowhere near up to the task of making any progress in such heavy ice as had been encountered, but it was finally vetoed by Sir John and seconded by Fitzjames. To satisfy his curiousity, it was agreed that Crozier would be permitted to take a ship’s boat southward into the Inlet and map it’s coastlines if the ships were beset early, but this was thought unlikely given the recent good weather. Only the Ice Masters reserved judgement claiming the heavy multi-year old ice to the west was considerably thicker and heavier than they were used to seeing in their whaling experience prior to this present voyage. Neither of them viewed entering the ice pack with much enthusiasm, but agreed that it seemed their only option other than retreating back up Peel Sound which no one was yet prepared to do. Only the experience of the two ships previously in the Antarctic and the special iron sheathing and solid wood strengthening at the bows which had been performed especially for this voyage convinced Franklin that the ships were up to the challenge of the ice.
The high tide did not float the Terror free as expected. Anxious to be off, Capt Crozier began immediately off-loading various supplies and shipping them to shore on a nearby island with the understand of making a small depot which would be picked up later if necessary. This operation took most of the following two watches when on their return, the boat crews and the ship’s engine were finally able to back the Terror off the shoal and into deeper water. The crews then returned to the depot to make it tight for the coming months until it could be retrieved later during the fall or spring to come. In order that the cases not come to harm from the sea storming over the low lying island, Crozier gave the order that the depot be made on high ground which turned out to be about 300 feet from the shoreline. Most of the cases contained flour sealed inside the usual red painted tins. A few of the other cases contained ships’ biscuit and a small amount of pemmican. The whole depot was made secure with a canvas cover which in turn was nailed tight by long, wide, thick planks nailed into the wooden crates.
The grounding had not done the Terror much damage although the carpenters spent the next several days checking several areas of planking which had sprung and were leaking slightly.
Sir John then sent the Crozier and the Terror westward along the ice edge in hopes of finding some opening to the west, but after only a few hours of sailing it proved hopeless, the ice edge curving in a more and more northernly direction until it was seen to attach itself to the southern tip of Prince of Wales Island. To the west, the heavy ice extended to the westward to the horizon and beyond. Somewhat shaken by the prospects, Crozier gave the order to come about and turned back to Cape Felix to report to the anchored Erebus.
Fitzjames, in the Erebus, had had little luck in pushing his way through the heavy ice of the western channel. It was simply too heavy and thick, made up as it was of multi-year ice which had partly thawed only to refreeze again and again year after year turning it into an iron hard substance more than equal to any wooden hulled ship. This situation of searching here and there along the ice edge for an open channel continued through the month of August, 1846 when the fine summer weather began to fail, the darkness of night returned in ernest and then, late in the month, an early winter drop in temperature below the freezing mark found the ships once again frozen into the ice about a mile distant from each other, with little hope of making any further progress through the passage this year. In the end, it was simply a matter of deciding the best possible site to be beset in order to float through to the southwest the following summer. To the great disappointment of everyone they would have to spend their second winter where they were and not sailing through tropical seas, a victory in hand.