Part 8

We thus seem to have _primâ facie_ evidence that the sea reached by Kane communicates either with the Pacific or with the Atlantic, or—which is the most probable view—with both those oceans. When we consider the voyages which have been made towards the North Pole along the northerly prolongation of the Atlantic Ocean, we find very strong evidence in favour of the view that there is open-water communication in this direction, not only with the spot reached by Kane, but with a region very much nearer to the North Pole.

So far back as 1607, Hudson had penetrated within eight and a half degrees (or about 600 miles) of the North Pole on this route. When we consider the clumsy build and the poor sailing qualities of the ships of Hudson’s day, we cannot but feel that so successful a journey marks this route as one of the most promising ever tried. Hudson was not turned back by impassable barriers of land or ice, but by the serious dangers to which the floating masses of ice and the gradually thickening ice-fields exposed his weak and ill-manned vessel. Since his time, others have sailed upon the same track, and hitherto with no better success. It was reserved to the Swedish expedition of 1868 to gain the highest latitudes ever reached in a ship in this direction. The steamship ‘Sofia,’ in which this successful voyage was made, was strongly built of Swedish iron, and originally intended for winter voyages in the Baltic. Owing to a number of delays, it was not until September 16 that the ‘Sofia’ reached the most northerly part of her journey. This was a point some fifteen miles nearer the North Pole than Hudson had reached. To the north there still lay broken ice, but packed so thickly that not even a boat could pass through it. So late in the season, it would have been unsafe to wait for a change of weather and a consequent breaking-up of the ice. Already the temperature had sunk sixteen degrees below the freezing-point; and the enterprising voyagers had no choice but to return. They made, indeed, another push for the north a fortnight later, but only to meet with a fresh repulse. An ice-block with which they came into collision opened a large leak in the vessel’s side; and when after great exertions they reached the land, the water already stood two feet over the cabin floor. In the course of these attempts, the depths of the Atlantic were sounded, and two interesting facts were revealed. The first was that the island of Spitzbergen is connected with Scandinavia by a submarine bank; the second was the circumstance that to the north and west of Spitzbergen the Atlantic is more than two miles deep!

We come now to the most conclusive evidence yet afforded of the extension of the Atlantic Ocean towards the immediate neighbourhood of the North Pole. Singularly enough, this evidence is associated not with a sea-voyage, nor with a voyage across ice to the borders of some northern sea, but with a journey during which the voyagers were throughout surrounded as far as the eye could reach by apparently fixed ice-fields.

In 1827 Sir Edward Parry was commissioned by the English Government to attempt to reach the North Pole. A large reward was promised in case he succeeded, or even if he could get within five degrees of the North Pole. The plan which he adopted seemed promising. Starting from a port in Spitzbergen, he proposed to travel as far northward as possible in sea-boats, and then, landing upon the ice, to prosecute his voyage by means of sledges. Few narratives of arctic travel are more interesting than that which Parry has left of this famous ‘boat-and-sledge’ expedition. The voyagers were terribly harassed by the difficulties of the way; and after a time, that most trying of all arctic experiences, the bitterly cold wind which comes from out the dreadful north, was added to their trials. Yet still they plodded steadily onwards, tracking their way over hundreds of miles of ice with the confident expectation of at least attaining to the eighty-fifth parallel, if not to the Pole itself.

But a most grievous disappointment was in store for them. Parry began to notice that the astronomical observations, by which in favourable weather he estimated the amount of their northerly progress, showed a want of correspondence with the actual rate at which they were travelling. At first he could hardly believe that there was not some mistake; but at length the unpleasant conviction was forced upon him that the whole ice-field over which he and his companions had been toiling so painfully was setting steadily southwards before the wind. Each day the extent of this set became greater and greater, until at length they were actually carried as fast towards the south as they could travel northwards.

Parry deemed it useless to continue the struggle. There were certainly two chances in his favour. It was possible that the north wind might cease to blow, and it was also possible that the limit of the ice might soon be reached, and that his boats might travel easily northward upon the open sea beyond. But he had to consider the exhausted state of his men, and the great additional danger to which they were subjected by the movable nature of the ice-fields. If the ice should break up, or if heavy and long-continued southerly winds should blow, they might have found it very difficult to regain their port of refuge in Spitzbergen before winter set in or their stores were exhausted. Besides, there were no signs of water in the direction they had been taking. The water-sky of arctic regions can be recognised by the experienced seamen long before the open sea itself is visible. On every side, however, there were the signs of widely-extended ice-fields. It seemed, therefore, hopeless to persevere, and Parry decided on returning with all possible speed to the haven of refuge prepared for the party in Spitzbergen. He had succeeded in reaching the highest northern latitudes ever yet attained by man. (A somewhat higher latitude has since been reached by Captain Nares’s expedition.)

The most remarkable feature of this expedition, however, is not the high latitude which the party attained, but the strange circumstance which led to their discomfiture. What opinion are we to form of an ocean at once wide and deep enough to float an ice-field which must have been thirty or forty thousand square miles in extent? Parry had travelled upwards of three hundred miles across the field, and we may fairly suppose that he might have travelled forty or fifty miles farther without reaching open water; also that the field extended fully fifty miles on each side of Parry’s northerly track. That the whole of so enormous a field should have floated freely before the arctic winds is indeed an astonishing circumstance. On every side of this floating ice-island there must have been seas comparatively free from ice; and could a stout ship have forced its way through these seas, the latitudes to which it could have reached would have been far higher than those to which Parry’s party was able to attain. For a moment’s consideration will show that the part of the great ice-field where Parry was compelled to turn back must have been floating in far higher latitudes when he first set out. He reckoned that he had lost more than a hundred miles through the southerly motion of the ice-field, and by this amount, of course, the point he reached had been nearer the Pole. It is not assuming too much to say that a ship which could have forced its way round the great floating ice-field would certainly have been able to get within four degrees of the Pole. It seems to us highly probable that she would even have been able to sail upon open water to and beyond the Pole itself.

And when we remember the direction in which Dr. Kane saw an open sea—namely, towards the very region where Parry’s ice—ship had floated a quarter of a century before—it seems reasonable to conclude that there is open water communication between the seas which lie to the north of Spitzbergen and those which lave the north-western shores of Greenland. If this be so, we at once obtain an explanation of the tidal waves which Kane watched day after day in 1855. These had no doubt swept along the valley of the Atlantic, and thence around the northern coast of Greenland. It follows that, densely as the ice may be packed at times in the seas by which Hudson, Scoresby, and other captains have attempted to reach the North Pole, the frozen masses must in reality be floating freely, and there must therefore exist channels through which an adventurous seaman might manage to penetrate the dangerous barriers surrounding the polar ocean.

In such an expedition, chance unfortunately plays a large part. Whalers tell us that there is great uncertainty as to the winds which may blow during an arctic summer. The icebergs may be crowded by easterly winds upon the shores of Greenland, or by westerly winds upon the shores of Spitzbergen, or, lastly, the central passage may be the most encumbered, through the effects of winds blowing now from the east and now from the west. Thus the arctic voyager has not merely to take his chance as to the route along which he shall adventure northwards, but often, after forcing his way successfully for a considerable distance, he finds the ice-fields suddenly closing in upon him on every side, and threatening to crush his ship into fragments. The irresistible power with which, under such circumstances, the masses of ice bear down upon the stoutest ship, has been evidenced again and again; though, fortunately, it not unfrequently happens that some irregularity along one side or the other of the closing channel serves as a sort of natural dock, within which the vessel may remain in comparative safety until a change of wind sets her free. Instances have been known in which a ship has had so narrow an escape in this way, and has been subjected to such an enormous pressure, that when the channel was opened out again, the impress of the ship’s side has been seen distinctly marked upon the massive blocks of ice which have pressed against her.

(From the _St. Paul’s Magazine_, June 1869.)

FOOTNOTES:

[5] So far back as 1789, John Williams, in his _Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom_, discussed the question of the ‘Limited Quantity of Coal in Great Britain.’ The following extracts are taken from an excellent paper on the exhaustion of our coal in the _Popular Science Review_ for July 1866, by Mr. Lemoran, Colliery Viewer. ‘I have no doubt,’ says Williams, ‘that the generality of the inhabitants of Great Britain believe that our coal mines are inexhaustible; and the general conduct of the nation, so far as relates to this subject, seems to imply that this is held as an established fact. If it was not a generally received opinion, would the rage for exporting coals be allowed to go on without limitation or remorse? But it is full time that the public were undeceived in a matter which so nearly concerns the welfare of this flourishing island.... When our coal mines are exhausted, the prosperity and glory of this flourishing and fortunate island are at an end. Our cities and great towns must then become ruinous heaps for want of fuel, and our mines and manufactories must fail from the same cause, and then, consequently, our commerce must vanish. In short, the commerce, wealth, importance, glory, and happiness of Great Britain will decay and gradually dwindle away to nothing, in proportion as our coal and other mines fail.’ Mr. Williams also solves in a very summary manner the problem of England’s fate after her coal stores shall be exhausted. ‘The future inhabitants of this island must live,’ says he, ‘like its first inhabitants, by fishing and hunting.’

[6] In 1854, the yield was 64,661,401 tons; in 1864, the yield was 92,787,873: the average increase per annum was, therefore, no less than 2,812,647 tons.

[7] I have obtained a somewhat different result from a computation I have just gone through. I make the consumption 291 millions in 1900, and 1,446 millions in 1950. Mr. Lemoran seems to have taken the percentage at 3½ instead of 3¼. It is worth noticing how seriously a small change in the percentage affects the result; the consumption in 1950 becoming 1,760 millions of tons, instead of 1,446 millions.

[8] The year 1863 was the last whose statistics were available for Mr. Jevons’s purpose; and estimating from either 1860 or 1862 would give a result smaller than either of the above. Indeed, the consumption was less in 1862 than in 1861.

_IS THE GULF STREAM A MYTH?_

The Gulf Stream has recently attracted a large share of the attention of our men of science. The strange weather which we experienced last winter (see date of essay) has had something to do with this. The influence of the Gulf Stream upon our climate, and the special influence which it is assumed to exercise in mitigating the severity of our winters, have been so long recognised that meteorologists began to inquire what changes could be supposed to have taken place in the great current to account for so remarkable a winter as the last. But it happened also that at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society early in the present year the very existence of the Gulf Stream was called in question, just when meteorologists were disposed to assign to it effects of unusual importance. And in the course of the discussion whether there is in truth a Gulf Stream—or rather whether our shores are visited by a current which merits such a name—a variety of interesting facts were adduced, which were either before unknown or had attracted little attention. As at a recent meeting of the same society these doubts have been renewed, I propose to examine briefly, in the first place, a few of the considerations which have been urged against the existence of a current from the Gulf of Mexico to the neighbourhood of our shores; and then, having rehabilitated the reputation of this celebrated ocean river—as I believe I shall be able to do—I shall proceed to give a brief sketch of the processes by which the current-system of the North Atlantic is set and maintained in motion.

In reality the Gulf Stream is only a part of a system of oceanic circulation; but in dealing with the arguments which have been urged against its very existence, we may confine our attention to the fact that, according to the views which had been accepted for more than a century, there is a stream of water which, running out of the Gulf Stream through the Narrows of Bemini, flows along the shores of the United States to Newfoundland, and thence right across the Atlantic to the shores of Great Britain. It is this last fact which is now called in question. The existence of a current as far as the neighbourhood of Newfoundland is conceded, but the fact that the stream flows onward to our shores is denied.

The point on which most stress is placed is the shallowness of the passage called the ‘Bemini Narrows,’ through which it is assumed that the whole of the Gulf current must pass. This passage has a width of about forty miles, and a depth of little more than six hundred yards. The current which flows through it is perhaps little more than thirty miles in width, and a quarter of a mile in depth. It is asked with some appearance of reason, how this narrow current can be looked upon as the parent of that wide stream which is supposed to traverse the Atlantic with a mean width of some five or six hundred miles. Indeed, a much greater width has been assigned to it, though on mistaken grounds; for it has been remarked that since waifs and strays from the tropics are found upon the shores of Portugal, as well as upon those of Greenland, we must ascribe to the current a span equal to the enormous space separating these places. But the circumstance here dwelt upon can clearly be explained in another way. We know that of two pieces of wood thrown into the Thames at Richmond, one might be picked up at Putney, and the other at Gravesend. Yet we do not conclude that the width of the Thames is equal to the distance separating Putney from Gravesend. And doubtless the tropical waifs which have been picked up on the shores of Greenland and of Portugal have found their way thither by circuitous courses, and not by direct transmission along opposite edges of the great Gulf current.

But certainly the difficulty associated with the narrowness of the Bemini current is one deserving of careful attention. Are we free to identify a current six hundred miles in width with one which is but thirty miles wide, and not very deep? An increase of width certainly not less than thirtyfold would appear to correspond to a proportionate diminution of depth. And remembering that it is only near the middle of the Narrows that the Gulf Stream has a depth of four hundred yards, we could scarcely assign to the wide current in the mid-Atlantic a greater depth than ten or twelve yards. This depth seems altogether out of proportion to the enormous lateral extension of the current.

But besides that even this consideration would not suffice to disprove the existence of a current in the mid-Atlantic, an important circumstance remains to be mentioned. The current in the Narrows flows with great velocity,—certainly not less than four or five miles an hour. As the current grows wider it flows more sedately; and opposite Cape Hatteras its velocity is already reduced to little more than three miles an hour. In the mid-Atlantic the current may be assumed to flow at a rate little exceeding a mile per hour, at the outside. Here, then, we have a circumstance which suffices to remove a large part of the difficulty arising from the narrowness of the Bemini current, and we can at once increase our estimate of the depth of the mid-Atlantic current fivefold.

But this is not all. It has long been understood that the current which passes out through the Narrows of Bemini corresponds to the portion of the great equatorial current which passes into the Gulf of Mexico between the West Indian Islands. We cannot doubt that the barrier formed by those islands serves to divert a large portion of the equatorial current. The portion thus diverted finds its way, we may assume, along the outside of the West Indian Archipelago, and thus joins the other portion—which has in the meantime made the circuit of the Gulf—as it issues from the Bemini Straits. All the maps in which the Atlantic currents are depicted present precisely such an outside current as I have here spoken of, and most of them assign to it a width exceeding that of the Bemini current. Indeed, were it not for the doubts which the recent discussions have thrown upon all the currents charted by seamen, I should have been content to point to this outside current as shown in the maps. As it is, I have thought is necessary to show that such a current must necessarily have an existence, since we cannot lose sight of the influence of the West Indian Isles in partially damming up the passage along which the equatorial current would otherwise find its way into the Gulf of Mexico. Whatever portion of the great current is thus diverted must find a passage elsewhere, and no passage exists for it save along the outside of the West Indian Isles.

The possibility that the wide current which has been assumed to traverse the mid-Atlantic may be associated with the waters which flow from the Gulf of Mexico, either through the Narrows or round the outside of the barrier formed by the West Indies, has thus been satisfactorily established. But we now have to consider difficulties which have been supposed to encounter our current on its passage from the Gulf to the mid-Atlantic.

Northwards, along the shores of the United States, the current has been traced by the singular blueness of its waters until it has reached the neighbourhood of Newfoundland. Over a part of this course, indeed, the waters of the current are of indigo blue, and so clearly marked that their line of junction with the ordinary sea-water can be traced by the eye. ‘Often,’ says Captain Maury, ‘one half of a vessel may be perceived floating in Gulf Stream water, while the other half is in common water of the sea—so sharp is the line, and such the want of affinity between the waters, and such, too, the reluctance, so to speak, on the part of those of the Gulf Stream, to mingle with the littoral waters of the sea.’

But it is now denied that there is any current beyond the neighbourhood of Newfoundland—or that the warm temperature, which has characterised the waters of the current up to this point, can be detected farther out.

It is first noticed that, as the Gulf current must reach the neighbourhood of Newfoundland with a north-easterly motion, and, if it ever reached the shores of the British Isles, would have to travel thither with an almost due easterly motion, there is a change of direction to be accounted for. This, however, is an old, and I had supposed exploded, fallacy. The course of the Gulf Stream from the Bemini Straits to the British Isles corresponds exactly with that which is due to the combined effects of the motion of the water and that of the earth upon its axis. Florida being much nearer than Ireland to the equator, has a much more rapid easterly motion. Therefore, as the current gets farther and farther north, the effect of the easterly motion thus imparted to it begins to show itself more and more, until the current is gradually changed from a north-easterly to an almost easterly stream. The process is the exact converse of that by which the air-currents from the north gradually change into the north-westerly trade-winds as they get farther south.

But it is further remarked that as the current passes out beyond the shelter of Newfoundland, it is impinged upon by those cold currents from the arctic seas which are known to be continually flowing out of Baffin’s Bay and down the eastern shores of Greenland; and it is contended that these currents suffice, not merely to break up the Gulf current, but so to cool its waters that these could produce no effect upon the climate of Great Britain if they ever reached its neighbourhood.

Here, again, I must remark that we are dealing with no new discovery. Captain Maury has already remarked upon this peculiarity. ‘At the very season of the year,’ he says, ‘when the Gulf Stream is rushing in greatest volume through the Straits of Florida, and hastening to the north with the greatest rapidity, there is a cold stream from Baffin’s Bay, Labrador, and the coasts of the north, running south with equal velocity.... One part of it underruns the Gulf Stream, as is shown by the icebergs, which are carried in a direction tending across its course.’ There can be no doubt, in fact, that this last circumstance indicates the manner in which the main contest between the two currents is settled. A portion of the arctic current finds its way between the Gulf Stream and the continent of America; and this portion, though narrow, has a very remarkable effect in increasing the coldness of the American winters. But the main part, (heavier, by reason of its coldness, than the surrounding water,) sinks beneath the surface. And the well-known fact mentioned by Maury, that icebergs have been seen stemming the Gulf Stream, suffices to show how comparatively shallow that current is at this distance from its source, and thus aids to remove a difficulty which we have already had occasion to deal with.