Historical Human Struggles with Arctic Ice

Key Insight

The sea ice presented extreme peril for early arctic sailors and whalers, a stark contrast to modern icebreaker voyages. Wood ships were vulnerable to crushing, and radar limitations meant captains and crew faced constant, life-threatening uncertainty. Historical accounts describe gale warnings, the inability of radar to distinguish icebergs from waves, and the sheer terror of being caught in darkness amidst ice the size of cathedrals. Even when surviving a storm, the psychological toll was immense, with the sound of adjusting ice likened to 'complicated machinery, or distant thunder'.

Whalers employed desperate measures to navigate or survive in the ice, including 'boring' through with ice-strengthened prows, towing ships with whaleboats, 'warping' them forward by winching against ice anchors, or 'mill-dolling' by breaking ice from the bowsprit. A 250-ton ship could be crushed in 'two or three minutes,' likened to 'a grand piano caught in an industrial press.' Crews constantly sawed temporary docks for protection, battling 'loose ice' that hit them 'hard enough to knock the ship’s brains out.' Damage was routine, often requiring 'relays of men at the pumps and others working with buckets' to remove 'seven to eight tons of water per minute' from stove ships.

The human cost was catastrophic. In 1777, over 350 shipwrecked whalers and sealers hiked across ice off southeast Greenland, with only 140 reaching safety; the rest perished. In 1830, nearly 1000 men were camped on ice in Melville Bay, a 'breaking-up yard' for ships. A British expedition in 1835 in Baffin Bay saw most men die of starvation, exposure, and despair after their ships froze in for months. The whaler Shannon of Hull, in 1832, struck an iceberg and was awash in minutes, with 16 men and 3 boys swept away; survivors resorted to drinking blood from a shoe to live. These harrowing experiences, though now remote, remain embedded in the collective memory of arctic navigation, a reminder of the ice's capricious and 'unappeasable nature'.