Roy, I feel like a ning-nong - I knew your name was familiar, but I'd forgotten that it was you that helped me years ago try to track down a copy of Reade! After chasing it on Ebay and the ABE for some time, a very dear and generous friend bought me a copy quite a while back.
quote:
Yes, it was Reade who demolished the Samson "theory." Did you ever locate a copy of his book, by the way? I found mine through the internet at a shop in Hampshire, England.
Apologies, my wording was vague on this point. I know it was Reade who demolished the
Samson theory, based on port records and (among other things) the unlikelihood of a vessel in international waters fearing being caught 'illegally' sealing. I was trying to recall the name of an author who raised doubts about seals being in the area that the ship sank - I don't think it was a point Reade made, but I haven't checked.
I've never been a marine mammal person, but am now quite intrigued by what seals might have been sighted on ice flows and bergs in that location. Elephant seals would seem to be the most independant of the land - they go open ocean foraging for up to months at a time, never coming close to shore and sleeping underwater (according to one site). Their dives average 300 m but can apparently be as deep as as 1500 m and stay submerged for more than an hour. Mark Baber posted a report of an elephant seal sighted from one of the mail boats on the North Atlantic run, so it would seem that they weren't seen in great numbers and it was an event of note when they were spotted. I've been looking at other possibilities, such as Grey Seals. In the North Pacific/Arctic waters the Largha Seal (
Phoca largha) and Ribbon Seal (
Histriophoca fasciata.) do live in pack ice, but their ranges does not include the North Atlantic.
Bearded Seals (
Erignathus barbatus) might be a remote possibility - they're circumpolar in Arctic and Sub-Antarctic waters, although their range doesn't seem to normally extend that far south, and they usually inhabit shallow water and moving ice. They also tend to be solitary.
Harp Seals (
Pagophilus groenlandicus) might be a good candidate - they inhabit the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans from northern Russia, to Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada. They're closely associated with pack ice, are quite gregarious and cover long distances during migration to more southerly summer feeding zones.
Hooded seals (
Cystophora cristata) are also associated with pack ice, and it tends to mark the limits of their range, although some have been found in much more southerly regions. Again, though, they tend to be more solitary.
I remember the 'El Niño' theory in circulation a few years ago...around about the time the world was experiencing its effects again. I haven't come across a mention in any correspodence from the deck officers refering to the problems of ice that year, but certainly they felt it had been an very hard winter on the run - Moody's surviving correspondence in particular springs to mind. He doesn't mention ice among the conditions encountered on the North Atlantic, but even that late winter/early spring in Southampton was miserable - during March when the
Oceanic was laid up he made the comment that when it wasn't raining, it was hailing.
Thank you for posting all those headlines - it does look like it was a miserable winter indeed! I wonder what weather stations on both sides of the Atlantic were recording?
All the best -
Inger
