Museum catalogue: Polar Art Collection

The last of the paleocrystic floe, Kane's open polar sea, Cape Constitution, Franklin and Crozier Islands in the distance, August 20, 1876


Accession no.:	Y: 54/13/14/1
Title:	The last of the paleocrystic floe, Kane's open polar sea, Cape Constitution, Franklin and Crozier Islands in the distance, August 20, 1876
Description:	One of a set of 16 chromolithographs, based on the work of Staff Surgeon Edward Lawton Moss, R.N. of H.M.S.Alert during the British Arctic Expedition of 1875-76. 'As the ships returned southward, they steamed through a large polynia, or waterspace in Kennedy Channel. It was on a still night, late in August, and the ice-locked sea was calm enough to be the veritable 'Peace Pool'. A few last fragments of polar floe lay here and there in the water, strangely reflected, and a dovekie swam beside one of them. Far away to the east, between Franklin and Crozier Islands, Cape Constitution rose above a faint line of pack. It was Kane's farthest point. From its base, Morton, looking on another such polynia, had naturally enough reported an open Polar Sea. The sea was open now as far southward as could be seen from the crow's nest, and yet both ships were in difficulties before morning, and a hundred miles of Smith's Sound pack still separated them from the North Water and from home' - Extract from 'Shores of the Polar Sea'.
Medium:	Print
Artist:	Moss, Edward Lawton
Note:	Published in 1878 by Marcus Ward, London.
Dimensions:	Image: Width: 280mm; height: 195mm Sheet: Width: 480mm; height: 330mm