Steaming north-east, we reached another horn and
saw that the pack, heavy and dense, then trended away to the east. We
made an attempt to push into the ice, but it was so heavy that the
trawler was held up at once and began to grind in the small thick
floes, so we cautiously backed out. The propeller, going slowly, was
not damaged, though any moment I feared we might strip the blades. The
island lay on our starboard quarter, but there was no possibility of
approaching it. The Uruguayan engineer reported to me that he had
three days' coal left, and I had to give the order to turn back. A
screen of fog hid the lower slopes of the island, and the men watching
from the camp on the beach could not have seen the ship. Northward we
steamed again, with the engines knocking badly, and after encountering
a new gale, made Port Stanley with the bunkers nearly empty and the
engines almost broken down. H.M.S. 'Glasgow' was in the port, and the
British sailors gave us a hearty welcome as we steamed in.
The Uruguayan Government offered to send the trawler to Punta Arenas
and have her dry-docked there and made ready for another effort. One
of the troubles on the voyage was that according to estimate the
trawler could do ten knots on six tons of coal a day, which would have
given us a good margin to allow for lying off the ice; but in reality,
owing to the fact that she had not been in dock for a year, she only
developed a speed of six knots on a consumption of ten tons a day.
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