The "sish" ice is composed of the small fragments chipped off the floes after the pounding and grinding between the millstones of the great winds and the heavy seas.
Perhaps the ship has been buffeting the ice for many weary days, bucking the floes and backing away again with the lookout in the crow's nest scanning the horizon in vain with powerful spy-glasses.
The worst have happened when blizzards caught the men out on the ice-floes far from their ship.
On his first voyage to the sealing grounds Grenfell saw the seals like black dots by the thousands, all over the floes as far as the horizon.
It did not appear probable to the two masters, however, that the vessel would be forced from its present berth, the rending and cracking of the ice sensibly diminishing, as the two floes came closer and closer together.
The great depth of the bergs still prevented their coming within the cluster of islands, while their number and size completely stopped the floes from passing.
Perceiving that escape was impossible, all means of getting clear being rendered useless by the floes soon touching, both before and behind him, he set about adopting the means most likely to save his vessel.
By some means that were not apparent, the floes were now actually separating, and at a rate of movement which much exceeded that of their junction.
It was soon apparent that floes or field ice accompanied the floating mountains, and extended so far to the southward of them as to be already within an inconvenient if not hazardous proximity to the two vessels.
The young are born in the spring, and generally on the ice floes, but being born fat the ice floes are probably as warm to them as is a nest to a little mouse.
The surface of these ice floes or fields rose only about a foot or so above the surface of the water.
But the crew of the ship did not give themselves much concern about the ice itself; for it was soon discovered that the floes were covered in many places with seals.
He hung on a week or two with the floes driving in all the while, and then it freshened hard and blew him out.
In addition, surface waters on the lee side of icefloes and cakes usually have little surface disturbance.
This zone is prevented from forming large floesby the action of swells from the open water to the south.
The explosive was carried by the Peary for the blasting of such ice floes as might trap her.
Down below was impenetrable blackness, shading softly overhead into blue-gray which was mottled by lighter areas from breaks in the floes above.
And we found it in plenty, for the stout little vessel, after cleaving and crashing her way through the floes for a couple of hours, was finally brought to a standstill by an impassable barrier.
We boarded her with some difficulty on account of the jagged ice floes on the beach to which she was moored.
For perhaps an hour every man floundered about the hummocks and crevasses of the bay with a dogged perseverance born of the knowledge that at this time of the year large floes are often detached from the main pack and blown out to sea.
Towards springtime this becomes a dangerous occupation, for floes are often detached without warning and carried away from the main pack into Bering Sea, whence there is generally no return, although marvellous escapes are recorded.
At length the ice-floes moved away, and after a while the channel was cut out for the release of the Erebus and Terror.
The Fox was in imminent danger from the closing up of the ice, and the force with which the floes come together cannot be estimated by any who have not witnessed the scene.
At length the ships are completely surrounded, and anchored to the snowy floes which extend in all directions.
Through a stretch where the ice-crusher now was the floeshad changed position, or new ice was blocking the channel; for the Ste.
During the storm of the week before, the floes had jammed into that narrow neck between the great lakes of Michigan and Huron until, men said, the Straits were ice-filled to the bottom; but the Ste.
He waited ten minutes, perhaps, coughing at intervals, and at length Kosmaroff came to him, not from the land, but across the moving floes from the direction of the bridge.
All Kosmaroff's skill, all the little strength of both was required to work the boat through the floes towards the land.
The drift of the "Jeannette" was becoming faster as she got farther west; indeed, it was possibly the more rapid movement of the current that set the floes in motion and led to the crushing of the vessel.
Sometimes these leads are mere cracks running through old floes in nearly a straight line.
It is composed of huge sheets broken off from the glacial fringe of North Grant Land broken up by contact with other floes and with the land, and driven south under the impetus of the violent flood tides.
This walking across the floes is dangerous, as the ice is full of cracks, some of them quite wide, and on the day in question the cracks were for the most part concealed by a recent snowfall.
The destruction of a ship between two ice floes is not sudden, like her destruction by a submarine mine, for instance.
As soon as we struck the old floes the going was much better.
The floes were large and old, hard and level, with patches of sapphire blue ice (the pools of the preceding summer).
We had made some twelve miles over much better going than that of the last few marches and on a nearly direct line over large floes and young ice.
The Roosevelt was kicked about by the floes as if she had been a football.
I told Bartlett to get out his batteries and dynamite, and to smash the ice between the Roosevelt and the heavyfloes outside, making a soft cushion for the ship to rest on.
Andrew was thankful that the snow on the frozen surface threw up a faint light and they could see the glimmer of the floes that drifted down, though it was not always possible to avoid them.
Among them drove huge floes into which the floating cakes had solidified during the earlier frosts.
Across such floes it would be almost impossible to drag a canoe, however industriously we might ply the axe, as our Hoona guide took great pains to warn us.
We were in danger of being imprisoned in a jam of icebergs, for the water-spaces between them freeze rapidly, binding the floes into one mass.
The current was, however, often very strong, and would occasionally spin the ice-floes around in the channels in a way that made you uncomfortable to look at it.
On Tuesday, the 11th, we again proceeded southward by dint of arduous labor in clearing floes and brash, which often blocked our way.
In addition to this, there were a number of loose floes beyond, and these were in constant motion, so that we had to be on the alert to prevent the kayaks from being crushed between them.
This is quite unexpected: the ice is very much broken up here--mere pack-ice, were it not for some large floes or flat spaces in between.
This we accomplished by putting a running noose over the muzzles of the bears and pulling them through the water to the edge of the ice, where we pushed some small floes beneath them; and then, with our united strength, we hauled them up.
At 3 o'clock in the morning we concluded operations for the time being, as the ice was so thick that the drill did not reach through, and the slush so bad that it was impossible to get the ice-floes shoved away.
We managed to get some distance in the kayaks; but while I was crossing a wide channel on some loose floes I alighted on such poor ice that it sank under my weight, and I had to jump back quickly to escape a bath.
Finally, having walked round the pool, we succeeded in getting out upon the floe from the other side, where the distance from the solid ice was less and where some smallfloes formed a kind of bridge.
The following day we had to make our way as well as we could by paddling short distances in the lanes or hauling our loads over floes smaller or larger, as the case might be.
Meanwhile, the wind drove the ice in, the navigable water closed in all round it outside, and the floes were continually drawing nearer.
As they were crossing the ice between King William's Land and the mainland, a great cracking of the floes startled them with the fear that the ice was breaking up.
The possibility of being caught between such masses and "nipped" was a constant danger, for no vessel could possibly withstand the tremendous pressure exerted by two floes of that size colliding.
This time it was not the new ice but the closing in of the floes that caught them.
Depending so much upon the wind, a sailing vessel is only able to make headway amongst heavy drifting floes by means of long hawsers, run out and made fast to a mass of ice and then slowly hauled in at the capstan.
Hastily placing their stores in the whale-boat, which they had been dragging in addition to the hand-sledges, they abandoned everything else, fearful lest the sudden opening of the floes might cut them off from a further advance.
The fact that they only carried a limited supply of fuel made their position more serious, and when, on August 18, a temporary breaking in the floes enabled them to move forward, there was a general rejoicing.
A series of floes had closed one upon the other, and had so compressed themselves together, that all hope of extricating the Polaris until the ice itself broke up was reluctantly abandoned.
The ice was particularly heavy, however, and very slow progress was made when, by August, the Polaris became entangled with some big floes which checked her in every direction.
In the northern hemisphere massive ice-floes are not encountered until the 70th parallel of latitude has been passed, while it is not until the 75th parallel is passed that the ice becomes so packed as to appear to be stationary.
Ice-saws were fixed ready to cut passages through the floes when they began to separate, and ice-anchors were run out so that the vessels could be warped along whenever an opening occurred.
As there are no large bays along the northern shore of that strait, no land floes of great importance are formed.
On Davis Strait ice floes are formed between Cape Mickleham and Cape Mercy, in Exeter Sound, and between Okan and Bylot Island.
Therefore the fjords and islands which offer a long coast line furnish a good hunting ground, and in the latter part of March and in April the Eskimo either visit these regions or the floes of rough ice.
There are only a few districts where the proximity of open water favors walrus hunting during the winter, and all of these have neighboring floes on which seals may be hunted with the harpoon.
Later in the season the ice consolidates in the shelter of the islands, while beyond the bays and channels drifting floes fill the sea.
In the far north, extensive floes of smooth ice are formed in Eclipse Sound and Admiralty Inlet.
In the fall, when the small bays are covered with ice and newly formed floes drift to and fro in the open sea, the natives go sealing at the edge of the land ice (Fig.
It shuns hummocky ice and floes of more than one year's age.
In considering the distribution of the tribes it is evident that they are settled wherever extensive floes afford a good sealing ground during the winter.
The North Greenlanders live in the sounds of the peninsula between Melville Bay and Kane Basin, hunting seals on the smooth floes of the bays and pursuing walrus at the floe edges.
By taking precautionary measures of this kind the natives pass over extensive floes of weak ice.
We'll follow that trail if it takes us right out on the ice-floes of the Arctic and we'll get you, just as Jennings says, like a rabbit in a hollow tree.
He had established a large supply station on Flaxman Island; then he had pushed fearlessly out through the floes toward the Pole.
He pointed straight over the ice floes which lay far as eye could scan, out to sea.
In a few hours, a strong reflected light to the westward and northward showed we were fast approaching the ice-fields or floes of Baffin's Bay.
The floes around our ships were entirely covered with the water of the melted snow, in some places full four feet in depth, eating its way rapidly through in all directions, when Lieut.
Sending a portion of our crew to keep launching her boats ahead during the night, we watched with anxiety the fast-moving floes and icebergs around us.
Pressed up from Baffin's Bay by the southerly gales of this season of the year, the broken floesseemed to have been seeking an outlet by the north-west.
Learn that we altered course last night because the floes were seen extending across ahead.
Others strolling over to a hole, and with fragments of wood, or a measure, endeavouring to detect that movement in the floes by which liberation was to be brought about.
Freja was caught in a severe nip between two floes and was crushed, sinking in about two hours.
And sweet also to his ears was the noise the ice-floes made as they were driven one against another by the waves of that dreary sea.
And at that sound there was a movement in the earth like that of a countless multitude of worms, and not in the earth only but in the hard stone and in the ice-floes also.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "floes" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
