Arctic Ice - coming or going?

A bit of each it seems. The warmists cry to the heavens that the arctic ice is getting thinner and sometimes (GASP!) disappears for months at a time. Not like it was a hundred years ago when everything froze solid every winter. I used to like to point them to the St. Roch -- this famous ship is in the Vancouver Maritime Museum and was in service from 1929 through 1954 and made several single-season transits of the Northwest Passage including one where she circumnavigated the North American continent. Now, thanks to the Manitoba Historical Society, we have records of ships belonging to the Hudson�s Bay Company:

Navigation of Hudson Bay and Straits
MHS Transactions, Series 1, No. 7
Read 10 May 1883

The regular meeting of the Historical and Scientific Society was held Thursday evening, with a good attendance. Rev. Professor Hart presided. At the usual meeting of the Executive Committee, Mr. J. M. MacGregor was proposed as a member, and afterwards duly elected. Mr. Chas. N. Bell was then called upon to read his paper upon the:

Navigation of Hudson�s Bay and Straits
This paper is a sequel to Mr. Bell�s letter which appeared in the Free Press last Monday, and is as follows:

Until a year or two ago, the general public were under the impression that the Hudson�s Bay and Strait were navigated only by one or two vessels belonging to the Hudson�s Bay Company, which carried the trading goods for their annual business from London to York Factory and other posts about the Bay, and returned with the previous years� yield of furs. Even the accounts of the voyages of these vessels were wrapped in an envelope of misty vagueness. Little or no information was obtained through the medium of the press, and the old books of Dobbs, Robson, Ellis, Hearne, Chappelle, Black, and others, who had sailed in those waters, or written out the accounts of those who had from 1733 to 1838, are too costly and rare to be found in ordinary libraries.

The records of the Hudson�s Bay Company could only be inspected in London, and even the existence of those records was unknown, except to a very few, and that few seem to have kept their contents to themselves.

Prof. Bell was readily and cheerfully supplied with valuable information by the Hudson�s Bay Company people, both in London and at the posts about the Bay, and he has presented it in his annual geological reports.

That a large number of whaling vessels seek the waters of the Hudson�s Bay annually, and take out oil, whalebone, etc., to the ruling market value of $1240,000 as an average season�s �catch� (as we find by the U.S. Government fisheries returns for the past eleven years), seems to have passed unnoticed.

An examination of the works of the old-time navigators, and a comparison of their statements of the subject of the navigation of these seas with the statements of whalers who now pass each season there, may prove both interesting and instructive.

The extracts given in this letter are taken directly from the works quoted, and from manuscript copies of the original log-books of whaling vessels sailing from New Bedford, Mass., and New London, Conn.

It must be borne in mind that all the vessels mentioned in the paper are sailing ships.

More and more satisfactory evidence is being produced very year to prove that the navigation of Hudson�s Bay and Strait is not as formidable as we have been led to suppose.

It is now almost considered as a fact that not only does the Bay itself not freeze over, but that the strait, with its high tides and strong currents, remains open all winter as well.

Much more at the site, the names of Ships and Captains, places and dates. Yes, the Earth has been warming up from the last glacial period but the idea that it is humans causing this warming is hubris. These are natural cycles and everything is now pointing to a period of cooling similar to the Maunder Minimum. Also, there are a lot more factors affecting the thickness of sea ice than just the temperature. Wind and currents have just as much if not greater effect. I will be digging into this website a lot more -- great stuff...