A port stern quarter view of 'Alert' (1856) alongside the ice floe, with the crew cutting an ice dock in Dobbin Bay. RMG B3669-N

A port stern quarter view of 'Alert' (1856) alongside the ice floe, with the crew cutting an ice dock in Dobbin Bay.
Lt. Parr wrote: ‘we steamed up the bay & cut a dock in the large floe which would shelter us completely. This same dock cutting in ice between four & five feet thick is no easy matter though it is not as hard as one would expect, but the saw does not go through it as easily as a hot knife through a pat of butter…The cutting took just two hours to complete, but it took nearly as long again to get the ship in for she had to be dragged up against the tide and was jammed by a lot of ice’.

Alert cutting into dock, Dobbin Bay, 13 August 1875