Our Own Titanic Moment?

Early, early this morning (around 1:30 a.m.) I was blasted WIDE awake by a big crashing noise, followed by a distinct diminution of engine noise.  "Oh No!"  I thought" ... "is this our own Titanic moment?  Are we going to receive a notification that we have to don our warmest outerwear and our life jackets, and proceed to our designated lifeboat station?"  Shortly after the first jolt, a second one occurred ... this time I was out of bed, slightly panicking, and headed for our balcony door to see what the dickens was going on!

This is a screenshot from our in suite TV coverage of the view from the bridge.  As you can see, there are search lights focusing ahead of our progress, and we are surrounded by big chunks of ice. 

Eventually the engines were reversed, and we slowly backed out of a no-win situation, and (obviously, because I am typing this now,) we managed to extricate ourselves from some quickly forming sea ice.  Welcome to the Arctic!

What we didn't know at the time was that there was a Polar Bear sighting at that moment ... a rather large bear standing on an ice floe, photographed by a fellow passenger!  (I will try to meet up with him again when I have my phone with me so he can download his AMAZING photo for me!)

In the extra:  Later in the day, we took the Zodiacs ashore to Radstock Bay where we (a) avoided Polar Bears (two or three sighted wandering along the shoreline as we approached our anchorage), (b) trekked ashore over rocky beaches, boggy permafrost, and watery clay which tried it's damndest to suck our boots off to visit an archaeological site with several ancient Thule houses, as well as some more recent artifacts from the doomed Franklin expedition of the 1800's. 

This was made more exciting by the fact that this was an active Polar Bear area, so our Expedition staff accompanied us with a healthy dose of lookouts and Bear Monitors equipped with rifles.  (See Extra).

I am happy to say we all made it back to the ship intact and all accounted for!