HON. CAPTAIN PHIPPS. 317 



to extricate the ships from the danger of being a.d. 



1 ° ° 1773. 



beset between the ice and the land, which the 

 gradual accumulation of broken ice about the 

 vessels, and a general closing of the main body 

 with the coast momentarily threatened. Being 

 favoured with a light breeze from the eastward in 

 the morning of the 31st, the ships cast off and 

 steered to the westward, but were soon obliged 

 to make fast again, as the ice became packed 

 in every direction, being evidently acted upon 

 by some very great external force, as it was 

 piled up, occasionally, in heaps higher than the 

 ships 1 main-yard. This immense pressure was 

 no doubt occasioned by a gale of wind from the 

 southwestward, which being kept off by the land 

 of Spitzbergen, was not felt by the ships, which 

 were becalmed all day. That such was really 

 the case was shortly rendered more evident by 

 the ice driving bodily to the eastward, as well as 

 by the space in which the ships had advanced 

 from the westward becoming so closed up, that 

 there was not any open water to be seen. The 

 pilots, who had never been so far before, now 

 became alarmed lest the ships should become 

 permanently fixed in the ice, and recommended 

 the saws to be set to work with a view to the 

 liberation of the vessels by means of a canal, but 

 the ice was so thick that, with the utmost ex- 



