248 ACCOUNT OF THE ARCTIC REGIONS. 



ror and dismay must be the predominant feelings. 

 The whale-fishers at all times require unremitting 

 vigilance to secure their safety, but scarcely in any 

 situation so much, ds when navigating amidst those 

 fields : in foggy weather, they are particularly dan- 

 gerous, as their motions cannot then be distinctly 

 observed. It may easily be imagined, that the 

 strongest ship is but an insignificant impediment 

 between two fields in motion. Numbers of vessels, 

 since the establishment of the fishery, have been thus 

 destroyed ; some have been thrown upon the ice, 

 some have had their hulls completely torn open, 

 or divided in two, and others have been overrun by 

 the ice, and buried beneath its heaped fragments. 

 The Dutch have lost as many as twenty-three sail 

 of ships, among the ice, in one year. In the sea- 

 son of 1684, fourteen of their ships were wrecked, 

 and eleven more remained beset during the winter. 



In the year 1804, I had a good opportunity of 

 witnessing the effects produced by the lesser masses 

 in motion. Passing between two fields of bay- 

 ice, about a foot in thickness, they were observed 

 rapidly to approach each other, and before our 

 ship could pass the strait, they met with a veloci- 

 ty of three or four miles pe7^ hour : the one over- 

 laid the other, and presently covered many acres 

 of surface. The ship proving an obstacle to the 

 course of the ice, it squeezed up on both sides, 

 shaking her in a dreadful manner, and producing 



