CAPTURING THE WHALE. 119 



a time. Some leaped upon the ship's side and 

 were going upon the ice, when the captain cried out 

 to them to hehave like men and stick to the ship 

 as long as she remained above water ! We all stood 

 on that part of the ship nearest the ice, with our 

 bags of clothing on our shoulders. For fifteen mi- 

 nutes we had patiently waited our doom ; when, 

 by the interposition of Divine Providence, the wind 

 changed, the ice began to set off from the ship, and 

 in fifteen minutes more she recovered her upright 

 position. The water now rapidly spread among the 

 surrounding ice, and, finally, the vessel was warped 

 out and floated uninjured on the waves." 



We add one other more recent and still more 

 awful occurrence. It is pretty generally known that 

 the year 1830 proved peculiarly disastrous to the 

 whale fishery, in as much as nineteen British vessels 

 were totally wrecked during the season, and twelve 

 more materially damaged, at a computed loss of 

 upwards of .142,000. Most of this injury was 

 received in Baffin's Bay, in the high latitude of Mel- 

 ville Bay, and was principally caused by the ice being 

 drifted in immense quantities among the vessels, 

 and so agitated during a succession of storms as 

 finally to overwhelm them. We have room only 

 for a short extract, taken from the highly interest- 

 ing account given in the Edinburgh Cabinet Li- 

 brary (i. 448). " A small squadron, consisting of 

 six very fine vessels, in attempting a passage to the 

 west side, encountered a fresh gale, which drove in 

 upon them masses of ice, by which they were soon 



