THE OCEAN. 343 



Beset with ice fields, bergs, and floes, often in fogs by day, and subject to the long 

 nights of those high latitudes, not all the experience and resources of the commander can 

 avert situations of imminent peril and apparently inextricable difficulty. Scoresby 

 relates a remarkable instance of this kind. Having moored his vessel to a floe, during a 

 gale, attended by a heavy fall of snow, he states : " About 6 P. M. the snow became so 

 thick that we could scarcely see a hundred yards distinctly, and the wind was, if possible, 

 more furious. Two small icebergs now appeared setting towards the ship ; but as they 

 were not of a magnitude sufficient to endanger us without auxiliary pressure, we 

 quietly awaited their approach. The first, which was about thirty-six feet above the 

 level of the sea, struck the ship on the starboard quarter, and turned her broadside to the 

 wind ; it then slipped clear, without occasioning us any damage whatever. The second 

 iceberg approached us with more alarming rapidity ; but as we had not the power of 

 getting clear of it, we were obliged to receive the shock upon whatever part of the ship it 

 might chance to fall. It came in contact with the rudder, and slightly bruised one of its 

 timbers ; then grazing the ship's quarter and broadside, it passed forward to the bows, 

 and being fortunately kept from close contact aloft by a tongue projecting from its base, 

 it cleared all our boats. At this juncture, when the ship was so much involved with ice- 

 bergs as to render casting off impracticable, had the state of the weather permitted it, 

 two floes came in sight from different quarters. One of them appeared to be rapidly 

 closing upon us from the west, and the other from the south, which with the floe that we 

 were moored to, occupying the eastern quarter, almost completely locked us in. To 

 secure ourselves as far as possible against the crush which now appeared certain, we 

 fastened by a hawser a large heavy piece of ice ahead of the ship where the floes threat- 

 ened the first contact, with the view of subjecting the interposed mass to the pressure, 

 and with the hope of being then defended from partaking of it. The first shock of the 

 floes was sustained by this mass with full effect, and for some time afterwards all things 

 seemed quiet and safe. Suddenly, however, the pressure was renewed, in consequence, 

 it was supposed, of some new stoppage to the drift of the floes, with tenfold violence. 

 Our barrier was squeezed deeply into the floe, and prodigious blocks of ice were broken 

 off and raised up by the pressure. While we contemplated their mighty effects with 

 much anxiety, the berg which shortly before had passed the ship began a revolving and a 

 retrograde motion, so quick as to overtake us before we could get the ropes off to slack 

 astern, and suddenly nipped the ship on the larboard beam and bow against the floe by 

 which we rode. The force was irresistible : it thrust the ship completely upon a broad 

 tongue (or shelf under water) of the floe, until she was fairly grounded, and continued to 

 squeeze her rapidly up the inclined plane formed by the tongue, until the ice came in 

 contact beneath the keel. This was the work of a few moments, and in ten minutes all 

 was again at rest. When the pressure ceased, we found that the ship had risen six or 

 eight feet forward, and about two feet abaft. 



" The floe on the starboard side was about a mile in diameter and forty feet in thickness, 

 having a regular wall-side of solid ice five feet in height above the sea ; on the tongue of 

 this the ship was grounded. The iceberg on the larboard side was about twenty feet 

 high, and was in contact with the railing of the bows, and with the gunwale and channel- 

 bends amidship. This berg was connected with a body of floes to the westward, several 

 leagues in breadth. The only clear space was directly astern, where a small interstice 

 and vein of water was produced by the intervention of the bergs. Any human exertion 

 for our extrication from such a situation was now in vain, the ship being firmly cradled 

 upon the tongue of ice which sustained her weight. Every instant we were apprehensive 

 of total destruction, but the extraordinary position of the ice beneath her was the means 

 of her preservation. The force exerted upon the ship to place her in such a situation 



