VOYAGE TO GREENLAND. 
were unable to assist them, all their attention being 
requisite for their own preservation ; as the ship lay 
almost on her beam ends. In this critical situa- 
tion they had not remained many minutes, when a 
wave struck the boats, filled and overwhelmed them, 
and the whole of the crews, nineteen in number, 
perished. But this catastrophe, melancholy as it 
was, formed only a small proportion of the disasters 
of the storm. 
“ While the different ships were endeavouring to 
make their way clear of the ice, the ship, Pennant, 
was struck by so dreadful a surge, that it foundered, 
and all the crew perished ; the same wave struck 
the ships, Perseverance and Rockingham, by which 
one of the quarter-boats of the latter was thrown 
upon the deck, and the bulwark, fore and aft, was 
washed away ; five boats and five men were washed 
from the sides and deck of the former, while at 
the same time, such damage was occasioned to the 
hull of the ship, that it was under the necessity of 
returning home to refit. A Dutch snow, on board 
of which the crews of six English boats had taken 
refuge, falling to leeward against a point of ice, was 
wrecked, and all on board perished. It was esti- 
mated that, during this dreadful gale, about four 
hundred foreign seamen, and nearly two hundred 
British, were drowned, and four or five ships totally 
lost ; scarcely any escaped without damage.” 
To return from this digression to the more im- 
mediate account of our proceedings, we had not 
sailed more than an hour or two into the ice after 
