LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
479 
There were some on board the Victory, who had sailed on 
former expeditions to the Polar seas, and who had witnessed 
the tact and ability, with which certain circumstances were 
taken advantage of, and seized, as it were, by the forelock, 
showing at once the determined spirit of the commander, and 
his noble daring, in dashing through the difficulties by which he 
was beset. 
We will not lay timidity to the charge of Capt. Ross ; but 
there is a great difference between that animal courage, which 
displays itself amidst the carnage on the quarter-deck of a man 
of war, and that bold and invincible fortitude, which is the 
touchstone of the man, in the hour of dangers and difficulties. 
The man who, in the heat of an engagement, will show, that he 
has a lion heart within him, will frequently show himself the 
effeminate, or, more properly speaking, he will appear as 
daunted and unnerved, when his physical energies are to be 
called into action, for the purpose of avoiding or surmounting 
an impending evil. This appears, in some respects, to have 
been the character of Capt. Ross; for, in many of the trying 
situations, in which he was placed, either from pusillanimity or 
indiscretion, he acted in direct variance with the judgment of 
those, who, although, they might have been his inferior in rank, 
were perhaps his superior in nautical skill, and in that boldness 
and promptitude of action, which are the most striking features 
of the great and noble character in the immediate hour of 
danger. 
The gravamen of the accusation against Capt. Ross, in the 
present instance, consisted in the unnecessary act of his fasten¬ 
ing the Victory to the iceberg, when circumstances so combined, 
as to have enabled him to dash through the passage, and thereby 
brought the vessel into an open sea, instead of exposing her to 
be momentarily so severely nipped by the ice, as perhaps to ren¬ 
der her unfit altogether to prosecute the voyage. 
At the time of the Victory leaving Felix Harbour, the wind 
was south, and the ice running north ; the wind then veered 
round to the west north-west, and the ice still running to the 
north; it then changed to the south west, but the ice still 
