ice, which was more than six feet thick, broke against the sides,
curling back on itself. The great stress now fell upon our bow; and,
after being again lifted up, we were carried with great violence towards
the Alexander which had hitherto been, in a great measure, defended by
the Isabella. Every effort to avoid their getting foul of each other
failed; the ice-anchors and cables broke one after another; and the
sterns of the two ships came so violently into contact, as to crush to
pieces a boat that could not be removed in time. The collision was
tremendous, the anchors and chain-plates being broken, and nothing less
than the loss of the masts expected; but at this eventful instant, by
the interposition of Providence, the force of the ice seemed exhausted;
the two fields suddenly receded, and we passed the Alexander with
comparatively little damage. A clear channel soon after opened, and we
ran into a pool, thus escaping the immediate danger; but the fall of
snow being very heavy, our situation still remained doubtful, nor could
we conjecture whether we were yet in a place of safety. Neither the
masters, the mates, nor those men who had been all their lives in the
Greenland service, had ever experienced such imminent peril; and they
declared, that a common whaler must have been crushed to atoms."

Captain Scoresby relates a similar narrow escape from destruction owing
to the same cause. "In the year 1804," he observes, "I had an
opportunity of witnessing the effects produced by the lesser masses in
motion. Passing between two fields of ice newly formed, 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 velocity of three
or four miles per hour. The one overlaid 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 a loud grinding or lengthened acute