Under these circumstances I came to the determination, now that the ships were ready for sea, to try what could be effected towards their release, by sawing and cutting the ice; for it was vexatious to see open water daily in the offing, and not to be able to take advantage of it.  Arrangements were therefore made for getting everything, except the tent and instruments, on board the next day, and for commencing this more laborious occupation on the following Monday.

On the 1st of June, having launched a boat at the mouth of the bay, I went to sound in that neighbourhood and along the eastern side of the island, preparatory to marking out the intended canal.  A good deal of ice still remained attached to the land; but as far as we could distinguish to the N.N.E. there was a lane of clear water wide enough for the navigation of the ships.

On the morning of the 3d, at six A.M., both the ships’ companies, under their respective officers, were set to work upon the ice.  A line was accurately marked out from each of the Fury’s quarters, where they were fifty feet apart, diverging to two hundred and fifty at the edge of the floe, the latter being distant from the ships two thousand and twenty feet, or just one third of a nautical mile.  It was proposed to make a cut through the ice with the saws, along the two lines thus marked out, and then a transverse section here and there, the divergency of the sides being intended to facilitate the removal of the pieces thus detached by first pulling them out with strong purchases, and then floating them down the canal to the sea without.  Nothing could exceed the alacrity with which this laborious work was undertaken, and continued daily from six in the morning till eight at night, with the intermission only of mealtimes:  nor could anything be more lively and interesting than the scene which now presented itself to an observer on the southeast point.  The day was beautifully clear, the sea open as far as the eye could stretch to the northward, and the “busy hum” of our people’s voices could at times be heard mingling with the cheerful though fantastic songs with which the Greenland sailors are accustomed at once to beguile their labour, and to keep the necessary time in the action of sawing the ice.  The whole prospect, together with the hopes and associations excited by it, was, to persons cooped up as we had been, exhilarating beyond conception.

In the course of the first week we had completed the two side cuts, and also two shorter ones in the space between the ships; making in all a length of two thousand three hundred feet on each side of the intended canal, the thickness of the ice being in general four feet, but in one or two places (where the junction of the sea-ice with the bay-floe occasioned some squeezing) above ten feet and a half, scarcely allowing our longest saws to work.  Laborious as this part of the operation had been, we soon found it likely to prove the least