On the morning of the 3d the wind blew strong from the eastward, with a short, breaking sea, and thick, rainy weather, which made our situation for some hours rather an unpleasant one, the ice being close under our lee.  Fortunately, however, we weathered it by stretching back a few miles to the southward.  In the afternoon the wind moderated, and we tacked again to the northward, crossing the Arctic circle at four P.M., in the longitude of 57 deg. 27’ W. We passed at least fifty icebergs in the course of the day, many of them of large dimensions.  Towards midnight, the wind having shifted to the southwest and moderated, another extensive chain of very large icebergs appeared to the northward:  as we approached them the wind died away, and the ships’ heads were kept to the northward, only by the steerage way given to them by a heavy southerly swell, which, dashing the loose ice with tremendous force against the bergs, sometimes raised a white spray over the latter to the height of more than one hundred feet, and, being accompanied with a loud noise, exactly resembling the roar of distant thunder, presented a scene at once sublime and terrific.  We could find no bottom near these icebergs with one hundred and ten fathoms of line.

At four A.M. on the 4th we came to a quantity of loose ice, which lay straggling among the bergs; and as there was a light breeze from the southward, and I was anxious to avoid, if possible, the necessity of going to the eastward, I pushed the Hecla into the ice, in the hope of being able to make our way through it.  We had scarcely done so, however, before it fell calm; when the ship became perfectly unmanageable, and was for some time at the mercy of the swell, which drifted us fast towards the bergs.  All the boats were immediately sent ahead to tow; and the Griper’s signal was made not to enter the ice.  After two hours’ hard pulling, we succeeded in getting the Hecla back again into clear water, and to a sufficient distance from the icebergs, which it is very dangerous to approach when there is a swell.  At noon we were in lat. 69 deg. 50’ 47”, long. 57 deg. 07’ 56”, being near the middle of the narrowest part of Davis’s Strait, which is here not more than fifty leagues across.

On the 5th it was necessary to pass through some heavy streams of ice, in order to avoid the loss of time by going round to the eastward.  On this, as on many other occasions, the advantage possessed by a ship of considerable weight in the water, in separating the heavy masses of ice, was Very apparent.  In some of the streams through which the Hecla passed, a vessel of a hundred tons less burden must have been immovably beset.  The Griper was on this and many other occasions only enabled to follow the Hecla by taking advantage of the openings made by the latter.