On unhanging the rudders, and hauling them up on the ice for examination, we found them a good deal shaken and grazed by the blows they had received during the time the ships were beset at the entrance of Davis’s Strait.  We found, also, that the rudder-cases in both ships had been fitted too small, occasioning considerable difficulty in getting the rudders down when working, a circumstance by no means disadvantageous (perhaps, indeed, rather the contrary) on ordinary service at sea, but which should be carefully avoided in ships intended for the navigation among ice, as it is frequently necessary to unship the rudder at a short notice, in order to preserve it from injury, as our future experience was soon to teach us.  This fault was, however, soon remedied, and the rudders again hung in readiness for sea.

On the 14th a boat passed, for the first time, between the ships and the shore, in consequence of the junction of a number of the pools and holes in the ice; and on the following day the same kind of communication was practicable between the ships.  It now became necessary, therefore, to provide against the possibility of the ships being forced on shore by the total disruption of the ice between them and the beach, and the pressure of that without, by letting go a bower-anchor underfoot, which was accordingly done as soon as there was a hole in the ice under the bows of each sufficiently large to allow the anchors to pass through.  We had now been quite ready for sea for some days; and a regular and anxious look-out was kept from the crow’s-nest for any alteration in the state of the ice which might favour our departure from Winter Harbour, in which it now became more than probable that we were destined to be detained thus inactively for a part of each month in the whole year, as we had readied it in the latter part of September, and were likely to be prevented leaving it till after the commencement of August.

From six A.M. till six P.M. on the 17th, the thermometer stood generally from 55 deg. to 60 deg.; the latter temperature being the highest which appears in the Hecla’s Meteorological Journal during this summer.  It will readily be conceived how pleasant such a temperature must have been to our feelings after the severe winter which immediately preceded it.  The month of July is, indeed, the only one which can be called at all comfortable in the climate of Melville Island.

On the 20th, there being a strong breeze from the N.N.E., with fog and rain, all favourable to the dispersion of the ice, that part of it which was immediately around the Hecla, and from which she had been artificially detached so long before, at length separated into pieces and floated away, carrying with it the collection of ashes and other rubbish which had been accumulating for the last ten months:  so that the ship was now once more fairly riding at anchor, but with the ice still occupying the whole of the centre of the harbour, and within a few yards of her bows:  the Griper had been set free in a similar manner a few days before.  But it was only in that part of the harbour where the ships were lying that the ice had yet separated in this manner at so great a distance from the shore; a circumstance probably occasioned by the greater radiation of heat from the ships, and from the materials of various kinds which we had occasion to deposite upon the ice during the time of our equipment.