It was again nearly calm on the 19th, and the weather was foggy for some hours in the morning.  In the evening, having walked to Cape Providence to see if there was any possibility of moving the ships, I found the ice so close that a boat could not have passed beyond the Cape; but a light air drifting the ice slowly to the eastward at this time, gave me some hopes of soon being enabled to make our escape from this tedious as well as vexatious confinement.  At a quarter past eight it was high water by the shore; about this time the ice ceased driving to the eastward, and shortly after returned in the opposite direction.

At half past eleven P.M., some heavy pieces of the grounded ice, to which our bow-hawser was secured, fell off into the water, snapping the rope in two without injuring the ship.  As, however, every alteration of this kind must materially change the centre of gravity of the whole mass, which already appeared in a tottering state, I thought it prudent to move the Hecla out of her harbour to the place where the Griper was lying, considering that a ship might easily be forced on shore by the ice without suffering any serious damage; but that one of those enormous masses falling upon her deck must inevitably crush or sink her.

The “young ice” had increased to the thickness of an inch and a half on the morning of the 23d, and some snow which had fallen in the night served to cement the whole more firmly together.  On a breeze springing up from the westward, however, it soon began to acquire a motion to leeward, and at half an hour before noon had slackened about the ships sufficiently to allow us to warp them out, which was accordingly done, and all sail made upon them.  The wind having freshened up from the W.N.W., the ships’ heads were got the right way, and, by great attention to the sails, kept so till they had got abreast of Cape Providence, after which they were no longer manageable, the ice being more close than before.  I have before remarked that the loose ice in this neighbourhood was heavy in proportion to the floes from which it had been broken; and the impossibility of sailing among such ice, most of which drew more water than the Hecla, and could not, therefore, be turned by her weight, was this day rendered very apparent, the ships having received by far the heaviest shocks which they experienced during the voyage.  They continued, however, to drive till they were about three miles to the eastward of Cape Providence, where the low land commences; when, finding that there was not any appearance of open water to the eastward or southward, and that we were now incurring the risk of being beset at sea, without a chance of making any farther progress, we hauled in for the largest piece of grounded ice we could see upon the beach, which we reached at six P.M., having performed six miles of the most difficult navigation I have ever known among ice.  The Hecla was made fast in from eighteen to twenty feet water close to the beach, and the Griper in four fathoms, about half a mile to the westward of us.