we fitted for the purpose.  Upon this plan we likewise could afford to make our boat considerably stronger, adding some stout iron knees to the supports of her runners, and increasing our store of materials for repairing her.  The weight reduced by this arrangement would have been above two thousand pounds, without taking away any article conducive to our comfort, except the boat and her gear.  I proposed to the officers and men who had been selected to accompany me this change in our equipment; and I need scarcely say that they all clearly saw the probable necessity of it, and cheerfully acquiesced in its adoption, if requisite.

On the 29th I sent Lieutenants Foster and Crozier, with the greater part of the ship’s company, and with a third or spare travelling-boat, to endeavour to land her on Red Beach, together with a quantity of stores, including provisions, as a deposite for us on our return from the northward, should it so happen, as was not improbable, that we should return to the eastward.  It is impossible to describe the labour attending this attempt.  Suffice it to say, that, after working for fourteen hours, they returned on board at midnight, having accomplished about four miles out of the six.  The next day they returned to the boat, and, after several hours’ exertion, landed her on the beach with the stores.  What added to the fatigue of this service was the necessity of taking a small boat to cross pools of water on their return, so that they had to drag this boat both ways, besides that which they went to convey.  Having, however, had an opportunity of trying what could be done upon a regular and level floe which lay close to the beach, everybody was of opinion, as I had always been, that we could easily travel twenty miles a day on ice of that kind.

It will not be wondered at if the apparent hopelessness of getting the ship free for the present again suggested the necessity of my own setting out:  and I had once more, on the 1st of June, after an anxious consultation with my officers, resolved on making a second attempt, when the ice near us, which had opened at regular hours with the tide for three or four days past, began to set us much more rapidly than usual to the eastward, and towards a low point which runs off from Red Beach, near its western end, causing us to shoal the water in a few hours from fifty-two to twenty fathoms, and on the following morning to fourteen and a half.  By sending a lead-line over the ice a few hundred yards beyond us, we found ten fathoms water.  However unfavourable the aspect of our affairs seemed before, this new change could not fail to alter it for the worse.  The situation of the ship now, indeed, required my whole attention; for the ice occasionally opened and shut within twenty or twenty-five yards of us on the in-shore side, the ship herself was still very firmly imbedded by the turned up masses which pressed upon her on the 19th, and which, on the other side, as well as ahead and astern, were of considerable