’On the 13th, we found that a mass of heavy ice which had been aground with the Fury, had now floated alongside of her at high water, still further contracting her already narrow basin, and leaving the ship no room for turning round.  At the next high water, therefore, we got a purchase on it, and hove it out of the way, so that at night it drifted off altogether.

’The coals and preserved meats were the principal things now remaining on board the Fury, and these we continued landing by every method we could devise as the most expeditious.  The tide rose so considerably at night, new moon occurring within an hour of high water, that we were much afraid of our bergs floating; they remained firm, however, even though the ice came in with so much force as to break one of our hand-masts, a fir spar of twelve inches in diameter.  As the high tides, and the lightening of the Fury, now gave us sufficient depth of water for unshipping the rudders, we did so, and laid them upon the small berg astern of us, for fear of their being damaged by any pressure of the ice.

’Early on the morning of the 14th, the ice slackening a little in our neighbourhood, we took advantage of it, though the people were much fagged, to tighten the cables, which had stretched and yielded considerably by the late pressure.  It was well that we did so, for in the course of this day we were several times interrupted in our work by the ice coming with a tremendous strain on the north cables, the wind blowing strong from the N.N.W., and the whole ‘pack’ outside of us setting rapidly to the southward.  Indeed, notwithstanding the recent tightening and re-adjustment of the cables, the bight was pressed in so much, as to force the Fury against the berg astern of her, twice in the course of the day.  Mr. Waller, who was in the hold the second time that this occurred, reported that the coals about the keelson were moved by it, imparting the sensation of part of the ship’s bottom falling down; and one of the men at work there was so strongly impressed with that belief, that he thought it high time to make a spring for the hatchway.  From this circumstance, it seemed more probable that the main keel had received some serious damage near the middle of the ship.

’From this trial of the efficacy of our means of security, it was plain that the Fury could not possibly be hove down under circumstances of such frequent and imminent risk.  I therefore directed a fourth anchor, with two additional cables, to be disposed, with the hope of breaking some of the force of the ice, by its offering a more oblique resistance than the other, and thus by degrees turning the direction of the pressure from the ships.  We had scarcely completed this new defence, when the largest floe we had seen since leaving Port Bowen came sweeping along the shore, having a motion to the southward of not less than a mile and a half an hour, threatened to overturn it, and would certainly have dislodged it from its situation but from the cable recently attached to it.