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.