After prolonged and arduous exertions, the _Thracia_ was at last extracted from her dangerous position in the ice and brought back to the open water harbour at Alexandrovsk. From this port, accompanied by an ice-breaker, she again made an attempt to reach Archangel on January 24th, 1915. Heavy field-ice was once more encountered as soon as the White Sea had been entered, causing the utmost difficulty in steering, and reducing progress to the slowest limits. After covering, with much perseverance, a certain distance, huge floes of ice finally stopped the _Thracia’s_ progress; the ice-breaker was also in difficulties, and therefore unable to render any assistance. For a considerable time the _Thracia_ remained wedged in the drifting ice, and meanwhile a heavy north-east gale had packed the entrance to the White Sea. The action of this wind, however, presently opened the ice in the immediate neighbourhood of the vessel, and a certain amount of further progress towards the south became possible. Here, however, the ice was found to be once more heavily packed, while the north-east gale was choking the entrance with ever more and more drifting floes. The _Thracia’s_ propeller had by this time become badly damaged, and the ice-breaker herself was finding it all she could do to secure her own safety. It was now clear that to remain in the drifting ice would be bound in the long run to prove fatal, and thereupon Captain Doyle made an effort to drive his vessel close to the land ice, where some degree of shelter might be found from the gales which were constantly driving enormous floes up and down with the ebb and flow of the tides through the narrow neck of the White Sea. After many days and nights of the heaviest and most unremitting toil, the _Thracia_ was finally brought close to land, and a net-work of cables and ropes thrown out to secure her position there. For seven weeks, until the 18th of March, she was held here, during the whole of which time she was being submitted to the severest pressure owing to the alternating flow and ebb of the tides driving the packed ice against her side, under her bottom, and piling it up round her counter to a height of as much as 20 ft. Serious damage was done to her hull, and for three months her pumps had to be kept going constantly in order to keep her afloat, while the greatest skill and ingenuity had to be exercised in order to protect her rudder from the ice pressure under her counter. [Illustration: THE “AQUITANIA,” HAVING ESCAPED THE FATE OF SO MANY OF HER SISTERS, REAPPEARS IN THE MERSEY IN HER PEACE-TIME GUISE]