this time with propriety leave the ship to go on board the _Fury_. This, however, I the less regretted as Captain Hoppner was thoroughly acquainted with all my views and intentions, and I felt confident that, under his direction, nothing would be left undone to endeavour to save the ship. I, therefore, directed him by telegraph, “if he thought nothing could be done at present, to return on board with all hands until the wind changed;” for this alone, as far as I could see the state of the _Fury_, seemed to offer the smallest chance of clearing the shore, so as to enable us to proceed with our work, or to attempt hauling the ship off the ground. About seven P.M. Captain Hoppner returned to the _Hecla_, accompanied by all hands, except an officer with a party at the pumps, reporting to me that the _Fury_ had been forced aground by the ice pressing on the masses lying near her, and bringing home, if not breaking, the seaward anchor, so that the ship was soon found to have sewed from two to three feet fore and aft. With the ship thus situated, and masses of heavy ice constantly coming in, it was Captain Hoppner’s decided opinion, as well as that of Lieutenants Austin and Ross, that to have laid out another anchor to seaward would have only been to expose it to the same damage as there was reason to suppose had been incurred with the other, without the most distant hope of doing any service; especially as the ship had been driven on shore, by a most unfortunate coincidence, just as the tide was beginning to fall. Indeed, in the present state of the _Fury_, nothing short of chopping and sawing up a part of the ice under her stern could by any possibility have effected her release, even if she had been already afloat. Under such circumstances, hopeless as for the time every seaman will admit them to have been, Captain Hoppner judiciously determined to return for the present, as directed by my telegraphic communication; but being anxious to keep the ship free from water as long as possible, he left an officer and a small party of men to continue working at the pumps so long as a communication could be kept up between the _Hecla_ and the shore. Every moment, however, decreased the practicability of doing this; and finding, soon after Captain Hoppner’s return, that the current swept the _Hecla_ a long way to the southward while hoisting up the boats, and that more ice was drifting in towards the shore, I was under the painful necessity of recalling the party at the pumps, rather than incur the risk, now an inevitable one, of parting company with them altogether. Accordingly Mr. Bird, with the last of the people, came on board at eight o’clock in the evening, having left eighteen inches of water in the well, and four pumps being requisite to keep her free. In three hours after Mr. Bird’s return, more than half a mile of closely-packed ice intervened between the _Fury_ and the open