“In order to avert the effects of this as much as possible, a cable was cut up into thirty feet lengths, and these, with plates of iron four feet square, which had been supplied to us as fenders, together with some walrus hides, were hung round the vessels, especially about the bows. The masts, at the same time, were secured with additional ropes, and the hatches were battened and nailed down. By the time these precautions had been taken, our approach to the breakers only left us the alternative of either permitting the ships to be drifted broadside against the ice, and so to take their chance, or of endeavoring to force fairly into it by putting before the wind. At length, the hopeless state of a vessel placed broadside against so formidable a body became apparent to all, and we resolved to attempt the latter expedient.” Beechey, in describing the appalling scene, continues:— “No language, I am convinced, can convey an adequate idea of the terrific grandeur of the effect now produced by the collision of the ice and the tempestuous ocean. The sea, violently agitated and rolling its mountainous waves against an opposing body, is at all times a sublime and awful sight; but when, in addition, it encounters immense masses, which it has set in motion with a violence equal to its own, its effect is prodigiously increased. At one moment it bursts upon these icy fragments and buries them many feet beneath its wave, and the next, as the buoyancy of the depressed body struggles for reascendancy, the water rushes in foaming cataracts over the edges, while every individual mass, rocking and laboring in its bed, grinds against and contends with its opponent, until one is either split with the shock or upheaved upon the surface of the other. Nor is this collision confined to any particular spot; it is going on as far as the sight can reach; and when from this convulsive scene below, the eye is turned to the extraordinary appearance of the blink in the sky above, where the unnatural clearness of a calm and silvery atmosphere presents itself, bounded by a dark, hard line of stormy clouds, such as this moment lowered over our masts, as if to mark the confines within which the efforts of man would be of no avail, the reader may imagine the sensation of awe which must accompany that of grandeur in the mind of the beholder.” And he continues: “If ever that fortitude of seamen was fairly tried, it was assuredly not less so on this occasion; and I will not conceal the pride I felt in witnessing the bold and decisive tone in which the orders were issued by the commander (the present Captain Sir John Franklin) of our little vessel, and the promptitude and steadiness with which they were executed by the crew.”