n the
course of the day, that by seven P.M. we had nearly reached a channel
of clear water which kept open for seven or eight miles from the land.
Being impatient to obtain a sight of the Fury, and the wind becoming
light, Captain Hoppner and myself left the Hecla in two boats, and
reached the ship at half-past nine, or about three-quarters of an hour
before high water, being the most favourable time of tide for arriving
to examine her condition.

'We found her heeling so much outward, that her main-channels were
within a foot of the water; and the large floe-piece which was still
alongside of her, seemed alone to support her below water, and to
prevent her falling over still more considerably. The ship had been
forced much farther up the beach than before, and she had now in her
bilge above nine feet of water, which reached higher than the
lower-deck beams. On looking down the stern-post, which, seen against
the light-coloured ground, and in shoal water, was now very distinctly
visible, we found that she had pushed the stones at the bottom up
before her, and that the broken keel, stern-post, and dead wood had,
by the recent pressure, been more damaged and turned up than before.
She appeared principally to hang upon the ground abreast the gangway,
where, at high water, the depth was eleven feet alongside her keel;
forward and aft, from thirteen to sixteen feet; so that at low tide,
allowing the usual fall of five or six feet, she would be lying in a
depth of from five to ten feet only. The first hour's inspection of
the Fury's condition too plainly assured me, that, exposed as she was,
and forcibly pressed up upon an open and stony beach; her holds full
of water, and the damage of her hull, to all appearance and in all
probability, more considerable than before, without any adequate means
of hauling her off to the seaward, or securing her from the incursions
of the ice, every endeavour of ours to get her off, or _if_ got off,
to float her to any known place of safety, would at once be utterly
hopeless in itself, and productive of extreme risk of our remaining
ship.

'Being anxious, however, in a case of so much importance, to avail
myself of the judgment and experience of others, I directed Captain
Hoppner, in conjunction with Lieutenants Austin and Sherer, and Mr.
Pulfer, carpenter, being the officers who accompanied me to the Fury,
to hold a survey upon her, and to report their opinions to me. And to
prevent the po