"
Captain Scoresby relates a similar narrow escape from destruction owing
to the same cause. "In the year 1804," he observes, "I had an
opportunity of witnessing the effects produced by the lesser masses in
motion. Passing between two fields of ice newly formed, about a foot in
thickness, they were observed rapidly to approach each other, and,
before our ship could pass the strait, they met with a velocity of three
or four miles per hour. The one overlaid the other, and presently
covered many acres of surface. The ship proving an obstacle to the
course of the ice, it squeezed up on both sides, shaking her in a
dreadful manner, and producing a loud grinding or lengthened acute
trembling noise, according as the degree of pressure was diminished or
increased, until it had risen as high as the deck. After about two hours
the motion ceased, and soon afterwards the two sheets of ice receded
from each other nearly as rapidly as they had before advanced. The ship
in this case did not receive any injury; but, had the ice only been half
a foot thicker, she might have been wrecked.
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