Whilst they were rowing up and down, to watch the motions of these creatures, they discovered at a distance a great ice-shoal, with something white upon it, which at first sight they imagined to be bears (they being generally white there;) but one Ellert Johnson, who was in the sloop to manage the harpoon, judging by the motion that it was something else, persuaded them to row that way, which being done accordingly, they not long afterwards perceived the same to be a piece of a rope belonging to the sails of a ship, which was held up by a man as a signal of the utmost distress; so they rowed up to it with all the oars they had, and coming near, found, to their great surprise, four living men, and one dead one, all Englishmen, upon the ice-shoal, who, upon their bended knees, expressed their joy and thankfulness for so unexpected a deliverance from the jaws of death. They were taken into the sloop, and carried to the bay aboard the ship.

These unfortunate men had cut a large hole, in the nature of a subterraneous cave, into the ice, and round the entrance thereof had placed the pieces of ice that were cut out of the concavity, to defend themselves against the violence of the winds and waves. In this hole they had spent fourteen days, it being so long since they had lost their ship. At first there were in all forty-two of them, and they had saved some victuals and tools, with their sloop. The commander, however, perceiving, after a little while, that it was impossible for them to hold out long on the ice-shoal, resolved to go ashore in the sloop, with seventeen of his men, and afterwards to send word back how matters stood there. This was done accordingly, but it blowing very hard, and they not having heard the least tidings of them since, they were afraid that they were drowned before they reached the shore.

There were twenty-four left upon the ice-shoal, but the want of provisions increasing daily amongst them, and they being reduced to a starving condition, and expecting nothing but present death, resolved to divide themselves, and to get upon several other ice-shoals, in hopes, by some chance or other, to come near the shore; but whether some of them got ashore, or were taken up by some ships, or swallowed up by the waves, they were not able to tell.

Certain it is, that four of them, the miserable remnants of forty-two, were found sitting together upon this ice-shoal, overwhelmed with affliction, without any hopes of being saved from the last extremity, which they were reduced to by frost and hunger, before the Dutch ship came in sight of them, having had nothing to feed upon for some time but a leathern belt, which they had divided and eaten, share and share alike, till it was all consumed.

After they were brought to the Dutch ship, the surgeon took all imaginable care for their recovery, notwithstanding which, three of them died in a few days after; so that of forty-two, wherewith this ship was manned, no more than one escaped with life, who arriving in September, 1746, in the galliot, the Delft, upon the Meuse; from thence he returned to England, his native country.

Plummer, Printer, Seething-lane.