Add to ORKGvessels. For though the pack may be well off shore when they proceed along the Coast to the N.E. a day or two of N.E. or S.W. or W. wind would drive it in and at the same time prevent the escape of the vessel, as it could not beat against it, and the current which always sets to the N.E. during summer, while the ice is offshore. It is not long since the first whaleship passed Behring Strait. Yet no less than 47 ships have been crushed here or driven ashore or embayed in the ice and swept away northward to Heaven only knows where while many others have had narrow escapes. Thirty-three were caught and lost in this way here at one time, 13 a year or two later and one last July, while two others barely made their escape, as the ice-jaws clo...