Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
cassell’s national library.
by CAPT. W. E. PARRY, R.N., F.R.S., and commander of the expedition.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited: LONDON , PARIS , NEW YORK & MELBOURNE . 1889.
William Edward Parry, the son of a physician, was born at Bath in December, 1790. At the age of thirteen he was entered as a first-class volunteer on board the flag-ship of the Channel fleet, and after seven years’ service and careful study of his profession he obtained a commission in 1810 as lieutenant in the navy. He was then at once, aged twenty, sent to the Arctic seas, where he was during two or three years in command of a ship for protection of the British whale fisheries and for revision of the admiralty charts. In 1813 he was recalled from that service and sent on blockade service to the North American station, where he remained about four years, and occupied his leisure in writing a book on “Nautical Astronomy by Night,” which he published upon his return to England in 1817.
At that time the search for a North-West Passage to Eastern Asia had been suspended for more than half a century. No expedition had been sent
out since 1746. But after Lieutenant Parry’s return from the North American station, an expedition was prepared under Sir John Ross in the Isabella , which sailed in April, 1818, accompanied by the Alexander , to the command of which Parry was appointed, Sir John Ross being chief of the expedition. They went by Davis’s Straits to Lancaster Sound, where Sir John Ross gave up hope of success and turned back; though Lieutenant Parry would have gone on. Next year Parry was entrusted with an expedition of his own, which set out in May, 1819, and reached Lancaster Sound in July, discovered Prince Regent’s Inlet, and Barrow Straits, named after Sir John Barrow, Secretary to the Admiralty, who was active promoter of these expeditions. Parry wintered among the ice and returned next year, having pushed Arctic discovery by thirty degrees of longitude farther than any who had gone before. That was Parry’s first voyage, from which he returned to be received with triumph by his countrymen. He was advanced to the rank of Commander in November, 1820, and made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He had shown in what direction to proceed with further search, and at the age of thirty