While these efforts were being made to penetrate the ice which surrounds the Antarctic Pole, a region having little which could attract human enterprise, the interests of commerce seemed to call for obstinate and persevering attempts to penetrate to the Arctic Pole. In spite of these numerous expeditions, however, which extend over two centuries, the regions round the North Pole are far from being known to geographers. The fogs and snows which almost always cover them were the source of many errors made by the earlier navigators. In his first voyage, made in 1818, Sir John Ross was led to think that Lancaster Sound was closed by a chain of mountains, which he called the Croker Mountains; but in the following year Captain Parry, in command of two ships, the Hecla and Griper, discovered that this was an error. This celebrated navigator discovered Barrow's Straits, Wellington Channel, and Prince Regent Inlet; Cornwallis, Sir Byam Martin, and Melville Islands, to which the name of Parry's Archipelago has been given. In this short voyage he gathered more new results than were obtained by his successors during the next forty years. He was the first to traverse these seas. Upon Sir Byam Martin Island he has described the ruins of some ancient habitations of the Esquimaux. He passed the winter on Melville Island. In order to attain his chosen anchorage in Winter's Bay, he was compelled to saw a passage in the ice of a league in length, which involved the labour of three days; but scarcely were they moored in their chosen harbour than the thermometer fell to eighteen degrees below zero. They carried ashore the ship's boats, the cables, the sails, and log-books. The masts were struck to the maintop; the rest of the rigging served to form a roof, sloping to the gunwale, with a thick covering of sail-cloth, which formed an admirable shelter from the wind and snow. Numberless precautions were taken against cold and wet under the decks. Stoves and other contrivances maintained a supportable degree of temperature. In each dormitory a false ceiling of impermeable cloth interposed to prevent the collection of moisture on the wooden walls of the ship. The crew were divided into companies, each company being under the charge of an officer, charged with the daily inspection of their clothes and cleanliness—an essential protection against scurvy. As a measure of precaution, Captain Parry reduced by one-third the ordinary ration of bread; beer and wine were substituted for spirits; and citron and lemon drinks were served out daily to the sailors. Game was sometimes substituted to vary a repast worthy of Spartans. As a remedy against ennui, a theatre was fitted up and comedies acted, for which occasions Parry himself composed a vaudeville, entitled "The North-west Passage; or, the End of the Voyage." During this long night of eighty-four days, the thermometer in the saloons marked 28°, and outside 35° below zero, and for a few minutes actually reached 47°. Some of the sailors had their members frozen, from which they never quite recovered. One day the hut which served as an observatory was discovered to be on fire. A sailor who saved one of the precious instruments lost his hands in the effort; they were completely frost-bitten in the attempt.
Nevertheless, the month of June arrived, and with it the opportunity of making excursions in the neighbourhood. It was found that, in Melville Island, the earth was carpeted with moss and herbage, with saxifrages and poppies. Hares, reindeer, the musk-ox, northern geese, plovers, white wolves and foxes, roamed around their haunts, disputing their booty with the crew. Captain Parry could not risk a second winter in this terrible region. He returned home as soon as the thaw left the passage open.
In 1821, Captain Parry undertook a second voyage with the Fury and Hecla. He visited Hudson's Bay and Fox's Channel. In his third voyage, undertaken in 1824, he was surprised by the frost in Prince Regent's Channel, and was constrained to pass the winter there. The Fury was dismantled, and, being found unfit for service, Captain Parry was obliged to abandon her and return to England.
Accompanied by Sir James Ross, Parry again put to sea in the Hecla, in April, 1826. On his third voyage, on leaving Table Island on the north of Spitzbergen, Parry placed his crew in the two training ships, Enterprise and Endeavour; the first under his own command, the second under orders of Sir James Ross. Sometimes they sailed, sometimes hauled through the crust of the ice; sometimes the ice, which pierced their shoes, showed itself bristling with points, intersected into valleys and little hills, which it was difficult to scale. In spite of the courage and energy of their crews, the two ships scarcely advanced four miles a day, while the drifting of the ice towards the south led them imperceptibly towards their point of departure. They reached latitude eighty-two degrees forty-five minutes fifteen seconds, however, and this was the extreme point which they attained.
In the month of May, 1829, Sir John Ross, accompanied by his nephew, James Clark Ross, again turned towards the Polar Seas. He entered Prince Regent's Channel, and there he found the Fury, which had been dismantled and abandoned by Parry, in these regions, eight years before. The provisions, which the old ship still contained, were quite a providential resource to Ross's crews. The distinguished navigator explored the Boothian Peninsula, and passed four years consecutively in Port Felix, without being able to disengage his vessel, the Victory. This gave him ample leisure to become familiar with the Esquimaux. Sir John Ross, in his account of this long sojourn in polar countries, has recorded many conversations with the natives, which our space does not permit us to quote. From this terrible position he was extricated, and emerged with his crew from this icy prison, when all hope of his return had been abandoned. After being exposed to a thousand dangers, Ross and his crew were at last observed by a whaling ship, which received them on board, after many efforts to attract attention. On learning that the ship which had saved them was the Isabella, formerly commanded by Captain Ross, he made himself known. "But Captain Ross has been dead two years," was the reply.
We need not repeat here the enthusiastic reception Captain Ross and his companions met with on their arrival in London.
During an excursion made by the nephew of the Commander (afterwards Sir James Clark Ross), he very closely approached the North Magnetic Pole. This was at eight o'clock on the morning of the 1st of June, 1831, on the west coast of Boothia. The dip of the magnetic needle was nearly vertical, being eighty-nine degrees fifty-nine seconds—one minute short of ninety degrees. The site was a low flat shore, rising into ridges from fifty to sixty feet high, and about a mile inland.
Contrary to the judgment of many officers of experience in polar explorations, the last and most fatal of all the expeditions was undertaken by Sir John Franklin, with one hundred and thirty-seven picked officers and men, in the ships Erebus and Terror. The adventurers left Sheerness on the 26th of May, 1846, the ships having been strengthened in every conceivable way, and found in everything calculated to secure the safety of the expedition. On the 22nd of July the ships were spoken by the whaler Enterprise, and, four days later, they were sighted by the Prince of Wales, of Hull, moored to an iceberg, waiting an opening to enter Lancaster Sound. There the veil dropped over the ships and their unhappy crews. In 1848, their fate began to excite a lively interest in the public mind. Expedition in search of them succeeded expedition, at immense cost, sent both by the English and American authorities, and by Lady Franklin herself, some of which penetrated the Polar Seas through Behring's Straits, while the majority took Baffin's Bay. In 1850, Captains Ommaney and Penny discovered, at the entrance of Wellington Channel, some vestiges of Franklin, which led to another expedition in 1857, which was got up by private enterprise, of which Captain M'Clintock had the command. Guided by the indications collected in the previous expedition, and intelligence gathered from the Esquimaux by Dr. Rae in his land expedition, Captain M'Clintock in the yacht Fox discovered, on the 6th of May, 1859, upon the north point of King William's Land, a cairn or heap of stones. Several leaves of parchment, which were buried under the stones, bearing date the 28th of April, 1848, solved the fatal enigma. The first, dated the 24th of May, 1847, gave some details ending with "all well." The papers had been dug up twelve months later to record the death of Franklin, on the 11th of June, 1847. The survivors are supposed to have been on their way to the mouth of the River Back, but they must have sunk under the terrible hardships to which they were exposed, in addition to cold and hunger.