The voyage to the north was that of Buchan and Franklin in the Dorothea and Trent; that to the north-west was undertaken by John Ross in the Isabella and William Edward Parry in the Alexander. Of this we need only say here that on their return from the north of Baffin Bay, Ross and Parry coasted down the west side and sailed into Lancaster Sound for a considerable distance until Ross—who seems to have had the mountain-finding eye and an unenviable gift for missing straits—declared that it ended in a range of mountains which he appropriately named Croker's; and, that there should be no mistake about them, he gave a very pretty picture of them as a full-page plate in his book. Parry, however, saw no mountains and took the liberty of saying so to Barrow when he reported himself at the Admiralty, the result being the despatch of Parry's expedition in the Hecla and Griper which left Yarmouth on the 12th of May, 1819, and, for the first time after leaving the coast of Norfolk, dropped anchor in the bay named after them in Melville Island, on the 5th of September.
Parry, before his voyage in the Alexander, had had Arctic experience while lieutenant of the Alexandria frigate engaged in protecting the Spitsbergen whale fisheries, and knew thoroughly what he was about. For instance, he worked his crews in three watches, and had both his vessels rigged as barques as the most convenient rig among ice, though the Griper, a strong, slow gunboat, was rather too small to be so treated, being only about half the tonnage of the Hecla, whose measurement was under four hundred. Had she been a little speedier more work might have been done; but what was done was magnificent.
Entering Lancaster Sound, Parry found a strait not blocked by mountains but thirty miles broad leading into a region up to then unknown, except—so it is said—to the Norsemen. On the 12th of August Prince Regent Inlet was discovered and named, it being George IV's birthday. Then North Somerset was sighted and the course laid across Barrow Strait to North Devon and its south-western peninsula known as Beechey Island; then Wellington Channel was descried, and then Cornwallis Island. Griffith Island was discovered on the 23rd of August, Bathurst Island on the 25th, Byam Martin Island on the 27th, where Sabine, the astronomer of the expedition, found they had passed north of the magnetic north pole. Then the south side of Melville Island was coasted along, Dealy Island being found on the 4th of September at noon, and, at a quarter past nine at night, just after passing Bounty Cape (named in honour of the event), the Hecla crossed the 110th meridian west, and became entitled to the Government grant of £5000 for doing so—which Parry shared between the ships.
H.M.S. "HECLA" AND "GRIPER" IN WINTER HARBOUR
Soon the ice became difficult and the ships had to anchor, but, the conditions improving, the westerly voyage was resumed. Cape Providence was passed and Cape Hay sighted, but the ships could get no further than about half-way between these capes, and they had to return to Winter Harbour, where, on the 26th of September, they were warped to their quarters through a channel cut in the ice. The Hecla, sending down all her upper masts except the main topmast, and the Griper, housing her fore and main topmasts, used the spars to support a roof which completely enclosed their upper decks and made them both snug for the winter, which did not seem so long owing to the efforts of the officers to keep every one amused and on the move. Parry, a host in himself, was well seconded by his lieutenant, Beechey, late of the Trent, James Clark Ross, one of his midshipmen, Captain Sabine, and Lieutenant Liddon, the commander of the Griper, who was almost disabled with rheumatism, and Lieutenant Hoppner, also of the Griper. A couple of books of plays on board proved a real treasure; owing to them the Royal Arctic Theatre was started, the pioneer of so many amateur theatrical ventures in the Polar seas, and the North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle came into existence, the first of ship newspapers. On Christmas Day there was a dinner of roast beef which had been on board since May, the condition of which, as Parry said, was an excellent testimony to the antiseptic properties of a cold atmosphere; and the food generally was good and abundant, and the management and supplies far better than on many subsequent expeditions. In the spring, game was found in fair quantity, nearly four thousand pounds of musk ox, deer, hares, geese, ducks, and ptarmigan being brought on board.
In May the vessels were afloat again, though ice-bound, and, in June, walking, not sledging, journeys were organised, the furthest points reached being Cape Fisher to the north and Cape Hoppner to the west. On the 1st of August the vessels moved out of the bay to the westward, and six days afterwards Beechey called attention to the land with the three capes already mentioned. "The land," says Parry, "which extends beyond the 117th degree of west longitude, and is the most western yet discovered in the Polar Sea to the north of the American continent, was honoured with the name of Banks Land out of respect to the late venerable and worthy President of the Royal Society."
On the 16th Cape Dundas was named, but progress was impossible. For a week Parry made every endeavour to pass, but the floes, forty to fifty feet thick, heaped up by the tides from the east and the west so as to form a wide-stretching landscape of hill and dale, barred the way right across Banks Strait; and no further west could be attained than 113° 46´ 43·5˝, in latitude 74° 26´ 25˝. Thence Parry returned, hoping to get through on another voyage, and bidding farewell to the North Georgian Islands, as he called them, or the Parry Islands, as we now know them, he came home by the way he went out, through Lancaster Sound. Needless to say, the very next season the whalers followed on Parry's track, and Lancaster Sound became the highway to a very profitable fishing-ground.
PARRY'S DISCOVERIES ON HIS FIRST VOYAGE