7 - Discovery as Cheerful Endurance: William Edward Parry's Quest (1819–25)

Summary

At last brother tars here we are at the strait,

And the famed North-West Passage is travers'd complete;

O'er the wide rolling waves to the southward we'll steer,

And quickly arrive at the land of good cheer.

In the ice of the north British hearts were our own,

Still seeking for glory,

Famous in story,

We've gain'd for Old England new ways of renown.

William Edward Parry (1790–1855) belongs to ‘the pleiad’ of the great polar explorers in the Arctic, as Alina and Czesław Centkiewicz observe in their history of the exploration of the Far North. Between 1819 and 1825, this bright star of northern exploration headed three major expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage which set standards in terms of their meticulous preparation and resourceful crew management, but also as far as the results were concerned. Thanks to Parry, the certainty was obtained that there was no easy sea route to be found from Europe to Asia via the northwest even though the first expedition under his command (1819–20, HMS Hecla, a bomb, and HMS Griper, a gun-brig) managed to attain the 110th meridian west, allowing Parry to collect the prize money of £5,000 offered by Parliament to anybody reaching this point upon his return. The second voyage (1821–3, HMS Hecla and the bomb HMS Fury) did not reach further west but it did serve to charter an important area of that part of the Arctic from Southampton Island to Baffin Island.