Edward Parry

Sir William Edward Parry (19 December 1790 – 8 July 1855) was a Royal Navy officer and explorer best known for his 1819–1820 expedition through the Parry Channel, probably the most successful in the long quest for the Northwest Passage, until it was finally negotiated by Roald Amundsen in 1906.

At the age of thirteen he joined the flagship of Admiral Sir William Cornwallis in the Channel fleet as a first-class volunteer, in 1806 became a midshipman, and in 1810 received promotion to the rank of lieutenant in the frigate Alexander, which spent the next three years in the protection of the Spitsbergen whale fishery.

Parry took advantage of this opportunity for the study and practice of astronomical observations in northern latitudes, and afterwards published the results of his studies in a small volume on Nautical Astronomy by Night.

From 1813 to 1817 he served on the North American Station.

Partly as a result, Parry was given command of a new expedition in HMS Hecla (1815), accompanied by the slower HMS Griper (1813) under Matthew Liddon.

Others on the expedition were Edward Sabine, science officer and Frederick William Beechey.

For protection from ice the ships were clad with 3 in oak, had iron plates on their bows and internal cross-beams.

They also carried food in tin cans, an invention so new that there were as yet no can openers.

Instead of taking Ross's route anti-clockwise around Baffin Bay (which Ross was charting) he was able to cross the bay straight to Lancaster Sound.

Fighting his way through ice he reached clear water on 28 July and entered Lancaster Sound.

He passed Ross's farthest west and kept going.

Blocked by heavy ice, they went south for more than 100 mi into Prince Regent Inlet before turning back.

Continuing west they passed 110° W (about 600 mi west of Lancaster Strait) which entitled them to a £5,000 award offered by Parliament.

Finally blocked by ice they turned back to a place Parry called Winter Harbour on the south shore of Melville Island, somewhere near 107- or 108° W. Cutting their way through new ice the ships reached anchorage on 26 September.

Here they were frozen in for the next 10 months.

There were three months of total darkness and in the new year the temperature dropped to −54 F. The men were kept busy with regular exercise while the officers put on plays and produced a newspaper.

The first case of scurvy was reported in January and by March fourteen men were on the sick list, about half with mild scurvy.

Parry carried mustard and cress seeds and planted them in his cabin.

The leaves seemed to help.

There was some excitement in early March when the first melt water appeared, but by the end of the month the ice was still 6 ft thick.

In June Parry led a group of men dragging a wooden cart to the north shore of the island which he named Hecla and Griper Bay.

It was the first of August before the ships were able to float out of the harbour.

They got as far west as 113°46'W before turning back.

It was too late in the season and new ice was already beginning to form.

In 1818 he received command of the brig Alexander in the Arctic expedition under Captain John Ross.

This expedition followed the coast of Baffin Bay without making any new discoveries.

Parry and many others thought that Ross was wrong to turn back after entering Lancaster Sound at the north end of Baffin Island.

Luck was on their side; 1819 was unusually ice-free and no ship was able to travel so far west until Edward Belcher's expedition in 1850.

They reached England in October 1820 having lost one man.

Parry's voyage, which had taken him through the Parry Channel three-quarters of the way across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago was probably the single most productive voyage in the quest for the Northwest Passage.

A narrative of the expedition, entitled Journal of a Voyage to discover a North-west Passage, appeared in 1821, publisher John Murray paying 1,000 guineas for it.

Upon his return Lieutenant Parry received promotion to the rank of commander.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in February 1821.

In April 1821 he again left for the Arctic commanding HMS Fury (1814) accompanied by HMS Hecla (1815) under George Francis Lyon.

Others with him were George Fisher, scientist and chaplain, William Hooper, purser and diarist, lieutenant Henry Parkyns Hoppner and then midshipmen Francis Crozier and James Clark Ross.

Experience from the previous voyage led to improvements.

In 1827, Parry attempted one of the earliest expeditions to the North Pole.

He reached 82° 45' N, setting a record for human exploration Farthest North that stood for nearly five decades before being surpassed at 83° 20' N by Albert Hastings Markham in 1875.

Parry was born in Bath, Somerset, the son of Caleb Hillier Parry and Sarah Rigby.

He was educated at King Edward's School.