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CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
JOURNAL
OF THE
THIRD VOYAGE
FOR THE DISCOVERY OF A
NORTH-WEST PASSAGE.
BY
CAPT. W. E. PARRY, R.N., F.R.S.,
AND COMMANDER OF THE EXPEDITION.
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
1889.
INTRODUCTION.
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 had established for himself
a place of lasting honour in the history of English navigation.
Commander Parry was sent on a second expedition in 1821, from which he
returned in 1823. He was to explore the Fox Channel, for the purpose of
ascertaining whether it was connected with the Arctic Sea of his first
voyage. This voyage had no important results; and in 1824 Parry started
again on the third voyage, of which this volume contains his Journal. In
1827 he sailed again in the _Hecla_, but found himself sledging over ice
that floated southward as fast as he travelled forward on it northward.
He returned then to the work ashore, as a hydrographer, for which his
thorough knowledge of navigation marked him out. Desire for a more
active life caused him to spend four or five years in Australia (from
1829 to 1834) as Commissioner to the Agricultural Company of Australia.
He was knighted, and became in 1852 a Rear-Admiral. Sir Edward Parry was
Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital at the time of his death, in
July, 1855.
H. M.
THIRD VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE.
INTRODUCTION.
Notwithstanding the want of success of the late Expedition to the Polar
Seas, it was resolved to make another attempt to effect a passage by sea,
between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The chief attentions in the
equipment of the present expedition consisted in the placing of
Sylvester’s warming stove in the very bottom of the ship’s hold, in
substituting a small quantity of salt beef for a part of the pork, and in
furnishing a much larger supply of newly corned beef. Preserved carrots
and parsnips, salmon, cream, pickles of onions, beetroot, cabbage, and,
to make the most of our stowage, split pease instead of whole ones, were
supplied. A small quantity of beef pemmican, made by pounding the meat
with a certain portion of fat, as described by Captain Franklin, was also
furnished.
To the officers, seamen, and marines my best acknowledgments are once
more due, for the zealous support I have at all times received from them
in the course of this service; and I am happy to repeat my conviction
that, had it depended on their conduct and exertion, our most sanguine
expectations would, long ere this, have been crowned with complete
success.
CHAPTER I.
Passage to the Whale-fish Islands, and Removal of Stores from the
Transport—Enter the Ice in Baffin’s Bay—Difficulties of Penetrating to
the Westward—Quit the Ice in Baffin’s Bay—Remarks on the Obstructions
encountered by the Ships, and on the Severity of the Season.
The equipment of the _Hecla_ and _Fury_, and the loading of the _William
Harris_ transport, being completed, we began to move down the river from
Deptford on the 8th of May, 1824, and on the 10th, by the assistance of
the steamboat, the three ships had reached Northfleet, where they
received their powder and their ordnance stores. Two days were here
employed in fixing, under the superintendence of Mr. Barlow and
Lieutenant Foster, the plate, invented by the former gentleman, for
correcting the deviation of the compass produced by the attraction of the
ship’s iron; and the continuance of strong easterly winds prevented our
getting to the Nore till the 16th. During our stay at Northfleet the
ships were visited by Viscount Melville, and the other Lords
Commissioners of the Admiralty, who were pleased to approve of our
general equipment and arrangements.
During our passage across the Atlantic in June, and afterwards on our way
up Davis’s Strait, we threw overboard daily a strong copper cylinder,
containing the usual papers, giving an account of our situation. We also
took every opportunity afforded by light winds, to try the temperature of
the sea at different depths, as compared with that at the surface.
I now determined, as the quickest and most secure mode of clearing the
transport, to anchor at the Whale-fish Islands, rather than incur the
risk of hampering and damaging her among the ice. Fresh gales and thick
weather, however, prevented our doing so till the 26th, when we anchored
at eight A.M., in seventeen fathoms, mooring the ships by hawsers to the
rocks, and then immediately commenced our work. In the meantime the
observatory and instruments were landed on a small island, called by the
Danes Boat Island, where Lieutenant Foster and myself carried on the
magnetic and other observations during the stay of the Expedition at this
anchorage, of which a survey was also made.
Early on the morning of the 3rd of July, the whole of our stores being
removed, and Lieutenant Pritchard having received his orders, together
with our despatches and letters for England, the _William Harris_ weighed
with a light wind from the northward, and was towed out to sea by our
boats. The day proving calm, we employed it in swinging the _Hecla_, in
order to obtain the amount of the deviation of the magnetic needle, and
to fix afresh the iron plate for correcting it. On the following
morning, the wind being southerly, the pilots came on board, and the
_Hecla_ weighed to run through the north passage; in doing which she
grounded on a rock lying directly in the channel, and having only
thirteen feet upon it at low water, which our sounding boats had missed,
and of which the pilot was ignorant. The tide being that of ebb we were
unable to heave the ship off immediately, and at low water she had sewed
three feet forward. It was not till half-past one P.M., that she
floated, when it became necessary to drop her down between the rock and
the shore with hawsers; after which we made sail, and being soon after
joined by the _Fury_, which came out by the other channel, we stood round
the islands to the northwards. This rock was not the only one found by
our boats which may prove dangerous to ships going in and out of this
harbour, and with which our pilots were unacquainted. Another was
discovered by Mr. Head, about one-third of the distance across from Kron
Prins Island to the opposite shore of the S.E. entrance, and has not more
than eighteen feet water on it at low tide; it lies very much in the way
of ships coming in at that channel, which is the most commonly used. The
latitude of the island, on which the observations were made, called by
the Danes Boat Island, is 74° 28′ 15″; its longitude by our chronometers,
53° 12′ 56″; the dip of the magnetic needle, 82° 53′ 66″; and the
variation, 70° 23′ 57″ westerly. The time of high water, at new moon, on
the 26th of June, was a quarter-past eight, the highest tides being the
third and fourth after the conjunction, and the perpendicular rise seven
feet and a half.
The ships standing in towards Lievely on the afternoon of the 5th,
Lieutenant Graah very kindly came off to the _Fury_, which happened to be
the nearest in shore, for the purpose of taking leave of us. On his
quitting the ship a salute of ten guns was fired at Lievely, which we
returned with an equal number; and I sent to Lieutenant Graah, by a canoe
that came on board the _Hecla_, an account of the situation of the rocks
we had discovered. Light northerly winds, together with the dull sailing
of our now deeply laden ships, prevented our making much progress for
several days, and kept us in the neighbourhood of numerous icebergs,
which it is dangerous to approach when there is any swell. We counted
from the deck, at one time, no less than one hundred and three of these
immense bodies, some of them from one to two hundred feet in height above
the sea; and it was necessary, in one or two instances, to tow the ships
clear of them with the boats. We had occasion, about this time, to
remark the more than usual frequency of fogs with a northerly wind, a
circumstance from which the whalers are accustomed to augur a
considerable extent of open water in that direction.
The ice soon beginning to close around us, our progress became so slow
that, on the 17th, we saw a ship at the margin of the “pack,” and two
more on the following day. We supposed these to be whalers, which, after
trying to cross the ice to the northward, had returned to make the
attempt in the present latitude; a supposition which our subsequent
difficulties served to strengthen. From this time, indeed, the
obstructions from the quantity, magnitude, and closeness of the ice, were
such as to keep our people almost constantly employed in heaving,
warping, or sawing through it; and yet with so little success that, at
the close of the month of July, we had only penetrated seventy miles to
the westward, or to the longitude of about 62° 10′. Here, while closely
beset, on the 1st of August, we encountered a hard gale from the
south-east, which pressing the ice together in every direction, by mass
overlaying mass for hours together, the _Hecla_ received several very
awkward “nips,” and was once fairly laid on her broadside by a strain
which must inevitably have crushed a vessel of ordinary strength. In
such cases, the ice is forced under a ship’s bottom on one side, and on
the other up her side, both powers thus acting in such a manner as to
bring her on her “beam-ends.” This is, in fact, the most favourable
manner in which a ship can receive the pressure, and would perhaps only
occur with ice comparatively not very heavy, though sufficiently so, it
is said, to have run completely over a ship in some extreme and fatal
cases. With ice of still more formidable dimensions a vessel would
probably, by an equal degree of pressure, be absolutely crushed, in
consequence of the increased difficulty of sinking it on one side, and
causing it to rise on the other.
_Sept. 9th_.—I shall doubtless be readily excused for not having entered
in this journal a detailed narrative of the obstacles we met with, and of
the unwearied exertions of the officers and men to overcome them, during
the tedious eight weeks employed in crossing this barrier. I have
avoided this detail because, while it might appear an endeavour to
magnify ordinary difficulties, which it is our business to overcome
rather than to discuss, I am convinced that no description of mine, nor
even the minute formality of the log-book, could convey an adequate idea
of the truth. The strain we constantly had occasion to heave on the
hawsers, as springs to force the ships through the ice, was such as
perhaps no ships ever before attempted; and by means of Phillips’s
invaluable capstan, we often separated floes of such magnitude as must
otherwise have baffled every effort. In doing this, it was next to
impossible to avoid exposing the men to very great risk from the frequent
breaking of the hawsers. On one occasion, three of the _Hecla’s_ seamen
were knocked down as instantaneously as by a gunshot by the sudden
flying-out of an anchor; and a marine of the _Fury_ suffered in a similar
manner when working at the capstan; but, providentially, they all escaped
with severe contusions. A more serious accident occurred in the breaking
of the spindle of the _Fury’s_ windlass, depriving her of the use of the
windlass-end during the rest of the season.
The constant besetment of the ships, and our daily observations for
latitude and longitude, afforded a favourable opportunity for
ascertaining precisely the set of any currents by which the whole body of
ice might be actuated. By attending very carefully to all the
circumstances, it was evident that a daily set to the southward obtained,
when the wind was northerly, differing in amount from two or three to
eight or ten miles per day, according to the strength of the breeze; but
a northerly current was equally apparent, and fully to the same amount,
whenever the wind blew from the southward. A circumstance more
remarkable than these, however, forced itself strongly upon my notice at
this time, which was, that a _westerly_ set was very frequently apparent,
even against a fresh breeze blowing from that quarter. I mention the
circumstance in this place, because I may hereafter have to offer a
remark or two on this fact in connection with some others of a similar
nature noticed elsewhere.
With respect to the dimensions of the ice through which we had now
scrambled our way, principally by warping and towing a distance of
between three and four hundred miles, I remarked that it for the most
part increased, as well in the thickness as the extent of the floes, as
we advanced westward about the parallel of 71°. During our subsequent
progress to the north, we also met with some of enormous dimensions,
several of the floes, to which we applied our hawsers and the power of
the improved capstan, being at their margin more than twenty feet above
the level of the sea, and over some of these we could not see from the
mast-head. Upon the whole, however, the magnitude of the ice became
somewhat less towards the north-west; and within thirty miles of that
margin the masses were comparatively small, and their thickness much
diminished. Bergs were in sight during the whole passage; but they were
more numerous towards the middle of the “pack,” and rather the most so to
the southward.