PARRY'S GREAT VOYAGE 179 



his interest in the north, and in 1817, when at the 

 Admiralty, proposed to Lord Melville his plan for two 

 voyages of discovery, one to the north and the other 

 to the north-west, which opened the new era of Polar 

 exploration. 



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 A lexander. 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 miss- 

 ing straits declared that it ended in a range of moun- 

 tains 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 Yar- 

 mouth 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 Alexan- 

 dria 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 



