SUMMARY OF ARCTIC EXPLORING EXPEDITIONS. 



743 



caster Sound, which they found almost clear. But in a few days ice began to form 

 all around them, and the masses swept them back again into Baffin's Bay. They got 

 clear, and again entered Lancaster Sound, but could get only as far west as 80^, fully 

 35° east of the point which Parry had reached in 1819. Here they wintered. In 

 July the ice opened and they tried again; but the floating ice cut up the Fury 

 so badly that they were obliged to abandon her, and the Hecla, with both crews, 

 steered back for England.^ The expedition accomplished nothing, beyond demon- 

 strating the absolute uncertainty of voyaging in these channels. 



In 1825 the noble trio, Back, Franklin, and Richardson, started upon a new over- 

 land expedition ; this time amply provided. Before winter set in they had struck 

 Mackenzie River, and followed it down to the sea. In the summer of 1826 they sep- 

 arated. Franklin and Back exploring the coast to the west of Mackenzie River, and 

 Richardson the eastern shore of the Coppermine River. In the ineantime Beechy, in 

 the Blossom, was sent to Bering's Strait to meet Parry and Franklin who it was hoped 

 would have come together. Parry had put back, never having reached within 80 de- 

 grees of longitude of Bering's Straits ; but a boat expedition from the Blossom pushed 

 so far eastward along the shore that it came within 150 miles of Franklin's extreme 

 westerly point. ^ 



In 1827 Parry, undeterred by the ill success of his last two expeditions, undertook 

 an overland, or rather over-ice, expedition to the North pole, going by way of Spitz- 

 bergen. A whaling captain who had gone to the north of Spitzbergen reported that 

 the ice-fields there were free of crack or fissure so that for leagues upon leagues a sled 

 could traverse them as if upon a smooth road. Parry's flat-bottom boats were provided 

 with a runner on each side of the keel, so that they could be used either as sleds or 

 boats. By one or the other or by both he hoped to reach the pole. But he found 

 the ice soft and slushy, with frequent hummocks which rendered sailing and sledding 

 alike difficult. Still for 35 days he toiled cheerily on ; but when at last he was able 

 to take an observation he found that the great floe upon which he moved was drifting 

 southward just about as fast as he was traveling northward, so that though in constant 

 movement he was day after day occupying just the same spot in space. He had, how- 

 ever, the honor of planting the British flag in latitude 82° 40' 30^^, the most northerly 

 spot ever trodden by man, unless, indeed Hall may in his last expedition have gone as far. 

 It is only 40 miles beyoad the extreme point of Hayes, and only 80 miles north 

 of Scoresby's extreme point, which he had reached without difficulty twenty-one years 

 before.^ This expedition does not, however, come within the list of Arctic explora- 

 tions in America. This was Parry's last expedition, though he lived 18 years after, 

 and rose to be a knight and an admiral, and finally governor of Greenwich Hospital. 



In 1829 Captain (afterward Sir John) Ross desired to do something to make 

 amends for his failure in 1819. Sir Peter Booth fitted him out with a small steamer 

 called the Victory, the first time that steam was ever applied to Arctic navigation. 

 The screw propeller was not then thought of ; the Victory was an ordinary paddle 

 wheel steamer. As second in command went his nephew, James Ross, afterward noted 

 as an Arctic explorer. They passed through Hudson's Strait, entered Prince Regent's 

 Inlet, August 9. The season was unusually favorable, the channel being free from 

 ice, and by the 17th the Victory passed beyond Parry's meridian of 110° W., and 



IP. 349. 2 p. 360. 3 p. 351. 



