Free Resolute by Martin W. Sandler

Lancaster Sound. Ahead of him lay open water. There were no Croker Mountains. This time there would be no turning back. The same William Hooper—the
Alexander’s
purser—who had expressed such dismay a year earlier over Ross’s actions, now exclaimed, “There was something particularly animating in the joy which lighted every countenance. We had arrived in a sea which had never before been navigated, we were gazing on land that European eyes had never beheld…and before us was the prospect of realizing all our wishes, and of exalting the honour of our country.”
    From Lancaster Sound, Parry sailed on to Prince Regent Inlet, hoping that that waterway was the next link to the passage. But he found it blocked by ice. His two ships, the
Hecla
and the
Griper
, then pushed on, entered Barrow Strait, and explored the south shore of a previously unknown group of islands that Parry named the North Georgian Islands. The vessels had now reached the Arctic Archipelago, the first European ships ever to do so. On September 4, they were off the south shore of Melville Island when Parry’s instruments told him that they were crossing latitude 110 degrees west. They had earned the five-thousand pound prize that Parliament had offered for reaching this point.

    EDWARD PARRY was the first of the British naval officers to deliberately spend the winter in the ice so that his search for the passage could be extended a second season. Here, with the ice beginning to thaw, the crews of the
Hecla
and the
Griper
undertake the arduous task of cutting a channel to free the vessels from their entrapment.
    Aware that winter was pressing in on him, Parry tried to keep moving west but his path was increasingly being blocked by building ice. Rather than risk disaster, he decided to put into what he named Winter Harbor on Melville Island. He had planned well. He was fully prepared to become the first to voluntarily “winter down” in the Arctic and wait for the ice thaw before resuming his journey.
    Parry knew it would be a long and challenging winter. But his spirits had never been higher. He had confirmed that there were no Crocker Mountains blocking Lancaster Sound. He had claimed the first of Parliament’s rewards. And even better things, he believed, lay ahead. “Our prospects, indeed, were truly exhilarating,” he wrote in his journal. “The ships had suffered no injury; we had plenty of provisions, the crew in high health and spirits; a sea, if not open at least navigable; and a zealous and unanimous determination in both officers and men to accomplish, by all possible means, the grand object on which we had the happiness to be employed.”
    But first they would have to get through the winter. He knew that the greatest challenge—greater even than the ice or snow—would be boredom. “I dreaded,” he stated, “the want of employment as one of the worst evils that was likely to befall us.” Long before he had left for the Arctic, Parry had carefully planned for a work regimen and an ongoing array of entertainments to keep everyone occupied should they have to spend the winter in the ice. Every day, from 5:45 A.M. until nightfall, the men on both ships were kept busy with activities ranging from scrubbing the decks to mending and checking the rigging and sails. Anticipating the need for evening entertainment, Parry had brought with him costumes, makeup, and scripts—even a barrel organ, so that classic and comic productions and musicals could be presented. A weekly newspaper,
The North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle
was published. Cricket and other games were held on the ice that surrounded the vessels. Although he had no way of knowing it, Parry had instituted a program for dealing with spirit-killing boredom that, in years to come, would be employed time and again by winterbound Arctic ships.
    The
Hecla
and the
Griper
remained in their frozen entrapment for almost