Free Resolute by Martin W. Sandler Page A

a full year. It was not until the first of August that the ice finally began to break up and the ships could get underway. But as Parry resumed sailing westward he discovered that the waters ahead of him were still clogged with ice. Miles off in the distance he could see land, which he named Banks Land, but he knew he would never be able to reach it in that season. It was time to go home.
    The passage had not been found, but Parry had accomplished more than any other seeker had ever achieved. He had proven that Lancaster Sound opened a passage to the west. He had verified the need to map the maze of islands through which any successful passage-seeker would have to travel, and he had demonstrated that wintering in the Arctic without disaster was possible.
    Immediately upon returning, Parry was promoted to the rank of commander. He was elected unanimously as a fellow of the Royal Society and was publicly honored by various institutions and hailed wherever he went. Most important to his future prospects, he had justified the faith that Barrow and the Admiralty had placed in him. “No one,” Barrow would write after reading Parry’s report, “could rise from its perusal without the fullest conviction that Commander Parry’s merits as an officer and scientific navigator are not confined to his professional duties; but that the resources of his mind are equal to the most arduous situations, and fertile in expedient under every circumstance, however difficult, dangerous, or unexpected.”
    High praise indeed. And in six months Barrow had sent his hero off again. Parry could not wait to return. “How I long to be among the ice,” he had told his friends. Once again he was given two ships. He would command the 375-ton
Fury.
Command of his old ship, the
Hecla
, was given to George Francis Lyon, who had become a favorite of Barrow’s by overcoming extreme hardships during an expedition that Barrow had sent to Africa to trace the course of the River Niger.
    This time, instead of pursuing the path through Lancaster Sound, Parry had been instructed to sail westward through Hudson Strait toward Repulse Bay. Again, any scientific observations he might make were secondary. He was to finish the job; he was to find the passage.
    The
Fury
and the
Hecla
set sail on May 8, 1821, and by the end of July had entered Repulse Bay. But Parry soon found that, even this early in the season, his progress westward was blocked by ice. Turning from the bay, he and Lyon spent the next two months following the coast of Melville Peninsula, exploring every inlet, anxiously searching for a passage to the west. By October, ice was forming everywhere and the two ships were forced to put into a sheltered spot that Parry named Winter Island. There, for the next nine months, they would be frozen in position.
    Immediately, masts and sails were stored and the work and entertainment regimen was begun. Parry, now a veteran of “wintering over,” had added new features to occupy his men. Along with regular performances by the Royal Arctic Theater, now equipped with stage lights, Parry introduced a school aboard each of the vessels where crew members were taught both reading and writing. An observatory was built onshore where men of the
Fury
and
Hecla
took magnetic measurements and made other scientific observations.
    Much of the inevitable boredom of the long winter was relieved by something for which Parry could not have planned. On February 1, 1822, a group of Inuit suddenly arrived and informed Parry that they had built a winter settlement just two miles away. For the next several months the Eskimos paid regular visits to the ships. Most important, they spoke of a strait that lay to the north of Winter Island, a passageway that provided access to open water to the west. Now the monotony of the wintering over was replaced by impatience. Could this passageway lead to success at last?
    Impatient as he was, Parry was forced to wait