The Exact Results Of This Land Expedition Are Not
Yet Fully And Clearly Known; But It Is Generally Understood, That
After
having undergone infinite hardships and sufferings, they have been enabled
to confirm Hearne and Mackenzie's discoveries or conjectures respecting
The
Coppermine River, and to ascertain other points connected with the
geography and natural history of these remote and almost inaccessible
regions, though the most important and leading points of the expedition
have not been settled. [6]
In consequence of Captain Ross having penetrated into Baffin's Bay, an
object only accomplished once before by Baffin himself, and which for two
hundred years had been frequently again fruitlessly attempted, the
Greenland ships which left England during the season immediately following
Captain Ross's return, were induced, in order to reach a fresh and unfished
sea, to pursue the course that he had opened for them. The circumstance
that fourteen of them were wrecked, proves, unless the season had been
uncommonly tempestuous, that Captain Ross must have conducted his
expedition with considerable care and skill, notwithstanding he missed an
excellent opportunity of either discovering a north-west passage, or of
adding one more opening to those which were proved not to contain it.
The second sea expedition, to which we have already alluded, was under the
direction of Captain Parry, who had sailed along with Captain Ross in the
first expedition; he was therefore possessed of much knowledge and
experience, which would prove essentially useful and directly applicable to
the object he was about to undertake. Two ships were fitted out with all
necessary preparations for such a voyage, the Hecla bomb, and Griper
gun-brig, and they sailed from the Thames early in the month of May 1819.
Of the high importance and value to navigators of the chronometer, Captain
Parry had a striking and undoubted proof in the early part of his voyage.
On the 24th of May he saw a small solitary crag, called Rockall, not far
from the Orkney Islands. "There is," he observes, in this part of his
journal, "no more striking proof of the infinite value of chronometers at
sea, than the certainty with which a ship may sail directly for a single
rock, like this, rising like a speck out of the ocean, and at the distance
of forty-seven leagues from any other land."
About the middle of July he reached the latitude of 73 deg., after having made
many fruitless attempts to cross the ice that fills the central portion of
Davis's Strait and Baffin's Bay. the instructions of Captain Parry
particularly pointed out the sound which Captain Ross had left unexplored,
and which there could be no doubt was the Sir James Lancaster's Sound of
Baffin, to be most carefully and minutely examined, as the one by which it
was most probable a north-west passage might be effected, or which, at
least, even if not navigable, on account of the ice, would connect the
Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. On the seventh day after entering this sound,
he succeeded in reaching open water; but this was not reached without
infinite difficulty and labour, as the breadth of the barrier of ice was
found to be eighty miles; through this they penetrated by the aid of
sailing, tracking, heaving by the capstan, and sawing, being able to
advance, even with the assistance of all the methods, only at the rate of
half a mile an hour, or twelve miles a day.
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