In the following April he proposed to the first lord to attempt to reach the pole from Spitzbergen, by travelling with sledge-boats over the ice or through any spaces of open water. The proposal was referred to the president and council of the Royal Society, and, on their approval, Parry was appointed again to the Hecla, and sailed from the Nore on 4 April 1827. On 14 May he was in latitude 81° 5߱ 30″ N., and from the broken state of the ice believed he might have gone many miles further had he not judged it more important to secure the ship in some harbour before attempting the journey with the sledge-boats. This was effected in Treurenberg Bay, in latitude 79° 55߱, on 20 June; and on the 21st the boats started under the immediate command of Parry himself. On the 24th, in latitude 81° 31߱, the boats were hauled on the ice, which proved to be very rough, often soft and sloppy, and much broken; the sledge-boats too were very heavy, and the labour was excessive. It was impossible to make more than seven miles a day over the surface; very frequently not more than the half of it; and when, on 23 July, their latitude was found to be but 82° 45߱, the task was judged hopeless. The fact, which they were slow to realise, was that the current was setting the ice-floes to the southward nearly as fast as the men could drag the sledges towards the north; for the last three days it set rather faster, and when, on the 26th, Parry decided to return, their latitude was some miles less than the 82° 45߱, which is marked on the charts as ‘Parry's farthest.’ It was not only Parry's farthest, but the farthest north of civilised man till on 12 May 1876 Markham and Parr attained the latitude of 83° 20߱, over the palæocrystic sea to the north of Smith Sound. Since then, in May 1882, in the same locality, the latitude of 83° 24߱ was reached by the American expedition under Greely. The Hecla left Treurenberg Bay on 28 Aug., and arrived in the Thames on 6 Oct. When she was paid off, Parry resumed his duties as hydrographer till 13 May 1829, when he resigned, having accepted the appointment of commissioner for the Australian Agricultural Company. He had been knighted a few days before, 29 April; and on 1 July the university of Oxford conferred on him the degree of D.C.L.
In 1834 he returned to England; from March 1835 to February 1836 he was assistant poor-law commissioner in Norfolk; from April 1837 to December 1846 he was controller of the steam-department of the navy; and captain-superintendent of Haslar Hospital from December 1846 to 4 June 1852, when he was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral. In the latter part of 1853 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Greenwich Hospital. During the autumn and winter of 1854 his health was most seriously broken, and in the summer of 1855 he went for medical treatment to Ems, where he died on 8 July. His body was brought to Greenwich, and buried there in the mausoleum of the hospital burial-ground. He married, in October 1826, Isabella Louisa, daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley, by whom he had issue two daughters and two sons, the elder of whom, Edward, suffragan bishop of Dover (1830–1890), is separately noticed; the younger, Charles, a commander in the navy, died at Naples in 1868, and is the subject of a biography by his brother. His wife died in 1839, and he married for a second time, in 1841, Catherine Edwards, daughter of the Rev. Robert Hankinson, and widow of Mr. Samuel Hoare, by whom he had two daughters.
Parry's portrait, by Charles Scottowe, is in the museum of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich.
Parry was the author of: 1. ‘Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, performed in the Years 1819–20 in H.M. Ships Hecla and Griper,’ 4to, 1821. 2. ‘Journal of a second Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage … performed in the Years 1821–3, in H.M. Ships Fury and Hecla,’ 4to, 1824. 3. ‘Journal of a Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage … performed in the Years 1824–5, in H.M. Ships Fury and Hecla,’ 4to, 1826. 4. ‘Narrative of an Attempt to reach the North Pole in Boats fitted for that purpose and attached to H.M. Ship Hecla, in the Year 1827,’ 4to, 1828. These were all published by the authority of the admiralty. A neat and convenient abridgement of the three voyages for the discovery of a north-west passage, in 5 vols. 16mo, was published in 1828.
[The career of Parry as an arctic explorer is to be best studied in his own Journals; his Life, written by his son Edward in 1857, which ran through many editions, dwells, with a natural bias, on the religious side of his character, which was strongly marked. The memoir in Marshall's Roy. Nav. Biogr. viii. (suppl. pt. iv.) 315, is a good notice of his professional life. See also Gent. Mag. 1826, ii. 233–9.]
PARS, HENRY (1734–1806), draughtsman and chaser, born in 1734, was the son of a chaser and elder brother of William Pars
