He reached 82° 45' N, setting a record for human exploration Farthest North that stood for nearly five decades before being surpassed at 83° 20' N by Albert Hastings Markham in 1875.

At the age of thirteen he joined the flagship of Admiral Sir William Cornwallis in the Channel fleet as a first-class volunteer, in 1806 became a midshipman, and in 1810 received promotion to the rank of lieutenant in the frigate Alexander, which spent the next three years in the protection of the Spitsbergen whale fishery.

[1] Parry and many others thought that Ross was wrong to turn back after entering Lancaster Sound at the north end of Baffin Island.

For protection from ice the ships were clad with 3-inch (7.6 cm) oak, had iron plates on their bows and internal cross-beams.

There was some excitement in early March when the first melt water appeared, but by the end of the month the ice was still 6 feet (2 m) thick.

In June Parry led a group of men dragging a wooden cart to the north shore of the island which he named Hecla and Griper Bay.

A narrative of the expedition, entitled Journal of a Voyage to discover a North-west Passage, appeared in 1821, publisher John Murray paying 1,000 guineas for it.

Others with him were George Fisher, scientist and chaplain, William Hooper, purser and diarist, lieutenant Henry Parkyns Hoppner and then midshipmen Francis Crozier and James Clark Ross.

In September Lieutenant Reid trekked 100 miles (160 km) west along the Strait to the ice-filled Gulf of Boothia, the north end of which Parry had approached in 1819.

During his absence, he had been promoted to post rank in November 1821, and shortly after his return he was appointed acting Hydrographer of the Navy.

The goal this time was Prince Regent Inlet at the west end of Baffin Island where he had been blocked by ice in 1819.

He entered Prince Regent Inlet but after 60 miles (97 km) of ice he was forced to winter at a place he called Port Bowen on the eastern shore.

Stores were unloaded, but by 25 August it was clear that the keel was broken and the advancing ice forced them to abort further efforts.

In the following year Parry obtained the sanction of the Admiralty for an attempt on the North Pole from the northern shores of Spitsbergen at Sjuøyane.

Parry served as Commissioner of the Australian Agricultural Company based at Tahlee on the northern shore of Port Stephens, New South Wales, from 1829 to 1834.

[7] Parry was subsequently selected for the post of comptroller of the newly created department of steam machinery of the Navy, and held this office until his retirement from active service in 1846, when he was appointed captain-superintendent of Haslar Hospital.

He died after a long illness at Bad Ems in Germany on 8 July 1855, but his body was returned to London for burial.

The cemetery is now largely cleared to create a pocket park but he is named on the west face of the Officers Monument in the centre of the area.

However, his techniques were not infallible: in 1939 viable spores of certain heat-resistant bacteria were found in canned roast veal that had travelled with Parry to the Arctic Circle in 1824.