Appearances had now become so much against the ships making any further progress that season, as to render it a matter of very serious consideration whether they ought to risk being shut up, during the winter, in the strait, where, from whatever cause it might proceed, the last year’s ice was not yet wholly detached from the shores, and where a fresh formation had already commenced, which there was but too much reason to believe would prove a permanent one. Captain Parry, therefore, determined to return to a small island, called by the Esquimaux Igloolik, in lat. 69° 21', long. 81° 44', where they remained from the 24th Sept. 1822, until the 8th Aug. 1828. The daily visits of the natives, throughout the winter, afforded, both to officers and men, a fund of constant variety and never-falling amusement, which no resources of their own could possibly have furnished.
In April, 1823, a twelve months’ provisions and stores were removed from the Hecla to the Fury, and various necessary exchanges made in anchors, cables, and boats, it having been determined that the former ship should return to England as soon as the sea became navigable. Just before the disruption of the ice, however, some slight, but unequivocal, symptoms of scurvy were reported to have appeared among the Fury’s crew, and Captain Parry began to entertain doubts whether it would still be prudent to adopt the intended measure of remaining out in her as a single ship; whether, in short, under existing circumstances, the probable evil did not far outweigh the possible good. In order to assist his own judgment on this occasion upon one of the most material points, he directed the medical officers of the Fury to furnish him with their opinions “as to the probable effect that a third winter passed in these regions would produce on the health of the officers, seamen, and marines of that ship, taking into consideration every circumstance connected with their situation.” Mr. Edwards’s reply, with which in substance that of Mr. Skeoch coincided, is here given.
