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Sir William Edward Parry (1790-1855) was an English rear-admiral and Arctic explorer. In 1818 he received command of the brig Alexander in the Arctic expedition under Captain John Ross. This expedition returned to England without having made any new discoveries but Parry in the following year obtained the chief command of a new Arctic expedition; consisting of the two ships HMS Griper and HMS Hecla. It was a voyage of almost unprecedented Arctic success, having accomplished more than half the journey from Greenland to Bering Strait, the completion of which solved the ancient problem of a Northwest Passage. A narrative of the expedition, entitled Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North- West Passage, appeared in 1821. He was promoted to the rank of commander, and made two more Arctic journeys in following years but none were as successful as the first and the third resulted in the wreck of the Fury. He obtained the sanction of the Admiralty for an attempt on the North Pole and published an account of this journey under the title of Narrative of the Attempt to Reach the North Pole (1827).

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Sir William Edward Parry (1790-1855) was an English rear-admiral and Arctic explorer; an evangelical [Christian] and an ardent advocate of moral reform in the navy. Parry was born in Bath, the son of Dr. Caleb Hillier Parry and Sarah Rigby. He was educated at King Edward's School, Bath. At the age of thirteen he joined the flag-ship of Admiral 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. He took advantage of this opportunity for the study and practice of astronomical observations in northern latitudes, and afterwards published the results of his studies in a small volume on Nautical Astronomy by Night (1816). From 1813-1817 he served on the North American station.In 1818 he received command of the brig Alexander in the Arctic expedition under Captain (afterwards Sir) John Ross. This expedition returned to England without having made any new discoveries but Parry, confident, as he expressed it, that attempts at Polar discovery had been hitherto relinquished just at a time when there was the greatest chance of succeeding, in the following year obtained the chief command of a new Arctic expedition; consisting of the two ships HMS Griper and HMS Hecla. This expedition returned to England in November, 1820 after a voyage of almost unprecedented Arctic success, having accomplished more than half the journey from Greenland to Bering Strait, the completion of which solved the ancient problem of a Northwest Passage. A narrative of the expedition, entitled Journal of a Voyage to discover a North-west Passage, appeared in 1821.

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