I have not thought it necessary, in the course of this volume, to enter into any examination of the question respecting the approaches to the North Pole which had already been effected previous to our late attempt.  I shall, therefore, only add that, after carefully weighing the various authorities, from which every individual interested in this matter is at liberty to form his own conclusions, my own impartial conviction, at the time of our setting out on this enterprise, coincided (with a single exception) with the opinion expressed by the Commissioners of Longitude in their memorial to the king, that “the progress of discovery had not arrived northward, according to any well-authenticated accounts, so far as eighty-one degrees of north latitude.”  The exception to which I allude is in favour of Mr. Scoresby, who states his having, in the year 1806, reached the latitude of 81 deg. 12’ 42” by actual observation, and 81 deg. 30’ by dead reckoning.  I therefore consider the latter parallel as, in all probability, the highest which had ever been attained prior to the attempt recorded in the following pages.

* * * * *

The Hecla being ready to proceed down the river, she was taken in tow, at ten A.M. on the 25th of March, 1827, by the Lightning steam-vessel; and having received and returned the cheers of the Greenwich pensioners, the children of the Naval Asylum, and of various ships in the river, she made fast to the moorings at Northfleet at three P.M.  The following day was occupied in swinging the ship round on the various points of the compass, in order to obtain the amount of the deviation of the magnetic needle produced by the attraction of the ship’s iron, and to fix Mr. Barlow’s plate for correcting it.[015] On the 3d of April the ship’s company received three months’ wages in advance, together with their river-pay; and on the following morning, at half past four, we weighed and made sail from the Nore.

We had at this time remarkably fine weather for the season of the year, and such a continuance of southerly winds that we arrived off the island of Soroe, within which Hammerfest lies, on the 17th, without having had occasion to make a tack till we entered the fiord which forms the northern entrance.

The wind becoming light from the southward, and very variable, we were occupied the whole of the 18th in beating up towards Hammerfest.  In the evening a Lapland boat came on board, and one of the men undertook to pilot the ship to the anchorage, which, after beating all night against an ebb tide, we reached at three A.M. on the 19th.  Finding that our reindeer had not arrived, I immediately despatched Lieutenant Crozier, in one of our own boats, to Alten, from whence they were expected—­a distance of about sixty English miles.  At the same time, we landed our observatories and instruments at Fugleness, near the establishment of Messrs. Crowe and Woodfall, the British merchants residing here; and Lieutenant Foster and