Sketch by Lieutenant William Beechey of the crews of the ships Hecla and Griper cutting through the ice to make a safe winter harbour for Sir William Parry's expedition of 1819-1820. Its purpose was to discover the North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. After the expedition had reached a longitude of 110 degrees west from Greenwich severe ice halted their progress. Finally blocked by ice they turned back to a place Parry called Winter Harbour on the south shore of Melville Island, somewhere near 107- or 108?W. Sir William records the skill which had been acquired by the ships' companies in the art of sawing and sinking the seven inch thick ice. They cut a canal over two miles long and moved the Hecla and Griper to their winter quarters where they remained for ten months until August 1820.