Early in October the ships took up their quarters at Winter Island on the coast of Melville Peninsula in 66° 32´, and there, during the cordial intercourse with the Eskimos, Parry heard of the way through further north which led him on his release in the following July to discover Fury and Hecla Strait, along which the ships passed to find their progress blocked by the ice just beyond its entrance into Regent Inlet. Returning through the strait, they reached the island of Igloolik at the eastern entrance, and there they passed the winter, Igloolik being an important Eskimo settlement, with four fixed places of residence on it, to which as the season changes the natives move in rotation. From this island, as the health of the men did not permit of his venturing to spend another winter in the ice, Parry retraced his route and returned to England. The ships dropped anchor in the Thames on Trafalgar Day, 1823. Next year, on the 19th of May, they were off again to the north to seek a passage to the west down Prince Regent Inlet, Parry in the _Hecla_, Hoppner in the _Fury_. It was a bad season. The ships were late in leaving Baffin Bay and were hindered by new ice in Lancaster Sound. So far from reaching the strait discovered two years before, they could get no further south than Port Bowen, in 73° 12´, where they spent the winter in a singularly barren part of Cockburn Land. Starting in July they went down to Cresswell Bay, the ships being forced by the weather and the ice to work—as is not unusual under such circumstances—in almost every possible direction within every mile, their track—as shown in the illustration—being most complicated. The end of it all was that the _Fury_ was wrecked and her stores carefully taken out and left, on what was named Fury Beach, for the use of future callers in want of them. And the _Hecla_ came home alone.