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weeks the ships remained trapped. At one point, a party tried to walk to the shore but got lost in dense fog. Fortunately, a rescue party found them and led them back to the ship. Then, on July 6, temperatures rose and the ice that surrounded the ships suddenly began to break apart. Immediately, they began sailing up what Buchan believed to be a promising open stretch of water. But that night the ice returned, locking in the vessels even more tightly than before.
    Desperate to escape the icy prison, Buchan ordered that both ships be warped forward. This meant attaching anchors to far-off blocks of ice and then winching the vessels towards them. For three days, the backbreaking warping continued, with frustrating results. At one point the vessels actually slipped back two miles. In the process, both ships were damaged by the ice, and the
Trent
began to spring leaks.
    To his credit, Buchan refused to give in. He knew that open sea was some thirty miles away, and for the next three weeks, day and night, the warping continued. Initially, it took five hours to move the vessels forward just one mile, but he urged the men on and finally the open waters were reached. At this point, despite the weariness of his crews and the battered condition of his ships, he headed west for Greenland, still hoping to find a passage that would lead to the Pole. But within twenty-four hours, a sudden, unrelenting storm drove the ships back to the very edge of the ice pack from which they had so laboriously escaped. When the storm abated, the
Dorothea
and the
Trent
were found to be in even worse condition than before. Buchan was, at last, forced to admit that his search for the Pole had to be abandoned.
    After putting into Spitsbergen Harbor, where both vessels were repaired, the expedition headed for home. But even then, Buchan was not ready to totally abandon hope. Four times during the return voyage he tried to penetrate the ice pack, only to find no opening. Finally, when severe weather threatened once more he had to admit defeat. In the third week of October the
Dorothea
and the
Trent
arrived back in England. They had not found the Pole. Despite their heroics, they had not, in fact, even reached the northernmost recorded point of 80°48’.
    MEANTIME, NOTHING HAD BEEN heard from the two ships that Barrow had sent in search of the bigger prize. The
Isabella
, commanded by the expedition’s leader John Ross, and the
Alexander
, with Edward Parry in command, had set sail just three days after Buchan and Franklin had departed on their ill-fated voyage. Both officers had been carefully chosen. The son of a Protestant minister, John Ross had entered the Royal Navy when he was only nine years old and was a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. Short, red-haired, and both stubborn and vain, he was known for his quick temper. Yet, when he needed to, he could be disarmingly charming. Edward Parry had also seen action in these wars and in the British-American War of 1812, during which, in 1814, he took part in the destruction of twenty-seven American vessels on the Connecticut River. The physical opposite of Ross, the dashing Parry was tall, slender, and among the most handsome of all the naval officers. He was also one of the most ambitious. The son of a prosperous doctor, he moved easily through the highest levels of British society.

    THE FIRST of Barrow’s passage-seekers, John Ross was still searching the Arctic when he was seventy-three years old.

    THE INTREPID Edward Parry led three searches for the passage; he also commanded an expedition seeking the North Pole.
    Barrow had given specific orders to the two explorers. Among other objectives, they were to attempt to solve Arctic riddles that were the result of much earlier explorations. Did the bay that William Baffin claimed to have discovered, one that Barrow felt was key to finding the passage, really exist? And what about Greenland? Was it an island, or was it connected to North America?