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Highly detailed map depicting the exploration of William Edward Parry in the Arctic in 1819 and 1820.

The map appeared in volume VIII of the French serial Nouvelle Annales du Voyages, published in France by 1821. This journal, which was issued during the first half of the 19th Century, compiled contemporary accounts of the most recent voyages and overland expeditions of discovery, frequently including maps which depict important contemporary discoveries.

Sir William Edward Parry (1790 - 1855) was born and educated in Bath. At 13, he joined Admiral Cornwallis ss volunteer. By 1810, Parry was promoted to 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 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. 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.

Upon his return, Parry received promotion to Commander. In May 1821, he led a second expedition to discover a Northwest Passage, but returned to England in October 1823 without achieving his purpose. Thereafter, he was appointed acting hydrographer to the navy. His Journal of a Second Voyage, &c., appeared in 1824. Parry undertook a third expedition to the Arctic in 1824, but again failed to find the Northwest Passage.

In the following year Parry obtained the sanction of the Admiralty for an attempt on the North Pole from the northern shores of Spitsbergen, and his extreme point of 82° 45' N. lat. remained for 49 years the highest latitude attained. He published an account of this journey under the title of Narrative of the Attempt to reach the North Pole, &c. (1827). In April 1829 he was knighted.