Griper was commissioned in July 1813 under Commander Charles Mitchell. In February 1814 Commander Arthur M'Meekan replaced Mitchell. In 1817, Griper was at Chatham. She then underwent fitting as an exploration ship at Portsmouth between December 1818 and May 1819.
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Griper was fitted for the Coast Blockade service at Portsmouth between August and December 1825. She then joined the Coast Guard at Blackwall. She later also served at Sussex. Griper was at Portsmouth between 1827 and 1830, and at Chichester between 1831 and 1860.
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Lieutenant Matthew Liddon recommissioned Griper in January 1819. She then sailed with William Edward Parry from London on 11 May 1819.The Times (London), Monday, 4 December 1820, p.3 Parry commanded two 3-masted sailing ships: the 375 ton HMS Hecla and the 182 ton Griper.
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After wintering at Melville Island they returned to London in November 1820, and Griper was paid off in December.
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Eldridge Bay is an Arctic waterway Melville Island's Sabine Peninsula, the bay is an arm of Hecla and Griper Bay. Sabine Bay is to the south.
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On this occasion, she was carrying a land component of men.The Times (London), Saturday, 17 January 1824, p.2 Griper returned to London and was paid off in December 1824.
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While Sabine completed his observations Clavering made surveys, and his men supplemented their diet with fresh reindeer meat. Griper sailed from Spitsbergen on 23 June, and headed for the east coast of Greenland.
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Their destination was the Northwest Passage. Griper was by far the inferior of the two ships, being described as "one of these paltry Gunbrigs.....utterly unfit for this service!" (A.Parry; Parry of the Arctic ).
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Sabine Bay is an Arctic waterway in Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. Located off northern Melville Island's Sabine Peninsula, the bay is an arm of Hecla and Griper Bay. Eldridge Bay is to the north.
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Failing health resulted in him being sent home in care of the sick and wounded. "The Crews of H.M.S. Hecla & Griper Cutting Into Winter Harbour, Sept. 26th, 1819". An engraving from a journal published in 1821.
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The harsh nature and radical composition, however, caused it to remain unsold until the death of the artist in 1840. "The Crews of H.M.S. Hecla & Griper Cutting Into Winter Harbour, Sept. 26th, 1819". An engraving from the journal published in 1821.
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Hecla and Griper Bay is an Arctic waterway. Located in the Hazen Strait, it is a large inlet in the north of Melville Island, Canada. It is split between the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The bay takes its name from Arctic explorer William Edward Parry's ships and .
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Sabine completed his final set of observations, and Griper set sail for England on the 13th, though gales and unfavourable winds kept her embayed until 3 December, when she finally gained the open sea. Violent gales and electrical storms delayed her further, and she eventually returned to Deptford on 19 December 1823.
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Foster was born in Woodplumpton, Lancashire in 1797, and at an early age joined the Royal Marines. In his early career, Foster served aboard HMS York. Later, he served aboard HMS Griper in 1823 as part of the British Naval Scientific Expedition to the Arctic led by Douglas Clavering. He assisted the astronomer Edward Sabine.
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Clavering prepared his ship at Deptford, loading enough stores to see the ship through an entire winter, should they become trapped in the ice. The Griper set sail on 11 May, sailing across the North Sea, and then north along the coast of Norway, making good time as far as the Lofoten islands, where calms and light airs delayed them slightly. They arrived at Hammerfest on 2 June. Sabine set up camp ashore and made his first set of observations, which were completed by 23 June. Griper then sailed north for Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago, landing on 1 June and setting up a camp of tents and huts for six men, Sabine, and his instruments. Meanwhile, Clavering sailed north, until blocked by pack ice at 80° 21' N, and returned on the 11th.
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In 1824, HMS Griper, under Captain George Francis Lyon, anchored off Cape Pembroke on Coats Island in Hudson Bay. The whalers then encountered a band of Inuit who were said to have spoken a "strange dialect" and were called Sadlermiut. The Sadlermiut continued to establish contact with Westerners. However, as with many North American aboriginals, the Sadlermiut were often susceptible to Western diseases.
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Clavering returned to the camp on 29 August to find that Sabine had almost completed his measurements. They struck camp and returned to the ship the next day. Griper set sail on 31 August, heading south along the coast through ice floes, finally reaching open sea on 13 September. On the 23rd she arrived off the coast of Norway, finally anchoring off Trondheim on 6 October.
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The island was named by the second German North Polar Expedition 1869–70 as Clavering Insel to commemorate Douglas Charles Clavering (1794–1827), commander of the Griper on the 1823 voyage, which explored the area and, at the southern shore of this island made the first (and last) encounter that Europeans made with the now extinct Northeast-Greenland Inuit. In late August 1823, Clavering and the crew of the Griper encountered a band of twelve Inuit, including men, women and children. In his journal, Clavering described their seal-skin tent, canoe, and clothes, their harpoons and spear tipped with bone and meteoric iron, and their physical appearance ("tawny coppery" skin, "black hair and round visages; their hands and feet very fleshy, and much swelled"). He remarked on their skill in skinning a seal, the custom of sprinkling water over a seal or walrus before skinning, and their amazement at the demonstration of firearms for hunting.
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The leaves seemed to help. There was some excitement in early March when the first melt water appeared, but by the end of the month the ice was still thick. In June Parry led a group of men dragging a wooden cart to the north shore of the island which he named Hecla and Griper Bay. It was the first of August before the ships were able to float out of the harbour.
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The landscape depicts a shipwreck in the middle of a broken ice-sheet, whose shards have piled up after the impact. The ice has become like a monolithic tomb whose edges jut into the sky. The stern of the wreck is just visible on the right. As an inscription on it confirms, this is HMS Griper, one of two ships that took part in William Edward Parry's 1819–1820 and 1824 expeditions to the North Pole.
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Griper was refitted at Deptford between February and May 1823. Under the command of Captain Douglas Clavering, she conducted a voyage to Greenland and Spitzbergen, conveying astronomer Edward Sabine who took observations on behalf of the Board of Longitude.The Times (London), Saturday, 20 December 1823, p.2 A further note to this voyage occurred on an island later named Clavering Island, where, in August, the expedition made the first and only European contact with the now extinct North Greenland Inuit.
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Augusta Webster (30 January 1837 – 5 September 1894) born in Poole, Dorset as Julia Augusta Davies, was an English poet, dramatist, essayist, and translator. The daughter of Vice-admiral George Davies and Julia Hume, she spent her younger years on board the ship he was stationed, the Griper. She studied Greek at home, taking a particular interest in Greek drama, and went on to study at the Cambridge School of Art. She published her first volume of poetry in 1860 under the pen name Cecil Homes.
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Anthony Brandt,"The Man Who Ate His Boots", Chapter 11 Hudson Bay was unusually ice-filled, and on 1 September 1824, near Cape Fullerton, just west of the entrance to Roes Welcome Sound, a storm drove the ship onto a rock or iceberg. All hands expected the ship to sink but when the gale died down it was still afloat. On 12 September, Griper was forced to anchor offshore in a gale with heavy seas and snow. It lost its anchor cables and the masts and rigging were badly damaged.
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After making their way through ice floes, the ship finally reached the shore on 8 July, at around latitude 74°. They sailed north-east looking for a suitable landing place, and on 10 July discovered two islands, which Clavering later named the Pendulum Islands, (Little Pendulum Island and Sabine Island). The Griper continued north until blocked by ice. Clavering landed on an island he named Shannon Island, but realized he could go no further, so retraced his steps, and landed on the larger of the Pendulum Islands on 14 July to allow Sabine to set up camp and make his observations.
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