McClure Arctic expedition

Common card · No. 471488

The McClure Arctic expedition, one of many attempts to find the missing Franklin expedition, was significant for being the first to successfully discover and transit the Northwest Passage, which it accomplished west to east by boat and sledge. Robert McClure and his crew spent three years locked in the pack ice aboard HMS Investigator before abandoning the ship and making their escape across the ice. Rescued by HMS Resolute, which was itself later lost to the ice, McClure's party traveled by sledge to Beechey Island where they met HMS North Star and returned to England in 1854, where he was knighted and rewarded for completing the passage. The expedition discovered the first known Northwest Passage, in the geographical sense, which was the Prince of Wales Strait. It also made the first passage, or journey, across the Canadian Arctic from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. It did not, however, traverse the Prince of Wales Strait. Instead, the expedition did a portage across Banks Island...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Robert John McClure, Public domain