In one of the more famous arctic voyages, Robert McClure took the Investigator into the polar seas from the west. He left England on January 20th, 1850, and cleared the Straits of Magellan and carried on into the Pacific. While there were two ships travelling together, they lost one another in the Pacific. After touching the Hawaiian Islands (then known as the Sandwich Island) McClure took his Investigator into the Bering Strait. He went through it and found open water, such, that he sailed along the north coast of America. He found Banks Island, the most western of the large islands comprising the northern archipelago. (See Map) He circumnavigated the island. (All of the arctic explorers, to this point in time, had little knowledge of the area. The islands were large and when they came up against one, they were never certain it was continental territory, or not.) McClure winter'd over on the northern shore of Banks Island (the Bay of God's Mercy). As expected, the Investigator became frozen-in. McClure and his crew were hopeful that they would be freed from the immobilising ice in the following spring/summer. It did not happen, as the ship continued to be frozen in; and thus, McClure and his men spent a second winter in the same spot as they spent their first. The scenario was much like that of Franklin's; except, McClure got lucky. Robert McClintock, in his voyage of discovery, coming in from the east in the Resolute, found, in 1852, on the south shore of Melville Island (Winter Harbour), one of McClure's cairns. It was a clue, a pointer, which was followed up in the summer of 1853. The Investigator was found still frozen up; the men were rescued and by 1854 were back in England, to arrive like men from the dead. Incidentally, while the Investigator did not make it through, her men did.67 The rescue ship returned the way she came; so, the first full transit of the North-East passage was first made by McClure.

In 1851, John Rae headed up another expedition in the search for Franklin "with no other instructions than to take the route he best thought."68 From the mouth of the Coppermine River he traveled the whole of the coast to that point where western Victoria Island is located. Having with him but two other men, Rae investigated, in large part, most of the coast of Victoria Island. Just to the east of Victoria Island, as the Map will show, lies King William Island which is separated from Victoria Island by the Victoria Strait: the very strait in which Franklin's two ships became stuck. It therefore appears that Rae was only 130 miles from where the ships had been frozen-in. According to Traill, "Rae returned by way of the Lakes [beginning with Great Bear] and Fort Winnipeg, having covered either by boat, sledge, or snowshoes, a distance of 5,380 miles during his eight months of continuous travel."69

Rae set out for a further expedition in 1853. He wintered at Repulse Bay. In the spring of 1854, Rae set out once again, overland, west. At Pelly Bay (Map) he met his first Eskimos. Rae described this meeting in his own words:

"When travelling westward on my spring journey, I met an Eskimo [In-nook-poo-zhee-jook, who was also identified by Hall], to whom we put the usual question, 'Have you seen white men before? He said, No, but he had heard of a number having died far to the west, pointing in that direction. Noticing a gold cap band round his head, I asked him where he obtained it, and he said it had been got where the dead white men were, but that he himself had never been there, that he did not know the place [this place was eventually located and named, Starvation Cove] ... I [Rae] bought the cap-band from him, and told him that if he or his companions had any other things, to bring them to our winter quarters at Repulse Bay, where they would receive good prices for them."70

"At a later date the same season, but previously to the breaking up of the ice, the bodies of some thirty persons were discovered on the continent and five on an island near it, about a day's journey to the NW. of a large stream which can be no other than Back's Great Fish River ... Some of the bodies had been buried (probably those of the first victims of famine); some were in a tent or tents; others under the boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter, and several lay scattered about in different directions. Of those found on the island, one was supposed to have been an officer, as he had a telescope strapped over his shoulders and his double-barrelled gun lay underneath him."71

"When found [again, according to the information given by the Inuit to Hall], the ship was in complete order; four boats hung to her side, and one boat was on deck. They got a great many things out of her; but after a considerable time she became much broken up by the ice, and sank, leaving only her masts visible. Many things floated to shore."74

As for John Rae, his problems with a number of persons in England, especially with Franklin's wife, Jane, began with his return to England in 1854, and in the telling of "His Eskimo Stories."

"Rae's return at this time has always been a matter of regret, for a great chance had been lost. No less than five years were to elapse before M'Clintock reached King William Island, and had Rae gone at once to the places indicated by the Eskimos he would almost certainly have obtained more information than M'Clintock and possibly even have found written records."75