In 1845, Sir John Franklin set off from England to locate and chart the elusive Northwest Passage. He and his crew of 129 men never returned.

Over the following decade, forty expeditions were launched in an effort to establish the fate of the missing men. But it wasn’t until 1854 that traces of their demise were discovered along the western shore of King William Island.

However, without proof, Franklin’s wife, Lady Jane, refused to believe that her husband was dead. And so, in 1857, she sponsored a final expedition. Captain Francis Leopold McClintock, a highly regarded Arctic explorer, was given command of the steam yacht Fox, and he and a crew of twenty-five set off in search of evidence. On this quest, the always-adventurous McClintock was the first European to navigate through Bellot Strait and while the Fox was frozen into the ice in winter, he and his men made long and arduous exploratory journeys by dog sled. Eventually the men reached King William Island, where they discovered a cairn at Victory Point. It contained a note, which confirmed not only that Sir John Franklin had died in 1847, but that his crew had, in fact, been the first to discover the Northwest Passage. When this news reached England, Queen Victoria bestowed the Arctic Medal on McClintock and all the officers and men of the Fox.

The Voyage of the "Fox" in the Arctic Seas is Sir Francis McClintock's own thrilling account of the Fox’s journey into the Arctic, and the discovery of the fate of Sir John Franklin and his companions.

Sir Francis Leopold McClintock (1819-1907) was an Irish adventurer and explorer known for his discoveries in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. He joined the navy in 1831 and over the course of his career participated in countless expeditions. The most famous of these expeditions is probably the voyage of the Fox in 1857, which finally discovered proof of the fate of Sir John Franklin and his crew, who had disappeared in 1845. McClintock is also credited with perfecting certain sledging techniques and completing the mapping of the final sector of unexplored mainland Arctic coastline in the Boothia Peninsula area. Knighted in 1860, and promoted to admiral in 1884, he was known for his generosity and his exceptional skill as an Arctic explorer.

Frances Leopold McClintock's profile page

Shelagh D. Grant is the author of the award-winning Arctic Justice: On Trial for Murder; Pond Inlet 1923; Sovereignty or Security? Government Policy in the Canadian North 1936-50; and more recently, Mittimatalik-Pond Inlet: A History, translated into Inuktitut; as well as numerous scholarly articles on related topics. She is an adjunct professor in the Canadian Studies Program and research associate of the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies at Trent University and lives in Peterborough.

Shelagh D. Grant's profile page