Next 42. McClure, Robert John Le Mesurier, Sir
(1807-1873)
The Discovery of the North-west Passage by H.M.S. Investigator…1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854. Ed. By Sherard Osborn. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1856.
Melville Island, viewed from Banks Island, from Robert McClure, The Discovery of the North-west Passage by H.M.S. Investigator, 1856.
The “Smoking Cliffs’ of Franklin Bay, , from Robert McClure, The Discovery of the North-west Passage by H.M.S. Investigator, 1856.
HMS Investigator was sent out to look for the Franklin expedition from the west. Under the command of Robert McClureit sailed into the Arctic Ocean in 1850, and it made it all the way to Prince of Wales Strait that first year. From the ice at the end of the strait, they could see Melville Island on the opposite side of the Sound, which Parry had reached from the east on his first voyage of 1819.
The Investigator in the next year sailed all the way around Banks Island, finally reaching Mercy Bay, where they were frozen in during the winter of 1851-2. The ship would never escape. In 1853, the Investigator was discovered by a sledge expedition from HMS Resolute, which was anchored across the sound at Dealy Island.
Eventually the entire crew of the Investigator would cross the ice to the Resolute, and they would make it back to England on the supply ships of Belcher’s Arctic Squadron, thus completing the Northwest Passage, in a somewhat indirect manner.
In the spring of 1851, the Investigator sailed by the so-called ‘Smoking Cliffs’ of Franklin Bay. Several members of the crew visited the curious location. These cliffs are made of oil-shale, and they spontaneously combust in a specacular fashion.
