The Arctic Committee of 1851: A Background Study Part 1

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Holland, Clive
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1980
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Arctic; Austin; Baffin Bay; Devon Island; Beechey Island; Wellington Channel; Baffin; North West Passage; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400002874; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400002874

In 1850, five expeditions sailed for Baffin Bay with the common purpose of searching the Canadian Arctic for Sir John Franklin's missing North-west Passage expedition. They were all headed for different destinations and should have found themselves wintering many hundreds of miles apart; but, as chance would have it, three of them, led by Captain Horatio T. Austin, RN, Admiral Sir John Ross and the whaling master William Penny, were thrown together by ice conditions and by events. They wintered in close proximity to one another and were obliged to divide among themselves the search of the surrounding area. Ross's little private venture was too poorly equipped to contribute much, but the other two achieved very promising results: Austin's men discovered the first traces of the Franklin expedition on Devon Island and, in cooperation with Penny, located Franklin's first winter quarters on Beechey Island. In the following spring, sledge parties went out to explore hundreds of miles of new coastline; Austin found no further trace of Franklin, but Penny found persuasive evidence to suggest that the missing expedition had sailed up Wellington Channel (as, indeed, it had done, though it had not remained in that area). With the work of the travelling parties concluded, and after some conversation between Austin and Penny on 11 August 1851, all three expeditions set course for home.