Rae had displayed such ability when acting in conjunction with Sir John Richardson that the Government felt that they could not do better than entrust the conduct of the next expedition to him, so they asked Sir George Simpson for the loan of his services and commissioned him to continue the Franklin search in 1851 in whatever manner he thought best, only stipulating that the voyage should be made by boat.

With considerable difficulty he succeeded in getting two small boats built at the Great Bear Lake, and, after a preliminary sledge-expedition to Wollaston Land, in which he covered no less than 1100 miles in thirty-one days, on June 15, 1851, he started off on the serious work of the year from Provision Station, Kendall River, whither the boats had been brought to meet him. Passing through Dease Strait he soon made Cape Colburn, and instantly set to work to examine the east coast of Victoria Land, much of which had never been visited by a civilised man before. His boats, however, had to be abandoned after a while, for a stiff northerly gale and packed ice made it impossible for him to use them, and he felt that he would do better if he pursued his journey on foot. The rugged limestone debris with which the shore was covered, however, made this mode of travelling exceedingly irksome, and, meeting with no better success inland, he was obliged to turn back after attaining lat. 70° 03´ long. 101° 25´ thus, though he did not know it, reaching a higher latitude than that in which the Erebus and Terror were abandoned.

On his way home he found a boat’s stanchion and the butt-end of a small flagstaff, with a piece of rope attached to it in the form of a loop, which he rightly supposed to be relics of the Franklin expedition.

He returned to Fort Confidence, at the eastern extremity of the Great Bear Lake, without misadventure, after a brilliant journey, in the course of which he had explored 725 miles of unknown coast-line in Wollaston and Victoria Lands. For this service the Royal Geographical Society awarded him the founder’s gold medal.

His next journey was undertaken not as an agent of the Government, but as a servant of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and his mission was to explore the west coast of Boothia, of which very little was known at that time.

His first objective was his old headquarters at Repulse Bay, and thither he sailed in August. The outlook was calculated to fill with misgivings the heart of a less intrepid explorer than Rae. The weather, in the first place, was unfavourable for fishing and hunting. In the second place, not a trace of an Eskimo was to be found, from which fact he gathered that game was not so plentiful now as was the case when he had paid his last visit to Repulse Bay. Consequently he began to feel serious doubts as to the possibility of spending the winter there, for, being of the opinion that the country ought always to be made to support the explorer, he had only brought sufficient provisions for three months, and had depended on his guns and his nets to make up the deficiency. Consequently, he did not feel justified in asking his men to share the dangers of an Arctic winter with him against their will, so he called them together, told them exactly how matters stood, and asked them whether they would stay there or return. Such was their confidence in their leader that they one and all volunteered to remain where they were. Luckily for them the weather improved a little, and before the end of September they had laid in a sufficient supply of provisions and fuel to last them up to the period of the spring migrations of the deer.

It was on the last day of March that Rae and four men started out on the great spring journey which would, as they hoped, lead them across Boothia Peninsula from Pelly Bay to the Castor and Pollux River, and thence northward along the western coast of Boothia as far as Bellot Strait, thus connecting Simpson’s discoveries with those of Kennedy. They had been travelling for about three weeks when they happened to fall in with an Eskimo, from whom they obtained the first news of Franklin’s fate. The story is, perhaps, best given in Rae’s own words:—

“The man was very communicative, and, on putting to him the usual questions as to his having seen white men before, or any ships or boats, he replied in the negative; but said that a party of ‘Kabloonans’ (whites) had died of starvation a long distance to the west of where we then were, and beyond a large river. He stated that he did not know the exact place, that he had never been there, and that he could not accompany us so far.”

The substance of the information then and subsequently obtained was to the following effect:—

“In the spring four winters past (1850), whilst some Eskimo families were killing seals near the north shore of a large island, named in Arrowsmith’s charts King William Land, forty white men were seen travelling in company southward over the ice, and dragging a boat and sledges with them. They were passing along the shore of the above named island. None of the party could speak the Eskimo language so well as to be understood; but by signs the natives were led to believe the ship or ships had been crushed by ice, and that they were then going to where they expected to find deer to shoot. From the appearance of the men (all of whom, with the exception of one officer, were hauling on the drag ropes of the sledges, and were looking thin,) they were then supposed to be getting short of provisions, and they purchased a small seal, or piece of seal, from the native. The officer was described as being a tall, stout, middle-aged man. When their day’s journey terminated they pitched tents to rest in.

“At a later day the same season, but previous to the disruption of the ice, the corpses of some thirty persons and some graves were discovered on the continent, and five dead bodies on an island near it, about a long day’s journey to the north-west of the mouth of a large stream, which can be no other than Back’s Great Fish River, as its description and that of the low shore in the neighbourhood of Point Ogle and Montreal Island agree exactly with that of Sir George Back. Some of the bodies were in a tent or tents, others were under the boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter, and some lay scattered about in different directions. Of those seen on the island, it was supposed that one was that of an officer (chief), as he had a telescope strapped over his shoulders, and his double-barrelled gun lay underneath him. From the mutilated state of many of the bodies, and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last dread alternative—cannibalism—as a means of sustaining life. A few of the unfortunate men must have survived until the arrival of the wild fowl (say until the end of May), as shots were heard, and fresh bones and feathers of geese were noticed near the scene of the sad event.

“There appears to have been an abundant store of ammunition, as the gunpowder was emptied by the natives in a heap on the ground, and a quantity of shot and ball was found below high-water mark, having probably been left on the ice close to the beach before the spring thaw commenced. There must have been a number of telescopes, guns (some of them double-barrelled), watches, compasses, etc., all of which seem to have been broken up, as I saw pieces of these different articles with the natives, and I purchased as many as possible, together with some silver spoons and forks, an order of merit in the form of a star, and a small plate engraved ‘Sir John Franklin, K.C.B.’”

These spoons and forks, it may be mentioned, bore the crests and initials of some fifteen members of the expedition.

So far as Rae could discover, the natives had seen no traces whatever of the ships, and whenever they were questioned about them, they always reverted to the Victory, which was abandoned by Ross in the Gulf of Boothia in 1832. “My chief reason,” he writes, “for believing that none of the ships had been found was the fact that, in 1854, the Eskimos were so destitute of wood, that, although they had plenty of sealskins to make their small hunting canoes, they had no wood for the frames. Now, as 1846 was fourteen years after Ross’s vessel was abandoned, and as 1854 was only four years by Eskimo account—actually six years—after the Franklin ships were abandoned, the probability is that had these ships, or even one of them, been found, the natives would have had at least as much wood in 1854 as they had in 1847. The testimony of the Fox expedition of 1854 tends to support this idea, as no large wooden sledges were found, and no wood of a size larger than might have been got from the keel of a boat was seen.... I questioned the Repulse Bay Eskimos over and over again about whether any of the ships of the starved white men had been found, but they could tell me nothing, and always went back to the story of the Victory, stating that it was the only vessel from which wood had been obtained. I still believe that this was the ship to which the Eskimos referred when speaking to M’Clintock in 1859, and that they concealed the locality of the wreck lest he should wish to go there.... I may add that the white men when seen alive by the Eskimos made the latter understand by signs and a word or two of Eskimo, that they were going to the mainland (noo-nah) to shoot deer (took-took).... The Eskimos also remarked that it was curious that the sledges were seen with the party when travelling, but none were seen where the dead were, although the boat or boats remained. I pointed out to them that the white men having got close to the mouth of the Great Fish River, would require their boat to go up it, but as they did not require the sledges any more, they might have burned them for fuel. A look of intelligence immediately lit up their faces, and they said that they might have done so, for there had been fires.... They said also that feathers of geese had been seen, so they had probably shot some of these birds—an evidence that some of the party must have lived until the beginning of June, the date at which the geese arrive so far north.... What struck me at the time, as it does still, was the great mistake made by Franklin’s party in attempting to save themselves by retreating to the Hudson’s Bay territories. We should have thought that the fearful sufferings undergone by Franklin and his companions, Richardson and Back, on a former short journey through these barren grounds, would have deterred inexperienced men from attempting such a thing, when the well-known route to Fury Beach, certainly more accessible than any of the Hudson Bay Company’s settlements, and by which the Rosses escaped in 1832-33, was open to them. The distance from their ships to Fury Beach was very little greater than that from where Ross’s vessel was abandoned to the same place, and Franklin and his officers must have known that an immense stock of provisions still remained at the place where the Fury was wrecked, and where, even so late as 1859, an immense stock of preserved vegetables, soups, tobacco, sugar, flour, etc., still remained (a much larger supply than could be found at many of the Hudson’s Bay trading posts); besides, the people would have been in the direct road of searching parties or whalers. The distance to Fury Beach from where the ships were abandoned, roughly measured, is, as nearly as possible, the same as that between the ships and the true mouth of the Great Fish River, or about 210 geographical miles in a straight line. Had the retreat upon Fury Beach been resolved upon, the necessity for hauling heavy boats would have been avoided, for during the previous season (that of 1847) a small sledge party might have been despatched thither to ascertain whether the provisions and boats at the depot were safe and available. The successful performance of such a journey should not have been difficult for an expedition consisting of 130 men who, in the record found in 1859 by M’Clintock, were reported all well in the spring of 1847.”

These discoveries of Rae’s were, of course, mere side issues, and had no connection with the main object of his journey, which was the exploration of the western coast of Boothia. He accordingly resisted the strong temptation to inquire more closely into Franklin’s fate, and went on with the work which he had in hand. Unfortunately for him he had no sledges with him and no Eskimos to give him their assistance, for the natives who brought him the news already detailed soon left him; he was, in consequence, severely handicapped, and a naturally difficult journey was made all the more arduous. By dint of great exertions, however, he succeeded in reaching Simpson’s farthest on the Castor and Pollux River. Thence, in accordance with his instructions, he turned north, with the object of making his way to Bellot Strait, thus linking together the discoveries of Simpson and Kennedy. At Point de la Guiche, however, he was brought to a stop by fog and snow, and it soon became apparent that he could not attempt to reach the Strait without endangering the lives of his party. Accordingly, on May 7 he turned back, and finally reached Repulse Bay on May 26, after a brilliantly successful journey, during the course of which he had not merely added many miles of coast-line to the chart, but had also gained the first authoritative news of the fate of Franklin, for which he was awarded the £10,000 offered by the Government.