Editing Northwest Passage (section)

===McClure expedition===
{{Main|McClure Arctic Expedition}}
[[File:The North-West Passage, by John Everett Millais.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|''[[The North-West Passage]]'' (1874) by [[John Everett Millais]], representing British frustration at the failure to conquer the passage ([[Tate Britain]])]]
During the search for Franklin, Commander [[Robert McClure]] and his crew in {{HMS|Investigator|1848|6}} traversed the Northwest Passage from west to east in the years 1850 to 1854, partly by ship and partly by sledge. McClure started out from England in December 1849, sailed the Atlantic Ocean south to [[Cape Horn]] and entered the Pacific Ocean. He sailed the Pacific north and passed through the Bering Strait, turning east at that point and reaching Banks Island.

McClure's ship was trapped in the ice for three winters near Banks Island, at the western end of [[Viscount Melville Sound]]. Finally McClure and his crew—who were by that time dying of starvation—were found by searchers who had travelled by sledge over the ice from a ship of Sir [[Edward Belcher]]'s expedition. They rescued McClure and his crew, returning with them to Belcher's ships, which had entered the Sound from the east. McClure and his crew returned to England in 1854 on one of Belcher's ships. They were the first people known to circumnavigate the Americas and to discover and transit the Northwest Passage, albeit by ship and by sledge over the ice. (Both McClure and his ship were found by a party from [[HMS Resolute (1850)|HMS ''Resolute'']], one of Belcher's ships, so his sledge journey was relatively short.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|last=Karpoff|first=Jonathan M.|title=McClure, Robert|editor=Mark Nuttall|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of the Arctic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Swr9BTI_2FEC&pg=PA1265|year=2005|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-78680-8|pages=1265–1266}} HMS ''Resolute'' had to be abandoned in the ice on that journey. It was later found again and became quite famous.</ref>)

This was an astonishing feat for that day and age, and McClure was knighted and promoted in rank. (He was made [[rear-admiral]] in 1867.) Both he and his crew also shared £10,000 awarded them by the [[British Parliament]]. In July 2010 Canadian archaeologists found his ship, HMS ''Investigator,'' fairly intact but sunk about {{convert|8|m|abbr=on}} below the surface.<ref>{{cite news |agency=Associated Press |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128830294 |title=Canadian Team Finds Abandoned 19th Century Ship |publisher=[[NPR]] |date=July 28, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100731143021/http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128830294 |archive-date=July 31, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Canadian team finds 19th Century HMS Investigator wreck |date=July 28, 2010 |work=[[BBC News]] |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-10793639 |access-date=December 7, 2018 |archive-date=December 9, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181209152330/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-10793639 |url-status=live }}</ref>