Strait, and two others, the _Investigator_
and the _Enterprise_, under J. C. Ross, through Baffin Bay. Rae
reached the east coast of Victoria Land, and arrived within fifty
miles of the spot where Franklin's two ships had been abandoned;
but it was not till his second expedition by land, which started
in 1853, that he obtained any news. After wintering at Lady Pelly
Bay, on the 20th April 1854 Rae met a young Eskimo, who told him
that four years previously forty white men had been seen dragging
a boat to the south on the west shore of King William Land, and a
few months later the bodies of thirty of these men had been found
by the Eskimo, who produced silver with the Franklin crest to confirm
the truth of their statement. Further searches by land were continued
up to as late as 1879, when Lieutenant F. Schwatka, of the United
States army, discovered several of the graves and skeletons of
the Franklin expedition.

Neither of the two attempts by sea from the Atlantic or from the
Pacific base, in 1848, having succeeded in gaining any news, the
_Enterprise_ and the _Investigator_, which had previously attempted
to reach Franklin from the east, were despatched in 1850, under
Captain R. Collinson and Captain M'Clure; to attempt the search from
the west through Behring Strait. M'Clure, in the _Investigator_,
did not wait for Collinson, as he had been directed, but pushed on
and discovered Banks Land, and became beset in the ice in Prince of
Wales Strait. In the winter of 1850-51 he endeavoured unsuccessfully
to work his way from this strait into Parry Sound, but in August
and September 1851 managed to coast round Banks Land to its most
north-westerly point, and then succeeded in passing through the
strait named after M'Clure, and reached Barrow Strait, thus performing
for the first time the north-west passage, though it was not till
1853 that the _Investigator_ was abandoned. Collinson, in the
_Enterprise_, followed M'Clure closely, though never reaching him,
and attempting to round Prince Albert Land by the south through
Dolphin Strait, reached Cambridge Bay at the nearest point by ship
of all the Franklin expeditions. He had to return westward, and
only reached England in 1855, after an absence of five years and
four months.

From the east no less than ten vessels had attempted the Franklin
sea search in 1851, comprising two Admiralty expeditions, one private
English one, an American combined government and private party