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Captain M'Clintlock's first interview with the Esquimaux at Cape Victoria, Boothi Felix. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. 1858 The Illustrated London News 8 October 1859): 355.

Left: Relic of the Franklin Expedition. — Facsimile of a Paper found by Captian M'Clintlock, RN, on Prince of Wales Island. Right: F. L. M'Clintlock, Commander of the Final Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin. The Illustrated London News provided the following biographical sketch of M'Clintlock:

M'Clintock, the product of a military family, the son of a member of the 3rd Dragoon Guards, entered the Royal Navy in 1831, and passed his officer's examinations in 1838. After some experience as the mate of the gunnery-ship Excellent at Portsmouth and aboard the steamer Gorgon off the southeast coast of America, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in 1845. In the search for Franklin's Erebus and Terror he served aboard the vessel Fox, which had wintered in the Bellot Channel, unable to make the passage into Regent's Inlet. In the spring of 1859, despite temperature of -71 Fahrenheit, Capt. M'Clintock, accompanied by a Dane named Petersen and a driver named Alexander Thompson, set off in a light sledge drawn by dogs, hoping "to meet some of the natives, and glean from them through Mr. Petersen, who speaks Esquimaux thoroughly, some information of the fate of his lost countrymen" (355). At Cape Victoria, on the west side of Boothia Felix, just a few miles south of the magnetic pole, he and his party did encounter Esquimaux who told the story of a large ship being trapped in the ice at the northernmost tip of King William's Island some years before. According to the aboriginals, the Royal Navy sailors had abandoned ship and made their way as far Montreal Island at the mouth of the Great Fish River, where they died of starvation, "as reported by Mr. Anderson, after his journey down that stream in 1855."


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Last modified 1 July 2011