KENNEDY AND BELLOT 207 



The first undoubted traces of the lost expedition were 

 those discovered at Beechey Island, the news reaching 

 England in the Prince Albert in the autumn of 1850. 

 As soon as the winter was over this excellent little 

 schooner was again sent out by Lady Franklin under 

 the command of Captain William Kennedy, who took 

 with him as a volunteer Lieutenant Joseph Rene Bellot 

 of the French navy, and also John Hepburn, who had 

 been with Franklin on the land journey in 1819. 

 Kennedy wintered at Batty Bay in North Somerset, 

 and during a remarkable sledge journey, in which he 

 made the circuit of the island, he and Bellot reached 

 Brentford Bay, and, on the 21st of April, 1852, dis- 

 covered the strait named after the gallant Frenchman. 

 But he found no traces of the expedition through turn- 

 ing to the north and crossing to Prince of Wales Island, 

 instead of going to the south at the western mouth of 

 the strait. He had, however, discovered the termina- 

 tion of Boothia, the north point of the American conti- 

 nent which men had been seeking for three centuries. 



To the southern end of Boothia came the inde- 

 fatigable Rae. That cheery hero of the north left 

 Repulse Bay on the 31st of March, 1854, to complete 

 the Hudson's Bay Company's survey. On the 20th of 

 April he met a young Eskimo in Pelly Bay, who told 

 him the fate of the Erebus and Terror, and from him 

 and his people Rae obtained a number of small articles, 

 forks and spoons and so forth, which had undoubtedly 

 come from the ships, one of which had been crushed in 

 the ice, the other sinking after drifting further south. 



Rae was not the man to return until he had attacked 

 the work he had set out to do, and he continued his 



