262 Arctic aitd Antarctic Exploration [part i 
friends and the best of messmates. These were the rising 
Arctic men when Austin's expedition returned 1 . 
Disappointed with Captain Forsyth's return, Lady 
Franklin sent out the Prince Albert again with orders 
to search to the south of North Somerset. She alone 
seems to have had an intuition of the right direction. 
She gave the command to Mr William Kennedy of the 
mercantile marine, who was accompanied by Lieut. Bellot, 
a distinguished young French naval officer. The Prince 
Albert wintered in Batty Bay on the north-east coast of 
North Somerset, and a sledge journey was undertaken in 
the spring of 1852. Kennedy used flat-bottomed Indian 
sledges and dogs. After a long stay at Fury Beach he 
worked south and discovered a strait between North 
Somerset and Boothia, since named Bellot Strait, and 
passed through it. If he had then obeyed his instructions 
and gone south he would probably have discovered the 
fate of Franklin. He turned north, and returned to Batty 
Bay by the north coast of North Somerset. The exact 
route is uncertain, as the narrative is confused, but he 
was away 97 days. There seemed a fatality against the 
right direction being taken. 
1 Captain Austin was afterwards Superintendent of Deptford Dock- 
yard during the Crimean War, a post of great importance at that time, 
Admiral, K.C.B., and Admiral Superintendent of Malta Dockyard in 1863; 
he died in 1865. Captain Ommanney, in the Eurydice, commanded the 
squadron in the White Sea. In 1855 he had the Hawke in the Baltic; 
and the Brunswick in the West Indies until i860. He was Captain 
Superintendent at Gibraltar in 1864, retiring a K.C.B. in 1874. He died 
in December 1904, aged 91. 
