Robert John McClure

Born Jan. 28, 1807, in Wexford, Ireland; died Oct. 17, 1873, in Portsmouth, England. British naval figure; arctic explorer.

In 1848-53, McClure took part in three expeditions for the English government to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in search of J. Franklin’s missing expedition. In 1850-52 on the ship Investigator he passed through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean and discovered the south and west coasts of Banks Island and the straits separating it from the islands of Victoria and Melville. In 1853-54, after abandoning his ship in the ice off the north shore of Banks Island, McClure and his party, along with E. Belcher’s expedition, came out into Baffin Bay, thus proving the existence of the Northwest Passage. The strait between Banks Island in the south and Prince Patrick and Melville islands in the north was named in honor of McClure.