The steam yacht Fox was the vessel commanded by Francis Leopold McClintock

Francis Leopold McClintock

Admiral Sir Francis Leopold McClintock or Francis Leopold M'Clintock KCB, FRS was an Irish explorer in the British Royal Navy who is known for his discoveries in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.-Biography:...

  on an expedition of the Arctic

Arctic

The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

  in northern Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

  searching for the fate of the missing expedition of Sir John Franklin  in 1857-1859.

Construction and Early History

Fox was a built as a yacht for Sir Richard Sutton, 2nd Baronet at a cost of about £5000. The ship's hull was diagonally planked with Scotch larch

Larch

Larches are conifers in the genus Larix, in the family Pinaceae. Growing from 15 to 50m tall, they are native to much of the cooler temperate northern hemisphere, on lowlands in the north and high on mountains further south...

 on the inside and East India teak

Teak

Teak is the common name for the tropical hardwood tree species Tectona grandis and its wood products. Tectona grandis is native to south and southeast Asia, mainly India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Burma, but is naturalized and cultivated in many countries, including those in Africa and the...

 on the outside, and the two-cylinder auxiliary steam engine of 16 n.h.p. gave a speed of about seven knots.

Fox had made just one cruise to Norway before Sutton’s death, and after a period of use in the Baltic during the Crimean War, the vessel was laid up in a partly dismantled state at the builders’ yards. The executors sold the ship for £2000 to Lady Franklin for her Arctic search.

The 1857-59 Expedition

Land-based expeditions in 1854 and 1855 under John Rae

John Rae (explorer)

John Rae was a Scottish doctor who explored Northern Canada, surveyed parts of the Northwest Passage and reported the fate of the Franklin Expedition....

 and James Anderson had discovered relics from the missing expedition north of Back River

Back River

The Back River , is a river in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada...

, south-west of the Boothia Peninsula

Boothia Peninsula

Boothia Peninsula is a large peninsula in Nunavut's northern Canadian Arctic, south of Somerset Island. The northern part, Murchison Promontory, is the northernmost point of mainland Canada, and thus North America....

. Lady Franklin had previously sent three expeditions to search this area, but all had failed to reach it. She purchased the Fox in April 1857 after finally accepting advice that the 159-ton auxiliary schooner Isabel that she had owned since 1852 was too small for the job, and efforts to use HMS Resolute were denied.

The sailing master was Allen Young

Allen Young

Sir Allen Young was an English master mariner and explorer, best remembered for his role in Arctic exploration including the search for Sir John Franklin.-Early life:...

 who donated £500 towards the subscriptions raised for the expedition (about £3000 in cash or kind), and second in command was Lieutenant William Hobson, RN.

Fox left Aberdeen on 1 July 1857, and managed to pass through the Bellot Strait

Bellot Strait

Bellot Strait is a passage of water in Nunavut separating Somerset Island from Murchison Promontory on the Boothia Peninsula, the northernmost part of mainland North America...

 briefly before finding a secure winter anchorage to the east of the Strait off the Boothia Peninsula. Over the next two years extensive expeditions were made by sled to the west of the Boothia Peninsula. On 6 May 1859 William Hobson discovered the only written messages from the missing expedition ever found, in cairns on King William Island

King William Island

King William Island is an island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut and forms part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. In area it is between and making it the 61st largest island in the world and Canada's 15th largest island...

. The overland parties returned to the ship, which then left for Plymouth, arriving on 20 September. Three of the ship's crew died during the expedition: the engineer from natural causes, his assistant by a shipboard accident, and the steward from scurvy

Scurvy

Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is required for the synthesis of collagen in humans. The chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from the Latin name of scurvy, scorbutus, which also provides the adjective scorbutic...

.

Later Service

Still under Allen Young's command, Fox was engaged in survey work off the coast of Norway in conjunction with laying a North Atlantic telegraph cable in 1860-61 before being sold to the Danish Royal Greenland Company. By the late 1880s Fox was owned by Akties. Kryolith Mine-og Handels Selskabet of Copenhagen, and was refitted with a 17 nhp compound steam engine made by Burmeister & Wain

Burmeister & Wain

Burmeister & Wain was a large established Danish shipyard and leading diesel engine producer headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded by two Danes and an Englishman, its earliest roots stretch back to 1846. Over its 150-year history, it grew successfully into a strong company through the end...

. After a long and useful career Fox was wrecked on the coast of Greenland in 1912.