Rae reached the east coast of Victoria Land, and arrived within fifty miles of the spot where Franklin's two ships had been abandoned; but it was not till his second expedition by land, which started in 1853, that he obtained any news.

After wintering at Lady Pelly Bay, on the 20th April 1854 Rae met a young Eskimo, who told him that four years previously forty white men had been seen dragging a boat to the south on the west shore of King William Land, and a few months later the bodies of thirty of these men had been found by the Eskimo, who produced silver with the Franklin crest to confirm the truth of their statement.

Further searches by land were continued up to as late as 1879, when Lieutenant F.Schwatka, of the United States army, discovered several of the graves and skeletons of the Franklin expedition.
Neither of the two attempts by sea from the Atlantic or from the Pacific base, in 1848, having succeeded in gaining any news, the _Enterprise_ and the _Investigator_, which had previously attempted to reach Franklin from the east, were despatched in 1850, under Captain R.Collinson and Captain M'Clure; to attempt the search from the west through Behring Strait.

M'Clure, in the _Investigator_, did not wait for Collinson, as he had been directed, but pushed on and discovered Banks Land, and became beset in the ice in Prince of Wales Strait.

In the winter of 1850-51 he endeavoured unsuccessfully to work his way from this strait into Parry Sound, but in August and September 1851 managed to coast round Banks Land to its most north-westerly point, and then succeeded in passing through the strait named after M'Clure, and reached Barrow Strait, thus performing for the first time the north-west passage, though it was not till 1853 that the _Investigator_ was abandoned.