Parks Canada 2011 Arctic Expeditions

Vice-Admiral Sir Robert John Le Mesurier McClure, RN (1807-73)

by Glenn M. Stein, FRGS

McClure’s young mother was widowed before he was born in 1807 in County Wexford, Ireland. From the age of four, he was raised on Alderney, the northernmost of the Channel Islands, by his godfather, an army officer named Le Mesurier who had been a friend of his father.

Although it was intended that McClure become an army career like his father, the teenager had other ideas, and he joined the navy in 1824. Between 1830 and 1836, while waiting for a lieutenant’s commission, McClure served on cutters in Her Majesty’s Coastguard. At very short notice, McClure volunteered for a Northwest Passage expedition under Captain Back on HMS Terror. For months the ice assaulted, the vessel being saved only by superb seamanship, and McClure was promoted to lieutenant.

By November 1838, McClure was involved in putting down the Upper Canada Rebellion, and found himself in the thick of things onboard HMS Niagara, helping to save the border towns of Brockville and Prescott from destruction at the western end of the St. Lawrence River. Four years later he was in command of the receiving ship Romney, anchored in Havana Harbour as a temporary home for freed slaves until they could be transported back to Africa, which lasted into early 1846.  Without a sea-going appointment, McClure’s career stalled. Meanwhile, Sir John Franklin and HMS Erebus and HMS Terror sailed for the eastern Arctic in May 1845.

McClure ended his service in Romney when the ship was sold to the Spanish government, and he headed back to England to face an uncertain future. It was a year before he was able to find employment, again in the Coastguard. By the spring of 1847, the Admiralty had begun a search for the missing Franklin Expedition. This search, one of the largest manhunts in history, provided the means for McClure to return to the Arctic. In March 1848, he was assigned as first lieutenant of the lead ship, HMS Enterprise (commanded by Sir James Clark Ross), in company with HMS Investigator, to follow Franklin’s trail.

Ross’ expedition returned in November 1849, having failed to find any trace of the missing explorers, and another search using the same two ships was immediately planned, this time in the western Arctic. McClure was promoted to commander, made second-in-command of the expedition, and put in charge of Investigator. Though Franklin was not found, McClure did establish the existence of a Northwest Passage before abandoning his vessel at Mercy Bay, Banks Island. He and his crew were awarded £10,000 by Parliament for this discovery, and McClure was promoted to captain and knighted.

McClure’s last sea-going appointment was captain of HMS Esk, during the Second China War (1856-60), and he was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath for his role in the capture of Canton. He retired soon after the war’s end, and reached the rank of vice-admiral. McClure died in London, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in October 1873.

M’Clure Bay, on the west coast of Somerset Island, Nunavut; Cape McClure, on the north coast of Banks Island, Northwest Territories; and M’Clure Strait, between Banks Island and Melville Island, Northwest Territories, which formed the northwestern end of one of the routes through the Northwest Passage, were named after Robert McClure. He was also named a person of national historic significance in 1972 by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.