High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The McClure Arctic Expedition of 1850, among numerous British search efforts to determine the fate of the Franklin`s lost expedition, is distinguished as the voyage during which Robert McClure became the first person to confirm and transit the Northwest Passage by a combination of sea travel and sledging. McClure and his crew spent three years locked in the pack ice aboard the HMS Investigator before abandoning it before making their escape across the ice. Rescued by the HMS Resolute, which was itself later lost to the ice, McClure returned to England in 1854, where he was knighted and rewarded for completing the passage.