Pelly Bay

He was, in the assessment of many modern historians, the most competent European Arctic traveler of his era.

In the spring of 1854, while surveying the coast of the Boothia Peninsula on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, Rae encountered a group of Inuit near Pelly Bay on the western shore of the peninsula.

They were Netsilik Inuit, members of the communities whose territory included King William Island and the surrounding coast, the very region where the Franklin expedition had met its end.

The Inuit had items that clearly came from the Franklin expedition.