Francis Leopold McClintock

Biography

Sir Francis Leopold McClintock was the eldest son of Henry McClintock, formerly of the 3rd Dragoon Guards, by his wife Elizabeth Melesina, daughter of the Ven. George Fleury, D.D., archdeacon of Waterford. His uncle was John McClintock (1770–1855) of Drumcar House. In 1835 McClintock became a member of the Royal Navy as a gentleman volunteer, and joined a series of searches for Sir John Franklin between 1848 and 1859. He mastered travelling by using human hauled sleds, which remained the status quo in Royal Navy Arctic and Antarctic overland travel until the death of Captain Robert Falcon Scott RN in his bid to reach the South Pole. In 1848–49, McClintock accompanied James Clark Ross on his survey of Somerset Island. As part of Capt. Henry Kellett's expedition 1852 to 1854, McClintock travelled 1,400 miles by sled and discovered 800 miles of previously unknown coastline.

In 1854 the explorer John Rae travelled west from Repulse Bay, Nunavut and learned from the Inuit that a ship had been abandoned somewhere to the west. Previous expeditions had not searched the area because they thought it was ice-blocked. In April 1857 Sir Francis Leopold McClintock agreed to take command of the Fox (ship) (177 tons, 25-man crew), which belonged to Lady Franklin, and search for her husband in the area west of Repulse Bay. At Disko Bay he hired 30 sled dogs and an Inuit driver. It was a bad year for ice and from September he was frozen in for eight months. 1858 was another bad year and he did not reach Beechey Island until August. He entered Peel Sound, found it blocked by ice, backed up, entered Prince Regent Inlet in the hope of passing Bellot Strait. He was glad to extricate himself from this narrow passage and found winter quarters near its entrance. In February 1859, when sledging became practical, he went south to the North Magnetic Pole which had been found by James Clark Ross in 1831. Here he met some Inuit who told him that a ship had been crushed by ice off King William Island, the crew had landed safely and that some white people had starved to death on an island. In April he went south again and on the east coast of King William Island met other Inuit who sold him artefacts from Franklin's expedition. William Hobson, who had separated from him, found the only written record left by Franklin on the northwest corner of the island. They also found a skeleton with European clothes and a ships boat on runners containing two corpses. They got as far south as Montreal Island (Nunavut) and the mouth of the Back River. McClintock returned to England in September 1859 and was knighted. The officers and men of the Fox shared a £5,000 parliamentary reward. The tale was published in The Voyage of the 'Fox' in the Arctic Seas: A Narrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin and His Companions. London, 1859.

In 1872–1877 McClintock was Admiral-Superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard. In 1879 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief, North America and West Indies Station with the flagship HMS Northampton. McClintock left the Royal Navy in 1884 as a Rear Admiral. He died on 17 November 1907. He was buried in Kensington Cemetery, Hanwell, Middlesex.

His son, Robert S. McClintock, married Mary, only daughter of Major-General Sir Howard Craufurd Elphinstone.

On 29 October 2009 a special service of thanksgiving was held in the chapel at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, to accompany the rededication of the national monument to Sir John Franklin there. It also marked the 150th anniversary of Sir Francis Leopold McClintock's voyage aboard the yacht Fox.

Admiral Sir Frances Leopold McClintock has several portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, London.