The first two attempts at conducting the search through Lancaster Sound were not a conspicuous success. Sir James Clark Ross started off in the _Enterprise_ and _Investigator_ and explored most of Prince Regent Inlet and the northern gulf of Boothia, but without obtaining any clues to Franklin’s fate, while, in the following year, Saunders, who was sent out in the _North Star_ with provisions for Ross, was caught in the ice and never succeeded in reaching his destination. In 1851, however, the search was prosecuted with far greater vigour, and no fewer than five expeditions left British and American shores almost simultaneously. Of these, the Government sent out two, one consisting of four ships, the _Resolute_ and the _Assistance_, with their steam tenders, the _Pioneer_ and the _Intrepid_, commanded by Captain Horatio Austin, with Captain Ommaney, Lieutenant Osborn, and Lieutenant Cator under him, and the other of two whalers, the _Lady Franklin_ and the _Sophia_, under William Penny, a whaler of great repute, who, it was hoped, would meet with rather more success in battling with the ice than did his predecessors, Ross and Saunders. Two private expeditions also set out from England, one of them, the _Prince Albert_, having been equipped by Lady Franklin, while the other, the _Felix_, was placed under the command of Ross. The American expedition consisted of the _Advance_ and the _Rescue_, with Lieutenant De Haven at the head of affairs. Unfortunately, all of these expeditions had one common objective—to pass up Lancaster Sound and examine the shores of Wellington Channel, the south-east entrance to which they reached almost simultaneously. It was now that the first traces of the missing explorers were found, for, going ashore on Beechey Island on August 23, Ommaney discovered signs that a party of white men had encamped there, and Penny, examining the spot four days later, came upon the graves of four men belonging to the _Erebus_ and _Terror_. In addition to the graves there was a hut, some pieces of rope of the pattern used in the Navy, and such miscellaneous odds and ends as torn mits, fragments of writing paper, meat-tins, and coal-bags, but, search as they would, they could find no sign of any written document such as might give some hint as to the direction which Franklin had taken on leaving his winter quarters. At Cape Riley again traces were found in abundance, but no information of any value was forthcoming.