On Cook's death at Hawaii Captain Charles Clerke, of the accompanying vessel H.M.S. _Discovery_, took command of the expedition and carried out Cook's intention of making another effort during the following year. The ice conditions were, however, worse. The two ships found the ice block further south, and as impenetrable as before, and Clerke's highest was 70° 33´ on the American side, on the 19th of July. As it was Cook's last voyage, so it was Clerke's. He was in a bad way with consumption, and continued his work in the north, though, under the special circumstances and being in command, he could at any time have given up the obviously hopeless attempt and left for a more genial climate, in which he would at least have had a chance of longer life; but, remaining at his duty, he died at sea on the 22nd of August, and was buried at Petropaulovsk. [Illustration: FUR SEALS AT SEA] Captain Beechey, in H.M.S. _Blossom_, passed through the strait in 1826 when sent north from the Pacific with a view of meeting with his old commander, Franklin, then on his second land journey. Beechey took the ship to Icy Cape, whence on the 17th of August he despatched the barge under the master, Thomas Elson, to survey the coast to the north-eastward as far as he could go in three weeks, there and back. Elson reached his farthest on the 25th at a spit of land jutting out several miles from the more regular coast-line, the width of the neck not exceeding a mile and a half, broadest at its extremity, with several frozen lakes on it, and a village, whose natives proved so troublesome that it was thought unsafe to land. This was Point Barrow, in 71° 23´ 31˝, longitude 156° 21´ 30˝, the northernmost land on the western half of the American continent. To the eastward curved a wide bay—named Elson Bay by Beechey—the shore-line of which joined on to the ice pack that encircled the horizon. Here he was within a hundred and sixty miles of where Franklin had turned back a week before. Though Beechey did not meet Franklin he did most useful work in these parts, for by him the whole coast was surveyed between Point Barrow and Point Rodney, to the south of Prince of Wales Cape. Franklin was also the cause of the appearance of the next British expedition in the strait. This was in 1848, Captain Henry Kellett, in H.M.S. _Herald_, with Commander Thomas Moore in H.M.S. _Plover_, forming the western detachment of the first series of search expeditions. There were three detachments, one to follow the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ from the eastward, another under John Richardson to descend the Mackenzie and search the northern coast, the other coming in from the west to meet the ships should they have made the passage. On this duty the _Herald_ and _Plover_ were hereabouts for three seasons, the _Plover_ wintering, the _Herald_ going south when the navigation closed.