At the time when the British government sent out Captain Cooke on his last voyage of discovery, Lieutenant Pickersgill was also sent out by them, to examine the western parts of Baffin’s Bay, but he never entered the bay.  Government were equally unfortunate in their choice of Lieutenant Young, who was sent with the same object the following year:  he reached no farther than the seventy-second degree of latitude; and instead of sailing along the western side of the bay, which is generally free from ice, he clung to the eastern side, to which the ice is always firmly attached.  Indeed, if Dr. Douglas’s character of him was just, he was ill fitted for the enterprize on which he was sent; for his talents, he observes, were more adapted to contribute to the glory of a victory, as commander of a line-of-battle ship, than to add to geographical discoveries by encountering mountains of ice, and exploring unknown coasts.

Notwithstanding the unsuccessful issue of all these attempts to discover a north-west passage, the existence and practicability of it still were cherished by many geographers, who had particularly studied the subject.  Indeed, nothing had resulted from any of the numerous voyages to the Hudson’s or Baffin’s Bay, which in the smallest degree rendered the existence of such a passage unlikely.  Among those scientific men who cherished the idea of such a passage with the most enthusiasm and confidence, and who brought to the investigation the most extensive and minute knowledge of all that had been done, was Mr. Dalrymple, hydrographer to the Admiralty.  “He had long been of opinion, that not only Greenland, but all the land seen by Baffin on the northern and eastern sides of the great bay bearing his name, was composed of clusters of islands, and that a passage through the Fretum Davis, round the northern extremity of Cumberland Island, led directly to the North Sea, from the seventy to the seventy-first degree of latitude.”  This opinion of Mr. Dalrymple was grounded, in part at least, on the authority of an old globe, one of the first constructed in Britain, preserved in the library of the Inner Temple:  this globe contains all the discoveries of our early navigators.  Davis refers to it; and Hackluyt, in his edition of 1589, describes it “as a very large and most exact terrestrial globe, collected and reformed according to the newest, secretest, and latest discoveries, both Spanish, Portugal, and English, composed by Mr. Emmeric Molyneaux, of Lambeth, a rare gentleman in his profession, being therein for diverse years greatly supported by the purse and liberality of the worshipful merchant Mr. William Sanderson.”

Mr. Dalrymple prevailed on the Hudson’s Bay Company to send out Mr. Duncan, a master in the navy, who had displayed considerable talent on a voyage to Nootka Sound.  This gentleman was very sanguine of success, and very zealous in the cause in which he was employed.  But this attempt also was unsuccessful:  Mr. Duncan, after a considerable lapse of time, reaching no farther than Chesterfield Inlet.