Luke Foxe

Luke Foxe (or Fox) (20 October 1586 – c. 15 July 1635) was an English explorer, born in Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, who searched for the Northwest Passage across North America. In 1631, he sailed much of the western Hudson Bay before concluding no such passage was possible. Foxe Basin, Foxe Channel and Foxe Peninsula were named after him.

He left the Thames in May 1631 in the Charles, took 20 days to work through Hudson Strait, reaching the Bay on 11 July. Blocked by ice to the northward, he went south of Southampton Island to Roes Welcome Sound and south along the west shore to Port Nelson, Manitoba where he found Thomas Button's winter camp of 18 years before, turned north-east, met Thomas James on 29 August, went north into Foxe Channel and into the lower part of Foxe Basin, turned back at 66°47'N, passed Hudson Strait in 10 days and reached England in October without any deaths among his crew.

The son of Richard Fox, seaman and assistant of the Trinity House at Kingston-upon-Hull, he was born at Hull 20 October 1586. He acquired knowledge of seamanship in voyages southward to France, Spain, and the Mediterranean, and northward to the Baltic, Denmark, and Norway, also working along the coasts of England and crossing the North Sea. In 1606 he offered his services as mate to John Knight for a voyage to Greenland, but was rejected as too young.

After Hawkridge's abortive voyage of 1619, Foxe became the successor of Robert Bylot and William Baffin (1615) in Arctic exploration. In the meantime voyages had been made by Sir Thomas Button in 1612, by Henry Hudson in 1606, after George Waymouth in 1585-7 [probably 1605]. Foxe's first patron was Henry Briggs, who with Sir John Brooke, directed royal attention to Foxe's voyage. The project first took shape in 1629, in a Petition of Luke Fox to the king for a small supply of money towards the discovery of a passage by the north-west to the South Sea, Hudson and Sir Thomas Button having discovered a great way, and given great hopes of opening the rest. A pinnace of the Royal Navy of seventy tons was placed at the disposal of the adventurers, but the setting forth was deferred until the following year. In the interval Briggs died; half the adventurers having dropped out, the voyage might have been abandoned, but for news that Bristol merchants had projected a similar voyage from their port (under Thomas James, leaving left Bristol 3 May 1631). London merchants, with Sir Thomas Roe and Sir John Wolstenholme, supported Foxe in the Charles pinnace with a crew of twenty men and two boys victualled for eighteen months.

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