Rae  John 
(30.09.1813–22.07.1893)

English polar explorer. 
Born near Strouness in the Orkney Islands. He received a diploma from a surgeon in Edinburgh and in 1833 entered the service of the Hudson’s company in Canada. He spent ten years at Maws and its environs, collecting information related to the country's characteristics, way of life of the population, customs, ways of transportation, etc. Rae traveled a lot, having traveled over 13 thousand miles in total by land and water. 
He made his first difficult journey 1200 miles long in the winter of 1844 - 1845. in order to gain skills in astronomical and other useful observations. 
Rae's first Arctic expedition took place in 1846–1847. Financing it was just not serious. The company allocated only $ 500 and provided food for 4 months with a planned research duration of 15–27 months. Polar explorers were to hunt and fish for food. At the same time, the tasks were very large-scale: astronomical determination of all characteristic points, botanical, zoological and geological studies, measurements of water temperature, air, sea depths, flow rates, studying the state of the atmosphere and ice, magnetometric observations, familiarity with the Eskimo life. Rae on boats and sleighs passed from the Hudson Bay to Boothia Bay and along the west coast of the Melville Peninsula, opened the Kommitti and Lord Mayor bays. He did not know that not so far to the west of King-William Island, there were ships of the still-living J. Franklin. 
Since 1848, the search began for the missing expedition of J. Franklin. The search area was actually the entire Canadian Arctic archipelago. Rae entered the land batch of J. Richardson. She had to explore the coast of the continent from the Mackenzie Delta east to the mouth of the Mednorudnaya River (Coppermine), create a number of food depots, establish friendly relations with the Eskimos, whose help could be very valuable. 
After departing from England on March 25, 1848  an expedition of 42 men reached the mouth of the Mackenzie by July 31. Here they left the warehouse and moved by boat to the mouth of the Copper Mine River. The Eskimos, with whom they managed to establish good relations, did not know anything about the expedition of Franklin. The ice was getting harder, and before entering the Dolphin and Union Strait I had to leave the boats and move along the shore. The progress was very slow, the forces melted, winter was approaching. From the mouth of Mednorudnaya they turned to Big Bear Lake, where they winterized the apartment building that was there. In May 1849  Richardson returned to England, instructing Rae in the summer to try again and try to cross over to Victoria Island. 
Already on July 30  Rae was at the mouth of the Mednorudnaya. Dolphin & Union Strait was hammered by fast-moving ice, and cross over to  Victoria Island again failed. Reaching the hopelessness of the situation, Rae with a heavy heart turned south. The return home was bleak, but the effort expended cannot be considered useless. Thanks to the hikes, Rae was able to exclude from further searches a significant stretch of coast between the mouths of the Mackenzie and Mednorudnaya rivers. 
Since 1850, Rae on the instructions of the government and the Hudson company began an independent search for the Franklin expedition. He was entrusted himself to choose the route of exploration, and he chose the route from the mouth of the Copper River along the Arctic coast to the east. 
In 1851  Rae with the third attempt managed to cross over to the island of Victoria, which he plotted on the map. The local Eskimos Rae found things thrown away by sea from the dead ships of Franklin. 
In 1853  the Hudson’s company sent Rae to complete the shooting of the Boothy Peninsula. After passing over the ice of Kommitti Bay, Rae reached the Simpson Peninsula and went west. He successfully solved the task assigned to him and, moreover, proved the insular character of the Earth King-William. It should be said that at that time all the researchers of the American Arctic, whatever they pursued their goals, secretly always remembered the missing expedition of Franklin. And although Rae did not expect to find any traces of her in the area, he questioned the Eskimo he met and received sensational information. The Eskimo said that he had heard from other Eskimos about the whole detachment of white people who died of starvation somewhere behind a large, full of rapids. Confirmation of the veracity of what they heard turned out to be items of an Eskimo from “Erebus” and “Terror”. Rae went north to try and find traces of the expedition, but soon he was forced to turn around and went back, collecting information and items from the expedition from the local population. Following the results of his investigation, Rae reported to the Admiralty and received a £ 10,000 premium promised by the government for information about Franklin. From the stories of the natives it followed that during one of the winters during the hunt for seals, they saw about 40 white men who were making their way from ships covered with ice to where they could hunt deer. They were exhausted, bought meat from the natives. After some time, 36 corpses were found on the mainland and 5 on the island at a distance of one day's journey from the mouth of a large river (most likely Big Fish). Some corpses were buried, some lay in tents or under inverted boats, some were scattered. From the disfigured appearance of some corpses and the contents of the cauldrons, it was obvious that the unfortunate were forced to resort to cannibalism. 
All Eskimos interviewed by Rae spoke from the words of others. The subsequent expedition of James Anderson and James Stewart, sent in 1855 to the mouth of the Great Fish River, found the objects of the expedition, and in the coastal sand there were human bones, confirming the message of Rae. Unfortunately, due to bad boats to cross over to the island of King William could not. 
In 1860 and the following years  Rae worked in Iceland, Greenland, and various parts of North America, servicing telegraph lines and doing his work with exceptional accuracy and reliability. His physical observations were of great scientific importance. Contemporaries noted that he was "a man of action, not loving verbiage". 
For his merits Rae was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society, and also received a diploma of doctor of medicine at the University of Montreal. He was elected an honorary member of the National Historical Society, as well as some other learned societies. 
In recent years  Rae lived in London, where he died from aneurysm. A week later  his body was transported to the Orkney Islands. He was buried in the courtyard of St.Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. Inside the cathedral he has a monument.

Isthmus between the Kommitti Bay and Repuls Bay. 
Cape in the east of Melville Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

Mountain on the east coast of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

Strait between the peninsula Boothia and King-William Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.