Luke Foxe

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Foxe, Luke

(also Fox). Born Oct. 20, 1586, in Hull; died 1635 in Whitby. English navigator.

Having received a commission to search for the Northwest Passage, Foxe set sail on the King Charles in 1631. He reached the northwestern corner of Hudson Bay before turning south. He discovered Roes Welcome Sound, established that Southampton was an island, and explored the western and southern shores of the Hudson Bay to 55°10′ N lat. He then sailed north along the strait between Baffin Island and the mainland until he reached 66°35′ N lat. A channel and a basin in the Canadian Arctic archipelago have been named after Foxe, as well as a peninsula and a cape on Baffin Island.

WORKS

Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull and Captain Thomas James of Bristol in Search of a North West Passage, vols. 1–2. London, 1894. (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, vols. 88–89.)

REFERENCE

Magidovich, I. P. Istoriia otkryliia i issledovaniia Severnoi Ameriki. Moscow, 1962.

Mentioned in ?

Foxe, Luke

References in periodicals archive ?

With reference to the exploration of Hudson Bay, in the hope that it might lead to the Passage, there is no mention of Thomas Button (1612-13); Luke Foxe (1631); Thomas James (1631-32); Christopher Middleton and William Moor (1741 -42), who discovered Wager Bay and Repulse Bay; Francis Smith and William Moor (1746-47), who discovered Chesterfield Inlet; and George Lyon (1824).

DEAD RECKONING: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE

Apart from the passing mention in each of Purchas' books that Button had named his newly discovered lands New Wales, our knowledge of Button's voyage rests solely on the short account given, another decade on, by Luke Foxe in his book North-West Fox[e] (1635), which summarises all previous Northwest Passage expeditions before describing Foxe's own (3).

Luke Foxe left Deptford on 5 May 1631 in the Charles, with a crew of 20 men and two boys, and the usual 18 months' provisions, only two days after James had departed Bristol.

Simultaneously with James, Yorkshireman Luke Foxe was also exploring Hudson Bay, finding a cross erected by Button, which he re-erected with a fresh inscription restoring Button's name of New Wales.

The voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull, and Captain Thomas James of Bristol, in search of a North-west passage, in 1631-32 : with narratives of the earlier north-west voyages of Frobisher, Davis, Weymouth, Hall, Knight, Hudson, Button, Gibbons, Bylot, Baffin, Hawkridge and others.

New South Wales: the well-known Canadian placename

Luke Foxe voyaged in 1631, as well, but Foxe returned to England and reported the discovery of Foxe Basin and Foxe Channel to his London merchant sponsors before the year was out.

Writing Geographical Exploration: James and the Northwest Passage 1631-33

Chapter 3 recounts the seventeenth-century voyages of Henry Hudson, Thomas Button, John Ingram, Robert Bylot and William Baffin, Jens Munk, Luke Foxe, and Thomas James, and the mid-eighteenth century voyages of Christopher Middleton and William Moor.