Fifteen years after the last English voyage in search of the passage (led by Baffin and Bylot), two rival expeditions set out for the Arctic, one led by Thomas James and the other by Luke Foxe. Foxe had long-standing ambitions to get to the Arctic having been turned down for an expedition in 1606 and had persuaded a group of London merchants to fund his search.

Luke Foxe's expedition, 1631 - click to enlarge He traversed almost the entire western shore of Hudson Bay but failed to discover anything that looked like a route through the fabled North-West Passage. At Port Nelson he found evidence of Thomas Button’s expedition of 1612-13 that had wintered there. By chance he also encountered James’ rival expedition and the two commanders had a small tiff regarding maritime protocol.

Foxe then sailed north through today’s Foxe Channel (between Southampton and Baffin Islands) into what is now named Foxe Basin. The voyage made tidal observations, concluding that the tide through Foxe Channel came from the south-east (not from the west as previous expeditions had reported) thereby dampening hopes that the North-West Passage might take a route through Foxe Basin.

Foxe chose not to winter in the Arctic due to worsening health amongst his crew and returned to England, arriving that October without loss of life. 

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All North-West Passage expeditions