In 1857, Allen Young offered himself as sailing master of the auxiliary steamship Fox under the overall command of Francis Leopold McClintock, that was to search the Franklin expedition, missing since 1845.
In 1860, Allen Young was captain of Fox, as part of an expedition to determine the feasibility of carrying a telegraph line from Europe to America via the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland.
Colonel Taliaferro Shaffner, who had proposed this route, Arctic explorer and physician Dr. John Rae, and senior lieutenant of the Danish Army Theodor Zeilau [da] were in charge of surveying on land.
In 1881 Sir Allen Young was commissioned to take the steamship Hope in search of Benjamin Leigh Smith's expedition missing in Franz Josef Land, north of Russia.
[3] During 1886-87 Sir Allen Young proposed and lobbied for leadership of a British Antarctic Expedition, but adequate financial support failed to materialise.