[a] While searching for the Northwest Passage, a number of polar explorers visited, or spent their winters on, King William Island.

[7] The island is known for its large populations of barren-ground caribou, which summer there before migrating in the autumn by walking south over the sea ice.

[10] In 1834, George Back, another Arctic explorer, viewed its south shore from Chantrey Inlet and eventually recognised it as an island.

A team led by Canadian archaeologist Owen Beattie, found 31 pieces of human bone fragments on the southern tip of the island, called Booth Point.

[11] On September 9, 2014, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the Victoria Strait Expedition had located one of Franklin's two ships beneath shallow waters south of King William Island.

[15] In 1903, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, looking for the Northwest Passage, sailed through the James Ross Strait and stopped at a natural harbour on the island's south coast.

He used his ship Gjøa as a base for explorations in the summer of 1904, during which he travelled by dogsled on the Boothia Peninsula and to the North Magnetic Pole.

George Porter eventually made Gjoa Haven on King William Island his home, where he worked as the manager of the Hudson's Bay Company trading post for a career of 25 years.