Sir Allen Young (1827-1915), was a merchant navy officer and experienced polar explorer. He took part in several expeditions before those of the Pandora including as navigator to McClintock on the Fox to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin. He was also in command of the Fox on the 1860 North Atlantic Telegraph Expedition to assess the practicality of a cable route between Europe and America across the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. In 1875 and 1876 he led two expeditions in the Canadian Arctic on the steam yacht Pandora. The first, the British North-West Passage Expedition, was an attempt to reach the magnetic pole via Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, and to navigate the North-West Passage in one season. The second was a further attempt on the North-West Passage, but also to deliver dispatches to George Nares' Arctic expedition. These compelling accounts were first published together in 1879.