Charles Frederick Des Voeux was an Irish officer in the British Royal Navy. He served as mate aboard HMS Erebus during the 1845 Franklin Expedition which sought to chart the Canadian Arctic, including the Northwest Passage, and make scientific observations. All personnel of the expedition, including Des Voeux, died in what is now Nunavut, Canada in uncertain circumstances. He and Graham Gore signed and deposited the Victory Point Record, one of the only official communications of the expedition yet found.

Franklin's lost expedition was a failed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation. The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After being icebound for more than a year Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848, by which point two dozen men, including Franklin, had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and Erebus's captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, presumably having perished.