Even though the boats were said to be very good for lake-fishing and duck-shooting and were shown in the Great Exhibition of 1851, they did not sell well. Halkett's boat were not widely used except in the field of Canadian exploration. Halkett died on 23 March 1885, aged 65, and the building of his boats stopped. John Rae gave his boat from the 1853 expedition to a Miss Peace of Kirkwall. Many years later it was found and is now in the Stromness Museum at Orkney. A second boat is in the Hudson's Bay Company Museum Collection at the Manitoba Museum.