By the time John Franklin was born, in Spilsby, Lincolnshire in 1786, the
search for a sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the icy Arctic waters
north of Hudson's Bay was already centuries old. Prestige and adventure notwithstanding,
the search for the Northwest
Passage was funded entirely out of financial motives, by those with the greatest economic
stake in securing a quicker trade route between East and West. Since the waters of the
Arctic were navigable for only two months out of every year, the race to map this route
was a necessarily arduous and painfully slow one.
At the tender age of 15, Franklin joined the Royal Navy and began a career in exploration
which would earn him a knighthood, celebrity, and eventually a tragic and mysterious death
in a frozen land far from home. In total, he made four Arctic voyages and mapped 1, 200
miles of coastline. During the second of these Arctic expeditions, Franklin and his crew
faced starvation and although some perished, those who survived did so by chewing on any
and everything of possible nutritional value, including lichen, rotten animal skins, and
even the leather of their own boots. When they returned to Britain, tales of their ordeal
turned them instantly into national heroes. In 1845, a very public and much-anticipated
new expedition was arranged to map the remaining missing pieces of the Northwest Passage.
Sir John Franklin, even though he had been retired for 20 years and was a rather idle 59,
was thought to be the only man for the job.
Thus, on May 19th, 1845, Sir John Franklin, his officers and crew, totalling 135 men, set
sail in two iron-fortified and lavishly stocked ships named the Terror and the Erebus.
Their last confirmed sighting was two months later in Baffin Bay. What happened after that
to Franklin and his crew remains something of a mystery.
When, in 1847, there had yet been no word from the exploration, expeditions began to be
sent in search of the missing ships. Dozens returned having found no trace of the
Terror and the Erebus. It was not until 1850 that the first clues to their fate were
found. The graves of three crew members on Beechey Island along with a pile of empty tins
indicated the site of the expedition's first wintering. Four years later, the surveyor
John Rae, who made a habit of inquiring after Franklin, finally obtained some information
from a group of Inuit hunters who reported that the expedition's men had abandoned the
ships and headed south after becoming irrevocably locked in the ice. The Inuit were able
to provide items from the ships, including monogrammed spoons, as proof of their story.
These Rae took with him back to Britain, collecting a ten thousand pound reward.
In 1858 a new expedition, funded by Lady Jane Franklin and captained by Leopold
McClintock, set out in search of more answers. On King William Island he and his
second-in- command, William Hobson, discovered a grisly and puzzling scene: bodies lying
in the snow, decapitated skeletons, and a boat lashed to a sledge containing a great many
impractical items including combs, slippers, and a copy of The Vicar of Wakefield. In a
stone cairn they also found two notes, one a straightforward report written May 28th, 1847
followed by "All Well" and the other, dated April 25th, 1948, a report of the
ships' abandonment, note of Franklin's death (June 11th, 1847) as well as the deaths of 24
others, and the survivors' intent to proceed by land to Back's Fish River, hundreds of
miles to the south. The sledge was facing the wrong direction; this and its bizarre
provisioning, as well as the unwise choice of Back's Fish River as a route to safety,
suggested that something had been greatly impeding the men's ability to make decisions.
Subsequent forensic investigations have revealed that the tins taken on the
Franklin expedition were soldered with lead, which would have seeped into the food the men
were eating. They were suffering from the effects of lead poisoning.
The mystery pieces together something like this: after exploring the coast as long as
possible in 1845 the Terror and the Erebus wintered on Beechey island. When the summer
arrived, making passage more navigable, the expedition plunged on. However, during the
following winter they became locked tight in thick ice which continued to hold them over
the summer months. After the deaths of Franklin and many of the crew, Captain Crozier
decided to leave the ships and the survivors set out over land, pulling two smaller boats
behind them as sledges. Weak, delusional and desperate for nourishment, the last survivors
of Franklin's crew were forced to resort to cannibalism.
While all of this comprises the generally accepted version of events, the mystery of Sir
John Franklin's last expedition lives on in the unknown details of the story, as well as
conflicting Inuit accounts, some of which suggest the possibility of four survivors.
Although at the outset of the voyage two copies of the expedition report were ordered to
be kept, none have ever been found.
Editors Note: Also see the essay from Amanda
Hall on this subject
|
