Lady Franklin's Lament (The Sailor's Dream) [Laws K9] -- Part 04
DESCRIPTION: Conclusion of the notes to "Lady Franklin's Lament (The Sailor's Dream) [Laws K9]" [Laws K9]. -- Part 03
Last updated in version 6.8
NOTES [9885 words]: The Fate of Franklin: What Happened After the First Draft of This Song
From what was learned later, we know that Franlin's ships were caught on the ice; eventually they were abandoned and wrecked (this was verified both by Inuit accounts and by wreckage; Collinson found some as far away as Dease Strait, some ten degrees west of where the ships went down; Savours, p. 233), but the men were unable to reach civilization.
Bad maps probably played a role. The Northwest Passage can be thought of as proceeding from Baffin Bay in four stages: The first is Lancaster Sound, then the Barrow Straight. The obvious third stage was the straight path through Viscount Melville Sound (which runs north of Victoria Island). This path, however, is usually frozen and useless; Parry had made it part way on his first voyage, but no one ever sailed the full path until the twenty-first century. The more practical alternative was to head around the east and south sides of Victoria Island. No matter what the third stage, the fourth stage would be due west to the Beaufort Sea and out the Bering Strait.
The first, second, and fourth parts were known, but no one had even mapped a route for the third stage. It was known, e.g., that there was a straight path to the south of Victoria Island, but no one knew how to get make the southern connection past Victoria Island from Barrow Straight.
Franklin's first attempt at finding the third stage was an unfruitful exploration of Cornwallis Island; this led nowhere. Franklin then properly headed south through Peel Sound and past Prince of Wales island, just to the west of the Boothia Peninsula.
The question then was whether to pass east or west of King William Island, which lies in the area between the Boothia Peninsula and Victoria Island. Lambert, p. 149, suggests that the route south through Peel Sound was taken not because it was the way to the Passage but as an attempt to reach the north magnetic pole, because Franklin would have thought Peel Sound a dead end. This is dubious; it was the area by King William Island that was thought to be closed off.
As they approached King William Island, Franklin had to make a guess. And the charts he had were not only incomplete but inaccurate. John Ross had drawn a map of the area, based on his nephew James Clark Ross's explorations, which closed off the eastern passage around King William Island (which, in any case, was narrow and shallow; it would have been hard to navigate -- MSmith, p. 171). Ross even called the area "Poctes Bay," implying that he *knew* it was blocked by land. (This wasn't the only time Ross added thing to a map that he didn't know were there; he actually added islands to the Clarence Islands so he could name them after sponsors; McGooganFranklin, p. 135.) Apparently Franklin even wrote to James Clark Ross saying that he knew he could not pass that way (Lambert, p. 164). In fact, the strait east of King William Island was the only safe way to make the Passage.
(To add to the irony, an expedition under George Back had intended to map the relevant area while searching for John Ross, but when Ross was found, the expedition was redirected and the map never completed -- to Franklin's cost.)
Another error seemed to imply a useful passage further west which did not exist. (Lest we criticize, the Arctic Archipelago -- called the "District of Franklin" when they were still part of the Northwest Territories -- is among the hardest places on earth to map; I have an atlas from 1967 which still contains significant errors, such as showing Borden and Mackenzie King islands as one. Brant, p. 32, notes that this region was not fully mapped until the mid-twentieth century, and that mostly by air.)
Given that misinformation, Franklin chose to steer west of King William Island. That route, while short in air distance, is exposed to pack ice coming down McClintock Channel. While technically ocean, the route almost never thaws -- there is so much ice that it periodically throws floes high up on King William Island (Fleming-Barrow, p. 288; MSmith, pp. 170-171, quotes James Clark Ross's observations of the ice on the island). Franklin seems to have entered it at one of the few times when it was partly open. His ships were frozen on the ice for almost two years before they were finally abandoned.
Franklin did not live long enough to know the worst. He died, of unknown but probably natural causes, aboard Erebus on June 11, 1847; his body has not been found. His loss shouldn't have been fatal -- after all, that left the veteran F. R. M. Crozier in command.
But the loss of their paunchy admiral seemed to take something out of the expedition. Crozier, though an intelligent self-made man, had never held an independent command (Lambert, p. 338). And, somehow, he never seemed to gain any recognition (MSmith, p. 132). Plus, though reportedly respected by his crews, he is said to have been a strict disciplinarian (MSmith, p. 97) and probably was not loved.
His mental state wasn't the best, either. Crozier told the wife of another officer that he didn't expect to return alive from the Franklin Expedition (MSmith, p. 156). His last letters hint strongly at depression (Cookman, p. 54), and Lady Franklin wrote that he "seemed... ill and dispirited when he left" (Savours, p. 192). He felt, with some justice, that his record should have earned him more recognition than he had been given. Bitter and pessimistic, he was hardly the man to save a bad situation.
After being frozen off King William Island for two winters, Crozier finally abandoned the ships and tried to head back to a possible rendezvous point by the Great Fish River (now the Back River). Lambert, pp. 340-342, thinks he did not expect to succeed but had to try something. Lambert, p. 341, adds that neither Crozier nor his second in command FitzJames made any personal statement in their last record, which to him indicates that they had no hope -- but which could indicate they expected to survive.
But there would be no rescue ships at the Great Fish River , and indications are that the crew broke up into smaller groups, all of which died.
Several bodies have been found which seem to come from the Franklin Expedition -- and which show obvious signs of cannibalism (Lambert, p. 347, noting that evidence of cannibalism was found in the nineteenth century by Schwatka, and perhaps McClintock as well, as well as by twentieth century explorers, and that Rae and Schwatka and Hall all heard Inuit stories of it. Potter, p. 33, notes that modern examinations of the bones strengthen these conclusions. Lambert, p. 348, says that the only actual question is whether the men died before being eaten, or if they were killed for their flesh. This even though Rae's tales of cannibalism were formally written out of the story by authors such as Clements Markham; Lambert, p. 326, in effect declares Markham's works historical fiction.)
The last written record of the expedition comes from the spring of 1848, as they abandoned the ships, although most of the men certainly lived somewhat longer.
In 2014, explorers finally found the wreckage of one of the ships, identified as Erebus, somewhat to the south of where it was abandoned but right along the course of the ice drift (Potter, p. 112, declares that it is "exactly where the Inuit said it would be," although the Inuit records are sufficiently contradictory that this may be exaggerated). It is in surprisingly good shape although the stern has been crushed (image on p. 168 of Hutchinson). In September 2016, it was announced that the Terror had been found about forty miles to the north, actually along the coast of King William Island (Watson, p. 334, etc.). It has even entered by a remotely operated vehicle; it is in even better shape. What's more, it is in a rather sheltered bay, making it unlikely that it drifted there; it is easier to assume that it was sailed there some time after the hips were abandoned. In a strange coincidence, McClintock had named the site "Terror Bay" a century and a half before the ship was found (Watson, p. 335).
Interestingly, Terror is near a part of the coast where Franklin relics have been found (see the map on p. xvi of Watson), but it is not clear if there is a direct connection. The finds may yet reveal more about the expedition, but as of this writing, no one has announced anything particularly useful. Watson's book, which is about the exploration, has relatively little information about the expedition itself; it's all about the ships. (It does say, p, 313, that the search for Franklin's ships did help to chart the waters of the arctic, in particular the depths of the channels.)
Inuit accounts imply that one of the ships sank before the other, and that the surviving ship had men on it after the other sank, implying either that the crew did not leave it or that they came back. The wreckage seems to support this to an extent (Woodman, p. xvii, says that "validates the long-known Inuit traditions); although Erebus is in good shape for a shipwreck, it looks like it actually did sink. Terror, by contrast, seems to have been very carefully buttoned up -- abandoned but not given up for lost (Watson, pp. 329-331); one of the searchers said it would probably float if it were raised and pumped out! So neither ship seems to have been wrecked, as the Inuit claimed, and yet they became separated, and one of them ended up in a place where there are Franklin relics. Neither one is anywhere near where the ships were said to have been trapped in the ice.
This raises the obvious question of whether the Victory Point record was in fact properly descriptive. Did Crozier abandon when Erebus was damaged and not want to admit to it? Did the ships separate? Did the men leave the ships and then come back, as Woodman suggested (Potter, p. 177, etc.; Woodman, pp. 6-7; he thinks they went out to hunt in 1848 and intended to return)? In particular, did they abandon the ships, fail in their expedition, and return to find Erebus wrecked but Terror able to sail? And did they then sail it to Terror bay? Finding the ships has raised more questions than it has answered.
Even more recently, genetic testing has revealed still more. According to the web site Ars Technica, in 2001, DNA revealed that a sample came from John Gregory, engineer on the Erebus. In 2024 came an even bigger result: The jaw of Captain FitzJames was identified based on its DNA -- and it showed cut marks that seemed to indicate cannibalism. Those who did the testing suggest that FitzJames most likely died in May or June 1848. This obviously shows that he was not the last to die, and also that the men did not hesitate to eat the body of their superior officer.
Franklin's problem, perhaps, could ultimately be put down to "bad luck" -- i.e. lack of actual genius; his 1819 expedition had ended in disaster through minor errors in what we would now call "staff work," and that is perhaps part of what happened here: When he needed to be inspired, he instead got bogged down, wasting time circling Cornwallis Island, failing to leave cairns to mark his progress (or building cairns but leaving no records in them; see, e.g., Savours, p. 292), and then dying before he could rectify his mistake.
(Most books seem to take a position that is either strongly pro- or anti-Franklin. I must admit that I find this hard. Of the men most qualified to know -- Parry, James Clark Ross, and Crozier -- all initially approved of his appointment; although Crozier became depressed, he had written to Ross somewhat earlier expressing his approval of Franklin; Savours, p. 178. Reading the passages from Franklin's notes compiled by Savours, pp. 169-177, it appears he was wiser about the Arctic than his superiors. And yet -- he *did* fail. My best guess is that he was a better-than-average commander for the task -- but that the task, given the weather conditions in the late 1840s, needed someone who was better than better-than-average.)
(Lambert, p. 350, would view it another way: "Franklin was neither a bungler nor an explorer. An inspirational leader, the noblest of public men, he made important contributions to polar navigation and magnetic science.... He did not 'discover' the North West Passage -- instead he discovered that Hell can be found in the hearts of men, in Van Diemen's land rather than in the high Arctic.")
All this was reconstructed from the findings of the expeditions sent to look for Franklin. There were many (Beattie, pp. 262-263, list some 17 ships sent out by 1850, plus some land expeditions; Delgado, p. 149, says that 32 expeditions were mounted from 1847 to 1859), but the initial searches were rather a failure; although the ships charted some new territory, few discovered anything and several managed to come to grief themselves.
Lady Franklin did not get any useful word until 1854. At that time, John Rae -- who wasn't even searching for Franklin; he was exploring the Boothia Peninsula for the Hudson's Bay Company (it was he who finally proved that King William Land was King William Island; Brandt, p. 366) -- met sundry Inuit (Savours, pp. 270-272) who had collected a few relics (including the Franklin Medal) and had also seen a company of perhaps forty white men struggling south in the snow. The Europeans had starved to death (Savours, p. 273), and the Inuit had collected the relics.
Rae had hoped to proceed north, into the area where we know Franklin's men died, but there was too much ice that year (Brandt, p. 341). So his knowledge was second- and third-hand (the first man he heard the story from had not seen Franklin's sailors or the places they died, but had traded for and was wearing a British officer's cap; Watson, pp. 152-155) -- but Rae had the artifacts, and why would the Inuit lie?
An 1855 land expedition led by James Anderson and James Stewart found some additional artifacts in the area of Montreal Island, but was unable to converse with the Inuit and so couldn't add much to the story.
While that located the expedition in the waters west of the Boothia Peninsula -- an area that no one had bothered to search, though Lady Franklin had urged it -- it left at least two-thirds of the men unaccounted for, though Franklin on the evidence was surely one of the casualties. The Admiralty was satisfied; it closed the books (Cookman, pp. 1-2, prints the preliminary Admiralty order to pay off the men's widows after a certain date if no word was heard. This was before Rae reported; obviously his report just made it final).
The Navy declared the seamen dead (Moss, p. 140, says that this is good, since it started the pension process, but pensions cost the Navy far less than regular wages), passed out a few knighthoods, and sent its fleet to fight in the Crimean War (where the British forces suffered more wastage than they ever did in Lancaster Sound, and for even less use. The Northwest Passage expeditions not only charted new ground, but they made biological, geological, and anthropological discoveries, though hardly enough to justify the lives they cost).
Brandt, p. 343, points out that, with steam becoming an efficient means of transportation and the Suez Canal complete, China and India were now only two weeks' steaming from Britain. So the Passage had lost any commercial significance. No one really cared any more.
Lady Franklin wasn't satisfied -- after all, this meant that Franklin was officially dead, which meant, given his will, that she lost control of the family finances (McGooganFranklin, p. 326). But from now on, she was on her own. She stuffily refused to take her pension and set out to organize things on her own (Watson, p. 156). She would finally learn her husband's fate in 1859.
In 1857, Lady Franklin had chartered a last expedition, under Francis McClintock. Because Lady Franklin was short of money, they had only a single small ship, the Fox, a 177 ton topsail schooner, formerly a yacht, with auxiliary steam (Savours, p. 284) that she bought for two thousand pounds (Watson, p. 162). It had to be crammed to the bilges to hold all the men and supplies (Savours, p. 285; Watson, p. 163) -- but they finally went to the right place, searching (mostly by sledge) around King William Island and the Boothia Peninsula. They also talked to the Inuit. And McClintock, unlike most of the other searchers, understood sledging and the ice, which made him a better explorer (e.g. Lambert, p. 279).
During their search, they found skeletons, more relics -- and two of the expedition's summary reports (Franklin had had orders to leave reports, sealed against water, at regular intervals, though only a handful were ever found, most from very early in the expedition; in effect, we have only one document of the last stages. The problem may have been that the records were supposed to be dropped into the sea, so that they could be used to evaluate currents as well as trace the expedition's fate; Brandt, p. 305).
It was Lieutenant William Hobson who found the writings (Lambert, p. 280, who says on p. 281 that McClintock assigned Hobson that territory to help him earn promotion) in two cairns on King William Island. The copies originally dropped in the two cairns were the same, but one of them -- the so-called "Victory Point Record" after the place where it was found -- later had a long appendix added on the same sheet of paper (for details of the finding, see e.g. Sandler, pp. 182-185, plus of course McClintock, pp. 190-192).
The first report, from May 28, 1847, was optimistic. The expedition, after wasting most of 1845 circling Cornwallis Island, had spent the winter of 1845-1846 at Beechey Island. Once the ice broke up the next spring, Franklin had headed south, spending the winter of 1846-1847 off King William Island. At the time the report was written, the ships were still stuck there. Nonetheless, there seemed to be hope.
The second report, from (probably) April 25, 1848, was a grim addendum written in the margins of the first; the ships had been ice-locked by very cold weather for more than a year and a half. Both Franklin's subordinate captains, Crozier and FitzJames, were alive to sign the report, putting their names upside-down at the top of the sheet below a very cramped summary (McClintock, p. 193, believed that the note was written by FitzJames himself, save the last words which were by Crozier; he does not give reasons for this, but Savours, p. 292; Lambert, p. 280; Williams-Labyrinth, p. 34; Woodman, p. 92, and most others accept it. The expedition commander was supposed to write the official summary; Franklin had signed the one report found from the very first days of the expedition; Potter, pp. 37-38. FitzJames, as the #2 of Franklin's ship, might therefore take his place were Franklin ill. Wallace, p. 61, thinks the first message, however, was by Graham Gore. The surviving record seems to have been altered, as well as having the addendum added by Crozier and FitzJames -- but the quality of reproductions I've seen are not good enough to make it clear who did it).
Franklin could hardly have written the second note in any case. By the time it was written, Franklin had been dead for ten months, and a total of two dozen men -- 20% of the expedition's total -- had been lost. There seemed no way to escape by sea. On April 22, Crozier wrote that someone -- the report doesn't say who -- would "start tomorrow... for Back's Fish River." The usual assumption was that the 105 survivors abandoned the ships and head for the mainland.
The 1848 report did not tell the fate of the last survivors, of course. Most think they simply tried for the mainland and failed to make it. But David Woodman speculated that they wanted to hunt and fish at the river to restore their strength, then return to the ships (Delgado, p. 163). This would explain why there were relics found at so many places -- and also why the one ship's boat that was located was found on a sledge heading *north* (Savours, p. 296). On this theory, some of the crew may have lived until 1851 or 1852 -- and could have been rescued had anyone looked in the right place (Williams-Labyrinth, p. 355). But they were never seen again by Europeans.
They may have made severe mistakes in planning this last stage -- McClintock found they took a lot of junk, such as books and silverware, with them, though it has been argued that they simply emptied the ships (perhaps of materials not needed for the final part of the voyage, or perhaps to keep them available should the ships sink). And Woodman, p. 114, argues that the surviving materials in some cases show careful planning -- e.g. the one surviving medicine chest is full of materials likely to be needed on a long land journey. Nor did the men leave the trail of discarded materials that usually is found in a disastrous retreat;they left cairns and graves, but no discarded materials (Woodman, p. 116).
Nonetheless, they may not have been in shape to travel. Their sledges were ill-designed and heavy. It is little surprise that most died along the trek. It appears that quite a few simply dropped as they walked, and died where they fell (Beattie, pp. 80-81). Then, too, the evidence of cannibalism is overwhelming (Rae observed it at once -- Savours, p. 273 -- and others later confirmed it), in the form bones carved by knives and often scattered in a completely unnatural way (Delgado, p. 168; Sandler, pp. 150-151; Cookman offers additional details on pp. 176, 178, then proceeds on p. 184 to accuse Crozier of killing living men to feed the others. Of course, the only evidence of that is Cookman's dreams).
The Inuit would indicate that, after Erebus and Terror were abandoned, one sank and one was crushed by ice (Sandler, p. 180). The recent discovery of the shipwrecks supports this at least in part. In a sad irony, the two ended up drifting with the ice toward the place the men actually wanted to go (Watson, p. 193; the map on p. xvi of Watson shows Terror in a bay on the south side of King William Island, at a place where Franklin relics were found, and Erebus actually off the Adelaide Peninsula on the Canadian mainland, not far from a site on the Klutschach Peninsula where relics were also found). From there they could have followed Amundsen's route to Alaska and escape. Although abandoning ship was a reasonable choice, Crozier should either have done it earlier or waited until the drift had taken him south.
The nature of the abandonment, and of the surviving relics, led Woodman to the conclusion that the Victory Point record was not the last word (Woodman, p. 119); the ships were unloaded and left, but that the men returned to them for a time. I did not believe this before the discovery of the ships; now, I incline to think that this is true.
The crew's strange behavior in these final months led to speculation that the men were slowly losing their minds. Much would be made of this in the next century -- perhaps by over-reaction to the idolization of Franklin in Victorian times. As Lambert notes on p. 286, McClintock's book was in print for half a century (and was reprinted in the twenty-first century), and it helped shape Franklin scholarship for a long time. And the government set up a memorial to Franklin at Lady Franklin's urging -- but "from concept to motto the monument was a lie, one that made Jane the widow of 'a great explorer'" (Lambert, p. 295).
It is an irony of the search for Franklin that it finally *did* find the Northwest Passage; explorers from the west, led by Robert McClure, discovered McClure and Prince of Wales Straits and followed each far enough to sight Melville Sound and Parry's Winter Harbour (where that explorer had wintered in 1820), "forging the last link." (It was Franklin's friend John Richardson who first said the that Franklin's party "forged the last link of the Northwest Passage with their lives." Richardson's piece was included in the Encyclopedia Britannica, so the phrase became a commonplace; Lambert, p. 260). Both McClure's routes, however, were blocked by ice and unusable (and are close enough to the arctic pack that they rarely open).
McClure managed to sledge to Winter Harbor, the westernmost point reached by any expedition from the east, but he and his ship Investigator did not come through -- and indeed blundered around so much that the ship was lost. Having first risked a winter in open ice (Mirsky, p. 145), McClure the next year entered a cul-de-sac he called "Mercy Bay," where the ship was trapped (Berton, pp. 228-232). He probably should not even have tried for that second round of exploration, since many of his provisions had been lost or spoiled (Williams-Labyrinth, p. 302), and Mercy Bay was so open to the local ice currents that it was not until 2007 that it was ever seen to be ice-free (Stein, p. 249), but McClure wasn't the type to abandon a hope of fame just because it was the only sensible thing to do....
Shortly before they were found, McClure engaged in a brazen attempt to send more than half of his crew to their deaths so that the remainder (the strongest) would have a better chance to survive (Sandler, pp. 131-132; details on pp. 199-201 of Stein). If the ship's doctor is to be believed, the men knew what McClure was up to; he had to use the marines to enforce his decisions (Stein, pp. 201-202). Fortunately, they were found before he managed to execute his plan.
As Lambert comments on p. 228, "McClure's single-minded ambition wrecked the careful planning, limited the science, and destroyed any chance of completing the tasks" of the mission. It is noteworthy that his every act was in defiance of his orders -- he even technically mutinied to get away from his superior officer Richard Collinson. He also took a dangerous, largely unknown, route through the Aleutians to assure he arrived in the Arctic before Collinson (Brandt, p. 348). Even his officers seem to have disapproved of his conduct (Williams-Labyrinth, p. 298), and from the very beginning he was intent on undercutting and humiliating his second-in-command (Stein, p. 29).
Even when McClure's crew was rescued by sledges from ships in the east, he tried to leave his sick crew on his ship, so he could try to claim the prize money for making it through the passage (Stein, p. 218) -- but he couldn't convince the crew to do it (Berton, p. 248). McGooganRae, p. 261, says he "demonstrat[ed] a pathological passion to 'complete' a Northwest Passage at any cost." Fleming-Barrow, p. 405, calls his behavior at this time "a little mad," which may be an understatement; three of his crew were already dead, all had scurvy, and clearly they weren't strong enough to sail the vessel, but McClure tried to trick his superior into forcing them to stay with his ship.
He also pushed his crew to abandon the journals which would have documented his behavior (Savours, p. 222; Stein, p. 213, describes how he wrote this orders to pretend he was safeguarding the records). Some survived to show how badly he managed things (Williams-Labyrinth, p. 308), but Stein, p. 254, finds several cases where there is a gap at just the time when McClure's conduct was at its worst; it is as if they have been censored.
In the end, he had to be ordered to abandon his ship, even though it was clear that she could not be rescued; this little maneuver let him maintain that he had not lost his ship and that he had discovered the Northwest Passage (Stein, pp. 222-223). In writing all this up, he very carefully glossed over the five men who had died, and the others who were injured or ill, because of his vainglory (Stein, p. 227; Stein, p. 237, adds that several who survived probably had their lives shortened by their privations). What's more, he maneuvered it so that Henry Kellett and his men, who had rescued McClure and covered just about as much of the passage as McClure and Company, were left out of all the rewards (Wallace, pp. 138-139).
Wallace, pp. 97-98, observes that there are substantial similarities between the stories of the Franklin and McClure expeditions, and that the ending also would probably have been the same (a total loss) if McClure had been in the Passage alone; he and his crew only survived because all the other searchers were there also.
The only thing I can think of in McClure's defense is that he had lost a fortune through being disinherited at age twelve (Wallace, p. 93). This perhaps explains his obsession with success, but it certainly doesn't justify his methods!
What it came down to was that McClure's crew made the passage (from west to east) -- but no ship did. In the end, the eastern expeditions returned east, and the one surviving ship that had gone in from the west went back west, without their vessels meeting. Lambert, p. 244, suggests that the Admiralty accepted McClure's absurd claim of navigating the Passage just so they could shut down the Arctic mission and stop wasting time and money. But they also promoted McClure to captain (Stein, p. 228), so they don't seem to have really appreciated how badly he had performed. And they awarded 10,000 pounds for the discovery of the passage, including 5,000 to McClure (by comparison, his senior officers got 271 pounds, six shillings, four pence; able seamen were given 29 pounds, one shilling, five pence; Stein, p. 240).
On top of it all, Stein, p. 234, argues that McClure set things up to hand out medals to the sailors who had proved most loyal to him, not those who had done the best service. His wife was not so easily fooled; he blamed her, not himself, but he said that "I can never meet her again" (Stein, p. 235). Knighted in 1855, he commanded the Esk in the Second China War -- and was notorious for the extreme punishments he inflicted on his sailors. He was not given another command, although he was promoted rear admiral after he left the service (Stein, pp. 242-243).
Captain Richard Collinson, McClure's nominal boss, also discovered a passage (Delgado, p. 133), approximating that later used by Amundsen, and he did some good science while he was at it (Lambert, pp. 228-229). He also did a good job of keeping his crew alive; only six died, and none of them of specifically arctic problems, in a five year voyage (Neatby, p. 223). Indeed, he only flogged two crewmen in the entire time (Neatby, p. 222). He fought with his officers, but there isn't much doubt that he handled the Arctic better than any other explorer. Amundsen would later say that Collinson would get far too little credit for what he did; Savours, p. 307. A naval authority, Admiral Sir George Richards, declared is "the most remarkable [arctic voyage] of them all" (Neatby, p. 220). All that was needed after that was for someone to actually sail the passage it. (Although, if Collinson had tried, he might have gotten into real trouble, because his conflicts with his officers were so intense that they all were under arrest by the time he was done; Williams-Labyrinth, p. 314; Stein, p. 238; he might not have been able to navigate the narrow channels safely. An odd outcome, given that Wallace, p. 93, says that he was one of the "most magnanimous" of arctic explorers).
Collinson might well have learned the fate of Franklin, too, except that his interpreter had sailed with McClure, so he couldn't talk to the Inuit (Lambert, p. 229; Williams-Labyrinth, p. 313; Neatby, p. 223; Stein, p. 44; Neatby, p. 160, explains that McClure's ship had a cabin ready for him, and Collinson's didn't, so Collinson let the interpreter, Johan August Miertsching, start the voyage with McClure. Collinson meant to get him back, but McClure deliberately avoided making a rendezvous). Because of McClure's trick, Collinson didn't learn anything, but he was the only one in position to find out.
Poor Collinson gained little credit for his work, in part because McClure made it home first and in part because Collinson didn't actually follow the passage; according to Brandt, p. 362, the Admiralty never gave him another command. (According to Neatby, p. 226, he didn't try for one, given the way the Admiralty treated him. Given that they also mistreated Kellett and his men, the crews who rescued McClure -- Neatby, p. 228 -- I think Collinson had a point.) Lambert also suggests, pp. 237-238, that the Admiralty by that time wanted to suppress any mention of the Arctic. Yet, as his brother noted in editing his journals, he "demonstrated practically that it is navigable for ships" (quoted by Savours, p. 231) -- that is, Collinson, though he mapped only a small part of the Passage, was the first to sail a ship through large portions of it.
Ultimately, it was Collinson, not McClure or Franklin or anyone else, who proved that it was possible to get a ship through the Passage. Collinson also was the one who analyzed the Franklin reports found by McClintock and showed that Ross's erroneous map of King William (Is)land probably led Franklin to make his final mistake of passing west of that island (Lambert, p. 282).
It has been speculated that the sledging expedition of Graham Gore that left the "Victory Point Record," the one surviving record of the expedition (and the rarely-mentioned "Gore Point Record" that duplicates part of it), mapped Rae Straight and the other waterways that completed the passage, and that his report, when he got back to the ships, earned him a promotion to commander -- and caused Franklin to die of shock, since Franklin died just a few days after Gore placed the Victory Point document (Wallace, p. 61). This is barely possible, but completely beyond proof. It is noteworthy that Franklin did not sign the Victory Point Record, and that the word "commanding" had been crossed out, hinting that Franklin was already ill, or something, at the time the record was sealed (Woodman, p. 94). What's more, the practice was to solder the messages into their containers (Woodman, p. 95), which makes it interesting that it had been opened, an appendix added, and then left again. (And it was not re-soldered -- Woodman, p. 112 -- whether due to lack of time or equipment is not clear.)
It was not until 1903-1906 that Amundsen in the Gjoa made the actual passage from Baffin Bay to Beaufort Sea -- and even he didn't take the Lancaster/Melville/McClure route, but turned south from the Barrow Strait to take the route east and south of King William Island and then south of Victoria Island -- in effect combining the first part of Franklin's path with the main part of Collinson's.
Finally, in 1944, Larsen made it through the icy Lancaster/Melville passage. (Amazing to realize that, now, there are actual settlements -- Resolute and Grise Fjord, among others -- north of that route. Though Wilkinson, p. 78, notes an interesting point about Resolute: It is mostly a military base and airfield, designed to watch the Pole -- and it was supposed to be set up at Parry's Winter Harbor. But there was too much ice to get there, so they set up on Cornwallis Island instead. Winter Harbor ended up being the place where the first Arctic oil drilling began, though -- Wilkinson, p. 99.)
On January 25, 2011, I had the privilege to hear a talk by Roger Swanson, who sailed the passage in a boat called Cloud Nine in 2007 (a schooner-rigged sailing vessel with an auxiliary engine, built 1975), and afterward to talk for a few minutes with his wife Gaynelle Templin. For their trip, they had dramatic advantages over Franklin. For starters, they had better foods and knowledge of nutrition. Also, there are now enough settlements in the Canadian Arctic that they were able to refuel along the way. Plus they had radio -- and satellite-derived ice charts which allowed them to plan their route. And, even so, they had failed in previous attempts at the passage in 1994 and 2005; in the latter case, they had to be rescued by an icebreaker which happened to be nearby.
Theirs was the first American sailing vessel to cross the passage from east to west. It is their opinion that, even today, a sailing vessel without auxiliary power cannot make the passage. And that means that Franklin's ships, with their weak engines and limited coal supplies, could not make it either.
Nonetheless, the ice from Melville Sound to the Beaufort Sea opened completely in 2007 (Brandt, pp. 4-5), and we're seeing Russians taking tours in icebreakers (Brandt, p. 31). The passage is likely to be commercially viable soon. We're already seeing contests between Americans, Russians, and Canadians over who owns the land -- some recent Franklin exploration, including underwater searches for his ships, has been done by the Canadians in their attempts to stake their claim to the Passage territories (Brandt, pp. 8-9).
But why did the expedition fail to make it home? Why did they make the strange decisions they did, and why weren't they able to make it home? The ships could not make it through, but why did not the men come back? Crozier and company were far from anywhere when they abandoned ship, but they should still have had enough supplies to make it to one or another Hudson Bay Company outpost.
This is the second Great Mystery of the Franklin Expedition -- the one that endures to this day.
The obvious answer is, Scurvy, or vitamin C deficiency (cf. MSmith, p. 174, who estimates that the disease would have turned serious just about when Franklin died). As noted above, this had been the constant companion of long sea voyages for as long a men could remember; it nearly ruined Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe.
Franklin's crews of course were given the standard rations of lemon juice -- but the standard ration is not by itself enough to prevent scurvy. On most ships, this doesn't matter; the crews get at least some fresh food. Not in the Arctic, though! And Vitamin C has an unfortunate tendency to degrade when exposed to light and air, so a dose of lemon juice that might have prevented scurvy in 1845 would have been too weak to do much good in 1847. Plus, Sherard Osborn noted that no canned materials were found among any of the relics found along King William Island. Although the survivors almost certainly had provisions left when they left the ships, they were likely in the form of salt meat and biscuits, which had no vitamin C at all (Savours, p. 297).
What's more, scurvy affects both the mind and the body; a man too badly afflicted might make the sort of strange decisions Crozier and his surviving officers are accused of having made. Williams-Labyrinth, pp. 354-355, thinks it the main explanation for what happened; so does Woodman, p. 100, who elsewhere notes that the Inuit descriptions of the men they saw fit men who suffered from scurvy.
Yet many deny the possibility of scurvy (e.g. Fleming-Barrow, p. 416 thinks it killed too quickly). And the one skeleton from the Franklin expedition properly examined (originally thought to be Lieutenant Henry Le Vesconte, but isotope analysis makes this impossible; the best bet now is surgeon Harry Goodsir; Potter, pp. 28-30) shows no evidence of scurvy (Potter, pp. 30-31). The flip side is, one of the few Inuit reports about the survivors says that their mouths were dry, bleeding, and black -- a good fit for scurvy.
Owen Beattie had another hypothesis. In 1984 and 1986, he autopsied the bodies of the first Franklin men to die (the three buried on Beechey Island in the first winter). He found extremely high levels of lead. He also looked at bones of the skeletons found along the path of the Franklin Expedition. He found strong evidence of scurvy (Beattie, p. 16) -- and more lead.
Emsley-Molecules, pp. 218-219, explains why lead is so dangerous: It interferes with the manufacture of hemoglobin, and causes the buildup of a precursor chemical. The intestines are heavily affected; there is also a high likelihood of fluid on the brain. Beattie's theory is that the men were driven mad by lead poisoning, which would explain their erratic behavior, and of course would make them less able to bear the privations of an arctic journey.
This would also explain the scriptural references on the graves of two of the three men on Beechey: "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways" and "Choose ye this day whom you will serve" (Williams-Labyrinth, p. 190; the quotes are from Haggai 1:5 or 1:7 and Joshua 24:15). Williams considers these to be rather strange and ominous quotes, perhaps indicating some sort of mental defect, but I don't really see it.
Beattie states clearly in his work that lead did not kill the three men he autopsied on Beechey, though it may have weakened them and left them vulnerable to other illnesses. Nonetheless, the lead theory has been widely repeated, often without even Beattie's cautions -- e.g. Emsley-Molecules, p. 217, blames the deaths on Beechey, and the failure of the Franklin expedition, solely on lead.
Emsley-Elements, p. 302, gives the measured opinion, "Lead may not have caused the deaths of the members of the expedition but it must have seriously weakened them and there is evidence that they also suffered from scurvy.... Whatever happened, the members of that ill-fated expedition certainly suffered from lead poisoning."
But while the lead theory has become popular, the evidence is far from complete -- Beattie examined only a handful of bodies, and only the three from Beechey Island were intact. And even if lead poisoning caused some of the other deaths, we cannot be sure if these men were typical.
If anything, the evidence for lead poisoning is stronger in the search expeditions -- e.g. nearly everyone in James Clark Ross's 1848 rescue crew came down sick for extended periods, and their problem does not appear to have been scurvy (Sandler, p. 93); it has all the hallmarks of lead affecting the digestion. (On the other hand, Lambert, p. 188, notes that the crew of this expedition was not carefully chosen, and their provisions may have been poor due to the problems of Irish famine relief; the real problem may just have been that it was an improperly-mounted expedition. James Ross had refused even to consider taking a steamship; Lambert, p. 185.)
Against the lead theory may be set the fact that the last message, written and signed by Crozier and FitzJames, seems largely coherent and reasonable. The men were debilitated, but not entirely mad. Berton, p. 146, mentions the lead theory but says flatly that "the main cause of death was clearly scurvy." MSmith, p. 181, and Lambert, p. 340, note that Crozier's decision to abandon the ships in April 1848 was rational: although the weather would be warmer later on, this was the best time to travel across the ice, which would still be firm after the winter. The decision may have been wrong, but it was probably the best Crozier could have done in the circumstances.
Watson, the most recent writer on the subject as of when I write, says on p. 48, "In the twenty-first century, scientists ruled out the suggestion that any of the metal ingested during the sailors' Arctic voyage had a significant impact." Woodman, p. xix, is less definitive but also says that the scientific evidence is against lead as the major cause of the disaster. Also, a study published in 2018 (which I have not seen, so I can't cite it) says that studies of the hair of one of the bodies on King William Island gives strong evidence that lead was not the culprit, because the body was showing LESS lead in his hair toward the end of his life. The best evidence is that the men's high lead levels were typical of people living at the time.
In any case, there is the question of where the lead came from. It is widely believed that it came from their food. It is not absolutely certain, as is widely stated, that the lead came from their canned goods. Lead was surprisingly common at this time -- "sugar of lead" (lead acetate) was still used as a sweetener (MacInnis-Poison, p. 53), and yellow lead as a food dye, and red lead was added to snuff and used to color Gloucester cheese (MacInnis-Poison, p. 45). And Watson, p. 18, says that the desalination apparatus in the ships used lead pipes; many people today suspect that the lead came from their water. (Not that it matters; what matters is if it affected them.)
Still, about a third of the provisions supplied to the Franklin Expedition came from canned food -- in tin cans sealed with lead. And yet, other expeditions also sailed with lead-sealed cans, and survived. Indeed, thirty-some years later, the Jeannette expedition suffered from lead poisoning (in the form of stomach cramps) -- and they identified the condition and corrected it (Guttridge, p. 158; or see "Hurrah for Baffin's Bay" for more on the Jeannette).
Still, canning was a new technology in 1845 -- the first version was developed by a Frenchman, Nicolas Appert, shortly before 1800 (Satin, p. 122). His method worked well, but it was based on glass bottles, which were fragile. What was wanted was a metal can. But this required experimentation -- because no one knew why Appert's method worked. Although the first British patent was granted in 1811, people were still tinkering with the techniques. The contract to supply the Franklin Expedition was so large that most canners had backed out. One who did not was Stephan Goldner -- who submitted by far the lowest bid.
Cookman, whose book is mostly about canning, portrays Goldner as the extreme villain of the piece, deliberately cheating the Admiralty. This need not follow -- all that is quite clear that Goldner was not up to the job he had contracted for. He was supposed to supply a variety of provisions -- canned vegetables, meats, soups -- mostly in small cans. He delivered almost nothing by the contract date, and was allowed to substitute large cans (cheaper and faster to manufacture) at the last moment (Satin, pp. 132-133, probably summarizing Cookman).
By the end of the 1850s, it would become clear that Goldner's methods simply didn't work. The hypothesis at the time was that oxygen caused spoilage (Satin, p. 125), which led to misunderstanding of how canning worked. The real problem was that Goldner did not cook the contents of the cans (especially the larger cans, which had a higher volume-to-surface-area ratio) sufficiently. Plus he didn't solder them tightly enough; the contents, in addition to being saturated with lead, very often rotted in the cans, or in some instances burst.
Franklin's wasn't the only expedition troubled by bad canned goods; both the McClure and Collinson parties found that much they had carried was rotten (Williams-Labyrinth, p. 313).
Cookman thinks that Goldner probably adulterated what he shipped, as well; since he was canning in the spring, there would have been few fresh vegetables, and little fatted meat, available. Between the inferior ingredients, the inadequate cooking, and the undeniably unsanitary conditions in Goldner's factory, the canned goods would almost certainly have been breeding grounds for bacteria. Including botulism bacteria.
Williams-Labyrinth, p. 367, offers some indirect support for this: Amundson, half a century after the Franklin expedition, talked to some Inuit who reported that their forebears had eaten canned goods presumably from Franklin's ships -- and some had become ill and some had died. But had they eaten from sealed cans, or from canned goods that had been opened and spoiled?
In any case, is this a quality control problem or deliberate cheating? Cookman thinks the latter -- but it appears that some contemporary Goldner products had proved acceptable (Beattie, p. 65), and that Goldner had given satisfaction in the past (Beattie, p. 45). And Cookman is demonstrably wrong in one charge against Goldner (p. 87, where Goldner, correctly, argued that round cans are structurally more sound than square. Goldner's explanation is imprecise, so Cookman calls it a lie even though the gist of it is true).
But deciding that Goldner was evil allowed Cookman to evolve a vision of the expedition which makes Franklin and Company look much better: At every stage their behavior was rational. They just kept dying of food-borne illnesses. The idea is old: as early as Austin's expedition, Captain Ommaney, counting the number of tins left on Beechey Island, thought that some of Franklin's food might have been bad. The only problem with Cookman's version it is that it's about 10% facts (the facts being Goldner's problems, the large number of cans in the camp on Beechey Island, and the known places where Franklin artifacts were found) and 90% Cookman -- and Cookman's writing tends to substitute speculation for fact; his history of the expedition often includes descriptions of events no one witnessed or could reconstruct from the available data (e.g. he actually tells us, p. 95, which hatches were bolted on Franklin's ships during the winter).
Still, MSmith, p. 150, mentions the botulism theory with some approval. Satin, who knows more about food chemistry, however says on p. 136 that "Although this premise is theoretically possible, it is unlikely." He points out on p. 137 that at least some of the canned products would have been consumed on the trip from England to the Davis Straight -- but no one died in that time. This argues that Goldner's cans were not directly poisoned.
That Goldner's products were inferior is certain; there were many complaints in the years after the Franklin expedition, and eventually the Admiralty imposed such stringent conditions on him that he appears to have been driven out of business. Even if his products weren't filled with lead or fatal bacteria, many of the cans probably contained spoiled food.
This would fit Beattie's autopsy of Marine Private William Braine, who was very tall for the period (about 6 feet/180 cm.) but utterly emaciated (about 40 kg/90 pounds); botulism frequently affects the digestion first, and other forms of food poisoning target the digestion even more.
In this regard, the Admiralty's decision to fit out a large expedition was probably largely to blame: The ships were modernized and up-to-date -- but, with so many hands, the crew could not possibly pick up enough food locally to significantly supplement their diets. (Indeed, it appears they didn't have anyone trained as a hunter.) They had to rely on provisions taken from England -- which, whether lead-contaminated or not, whether poison or not, whether vermin-infested or not, lacked Vitamin C and were guaranteed to produce scurvy.
It seems to me that all the individual theories have contradictions. If the problem were lead alone, then there was enough food, so why cannibalism? If it were scurvy alone, again, why cannibalism? If it were botulism alone, then why were there so few deaths on Beechey Island? Hundreds of cans were discarded, yet only three men died, at least one of them primarily of tuberculosis. Even when the men abandoned the ships, the casualties were still only in the dozens. Goldner's cans may have been filled with junk, but at most a tiny fraction could have contained actual toxins. And if there were no toxins, then Cookman's diatribe against Goldner has no point.
One thing I note is that very many Arctic expeditions -- e.g. those of Kane, Hall, and Greely, for which see "Hurrah for Baffin's Bay," and the Karluk voyage, for which see "Captain Bob Bartlett" -- ended in madness and insubordination. Keating, p. 44, refers to "Arctic madness" as early as the time of Henry Hudson.
It probably started even earlier than that. Martin Frobisher, the first man to seek the Northwest Passage, came to blows with some of his captains during his third voyage to Baffin Bay (McGhee, pp. 143-145). Henry Hudson's crew set him adrift in Hudson's bay because he would not abandon the weaker members of the party (Mirsky, pp. 62-63; WoodmanR, pp. 36-40, thinks that the madness was actually Hudson's, not his men's, but either way, someone was nuts).
Williams-Labyrinth, p. 67, describes quarrels between Luke Foxe and his subordinates as the reached the far north. Williams-Delusion, pp. 16-17, tells of exploring parties sent by the Hudson's Bay Company in which men -- often the leaders -- lost their minds; in a later expedition, two ship captains ended up quarrelling over something as trivial as who distributed ptarmigan brought in by Indians (Williams-Delusion, p. 173), and the officers were accusing each other of plotting murder (Williams-Delusion, p. 175).
Thomas Collinson, who edited the journals of his brother Richard Collinson, confessed "there appears to be something in that particular service... that stirs up the bile and promotes bitter feelings" (Berton, p. 296). Thomas Simpson, who explored part of the Arctic shore, died in the north either by suicide or as a result of an attack by his men because he was so harsh (Wallace, p. 43). Berton concludes on pp. 392-393, "The history of Arctic exploration is riddled with irrational decisions and events."
The Arctic brought out the worst in men, and not just because of hunger and scurvy. Noah Hayes, who was on Charles Francis Hall's 1871 expedition, wrote "I believe that no man can retain the use of his faculties through one long [Arctic] night" (quoted in Fleming-North, p. 145).
That there was an Arctic disorder seems clear. I've not seen any writing fully explaining it, though -- seasonal affective disorder might play a part (the Inuit actually had a name for that; they called it "perlerorneq"; MSmith, p. 175) , but it hardly seems sufficient. Woodman, p. 113, calls it "arctic sickness" and quotes another source that calls it "arctic scurvy"; they agree that it was more than just scurvy, although they don't know why. Besides, Joseph-Elzear Bernier still found it striking his men in the twentieth century, when they had electric lighting (Williams-Labyrinth, pp. 370-371; he describes his men as depressed). Perhaps SAD plus incipient vitamin deficiency? Or calcium deficiency? In Robert Peary's later expedition, his Inuit were sometimes attacked by a disease called piblokto, which produced vicious and erratic behavior; it is now thought to be caused by lack of calcium (see Fleming-North, p. 359). Reading the accounts of Dr. Frederick A. Cook's arctic quest, I thought his behavior evidence of some sort of mental disturbance, and Bryce, p. 844, quotes another source who had the same thought.
Lambert, p. 339, declares "arctic scurvy" to be "a more complex phenomenon" than ordinary scurvy, suggesting that other vitamin deficiencies were involved. Williams-Labyrinth, p. 78, suggests that men in the arctic drank more to keep warm (or at least to feel warmer), and this might make the effects worse.
Whatever the "arctic madness" was, who is to say it didn't affect the Franklin expedition?
The books I've consulted all seem quite certain about their hypotheses. But it appears that, barring additional evidence, we simply cannot be sure. It is true that occasional relics continue to turn up, but they don't tell us much. Barring some other written record -- and, after 150 years, such a record is unlikely to be found -- we will remain as uncertain as the author of this song.
Probably the best conclusion is Satin's (p. 136), that scurvy, disease, malnutrition, and lead all played a part. Similarly, Lambert, p. 343, suggests a combination of factors: Mostly scurvy, a little seasonal affective disorder, some lead, plus despair and other dietary deficiencies (although on 345 he declares, "Faced with ample evidence that the men died of scurvy and starvation there is no need for speculation"). No one item was fatal. Together, they were.
Lambert, p. 345, makes another point: That, at the time the ships were abandoned, nine officers had already died, leaving only six officers still alive -- hardly enough to control the men and navigate their routes.
It's pretty useless at this stage to assign blame, but it's worth noting that not everyone thinks Franklin entirely at fault for the disaster. His reputation has had a curious history -- the British at first treated him as a near-saint. Then came the reaction in which he was treated as a fool. Now there are various attempts to vindicate him. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. A wiser man would probably have done better with the materials he had at hand, but it was not Franklin who designed the expedition. That was done by John Barrow, the Admiralty Second Secretary. Cookman, p. 204, blames Barrow explicitly; Fleming-Barrow implies it repeatedly. Ironic, then, that I have never seen a version of this song which mentions Barrow.
Moss, p. 221, suggests that the Franklin Expedition inspired The Hunting of the Snark to Lewis Carroll. I grant some faint similarities, but the differences are tremendous -- and it should be remembered that Carroll told us how the Snark came to be, and it was composed from the last line backward, with no hint of which way the plot would go.
Still, the Franklin search did inspire a lot of poetry, although this seems to be the only traditional song. Tennyson's epitaph for his kinsman can be seen on the Franklin monument. A few snippets of some of the others can be found on pp. 394-395 of Brandt, and Alexander, p. 244, has a rather pathetic short piece.
For the later fates of some Franklin searchers, who then turned to North Pole exploration, see "Hurrah for Baffin's Bay."
It's interesting to note that the Fox, which discovered the fate of the Franklin Expedition, herself became the subject of a sort of hunt. After her work under McClintock, she spent decades running supplied around Greenland, ran aground and was abandoned in 1912, broke up in 1940, and was recently explored by archaeologists (DelgadoHunter, p. 188).
Nor were the members of the Franklin expedition, nor even those who sought her in the nineteenth century, the last casualties of the passage. Martin Bergmann, who was helping to coordinate Canada's search for Franklin's ships in the twenty-first century, died in 2011 when the plane he was riding crashed while trying to land at Resolute (Watson, pp. 304-305). The Arctic still holds her secrets close....
Watson, p. 288, never mentions this song, but he does say that singing Stan Rogers's "Northwest Passage" has become a "required ritual" for arctic archaeologists. - RBW
Greenleaf/Mansfield-BalladsAndSeaSongsOfNewfoundland states that 151C is a different song from 151A and 151B. The text is
We sailed away down Baffin Bay,
Where the nights and days were one;
And the Huskimaw in his skin canoe,
That was the only living soul.
The ice-king came with his eyes aflame,
Perched on our noble crew,
And his chilly breath was cold as death,
It pierced our warm hearts through.
- BS
It is noteworthy that Laws does not list that song with this piece, and most of the lines quoted above are not normally found in "Lady Franklin's Lament." The reference to Eskimos, however, *is* found in other Franklin versions, so (given the rarity of this version), I'm still lumping the songs for the moment.
Incidentally, though the word "Huskimaw" for "Eskimo" seems to be extinct today, it was common enough in the past that it gave rise to the name "husky" for arctic dogs. (Thanks to J. V. Arkle and Lyle Lofgren for bringing this to my attention.) - RBW
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