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    Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror Expedition: Lost and Found
    Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror Expedition: Lost and Found
    Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror Expedition: Lost and Found
    Ebook207 pages2 hours

    Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror Expedition: Lost and Found

    By Gillian Hutchinson

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    About this ebook

    In 1845, British explorer Sir John Franklin set out on a voyage to find the North-West Passage – the sea route linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. The expedition was expected to complete its mission within three years and return home in triumph but the two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and the 129 men aboard them disappeared in the Arctic. The last Europeans to see them alive were the crews of two whaling ships in Baffin Bay in July 1845, just before they entered the labyrinth of the Arctic Archipelago.

    The loss of this British hero and his crew, and the many rescue expeditions and searches that followed, captured the public imagination, but the mystery surrounding the expedition's fate only deepened as more clues were found. How did Franklin's final expedition end in tragedy? What happened to the crew?

    The thrilling discoveries in the Arctic of the wrecks of Erebus in 2014 and Terror in 2016 have brought the events of 170 years ago into sharp focus and excited new interest in the Franklin expedition. This richly illustrated book is an essential guide to this story of heroism, endurance, tragedy and dark desperation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJul 13, 2017
    ISBN9781472948717
    Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror Expedition: Lost and Found

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      Book preview

      Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror Expedition - Gillian Hutchinson

      CONTENTS

      PREFACE

      FOREWORD

      1 THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE

      2 SIR JOHN FRANKLIN

      3 HMS EREBUS AND HMS TERROR

      4 THE MEMBERS OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN’S EREBUS AND TERROR EXPEDITION

      5 EXPEDITION LIFE

      6 SEARCHING FOR FRANKLIN

      7 McCLINTOCK DISCOVERS THE FATE OF THE FRANKLIN EXPEDITION

      8 DISASTER REVISITED

      9 FINDING EREBUS AND TERROR

      10 ANSWERS AND QUESTIONS

      LEARN MORE

      PICTURE CREDITS

      PREFACE

      Sir John Franklin set out with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in 1845 on a voyage to find the North-West Passage. The ships disappeared into the Arctic, never to be seen again until their wrecks were discovered in 2014 and 2016.

      This brief guide fills in the background to Franklin’s expedition and describes the attempts that have been made to find survivors and discover what happened. Mystery still remains, however. Will examination of the shipwrecks solve it?

      FOREWORD

      The 1845 expedition to the Arctic, commanded by Sir John Franklin, was the largest, best-equipped expedition that Britain ever sent north, yet it ended in tragedy. Back home, the deaths of its 129 men devastated families. The disaster was writ large upon the Victorian imagination, represented in art, theatre and music. Exactly what happened is still subject to speculation.

      The objects that Franklin searchers brought back were displayed in the Painted Hall in Greenwich from the 1850s. They were literally brought over the road when the National Maritime Museum opened in 1937 and have been important to the Museum ever since. We are grateful to Greenwich Hospital, the Gell Muniment Trustees, the descendants of Leopold McClintock and others for the things that they have entrusted to us over time. All these objects remain enigmatic witnesses to the final days of Franklin and his crew.

      The finds of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror are some of the most exciting maritime archaeological discoveries of recent years. Those who cooperated so successfully in locating them are to be congratulated. We are grateful to Parks Canada for lending some of the material recovered from the wrecks, and to the Government of Nunavut for allowing them to travel back to Britain for the first time, for display in the first major exhibition since the ships’ discovery, Death in the Ice: The Shocking Story of Franklin’s Expedition, at the National Maritime Museum from 14 July 2017 to 5 January 2018. Much of the material in this book will also go on display in the National Maritime Museum’s new Polar Worlds gallery from 2018 onwards. Now, tantalisingly, the possibility of further explanation for the crews’ deaths exists.

      It has been an enormous pleasure to work in collaboration with the Canadian Museum of History, sharing mutual expertise and collections to produce the Death in the Ice exhibition. The Canadian High Commission in London has also been a stalwart source of help. As Canada celebrates the 150th anniversary of its Confederation, we are delighted, through the exhibition, to be able to demonstrate the strong ties between our two nations, both past and present.

      Dr Kevin Fewster AM

      Director, Royal Museums Greenwich

      CHAPTER 1

      THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE

      The aim of Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror expedition was to find a North-West Passage – a sailing route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific across the top of North America. By the early nineteenth century the British Navy had explored nearly all the oceans of the world and the discovery of a North-West Passage was one of the greatest challenges that still remained.

      1.1 Globe of the world

      Malby & Co, 1845

      This globe, claiming to show ‘all the recent geographical discoveries’, was published on 1 June 1845, less than two weeks after Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror voyage began. The unexplored areas appear to be free of obstructions, giving the impression that completing the North-West Passage should be quite straightforward. Comparison with the NASA image opposite reveals what was still unknown at that time.

      Captain James Cook, during his third voyage, had been attempting to discover a North-West Passage by entering from the Pacific and sailing east. Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779, three years into the expedition, and before long the Royal Navy was fully occupied with the American and French revolutionary wars. In 1817, less than 40 years after Cook’s death, when Greenland whalers reported that the Arctic ice had thawed to an unusual extent, the British Admiralty decided to resume the search for the passage for a number of reasons.

      There was some hope that it might be useful for trade or for moving naval vessels around the world during the brief Arctic summers, with the potential to cut months off the time it took ships to sail from Europe to the west coast of America or China by going all the way round Cape Horn or through the straits of Magellan. It was also thought that the North-West Passage might provide quicker access to the coastal regions of the vast territory held by the Hudson’s Bay Company (a fur-trading organisation) on behalf of the British government. National prestige was another motive, since at this time the Hudson’s Bay Company ran up against the territory of the Russian-American Company (which operated in Alaska before Russia sold it to the United States later in the nineteenth century), and Britain wanted to show Russia that it was the dominant power in the region. Britain was also keen to enhance its reputation as a world leader in scientific and geographical discovery.

      Before Sir John Franklin set out with Erebus and Terror in 1845, the British Admiralty had sent out a series of expeditions to investigate the Arctic coasts and navigable channels over a period of more than 25 years. The explorers’ tracks seemed so tantalizingly close to joining up that Franklin’s expedition was confidently expected to make the final breakthrough.

      John Franklin had taken part in the very first of the new series of Arctic exploration voyages in 1818. He was commander of one of the ships sent to sail past Spitsbergen, an island in northern Norway, towards the North Pole, while another expedition went to Baffin Bay to explore routes leading west. The Spitsbergen voyage was disappointing. Captain David Buchan in HMS Dorothea, accompanied by Lieutenant Franklin in HMS Trent, encountered an ice sheet not far north of the island. Although they forced their ships into narrow channels in the ice and made painful progress by using their anchors and windlasses to drag their ships along, the mass of ice ultimately made their mission impossible. Both ships narrowly escaped being wrecked when they were driven against pack ice in a gale.

      1.2 NASA satellite image of summer Arctic ice coverage

      The satellite image reveals landmasses at the south-west end of Lancaster Sound (the main channel entering from the east) that had not been discovered by 1845. It also shows that, even after the dramatic shrinkage of the Arctic ice sheet since Victorian times, any attempt to sail north from Lancaster Sound would be blocked by ice.

      Meanwhile, Commander Ross in HMS Isabella and Lieutenant Parry in HMS Alexander charted Baffin Bay. Ross then entered Lancaster Sound on its west side, and sailed westwards for part of a day, with Parry’s ship following several miles behind. In the afternoon Ross thought he could see mountains blocking the way ahead and, with the weather deteriorating, he decided to turn back without investigating thoroughly. However, others on board the ship were less convinced that it was a dead end and made their views known to the Admiralty when they returned. As a result, Edward Parry was sent out again the following year to settle the matter. After entering Lancaster Sound, his two ships, HMS Hecla and HMS Griper, were able to sail right through the charted locations of the mountains that Ross thought he had seen, proving that they did not exist. Parry’s expedition continued westwards, passing the meridian of 110 degrees west of Greenwich and claiming the parliamentary reward of £5,000 for having done so. As winter approached, Parry found a natural harbour for his ships so that they could stay in the Arctic rather than returning home – the first time that British naval vessels had done this. The expedition was therefore in a good position to make an early start in the spring, and the ships succeeded in progressing further westwards before being blocked by ice and having to go back the way they came.

      While Edward Parry was exploring by sea, the Admiralty sent John Franklin, along with four other members of the Royal Navy, on an immense overland journey to the shore of the Arctic Sea in order to survey the coast. They set out from Hudson Bay in 1819, walking and travelling by canoe along waterways towards the Coppermine River. The distance was so great that the party took two years to reach the river as it was impossible to travel in winter and they had to spend several months of each year under cover, waiting for the snow to thaw. In summer 1821 Franklin’s men, assisted by voyageurs (French-Canadian boatmen) and indigenous guides, worked their way downstream and arrived at the mouth of the Coppermine River, where they launched two large canoes onto the sea. They headed east and succeeded in charting about 550 miles of new coastline. Their return journey was disastrous: at least nine of the 20 men died of starvation and two others were shot dead.

      Franklin eventually arrived back in England in 1822, the

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