Searches & Final Moments

When the Franklin expedition, on its search in the Arctic waters of Canada for a Northwest Passage, hadn’t been heard from since it’s last sightings in late July 1845, some felt it necessary to send a rescue mission as soon as 1847. While there were many such proposed missions, all were rejected by the Admiralty because it believed that these searches would be risking lives for unsubstantiated panic. However, the Admiralty soon shifted its tone and issued three rescue missions for the winter of ’47-48. ¹

The first mission, tasked with searching the Bering straight, near what is now Alaska, found nothing. The second was an overland search of the straights between the Banks and Victoria Islands and the mainland which also found no trace of the expedition.² The third rescue mission was led by John Ross. He was only able to go into Lancaster Sound and an ice blockage in Barrow Straight forced him to turn around. After wintering on Somerset Island, they surveyed the coasts of the island in an attempt to find a water passage south. However, everywhere they looked, ice blocked the way. Cold and defeated, they withdrew and sailed back to England.³

First Signs

The first traces of the Franklin expedition were found on August 23rd, 1850 by Ommaney, the captain of the HMS Assistance. On Devon Island, Ommaney found Franklin’s 1845-46 winter camp as well as details of magnetic observations left by Fitzjames in a cairn.⁵ By the 27th, the crew of the The Lady Franklin found the expedition’s winter quarters and, more importantly, the three graves of John Hartnell, William Braine and John Torrington—an able seaman, a Royal Marine, and the leading stoker respectively.⁶ Strangely, there were 600 tins of preserved food neatly stacked and partly filled with stones on the island as well. Additionally, going against standard practice, there was no note written by Franklin as to their intended path after this winter.⁷ These signs would mark the last main pieces of evidence found until 1854. Throughout the next four years, there would only be series of unfortunate and misguided missions would only end up finding two pieces of door frame near King William Island by 1853.⁸

John Rae’s Report

On October 22nd 1854, news arrived from John Rae, who was on a Hudson Bay expedition that would reveal the fate of the Franklin expedition.¹⁰ During his travel overland, he encountered two Inuit that had heard second hand of a group of white men who had died just south of King William Island. They had an officer’s gold cap band in their possession. Later, Rae would return and buy more objects from the Inuit group including silverware with the initials of F.R.M.C (Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier), one of Franklin’s medals, and more artifacts.¹¹ However, no paper records were recovered by Rae because the Inuit, being suspicious of such things, had thrown them away.¹²

When Rae questioned further, it was revealed that 40 men were seen traveling south in the winter of 1850 from King William Island. With them, they were hauling heavy sledges and a cutter boat. The group had communicated with Inuit through sign language that they were going south to find food after their ships had been crushed in the ice and thus abandoned. They purchased some seal meat from the Inuit and moved on. Later the same winter, bodies of 35 men were found on or near the mainland, near a river whose description matches that of Back’s Great Fish River.¹³

But the biggest shock came through, when, in John Rae’s report, he stated:

“From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource—cannibalism—as a means of prolonging existence.”

– John Rae in his report to the Admiralty
as seen in Frank Leslie’s New York Journal.¹⁴

This was the first concrete evidence of what had happened to the Franklin expedition. And the information was released publicly by the Admiralty for all of Britain to read in horror.¹⁵

The Final Pieces

On April 21st of 1857, Lady Jane, Franklin’s wife, would buy the steam yacht Fox and choose Francis Leopold McClintock as captain to lead a final search in vain hope to find evidence that would cement the Franklin expedition as something other than a Victorian Era nightmare.¹⁶ The Fox was about half the size of the Erebus and had a shallower draft which made it ideal for navigating the tight channels of the ice-crowded Northwest. The crew were also seasoned Arctic travelers equipped with dog-driven sledges.¹⁷ In contrast to the Erebus and Terror, the Fox had everything needed for a successful Arctic expedition.

After spending the winter of 1857-58 beset in Baffin Bay, the Fox restocked in Greenland and then went into Lancaster Sound. Following the evidence of John Rae, McClintock took Peel Strait south only to find his way obstructed by ice 25 miles in. Turning back and going south by way of the Prince Regent Inlet, McClintock tried to go west through Bellot Strait to only be met with more ice (see map above). Here he would winter and prepare for sledging in the spring.¹⁸

After some initial supply depots were set up, they set out in April. McClintock, Lieutenant William Hobson, and Allen Young would take separate parties along different routes to cover more area. More relics were bought from Inuit and further information was gleaned from them. Hobson traveled down the Western coast of King William Island. At the northern tip in May, he found remains of Franklin’s magnetic observatory. ¹⁹

He kept traveling and found two cairns, but no further evidence as to what happened.²⁰ Further south, two miles below Victory Point, he found remnants of an abandoned camp including clothes, stoves, and an assortment of abandoned equipment.²¹ Here, he would make the most pivotal discovery of the expedition. In a cairn, there was a tin container with a piece of paper relaying latitude and longitude information written on May 28th of 1847. These were navigation papers meant to be thrown overboard to relay information about the ships’ location to anyone who would come across them. As a result, there are instructions to return this paper to the Admiralty in six different languages.²² But this was not surprising. What Hobson read on the margins of the paper was though.

Fitzjames had written in the margin that the ships had been abandoned on April 22nd 1848 after being beset in the ice for over a year and eight months since September 12th 1846. He then, strangely, writes with the little space he has about the origin of the cairn in which the paper was deposited. This part of the note is likely a result of Fitzjames’ navigational obsession more than anything. Then, it is mentioned that Crozier had taken over command after Sir John Franklin’s death on June 11th 1847 and that nine officers and 15 men had died so far. A post-script note left by Crozier states simply “start tomorrow 26th for Backs Fish River”.²³

McClintock himself pointed out a date error in the first message: they wintered on Beechey Island in the winter of 1845-6 and not 1846-7.²⁵ This has been taken as a possible sign of disorientation among the crew while others believe that it was a simple mistake.²⁶ The death of Franklin left Crozier in command, who was known to be uncomfortable in leadership positions and whose mental state was in question. Finally, Backs Fish River was the suspected location of where the Inuit saw the 40 men group, which this document further supports.

With this document in hand, Hobson continued on. On May 24th 1859, he found one of the ship’s cutters (boats) with rifles, ammunition, silverware, blankets, clothes, and human bones. The boat was pointing Northward, making McClintock later speculate that the men were trying to return to their ships (which were 60 miles northward at this point²⁷). This was Hobson’s final discovery before meeting back up with McClintock. Together they found one more skeleton who was identified to be a steward that had a pocket-book with gibberish written inside.²⁸

With this evidence in hand, McClintock and Hobson returned to the Fox and set sail for England. On September 23 1859, they returned to London with the news that Franklin nor none of his men would be returning to the despair of Lady Jane.²⁹

Frozen

With all of the evidence gathered up to this point, we can understand the path and fate of the Franklin Expedition. After going through Lancaster Sound unimpeded, Franklin’s company went around Cornwallis Island and spent the winter of 1846-47 next to Beechey Island. Here, they likely performed magnetic observations, pointing them to the magnetic north, which at the time was near King William Island to the south. So, when the ice permitted them to leave, they set sail down Peel Sound.³⁰

It is now understood that the southerly winds (or lack thereof) heavily impact the ice conditions in the strait the ships went down (now named the Franklin Strait). If the men relied only on sail power and thus had to wait for northerly winds, then they would’ve iced up in the northern part of the strait where an search expedition could reach them. But because they had steam engines, they didn’t need to wait for favorable winds and thus were able to travel down the 20 mile channel. Warm winds from the south kept ice at bay, facilitating their journey. When ‘favorable’ winds arrived from the north, they brought with them cold, icy air and fresh ice. In what could’ve been over the course of one Arctic night, the ships were beset. The steam engines that allowed them to venture so far south against the warm winds are exactly what sealed the fate of these men.³²

Going Mad

Where the ships ended up beset was not the most favorable position. King William Island, the nearest land mass to them, was desolate and lacked any game. Even Inuit avoided the west coast of the island because of the lack of wildlife.³⁴ The 600 tins of preserved food may suggest that their food was spoiled. This, along with the lack of fresh food, would not only slowly starve the men but lead to the onset of scurvy. Additionally, the vitamin C in the lemon juice that the crew relied upon to stave off scurvy would’ve been destroyed in cold, which is likely to have happened to some degree during their wintering. Furthermore, scurvy in the arctic is more severe than typical scurvy. Along with a deficiency in ascorbic acid, the men lacked niacin, riboflavin, and thiamine leading to symptoms of weakness, nausea, loss of teeth, and receding gums—all signs that Inuit accounts later describe when seeing the men.³⁵

However, all would be good if the summer opened up the ice, allowing them to proceed. Unfortunately, this would not come to pass. To add to this bad luck, Franklin died on June 11th 1847, leaving Crozier in command. Crozier, who had never led a mission and deeply missed his mentor John Ross, was in poor mental state to lead a starving company of more than 120 men.³⁷ Any sense of hope keeping the men going would be broken if Crozier didn’t offer a route to salvation. 3,000 miles from Western civilization, Crozier had to make a decision: which way to go.³⁸

There were two routes possible to Crozier. The first was to head 800 miles northeast towards Baffin Bay in hopes of encountering a whaling vessel. However, this way was desolate in wildlife and could not be completed in a single season. The other option, the one they took, was the 1,000 mile route south to Back’s Great Fish River and then to a Hudson’s Bay Company outpost. At least this route offered food along the way. So it was decided. The men loaded up a large cutter boat with supplies and Fitzjames and Crozier wrote the Victory Point note the day before setting out in April.³⁹

The Death March

April was the earliest month that was warm enough for them to set out. The heavy sledges with boats carrying supplies could glide easier over the remaining snow. In the summer months, the rugged terrain would make their travel more difficult.⁴⁰

With the weight of the sledges, the 30 men dragging them could likely only go up to five to ten miles a day, burning an enormous amount of calories in the process (at least 6,000 per day). At this pace and with their amount of food, the men would’ve only gotten as far as 200-400 of the 800 miles needed. With this daily caloric expenditure; scurvy, which made it hard to eat; and reduced rations to travel lighter, starvation would get the men if pneumonia and hypothermia didn’t get to them first.⁴¹

Bones litter the path of the death march from the west and south coasts of King William Island to the mainland near the Back’s Great Fish river. When they set out Crozier was one of only six officers left, likely causing discipline among the men to weaken, along with their hope and any sense of normality. They moved south along the west coast of King William Island and eventually set up camp in Terror Bay. This would be the last stop for many men on the expedition who were too tired and sick to continue. Later Inuit accounts described a large abandoned camp with graves, cannibalized corpses, and skulls in a pile.⁴²

The crew’s numbers continued to dwindle as they headed east. Men would fall down and die as they walked.⁴³ At Washington Bay, they crossed paths with the Inuit hunting party whose secondhand telling of the encounter would be the basis of John Rae’s report. More than half of these men’s bones would be found past Washington Bay and even onto the mainland. Starvation Cove was where more human remains were found; any semblance of a group would’ve died here with the men. Finally, five miles inland, the remains of a man, likely the last, were found.⁴⁴

Hubris and Catastrophe

The Franklin expedition is a prime example of how human ingenuity and our instinct to explore can facilitate our advancement, but can also lead to arrogance and disasters. The Admiralty was so proud to show that Britain was the best country, that it rushed to put together a mission. This rush potentially led to oversights in provision quality and dismissing concerns around the ship that many experienced mariners, such as John Ross, brought up. The addition of the engines (rarely tried on ships at the time) helped them be more confident in their success. But this was the same addition that allowed them to go so far south down Peel Strait that a rescue mission couldn’t reach them.

Throughout the mission, there was arrogance in the belief that there was no way the mission could fail. This overconfidence, mixed with the lack of understanding of the geography or weather of the region and the using untested technology, meant that the crew had little chance of returning.

1. Michael Palin, Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time (Greystone Books, 2018), 237-39. ↩︎
2. Palin, Erebus, 239-40. ↩︎
3. Palin, Erebus, 240-41. ↩︎
4. Thincat, Canadian Arctic Archipelago, digital svg image, Wikimedia Foundation, August 4, 2017, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Northwest_Passage,_exploration.svg. ↩︎
5. Andrew D. Lambert, The Gates of Hell : Sir John Franklin’s Tragic Quest for the North West Passage (Yale University Press, 2009), 199. ↩︎
6. Palin, Erebus, 244. ↩︎
7. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 200. ↩︎
8. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 237. ↩︎
9. Gordon Leggett, Franklin Camp grave image, composite photograph, Wikimedia Foundation, September 11, 2015, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2018-09-30_02_Franklin_Camp_grave_images,_Nunavut_Canada_2015-09-11.jpg. ↩︎
10. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 247. ↩︎
11. Palin, Erebus, 249-50. ↩︎
12. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 248. ↩︎
13. Palin, Erebus, 250. ↩︎
14. John Rae, Frank Leslie’s New York Journal, Volumes 1-2 (Frank Leslie, 1855), 40, https://books.google.com/books?id=moFNAAAAYAAJ&q=wretched+countrymen#v=onepage&q&f=false ↩︎
15. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 247. ↩︎
16. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 276. ↩︎
17. Palin, Erebus, 253. ↩︎
18. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 279. ↩︎
19. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 279. ↩︎
20. Palin, Erebus, 255-256. ↩︎
21. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 279-80. ↩︎
22. Palin, Erebus, 256. ↩︎
23. James Fitzjames and Francis Crozier, [Victory Point Note], 1847-48, manuscript, Royal Museums Greenwich, Greenwich, https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-504898. ↩︎
24. Fitzjames and Crozier, [Victory Point Note].
    Original message: “H.M. Ships Erebus and Terror [. . .] Wintered in the Ice in Lat. 70°5’n Long. 98°23’w. Having wintered in 1846–7 at Beechey Island in Lat. 74°43’28″n Long. 91°39’15″w after having ascended Wellington Channel to Lat. 77° – and returned by the west side of Cornwallis Island. Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition. All well. Party consisting of 2 officers and 6 men left the Ships on Monday 24 May 1847.”
    Written in the margins: “1848 HM Ship[s] Terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22nd April, 5 leagues NNW of this [hav]ing been beset since 12th Septr. 1846. The officers and Crews consisting of 105 souls, under the command [of Cap]tain F. R. M. Crozier landed here – in Lat. 69°37’42” Long. 98°41′ [This p]aper was found by Lt. Irving under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831 4 miles to the Northward – where it had been deposited by the late Commander Gore in June 1847. Sir James Ross’ pillar has not however been found, and the paper has been transferred to this position which is that in which Sir J. Ross’s pillar was erected – Sir John Franklin died on 11 June 1847 and the total loss by deaths in the Expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men. James Fitzjames, Captain HMS Erebus.
    F R M Crozier Captain and Senior Officer.
    And start tomorrow 26th for Backs Fish River.” ↩︎
25. Leopold McClintock, The voyage of the ‘Fox’ in the Arctic seas: A narrative of the discovery of the fate of Sir John Franklin and his companions (Ticknor and Fields, 1860), 256. ↩︎
26. Palin, Erebus, 257. ↩︎
27. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 281. ↩︎
28. Palin, Erebus, 258-60. ↩︎
29. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 281-82. ↩︎
30. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 336-37. ↩︎
31. Smurftrooper, Supposed Route of Franklin’s expedition 1845-1848, digital svg image, Wikimedia Foundation, May 1, 2019, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Supposed_Route_of_Franklin%27s_expedition_1845-1848.svg. ↩︎
32. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 337. ↩︎
33. The Erebus and Terror in the Ice Stream, 1874, In Alexander Hyde, Abraham Chittenden Baldwin, and William Leonard Gage, The frozen zone and its explorers; a comprehensive record of voyages, travels, discoveries, adventures and whale-fishing in the Arctic regions for one thousand years (San Francisco: Hartford, Conn. [etc.] Columbia book company, 1874), 657. Internet Archive. ↩︎
34. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 340. ↩︎
35. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 339. ↩︎
36. Stephen Trafton, Franklin’s Summer Camp site 3.3 miles south of Cape Felix, King William Island, photograph, Wikimedia Foundation, July 3, 1989, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franklin%27s_Summer_Camp_site_3.3_miles_south_of_Cape_Felix,_King_William_Island.jpg. ↩︎
37. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 338. ↩︎
38. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 341. ↩︎
39. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 341-342. ↩︎
40. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 342. ↩︎
41. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 342-43. ↩︎
42. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 345. ↩︎
43. McClintock, The voyage of the ‘Fox’ in the Arctic seas, 249. ↩︎
44. Lambert, The Gates of Hell, 346. ↩︎