Into the Frozen
SEAS
AT FIFTY-NINE, Sir John Franklin was widely considered too old for the command. Lord Haddington, First Lord of the Admiralty, shared the doubts of many about Franklin’s fitness but agreed to interview him. During that meeting, the First Lord told Franklin of his concerns. “You are sixty,” he said. Franklin was nonplussed: “No, my lord, I am only fifty-nine.” Still, the Admiralty was nothing if not an old boys’ club, and William Edward Parry lobbied on Franklin’s behalf, telling Haddington: “If you don’t let him go, the man will die of disappointment.” On 7 February 1845, Franklin was given the job.
Born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, on 16 April 1786, Franklin entered the Royal Navy when he was fourteen and served in a number of famous battles during the Napoleonic Wars, including the Battle of Trafalgar. In 1814, he would be injured in a disastrous attempt to capture New Orleans. When the Duke of Wellington finally defeated Bonaparte in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the Royal Navy was forced to look for new assignments for its best young officers. Arctic exploration was one way for such officers to distinguish themselves in peacetime. And so it was that, in May 1818, Franklin began his polar service as second-in-command of Captain David Buchan’s failed voyage into the Spitsbergen ice.
Daguerreotype of Sir John Franklin.
In 1819 Franklin again headed north, this time in command of an overland expedition ordered by the British Admiralty to travel from Hudson Bay to the polar sea, where he was to map North America’s unexplored Arctic coast. George Simpson of the Hudson’s Bay Company was highly skeptical of Franklin’s qualifications for such a journey:
Lieut. Franklin, the Officer who commands the party has not the physical powers required for the labor of moderate Voyaging in this country; he must have three meals p diem, Tea is indispensible, and with the utmost exertion he cannot walk above Eight miles in one day, so that it does not follow if those Gentlemen are unsuccessful that the difficulties are insurmountable.
Franklin succeeded in surveying 211 miles (340 km) of the icy shoreline east of the Coppermine River before a tragic return journey over the Canadian tundra, or “Barren Grounds,” during which expedition members were reduced by starvation to eating an old leather shoe and caribou excrement. Ten men died from the cold and hunger, exacerbated in part by Franklin’s unfamiliarity with northern conditions. Franklin himself nearly succumbed to starvation before relief arrived. Yet when he returned to London, Franklin’s account of heroic achievement marred by murder, cannibalism and his own suffering caught the public’s imagination, and he became known as the man who ate his boots. Promoted to the rank of captain, he then returned in 1825–27 to the Arctic for a well-organized second overland expedition, resulting in the mapping of another 397 miles (640 km) of Arctic shoreline, for which he was knighted. Finally, after a six-year stint as colonial governor of Van Diemen’s Land (today, the Australian state of Tasmania), Franklin was placed in command of the greatest single expedition of discovery Britain had ever mounted.
Royal Navy officers Captain Francis Crozier and Commander James Fitzjames were also appointed to the expedition. The veteran Crozier had served in a number of earlier attempts at finding both a Northwest Passage and reaching the North Pole and had been second-in-command of James Clark Ross’s Antarctic expeditions as commander of the Terror. As for Fitzjames, he had served as mate aboard the first steamer to successfully navigate the Euphrates, and had served on ships operating in the Middle East and China, where he first became interested in the romantic lure of the Northwest Passage.
Captain Francis Crozier.
The days before the Erebus and Terror set sail were filled with social engagements and a general sense of excitement. The confidence of the expedition team was palpable. In a letter to his brother dated 11 April 1845, Harry D.S. Goodsir, the assistant surgeon on the Erebus, wrote: “All the Officers are in great hopes of making the passage and expect to be in the Pacific end of next summer.” Franklin and his officers were entertained at the Admiralty on 8 May. The crews were paid in advance of the sailing, and it can be assumed that at least some of the money was spent at the pubs dotting the docklands along the Thames. On 9 May, the final official inspection of the ships took place, attended by leading civil and naval figures and other specially invited guests. The Illustrated London News reported that “the arrangements made for the comfort of the officers and crews are excellent. The quantity of stores taken on board is considerable.” According to a Times reporter, those stores included “numerous chests of tea, although the crews are not expected to become teetotalers, an ample supply of rum having been provided for their use in the frozen regions.”
Commander James Fitzjames.
Among the food supplies were nearly 8,000 tins of preserved meats (including boiled and roast beef, boiled and roast mutton, veal, seasoned beef and ox-cheek), vegetables (potatoes, parsnips, carrots and mixed vegetables) and soup (of 1-, 2-, 4-, 6- and 8-pound/.5-, 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-kg capacity). They also carried 1,203 pounds (546 kg) of tinned pemmican. Other supplies included 7,088 pounds (3,218 kg) of tobacco, 200 gallons (909 litres) of “wine for the sick” and 9,450 pounds (4,290 kg) of chocolate. Some 9,300 pounds (4,222 kg) of lemon juice were also taken, to be rationed to all during the expedition.
With such vast quantities of provisions and fuel, enough to last three years, the accommodations were congested. Of the living quarters, only Franklin’s cabin on the Erebus was of any significant size. Commander Fitzjames had a cabin less than 6½ feet (2 metres) wide, with the crew of the Erebus berthed in what little space remained (many slung their hammocks alongside one another on the mess deck). Yet despite the cramped quarters, the Erebus had a library of 1,700 volumes, the Terror carried 1,200, including everything from narratives of earlier Arctic expeditions and geographical journals to Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby and bound copies of Punch magazine. Each ship also had a hand organ that could play fifty tunes, including ten hymns. There were mahogany writing desks for officers and school supplies for teaching illiterate sailors to read and write. Instruments for research in geology, botany and zoology and for magnetic observation were also taken. The Franklin expedition was also one of the first voyages of discovery to carry that relatively new invention: a camera.
Commander Fitzjames’s cabin on the HMS Erebus.
No Arctic expedition had ever been so lavishly outfitted. The same could be said even for the men, who were issued gear for extreme weather, suggesting a greater willingness on the part of British officialdom to adapt and learn from the Inuit than is generally credited. Indeed, Goodsir reported being issued sealskin gloves, a sealskin cap and greatcoat and a pair of “Deer-skin” trousers.
On 5 May, Franklin received his official instructions: essentially to sail to Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound through to the Bering Strait and, in so doing, complete a Northwest Passage—all the while collecting valuable scientific and geographical information. There were no plans for Admiralty assistance or relief should the expedition encounter difficulty or fail to complete its voyage within the three years it had been supplied for. As a cursory precaution, the Hudson’s Bay Company, with its fur-trading outposts at Fort Good Hope and Fort Resolution in what is now Canada’s Northwest Territories, was asked to aid the expedition should word of trouble be received. The company was also instructed to alert native traders to watch for Franklin’s crews.
In the last few days before he sailed, Franklin may have experienced a premonition of his fate. Suffering from the flu, he was resting at