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5 - Exploring Strange Worlds(Part 2)
Exploring the Northwest Passage
After the War of 1812, the Royal Navy found itself with many vessels and even more seamen, but with no battles to fight.
One way to employ this idle capacity was through global exploration, and a particularly intriguing goal for the British
was to find a passage to the Far East that would be shorter and easier than travelling around the southern tip of South
America. It was widely believed that such a passage existed through the unexplored Arctic regions north of Canada --
the Northwest Passage. John Barrow, Second Secretary of the British Admiralty and an ardent proponent of the existence
of the Northwest Passage, commented that such a project would be:
... one of the most liberal and disinterested that was ever undertaken and every way worthy of a great and prosperous and an enlightened nation, having for its primary object that of the advancement of science, for its own sake, without any selfish or interested views.24
Perhaps the most famous of the many Arctic expeditions was mounted in 1845 by Sir John Franklin. Franklin was no
stranger to the perils of the frigid north. He had led unsuccessful searches for the Northwest Passage in 1818 and again
in 1825. For his third attempt, he was given two ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. These vessels
had already experienced frozen seas, but on Antarctic, rather than Arctic, voyages.
Franklin, with his two ships and their 138 crewmen, departed from England on May 19, 1845. Foreshadowing the eventual
outcome of Franklin's attempt, another British Arctic explorer, Richard King, stated that the Erebus and
Terror were being sent to "form the nucleus of an iceberg."25 In late July, the ships
were sighted near Baffin Bay by British whalers, and were never seen by Europeans again.
Fourteen years later, it was learned that Franklin's expedition first travelled west along Lancaster Sound, turned north
toward Cornwallis Island, then had to retreat to Beechey Island for the winter of 1845. Three crewmen died there of
what appeared to be natural causes and were buried. During the summer of 1846, the ships attempted to sail toward the
west, but were again stopped by the thick polar ice. Franklin turned south and eventually prepared the Erebus
and Terror, now in solid ice just north of King William Island, for their second winter in the Arctic. A sled
team was dispatched to King William Island in May 1847, and Franklin himself died of unknown causes in June. The summer
did not bring a thaw, and the ships remained completely icebound, stranding the men for a third winter.
In April 1848, the 105 survivors finally abandoned the ships. They trekked across King William Island, trying to reach
the northern coast of Canada. The end of the Franklin expedition was poignantly recounted in a 20th Century publication
as follows:
Weakened by scurvy, inexperienced at overland travel, ill-equipped to face the rigours of the journey and overburdened with heavy loads from the ships, the sailors one by one lay down in the snow and died. Some sat propped against a rock; others took to their tents and never got up again; others simply collapsed as they walked along. Even in their distress sailors first paused to bury their shipmates, but eventually there was no strength left and the white arctic beach was strewn with corpses. A party of the strongest managed to cross Simpson Strait and camp for the last time in a small bay on the continental shore, now called Starvation Cove. And this is where the Franklin expedition ended, as a long silence closed over them.26
In Search of the Franklin Expedition
Because Arctic expeditions normally lasted 2 to 3 years, the absence of word from the Franklin expedition did not
immediately arouse major concern in Britain. However, in 1848 the British government mounted an extensive 10-year search
for clues as to Franklin's fate. The first official search party was composed of two units. Sir James Ross, with the
newest HMS Enterprise and the HMS Investigator, set out from the Atlantic, while Captain Henry Kellett
sailed from the Bering Strait with two other ships. The Enterprise was a 126-foot surveying ship that had been
commissioned on April 5, 1848. Ross sailed around Somerset Island, unknowingly tracing most of the path followed by
Franklin, before returning to Britain in 1849 with no news of Franklin's expedition.
In 1850, six expeditions, comprising 12 ships and 450 men, joined the search. Most of the ships concentrated on the
area around Lancaster Sound. The Enterprise and Investigator, making their second voyage into the Arctic,
were directed to begin their search from the west, via the Bering Strait. The expedition was under the overall command
of Captain Richard Collinson of the Enterprise.
As the ships approached the Bering Strait, the Investigator, commanded by Captain Robert McClure, raced ahead
of the Enterprise and into the Arctic ice packs alone. McClure's motivation is still shrouded in controversy.
As one 20th Century source put it:
Afterwards there was much debate whether McClure was motivated by unscrupulous ambition, negligence, or honourable zeal. It was highly irregular of him to risk permanent separation from his sister ship and highly ingenuous to claim that he believed Collinson was probably in front of him and he simply was trying to catch up.27
The Investigator sailed past Point Barrow, Alaska and into the Beaufort Sea.
The winter of 1850 saw the Investigator frozen in, as her crew settled down to the standard winter routine for
Arctic explorers. All supplies were removed from the ship so that she would sit higher in the water, ice blocks and
snow were piled against the exposed portions of the ship's hull to act as insulation from the biting cold, and heavy
canvas was stretched over the deck to provide a protected area for the crew to exercise. A daily routine was
established, which did not vary from day to day. Even the meals settled down to the same monotonous routine of a cup
of cocoa and a piece of salt pork for breakfast, vegetables and another piece of salt meat for lunch, and black tea
with still more salt meat for dinner. When conditions allowed, hunting parties were mounted to bring back fresh meat
for a special treat.
The following summer, the Investigator progressed further toward Victoria Island. But by September 1851, she
eventually became hopelessly frozen in at Mercy Bay. The crew endured several years without outside contact. Sledding
expeditions were mounted during the spring and summer months to explore the area around the ship. In April 1855, during
such a patrol, McClure and a portion of his crew were rescued by the HMS Resolute. They then returned by sea
to the Investigator, where the last of her crew abandoned the ship on June 5, 1855.
The patience of Captain Collinson and the Enterprise in not rushing into the Arctic worked to their ultimate
advantage. Arriving at the Bering Strait too late in the winter of 1850, Collinson waited until the spring of 1851 to
set sail into the frozen Beaufort Sea. He found more favorable ice conditions than had been encountered the previous
year by the Investigator, and was able to progress at a much faster pace. Through fantastic coincidence,
Collinson almost exactly matched the route followed by the Investigator, at some points being only weeks behind
McClure's ship.
Collinson prepared the Enterprise for the winter of 1851 on the west coast of Victoria Island, and in the spring
of 1852 sailed along the southern coast of the island, becoming the first vessel ever to reach this far through the
western approach. The Enterprise reached Victoria Strait, which separates Victoria Island from King William
Island, in 1853. Collinson mounted searches along the western side of Victoria Strait and returned to England in 1854,
without having found any trace of Franklin's missing expedition. Had he instead searched the eastern side, along the
coast of King William Island, he would have found the remains of Franklin's party.
The Enterprise participated in further Arctic exploration duties until 1860. She then served as a collier,
carrying coal for a lighthouse on the English Channel, and was sold on September 15, 1903. During her Arctic
expeditions, the Enterprise contributed significantly to the charting of the Canadian Arctic regions and in the
discovery of the Northwest Passage. A contemporary article in the magazine of the National Geographic Society hailed
the accomplishments of Captain Richard Collinson and the Enterprise.
The Arctic voyage made by the late Captain (afterwards Admiral) Sir Richard Collinson in HMS Enterprise, from 1851 to 1854, was perhaps, everything considered, the most successful expedition made in Arctic research prior to the use of steam.... Herschel island, which was reached by Stockton [commander of an American expedition in the USS Thetis in 1889] and the American whalers under steam, is about 15 degrees in longitude east of point Barrow; but Collinson took his vessel under sail about 40 degrees east of that point, or nearly three times as far beyond point Barrow.... It should be noted to Collinson's credit that the series of straits through which he tacked his vessel were the worst that have ever been successfully navigated to a considerable distance by any Arctic expedition, and that in addition to his journey from Bering strait to Cambridge bay and return he also carried the Enterprise up McClure strait to as high a point as was reached by the Investigator. In short, no other vessel came so near completing the Northwest Passage as the Enterprise.28
The saga of the missing Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin did not end with the unsuccessful searches of the
Enterprise and Investigator. The first clues of what happened to Franklin had been discovered by the
HMS Assistance in 1848. At Beechey Island, the site of Franklin's first winter camp, were found discarded meat
tins, pieces of rope and cloth, sled tracks, the ruins of buildings, and the graves of the expedition's first three
casualties. However, after repeated failures over the next 9 years to uncover any further evidence, the British
Admiralty decided to call off the search. Franklin's wife, Lady Jane Franklin, refused to give up hope, however, and
raised money for a privately financed search headed by Captain Francis McClintock in the Fox.
The Fox sailed from England on July 1, 1857 and soon became trapped in ice in Baffin Bay. For almost 2 years,
the Fox was carried along by the drifting ice. Finally, in April 1859 she reached King William Island and, during
an inland search, found a well-preserved piece of paper with two messages written by members of Franklin's team. The
first message gave a brief summary of the expedition up to May 1847, with the notation "All well." The second message,
dated 11 months later, was scribbled in the margins and told the grim story of the death of 24 men, including Franklin,
and indicated that the 105 survivors planned to continue south to try to reach the Back River in northern Canada.
McClintock continued his inland search and found an abandoned boat with two skeletons lying beside it, along with an
assortment of items, including clothing, guns, and tools. Expeditions in 1869, 1879, 1931, and 1969 found the majority
of the remaining bodies at Starvation Cove in northern Canada.
Mystery Solved
In 1984, Owen Beattie, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, traveled to Beechey Island to find
evidence for a theory he had developed concerning the demise of Franklin's expedition. The well-preserved bodies of
John Torrington, John Hartnell, and William Braine, the first three members of the ill-fated party to die, and the pile
of empty food tins left behind by Franklin's expedition supplied the answers Beattie needed. In Beattie's own published
account, he wrote that:
I was struck by the horrifying truth -- lead had contributed to the declining health of the entire crews of the Erebus and the Terror. Not only did the sailors suffer from loss of appetite, weakness and other physical symptoms of lead poisoning, but the lead probably also affected their minds, making them behave strangely. Many of them may have been unusually irritable, filled with unreal fears, incapable of clear thought, and unable to make important decisions.... I then carefully studied the tin can fragments that I had collected at Beechey Island. In Franklin's time, this new invention had allowed food to be preserved indefinitely, so that explorers could take with them supplies for long voyages. But the cans Franklin carried were seriously flawed. I could see that the metal edges and seams of the cans were sealed on the inside with large pieces of solder made of melted lead and tin.... While the can was full, lethal doses of lead from the solder would have dissolved into the food.... None could have guessed that inside the tins stored within the ship's hold there lurked a time bomb just as dangerous as the cruel Arctic winter.29 In time, a route through the Northwest Passage was found, and in 1984, the same year as Beattie's expedition and almost 140 years after Franklin's doomed expedition left England, the cruise ship Lindblad Explorer carried 90 passengers on a pioneering sightseeing tour of the Northwest Passage. However, even today, the thick polar ice pack makes the Passage an impractical and dangerous sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
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| Intro
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| Copyright ©
1996-2008 Arnold E.
van Beverhoudt, Jr.
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