Franklin’s Ill-fated 1840s Arctic Misadventure: A Story with a Remarkable Shelf Life

Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage to the islands of the Caribbean and the opening up of the “New World” provoked a Pan-European search to find an ocean route through the American continent to reach the rich trading ports of the Orient. Within a few years efforts were being focused on locating the North-West Passage, the Arctic archipelago at the top end of Canada. Over the following few centuries various names in exploration – John Cabot, John Davis, Martin Frobisher, Francis Drake, Henry Hudson, William Baffin, James Cook, George Vancouver, William Parry, James Knight and others – tried without success to navigate a route through the elusive passage.

By the 19th century “the Cape” trade route to East Asia was in full swing, but the prospect of finding a shorter route, the Northwest Passage, still beckoned to the explorer nations of the “Old World”. As mid-century approached the British Admiralty under the driving force of Sir John Barrow launched plans for yet another attempt on the Passage, this was to become the most talked-about and most tragic of all of the Arctic expeditions. Forebodings about the 1845 expedition began perhaps with the Admiralty’s choice of leader. Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin, despite a long career as a naval officer and prior experience in Arctic exploration, was not the preferred man✱. With other, more highly thought of candidates like Sir James Clark Ross and William Edward Parry declining, Franklin was perhaps as high as fourth or fifth choice! Moreover, the crews selected, though numerically sufficient for such a mission, had some question marks about them…they were mostly inexperienced in polar regions, only a few of the men had been to the Arctic before [‘Erebus and Terror – John Franklin. In Search of the North-West Passage’, Cool Antarctic, www.coolantarctic.com].

Exploration vessels supplied to the max Misgivings about the expedition commander aside, the expedition did not lack for preparation – provisions intended to last three years were taken, along with equipment for hunting and fishing. Given the extreme trials and tribulations that the voyageurs were forced to endure when things ultimately went horribly wrong, the practicality of some of the inclusions might raise a query. Room was made on the expedition’s ships (‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’) for, among other cargo items, 9,000 lbs of chocolate, 3,600 gallons of spirits, nearly 5,000 gallons of ale and porter✦ and 7,088 lbs of tobacco [‘Franklin’s Provisions’, (Arctic Passage), www.pbs.org].

A massive floating library The expedition members had no shortage of reading material, each ship was laden with well over a thousand hard-bound books plus numerous journals … one estimate puts the total at 2,900 volumes, ‘Terror on the Ice: How Obsession Doomed Franklin’s Arctic Expedition’, (Martyn Conterio), History Answers, 27-Apr-2018, www.historyanswers.co.uk]. Religious volumes of Christian instruction formed much of the library (each of the 128 crewmen⌖ were issued with a Book of Common Prayer), but variety was provided with various works of literature popular in the day (novels of Charles Dickens, Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, etc), volumes of Punch (a weekly magazine of humour and satire), as well as a host of technical volumes [‘The Library of the Erebus and the Terror’ (Russell A Potter), Visions of the North, 26-Apr-2009, www.visionsnorth.blogspot.com].

Luxury and comfort on a pro-rata class basis The two ships were equipped and furnished in quite a luxurious fashion. The officers’ quarters (however not the crew’s) were decorated elaborately with the finest curtains and furniture, and kitchens stocked with beautiful ceramic plates and the like. The rear-admiral’s own special fiddle-pattern cutlery lined the drawers. Even more impressively, the Erebus and the Terror had built-in comforts – to counter the Arctic cold the converted bomb-vessels were equipped with hot water and heating systems, something that later proved consequential in how the story ended up. The ships were well-equipped for the task at hand with scientific instruments, navigational tools and daguerreotype cameras.

‘Erebus on Ice’ (FE Musin) NMM Greenwich ⍗ The expedition ships made slow but steady progress over the course of two years, getting as far as King William Island and Victoria Strait, where in deteriorating conditions ice entrapped the ships. After Franklin died (1847), Captain Francis Crozier, skipper of the Terror took over command of the expedition. A year later Crozier abandoned the ships to their icy graves and led the remaining men (recent archaeological findings and forensic testing suggests that four of the crew were in fact women!) on foot south to try to reach the nearest established Canadian outpost…in the process all crew members perished, possibly from starvation or other (unknown) causes.

The hunt for Franklin’s expedition Back in London, unaware of the expedition’s end-game the Admiralty prevaricated and only really launched a serious attempt at rescue after a media campaign launched by Lady (Jane) Franklin. Over a period of more than 20 years, the lost polar expedition prompted what has been described as “the greatest rescue operation in the history of exploration”[Marsh, J., & Beattie, O., Franklin Search (2018) in The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/franklin-search]…more than 30 missions (most by sea, one from the opposite direction, some by land) were launched to try to locate the vessels’ whereabouts [‘Uncovering the secrets of John Franklin’s doomed voyage’, (Robin McKie), The Guardian, 02-Nov-2014, www.theguardian.com].

The “shock and horror” of white cannibals By the early 1850s no one bar perhaps Lady Franklin in her most optimistic moments thought the expedition crew still alive. With public interest in Franklin’s fate at a peak the British government eventually offered a reward of £20,000 to anyone who ‘assisted’ the lost expedition. In 1854 Dr John Rae’s mission (under the aegis of the Hudson’s Bay Company) unearthed the key to the mystery while bringing upon himself great controversy and hostility. Rae learned of the missing men’s fate from local (Nunavut) Inuits who told him that members of the expedition had resorted to cannibalism, eating dead crewmen in an attempt to avoid starvation. Such a notion was abhorrent to Lady Franklin and scandalised polite society in England…Charles Dickens endorsed Jane’s view that the word of “Esquimaux savages” should not be trusted and actively propagandised to refute the accursed idea [‘How Lady Franklin led Charles Darwin to disgrace himself’, (14-Sep-2014), www.kenmcgoogan.blogspot.com].

In the fullness of time John Rae’s viewpoint was vindicated. Archaeologists examining the remains of sailors found that they had flesh and even marrow removed from their bones to feed those of the expedition who were still alive. Far from being isolated occurrences, the cannibalism committed was of several stages of the practice [“‘Pot Polish’ On Bones From Franklin’s 1845 Arctic Expedition Is Evidence Of Cannibalism”, (Kristina Killgrove), Forbes, 01-VII-2015, www.forbes.com].

Lady Franklin on the counter-offensive In the face of the accusations of cannibalism, Franklin’s widow, horrified at its association with the expedition and with Franklin’s name, devoted the rest of her life to salvaging his reputation⊡. Lady Franklin lobbied politicians, enlisted the help of prominent and influential citizens✪, raised funds for a succession of new search parties, even consulted clairvoyants! [‘Finding HMS Terror: the Franklin Expedition and making sense of the past’, (Andrew Lambert), History Extra, 28-Sep-2016, www.historyextra.com].

Discovery – unravelling some of the mystery The Admiralty officially called a halt to the search for the Terror and Erebus in 1859, though Franklin’s indefatigable widow continued to promote recovery attempts until her death in 1875. In the modern era the Canadian government and other organisations revived the search for Franklin’s vessels. Since the 1980s a raft of relics associated with the ships and crews have been retrieved from the Canadian tundra and subjected to new forensic scrutiny, then finally a Parks Canada mission made the dramatic discovery that had eluded around 90 previous expeditions – the two ships were located using Sonar (Erebus in September 2014/Terror in September 2016). A bonus to the great discoveries was that both vessels, preserved by the ice, were still significantly intact!

What killed the expedition’s crew members? With a lot more information unearthed now, a lot more is known of what happened. There has much speculation over the years as to how the sailors perished – the extreme climatic conditions, pneumonia, disease (TB), scurvy✣, starvation, have all been put forward to greater or lesser degrees, and all seem to have been contributory factors to the tradegy[‘Cool Antarctic’, loc.cit.]. The reality though is that the exact nature of how the voyageurs died remains a mystery and possibly may never be resolved.

Tinned poison? Other theories have focused on the tins of canned food on board the exploration vessels. Proportionate to the anticipated length of the journey the Terror and the Erebus was loaded with 8,900 lbs of canned vegetables and 33,289 lbs of canned meats, all up comprising an estimated quantity of 8,000 tins [‘Food on board an Arctic expedition – The Franklin Expedition’, Parks Canada, www.pc.gc.ca]. The contribution of the tinned food to the sailors’ diet has led some to speculate that the dead crews were victims of botulism or possibly a form of lead poisoning contracted from the harmful type of lead soldering used on the tins [ibid.]. This explanation gained widespread currency at one time, however others have pointed out deficiencies and inconsistencies in the argument…tinned food consumed in the earlier James Ross Antarctic expedition involving the same two vessels did not have anything remotely like the harmful effect suffered on the Franklin voyage [‘Identification of the Probable Source of the Lead Poisoning Observed in Members of the Franklin Expedition’, (William Battersby), Journal of the Hakluyt Society, Sept 2008, www.hakluyt.com].

Lead poisoning from another source? A recent counter-argument has suggested that, rather than the soldering on the tins that was the deadly ingredient on the forlorn Franklin expedition, the poisoning of the men (abnormally high levels of lead were detected in forensic examinations) emanated from the specific boat modifications added to make the polar voyage more tolerable. Battersby has argued that the lead infusion came from the “unique distilled water systems fitted to the ships” [ibid.].

Model of HMS Erebus

Footnote: One curious caper that continue to fascinate Franklin’s polar expedition struck a resounding chord with the popular imagination. Search party after search party trying to unravel the mystery of the explorers’ disappearance, the tragic aftermath and the anthropophagus undertones, have held an enduring fascination for people on both sides of the Atlantic. The peculiar mystique of the Franklin story has provided inspiration for the great writers of fiction such as Verne, Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Twain, Conrad and Atwood, as well as numerous retellings of the narrative in book form, several TV series and popular songs. All captivated by a story which as characterised by Andrew Lambert is “a unique, unquiet compound of mystery, horror and magic” [Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation, (2011)].

PostScript: The reason for the mission – “discovery and science”, geographical curiosity, terrestrial magnetism? The raison d’être of the Franklin Expedition, according to the standard interpretation, was to chart a path through the Arctic archipelago to the Pacific. Franklin’s brief therefore was to find the passage that had eluded at least 60 earlier expeditions going back as far as the 1600s. This emphasis on navigating a feasible route has been challenged by some historians. Andrew Lambert for instance has refocused the mission’s objective on its scientific and geomagnetic observations. He argues that the expedition was part of a big project⋇ that sought to advance oceanic navigation by enhancing science’s understanding of the Earth’s magnetic field. According to Lambert, John Franklin was chosen not for his exploration prowess but as a leading magnetic scientist, his agenda was to get as close to the Magnetic North Pole as possible (if this was his task, judging by where the two expedition vessels were found, he got quite close) [‘Finding HMS Terror’, loc.cit].

____________________________________________________________________ ✱ at 59 many considered the portly Franklin too old for such an arduous and hazardous mission. Franklin had recently come off an unhappy tenure as Lt-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) which had resulted in his being recalled early to England ✦ including extra strong West Indian rum, 35% overproof ⌖ forensic testing of recent discoveries of remains suggests that four of the crew were in fact women! ⊡ remembering also that John Franklin had been keen to accept command of the expedition in 1845 to try to restore his reputation after the events of his Tasmanian governorship left it somewhat tarnished ✪ Victorian Britons seemed to have had a soft spot for Franklin…even prior to the tragic voyage he was viewed as a hero despite being involved in two earlier unsuccessful Arctic expeditions! Much like the later Scott of the Antarctic Franklin appears to have been lionised by the public for undertaking a “noble quest” in the field of exploration albeit being a failure ✣ the sailors definitely suffered from a scorbutic disorder – the vitamin C contained in the supply of lemon juice intended to counter scurvy was rendered ineffective after the liquid became frozen, [Lambert, loc.cit] ⋇ the 1830s and’40s British scientists (with Irish geomagnetic pioneer Edward Sabine in the forefront) were instrumental in promoting a campaign to launch expeditions to establish geomagnetic observatories around the globe (labelled the Magnetic Crusade by historian John Cawood), J Cawood, ISIS, 1979, 70 (No 254), History of Science Society].