by Sten Nadolny
That was McClintock, a short, wiry man with black sideburns. He left Aberdeen harbour on 30 June 1857, with a Scottish crew and a Danish interpreter.
On 6 May 1859, McClintock’s people found a note under a rock pyramid. It was signed by Crozier and Fitzjames and told of the fate of the expedition and of Franklin’s death. It was dated in the spring of 1848. The ships could not get free. The crew had given them up. The message closed with the words: ‘And start on tomorrow the 26th to the mouth of Backs fish river.’
They continued their search in that direction. It soon became evident that it was no longer necessary.
One hundred and five men had set out from the Erebus and the Terror in the spring of 1848, evidently already in a state of deep physical and mental exhaustion. Soon the caravan of the dying had split into several groups, one of them trying to return to the ships. Many men dragged table silver with them, perhaps to exchange it for food with the Eskimos. Others had pulled heavy boats across the ice, which they had to abandon on the way, most of them with part of their food supply. McClintock found several skeletons next to the boats, together with forty pounds of still edible chocolate. In the bay at the mouth of the Great Fish river they found more skeletons, most of them dressed in faded but fully preserved uniforms.
McClintock called the bay Starvation Cove. He met a few Eskimos who recalled the ships in the ice or had heard that they had sunk in the fall of 1848. An old woman had, in fact, observed the march of the whites from afar. ‘They died while walking. They fell down as they stood or walked and were dead.’ Why hadn’t the Eskimos helped the whites? ‘There were so many of them, and we were hungry ourselves – worse than ever before.’
The captain obtained by barter a number of things the Eskimos had found: silver buttons, a set of table silver, a pocket watch, even one of Franklin’s decorations. He asked for books, notebooks. Yes, they had found bundles of paper and had given them to their children to play with. Now nothing was left of them. Disappointed, McClintock left the Eskimo huts and returned to Starvation Cove.
Since they kept on finding food, they could not believe that the catastrophe was caused solely by hunger. The next obvious answer was scurvy. Examination of the skeletons showed that in many of them the teeth had fallen out. It also revealed something else: that the remnants of the crew fighting for their life had seized upon the final desperate means of survival in this place. McClintock found bones neatly separated, with smoothly cut surfaces that could have been made with a saw. The ship’s doctor crouched across from him. Their eyes met. The doctor whispered, ‘From my point of view … scurvy is a deficiency disease. The flesh of a man who dies of it lacks exactly the same ingredients that the sick require for their survival. It therefore didn’t even––’
‘Please go on,’ said McClintock.
‘It did them no good,’ said the doctor.
When they had collected the bones in order to bury them, McClintock said, ‘It was a worthy and brave crew. The passage of time was too slow for them. Whoever does not know what time is cannot understand a picture, not even this one.’
The only person who didn’t listen was the photographer of the Illustrated London News. He had quickly placed his camera, a Talbot System, in position to capture the skeletons’ condition in a still picture.
Author’s Note
John Franklin existed in real life. His true story has contributed countless details to this novel that could never have occurred to me on my own. This obliges me to name at least a few titles from the literature on the historical Franklin, in many ways undoubtedly different from the fictional Franklin of my novel.
On Franklin’s family and the stages of his career, more exact information can be found in:
Roderick Owen. The Fate of Franklin. London, 1978.
Henry D. Traill. The Life of Sir John Franklin, R. N.
London, 1896 (before Owen’s book, the classic Franklin biography).
The above authors give no details about what happened on the voyage to Lisbon and in the battle of Copenhagen. More is known about the Australian voyage:
Matthew Flinders. A Voyage to Terra Australis, Undertaken for the Purpose of Completing the Discovery of That Vast Country and Prosecuted in the Years 1801, 1802, and 1803 in His Majesty’s Ship ‘The Investigator’. 2 vols. and atlas. London, 1814 (official travel report).
On the great navigator Matthew Flinders, see above all:
James D. Mack. Matthew Flinders, 1774–1814. Melbourne, 1966.
The expedition report on the first Arctic voyage is:
Frederick W. Beechey. A Voyage of Discovery Towards the North Pole, Performed in His Majesty’s Ships ‘Dorothea’ and ‘Trent’. London, 1843.
The following reports on the two land expeditions are Franklin’s own:
John Franklin, Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22. London, 1823; Philadelphia, 1824 (translated into German and published in Weimar, 1823).
––––, Narrative of a Second Journey to the Polar Sea in the Years 1825, 26, 27. London, 1828; Philadelphia, 1829 (translated into German and published in Weimar, 1828).
From the hunger expedition on, the novel does not follow the exact chronology outlined in the first narrative. In the encounter with the Indian Michel Teroaoteh, the roles of Franklin and Dr Richardson have been reversed.
Franklin was not asked to direct military operations against China. However, from 1830 to 1833 he was commander of naval forces in Greek waters, where he succeeded in preventing armed conflict.
On the Tasmanian period, the following title will give the best information:
Kathleen Fitzpatrick. Sir John Franklin in Tasmania, 1837–43. Melbourne, 1949.
The elaborate defence by Franklin himself, justifying his tenure as governor, may be of additional interest to readers:
John Franklin. Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Van Diemen’s Land During the Last Three Years of Sir John Franklin’s Administration of Its Government. (Reprint facsimile edn). Hobart: State Library of Tasmania, 1967.
Many ingenious theories have been advanced concerning Franklin’s last voyage. The best-known books are:
Richard J. Cyriax. Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition. London, 1939.
Leopold McClintock. The Voyage of the ‘Fox’ in the Arctic Sea: A Narrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Franklin and His Companions. London, 1859.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Unsolved Mysteries of the Arctic. London, 1921 (‘The Lost Franklin Expedition’).
Noel Wright. The Quest for Franklin. London, 1959.
The best information on Franklin’s first wife can be gained from their published correspondence:
Edith Mary Gell. John Franklin’s Bride: Eleanor Anne Porden. London, 1930.
On Jane Franklin, see:
Frances Joyce Woodward. Portrait of Jane: A Life of Lady Franklin. London, 1951.
Lasting traces of Franklin’s accomplishment can be found above all in Hobart, Tasmania.
In Spilsby, the house where Franklin was born still stands. Statues of him can be found in Spilsby and London. In Westminster Abbey a memorial plaque to him bears an inscription with the following lines by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
Not here! The white North has thy bones, and thou
Heroic Sailor-Soul,
Art passing on thine happier voyage now
Towards no earthly pole.
The archipelago north of the Canadian mainland is called District of Franklin to this day.
Copyright
First published in the UK in English in 2003
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE
First published in 1983 in German as
Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit by
R. Piper GmbH. Published by arrangement
with Viking Penguin, a member of
Penguin Putnam Inc.
This digital edition first published in 2009
by Canong
ate Books
Copyright © Sten Nadolny, 1983
English translation copyright ©
Viking Penguin, Inc. 1987, 2003
Translated by Ralph Freedman;
this British edition is translated
in association with Joseph Cullen
The right of Sten Nadolny to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The publishers gratefully acknowledge general subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council towards the Canongate International series
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84767 752 5
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