by Gray, Gordon
The final piece of the jigsaw, the Northwest Passage, was actually found during the search for Franklin in the 1850s. It was found by a Shetlander, John Rae, a doctor who was working for the Hudson Bay Company. He spent ten years working as a doctor there and learnt much about survival and arctic travel from the Inuit. Through these skills and his natural stamina, he became involved in surveying the arctic coast to help try and complete the map. In 1854 he had travelled west over the Boothia Peninsula and after cresting a hill, he found himself looking down on what was then known as King William Land. Rae realised that it was actually an island and not part of the mainland, which would allow the passage of a ship round the east and south side of it and so complete the passage. Previously it had been thought that King William Land was joined to the mainland. It was the ice-choked waters down the west side of it that had stopped Franklin and others, but now Rae had found a way past. In fact, it is just one of a number of Northwest Passages, as other routes have since been found further north around the top of Victoria Island. It was John Rae who, through his contact with the Inuit, listening to their stories and examining the relics they had found, was able to report back to Britain on the last days of the Franklin expedition’s survivors, and the tales of cannibalism that shook Victorian Britain at the time.
In 1851, McClure in the HMS Investigator approached from the west through the Bering Straits to search for Franklin. He had sailed from the United Kingdom with Richard Collinson of HMS Enterprise, but after leaving Hawaii they had become separated and did not see each other again, although they did both spend winters off Banks Island. The Investigator became frozen-in off Banks Island and they were stuck there for three winters. During that time McClure went out with sledges from Banks Island and realised that he could see Melville Island, where Parry had reached, and as a result knew that he had found the Northwest Passage, or in truth, one of them. In 1854, having given up hope that his ship would be freed from the ice and to avoid starvation, he finally led out his crew by sledge and headed east. They met men from Capt. Kellet’s HMS Resolute, which was part of Belcher’s fleet that was sent to look for Franklin and McClure. Kellet had found messages that McClure had left at Winter Harbour on Melville Island and had come from Beechey Island by sledge searching for him. Consequently McClure claimed to be the first man to pass through the passage, albeit by different ships and sledging.
The Northwest Passage was not finally conquered until Roald Amundsen sailed through in 1903–6 in the small 45-ton herring sloop Gjoa. It took Amundsen and his six-man crew three years to make the journey as they overwintered at Gjoa Havn, on the south side of King William Island, to learn all they could about polar survival from the local Inuit. Amundsen was fascinated that a people could flourish in such a wasteland. He studied their food, clothing, sledges, dog-handling and hunting techniques and realised that they were actually highly skilled, given the small amount of raw materials they were able to use to survive well in the Arctic.
It was not until 1940 that another successful attempt was made to transit the Northwest Passage. That was by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police schooner St Roch. She was captained by the Norwegian-born Henry Larsen. St Roch sailed from the west coast of Canada, and over two winters sailed through from west to east. She then turned round and sailed back again, arriving in Vancouver in 1944; she was the first ship ever to complete a two way crossing.
2014: Our Expedition
I was to join the Russian ship Akademic Ioffe. An ice-strengthened ship, but not an icebreaker, she had been chartered by One Ocean Expeditions of Canada. To commemorate Henry Larsen’s voyage on board the St Roch in 1940–2, we were to attempt a west to east passage from Cambridge Bay, on the south side of Victoria Island in the far north of Canada, to Baffin Island. As part of the commemoration, Henry Larsen’s daughter, Doreen, was on board with us and entertained us one evening with a slide show from her father’s time in the Arctic.
Bad News
The plan was to fly by charter flight from Edmonton, Alberta, to Cambridge Bay on the southern end of Victoria Island. There we would join the ship and sail east, up past King William Island, through the Bellot Straights and into Prince Regent Inlet. From there we would sail to Lancaster Sound and out into Baffin Bay, finally finishing the voyage at Iqaluit at the southern end of Baffin Island.
Our joining instructions were to stay overnight at the Fairmont Hotel in Edmonton, so that all the passengers would be together and ready for the early morning charter flight up to Cambridge Bay the next day. That evening the expedition organisers, One Ocean, called us all to an unscheduled meeting in the hotel at 7 p.m. As this meeting had not been part of the programme I felt uneasy about its purpose. The news was not good. The operations director, Aaron Lawton, told us that ice conditions near Victoria Island in the southern part of the Northwest Passage, and especially Victoria Straight and Franklin Straight, were so bad that the ship had not been able to get down to Cambridge Bay from Peel Sound, up in the north. Also, McClintock Channel, to the northwest of King William Island, was choked with ice. Getting the ship to Cambridge Bay would require the use of an icebreaker and take almost a week, a week that we did not have. Lawton explained that the ice conditions were nine-tenths pack and made up of old second-year and multi-year ice. This was almost 2½ metres thick.
Had it been first-year ice, about 1 metre thick and not so densely packed, then the ship could probably have got through. In consultation with the ship, they had decided that the ship should make for Resolute, a small Inuit settlement which had a landing strip, on Cornwallis Island, some 400 miles north of Cambridge Bay. Our charter flight would fly us there to join the ship instead, but it meant that we would miss the first part of the voyage. He did, however, say that Prince Regent Inlet was pretty much free of ice and he was sure that the ship would take us down there instead, to see the Bellow Straights and Fort Ross. We obviously had little choice in the matter and we all left the meeting feeling disappointed but still hopeful of having a good trip.
So, before we had even left the hotel, our expedition through the Northwest Passage had failed. We would still be going to the Northwest Passage, but not through it. It also meant that we would not see the bare and barren wasteland that is King William Island, where Franklin’s desperate men came ashore after they abandoned their ships, Erebus and Terror, and started their doomed haul to the south in the hope of finding help. Nor would we sail through the Bellot Straits, the narrow stretch of water used by Henry Larsen in 1942. It was a big disappointment at such an early stage, but that is the essence of the Northwest Passage. Its history is one of ice preventing ships sailing through and this had added to its fascination and attraction over centuries. For us to assume that we had any ‘right of passage’ to sail happily through would have been impertinent and naïve, even at the end of the summer season. We were bound by the same laws of nature as everyone else since the 1600s and 1700s. In 2013 the ice was bad as well and ships could not get through, even in high summer. That year’s ice did not melt, and only increased with the winter freeze. So much for global warming! There was more ice in parts of the Arctic in 2014 than there had been for many years.
Joining the ship
The Boeing 737 of First Air took off from Edmonton. We refuelled at Yellowknife, then flew out across the Tundra and over the southern part of the Northwest Passage. We could see from the plane the vast sheets of pack ice that choked the main passages. We could see that both McClinton Sound and Victoria Straight had a lot of ice; both looked choked solid. Only a full icebreaker could get through. Looking down at all the ice it seemed obvious that One Ocean had been right to divert the ship to Resolute. We flew on to Resolute, on Cornwallis Island. Resolute is named after HMS Resolute, one of Edward Belcher’s ships sent to look for Franklin. Resolute is recorded as one of the coldest inhabited places on earth.
Northwest Passage choked by pack ice.
Resolute was all we expected it to be. A wind blasted airfield and a small terminal
building sitting on a level area of rock, dirt and gravel. A few old trucks sat outside and most looked as if they would never move again. There were large fuel oil drums lying around and a few rusty sheds. This was high summer and it looked terrible. It was desolate, bleak and appeared devoid of any life or vegetation. Ice and wind had scoured every living particle from the landscape and it was now just rounded grey–brown hillocks. An old bus took us down to the shore where we gathered prior to clambering into the Zodiacs, trying hard to keep our feet dry, to go out to the ship. Our luggage was put in cargo nets and sent on by zodiac, to be craned aboard the ship. From where we were standing we could see the settlement itself, about a mile away from the airstrip, just a lonely collection of a few wooden huts, nestling down in a shallow valley as if trying to keep out of the wind.
There was no sign of the ship, just a few small ice floes drifting on the current. A flock of Arctic terns sat on one of them, but flew off as we approached. A zodiac ride later, we rounded a low headland and we soon found ourselves on board the Akademic Ioffe.
Akademic Ioffe.
The Ship
Akademic Ioffe (Capt. Poskonny Gennadi), was built in Finland in 1988 as one of two identical, sophisticated ocean research vessels for the Russian Institute of Oceanography. She is 117 m long with a gross tonnage of 6,450. She is powered by twin-diesel engines, twin-controllable pitch propellers and has a bow and stern thruster. Although not an ice breaker, she is classed as ice strengthened, so is able to sail through ice floes and loose pack ice. She can carry 110 passengers and has a crew of forty. One Ocean staff on board totalled twenty.
I was sharing a three-berth cabin with two other single males. When I got there one of the other two guys had already arrived and claimed a settee birth under the porthole as his. This was Harold, a Canadian who now lived in Arizona; a tall seventy-eight-year old, but still very active. In his working life he had been a field geologist.
We both looked around and smiled. The cabin was tiny. It had two bunks, one over the other athwartships and Harold’s settee-birth fore and aft under the port hole. This was already made up as a bed and stayed folded out all the time, despite the tiny size of the cabin. There were some wardrobes, drawers and a small desk, which already had Harold’s battery charger and a book on it. I decided to quickly claim the bottom bunk before the third person arrived and so I put my bags on it. I did not fancy trying to clamber down ladders from the top bunk, at night and in the dark, if I needed to go to the loo!
I had no sooner claimed the bunk than the door opened and the third member squeezed into the now, very crowded, cabin. Luckily, like Harold and I, he was also a slim man. This was Dominique, a sixty-year old French man, full of Gallic charm. He accepted the top bunk with a shrug of the shoulders and a ‘It will be OK’. Dominique had been a police forensic investigator in his working life. He told us he was here just to see the wildlife, but mainly the birds. We had to use a communal bathroom and showers on the other side of the ship, which only had two loos and showers. We discovered that this was also used by about fourteen or fifteen other guys, all members of the expedition staff, who had cabins on the same deck – it got a bit busy in the mornings. The three of us agreed that the cabin was too small for us all at any one time and only one person could be in the cabin at a time, apart from sleeping at night, of course. So in the mornings I would get up, take my clothes to the shower room and get dressed there after my shower. Then Dominique could get up, and then Harold, who always seemed to sleep better and longer than Dominique and I. At night it was the same routine in reverse with Harold often being first to bed. We decided that unpacking would have to wait and that a coffee was the priority, so we went to find the lounge. The bar/lounge was a cosy and comfortable area towards the stern and had a well-stocked bar and a constant supply of hot coffee. This was the main social meeting point on the ship.
The meals on board were fine, and as good as we could expect on an expedition ship. They were served at single sittings in the large canteen-style dining room. Breakfast and lunch were both self-service buffet style while dinner was a waiter service. A lecture room was one deck down, where all the talks and slide shows were given. In addition, the ship had an open bridge policy, which meant anyone could go up to the bridges at any time. The bridge was large, with large open bridge wings, so there was always plenty of space to stand and watch the polar world go by.
The ship, being Russian, had a sauna, so later that day I went to find it. It was up on six deck (near the posh cabins!). In addition to a large sauna, there were also three shower cubicles, a large changing area with a table and mirrors and shelves full of fresh towels. For the rest of the trip this was where I went up for my morning shower, and as no-one used the sauna at 6:30 a.m. I always had the place to myself. Harold and Dominique must have wondered where I had got to as I was never in the bathroom when they got there and as I never revealed my secret and private bathroom.
First Ice
The first morning on board was icy. I don’t mean that the sea was full of ice, but the wet outside upper-steel decks of the ship had turned to ice overnight. It was a bit like black ice on the road. It just looks like a wet deck, but is in fact sheer ice. I had gone outside up on the top deck to take a photo, and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back. Luckily I was unhurt. Others were not so lucky. About ten minutes later Harold did exactly the same thing but badly hurt his leg. He had it strapped by the doctor, but it became swollen and caused him some pain for a few days. When he got home, although the pain had gone, some of the swelling had not and his doctor told him he had a spiral fracture (whatever that is?). Elaine, a lady on her own on the trip, was also caught out. She had decided to go out on deck, slipped on the ice and broke her wrist in the process. She spent the rest of the trip armed with a plaster cast, after having it x-rayed in the Pond Inlet Medical Centre.
Beechey Island
Our first destination was Beechey Island, named after one of William Parry’s lieutenants. This is where Franklin overwintered during his first year in the Arctic. Erebus and Terror anchored in the well-sheltered bay and the crews set up scientific huts ashore. It is also the burial site of three men from Franklin’s crew who died that first winter in 1845/6. The three were petty officer John Torrington, royal marine William Braine and able seaman John Hartnell. The graves were found in 1850 by Scottish whaling skipper William Penny, who had been on over thirty whaling trips to the Davis Strait and knew the area well. He was sent to find Franklin by the Admiralty. There was mystery over what they had died of for many years and to some extent that has not been fully resolved, but their bodies were exhumed and post mortems were carried out by John Geiger and Owen Beattie in the 1980s. That evening, Owen Geiger, who was in the area on board our sister ship the Akademic Vasilov, came on board and gave a lecture. The Akademic Vasilov was about to take part in a survey to discover the wrecks of Franklin’s ships, Erebus and Terror. Geiger’s book, Frozen in Time, is about the exhumation of these bodies and what he and Beattie discovered about the Franklin expedition from what they found at Beechey. He talked about how well-preserved the bodies were after 150 years in the ground, and how it had made it much easier to carry out the tests to see how they died. They found large quantities of lead in their bones, but concluded this alone was not the cause of death. They thought that they had actually died of pneumonia. There is a fourth grave there, just a little further up the beach from Franklin’s men’s graves. It is the grave of Thomas Morgan, a sailor from HMS Investigator, who, having survived three winters frozen-in off Banks Island, managed to get to Beechey Island with McClure, but sadly died on board his rescue ship. His shipmates buried him with the three others.
Beechey Island graves.
Beechey Island is a bare lump of rock about 1000 feet high and sits at the south–west corner of Devon Island and joined to it by a thin, low, gravel isthmus. It forms a fine sheltered harbour. The seaward end is high and sheer, although the rock itself is much eroded, leaving it
looking like an unpainted and decaying Hindu temple. It tails off to the north and ends as the thin, low strip which links it to the main island. It is totally devoid of vegetation and is greyish brown in colour. The few remnants of Franklin’s building, including Northumberland House among other buildings, as well as a small monument put there by his widow, sit on a raised area on the north–east side. The graves of his three men lie to the north, about 500 yards along the beach. The graves are midway up the beach, near to where it starts to sweep round towards the isthmus to Devon Island. The headstones stand alone in the flat, featureless, grey-brown landscape, without so much as a cemetery wall for shelter. Beechey Island is a gloomy, spiritual place, a place where sad history still lives. Perhaps the men who died here died a less painful, or less drawn out and miserable death, than their shipmates who sailed on in such hope, but died of starvation and cold.
Unfortunately, when he sailed from here, Franklin failed to leave any letters or reports, as he was supposed to, to tell others of his plans and his likely course after leaving Beechey Island. In fact, Franklin’s orders were that if he discovered that there was no clear passage to the north up through the Wellington Channel, he was to sail south. That is what he did. He sailed north up the Wellington Channel and right around Cornwallis Island, then headed south, down Peel Inlet. Unfortunately, the rescue ships that came later always found Peel Sound full of ice, so they assumed that Franklin could not have gone that way and turned their searches to the north. And so Franklin vanished into history.