Ice Ghosts

by Paul Watson

  Fig. 4 A daguerreotype of Franklin, made on the day before the expedition set sail from England.

  Fig. 5 James Fitzjames, captain of the HMS Erebus.

  Fig. 6 James Reid, the ice master on the HMS Erebus.

  Fig. 7 Belgian painter François Etienne Musin’s 1846 depiction of HMS Erebus surrounded by ice.

  Fig. 8 British painter W. Thomas Smith’s 1895 depiction of Sir John Franklin and his crew dying alongside their boat.

  Fig. 9 The Victory Point Record, notes detailing the fate of the Franklin Expedition found by the McClintock Expedition in 1859

  Fig. 10 The members of the Arctic Council—including John Ross, John Richardson, John Barrow, and William Parry—planning a search for the missing Franklin Expedition.

  Fig. 11 In March of 1849, the British government offered a reward in a belated effort to encourage a private search for the lost Franklin Expedition.

  Fig. 12 Hunger stalked Inuit into the early 20th century on King William Island, where shifting migrations of caribou, musk ox and other large mammals often left hunters without prey.

  Fig. 13 Louie Kamookak, a descendent of Inuit shamans, became fascinated by the Franklin Expedition after hearing stories from his great-grandmother while growing up on King William Island. He’s pictured here with the Governor-General, the Queen’s representative in Canada, after receiving the inaugural Polar Medal in 2015 for his essential role in the discovery of the HMS Erebus.

  Fig. 14 Canada’s first professional underwater archaeologist, Walter Zacharchuk (left), with Parks Canada head archaeologist John Rick (right) in 1967.

  Fig. 15 David Woodman in 1994 at Victory Point, where the McClintock Expedition found the note confirming that members of the Franklin Expedition had perished.

  Fig. 16 Cast-bronze bell from the deck of HMS Erebus, found with the rest of the ship in 2014.

  Fig. 17 The stunning sight of an almost perfectly preserved double-wheeled helm helped an Arctic Research Foundation crew confirm they had found the wreck of HMS Terror in September 2016.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Like the long search for the lost Franklin Expedition, telling the story of that epic hunt required the good fortune of serendipity. I am forever grateful to literary agent Joy Tutela for reaching out to me in the Arctic and suggesting I had a book to write. I owe an equal debt to W. W. Norton editor Matt Weiland, whose wise guidance and steady hand made an idea real. Finally, to all who trusted me to tell their part of a complex tale, I hope your faith and commitment to the memory of Sir John Franklin and his brave men is rewarded in these pages.

  SOURCE NOTES

  Writing a true story that spans centuries into the recent past melds history with journalism. While this is not a scholarly work, I have been faithful to facts and analyses as they were written by original sources and experts in their fields. More contemporary events were described to me in interviews with dozens of people who participated in the matters they recount. Anything in direct quotes comes either from primary sources, including letters, diaries, or journals, or from the mouths of those who spoke or heard the quoted words.

  To ease the reader’s passage on the epic search for Her Majesty’s Ships Erebus and Terror, I have not cited sources in footnotes. Instead, I summarize the principal works here by section.

  Finally, the current value of nineteenth-century British pounds was estimated using the Purchasing Power Calculator at MeasuringWorth.com and then converting pounds to US dollars at a 2015 value.

  Introduction

  Richard J. Cyriax is the dean of Franklinology, whose numerous works set the standard on the subject. I relied for background on Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition: A Chapter in the History of the Royal Navy. William Scoresby Jr., whose scientific mind was rooted in an early life as a whaler, was in many ways ahead of his time with analysis in An Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History and Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery, Volume 1, published in 1820. His letter to Sir Joseph Banks, as quoted by Robert Edmund Scoresby Jackson, The Life of William Scoresby, also shed light on his views. The debate between Scoresby and the Admiralty’s Sir John Barrow over the existence of an Open Polar Sea, and the negative consequences of Barrow’s snubbing the whaler and scientist, plays out in Constance Martin’s “William Scoresby Jr. (1789–1857) and the Open Polar Sea—Myth and Reality,” in Arctic 41 (1988). Captain James Fitzjames’s descriptions are a vivid look at the last days of the Franklin Expedition’s ships and the men who sailed them to their deaths, in “Captain James Fitzjames Journal,” from the “Nautical Magazine and Leader,” as reprinted in Papers and Despatches Relating to the Arctic Searching Expeditions of 1850–51–52.

  William Battersby and Peter Carney give an excellent account of the Royal Navy’s upgrades in “Equipping HM Ships Erebus and Terror, 1845,” International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology 81 (2011). Scoresby’s account of the sudden Arctic warming comes from Sir John Leslie, Robert Jameson, and Hugh Murray, Narrative of Discovery and Adventure in the Polar Seas and Regions: With Illustrations of Their Climate, Geology and Natural History; And an Account of the Whale Fishery.

  Barrow makes his case for renewed Arctic exploration in A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions, published in 1818. Sir John Ross counterattacks in Observations on a Work Entitled, “Voyages of Discovery and Research within the Arctic Regions,” by Sir John Barrow, Being a Refutation of the Numerous Misrepresentations Contained in That Volume, published in 1846.

  Insight into Franklin Expedition clothing comes from Barbara F. Schweger in Documentation and Analysis of the Clothing Worn by Non-Native Men in the Canadian Arctic Prior to 1920, with an Emphasis on Footwear (PhD thesis, University of Alberta, 1983). William Scoresby Jr. revived his case for polar exploration by animal-drawn sled in 1828, in The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, Exhibiting a View of the Progressive Discoveries and Improvements in the Sciences and the Arts, vol. 5, April–September. The Arctic Council’s Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment (2009), as excerpted by Arctis Knowledge Hub in The Canadian Maritime Arctic and Northwest Passage, provides a detailed look at the various routes that make up the modern Northwest Passage. W. Gillies Ross provides an excellent account of “The Type and Number of Expeditions in the Franklin Search 1847–1859,” in Arctic 55 (March 2002) and quotes Alfred Friendly on the grandiosity of the epic hunt for Erebus and Terror in “The Admiralty and the Franklin Search,” Polar Record 40 (2004).

  PART I: THE EXPEDITION

  Chapter 1: Franklin’s Last Mission

  Sir John Franklin’s service at war and in the Arctic is chronicled in Henry Duff Traill’s The Life of Sir John Franklin R.N., published in 1896. W. F. Rawnsley’s The Life, Diaries and Correspondence of Jane Lady Franklin 1792–1875, published in 1923, is a source for numerous quotes from Jane throughout this book and describes in detail the Franklins’ political problems in the colony of Van Diemen’s Land.

  Ross recounts the fateful day of the mirage in Captain John Ross, A Voyage of Discovery, Made Under the Orders of the Admiralty, in His Majesty’s Ships Isabella and Alexander, for the Purpose of Exploring Baffin’s Bay, and Inquiring into the Probability of a North-West Passage, published in 1819. The science of how the Arctic plays with the senses is clearly explained by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in its “Arctic Phenomena,” available online at All About Arctic Climatology and Meteorology: https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/arctic-meteorology/phenomena.html.

  William Parry’s fulsome praise for Franklin is quoted in Augustus Henry Beesly’s 1881 biography, Sir John Franklin. The diary entries describing the courtship of Franklin and his second wife, Jane, come from Frances J. Woodward, Portrait of Jane: A Life of Lady Jane Franklin, a superb source, published in 1951, that I rely on frequently for Lady Franklin’s own words as well as Woodward’s research into Jane’s complex character. Thomas Allen reported the sheriff’s responsibilities in 1839 in The History and Antiquities of London, Westminster, Southw
ark, and Parts Adjacent, Volume Two. The accomplishments of the expedition Sir Felix Booth funded are listed by Rear Admiral James Ross and James M. Savelle, “’Round Lord Mayor Bay with James Clark Ross: The Original Diary of 1830,” in Arctic 43 (March 1990). David Woodman, whose extraordinary research into Inuit oral history is covered later in this book, points out that Inuit were not frequent visitors to northwest King William Island as late as 1879. A contemporary account of the insufficient clothing British sailors brought to the High Arctic is in Sir John Ross’s 1835 journal, Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-West Passage and of a Residence in the Arctic Regions During the Years 1829, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833.

  Frances J. Woodward touches on Lady Franklin’s prison-reform efforts in “Franklin, Lady Jane (1791–1875),” Australian Dictionary of Biography 1 (1966). Shayne Breen examines the plight of Van Diemen Land’s aboriginal people in “Extermination, Extinction, Genocide: British Colonialism and Tasmanian Aborigines,” in René Lemarchand, ed., Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory (2011).

  The Literary Gazette reported detailed descriptions of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which were reprinted in The Gentleman’s Magazine, October 1839. Sir James Clark Ross dramatically chronicled the ships’ ordeal in his 1847 book, A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions, During the Years 1839–43, Volume One. Hamish Maxwell-Stewart describes the “Macquarie Harbour Penal Station,” in the Centre for Tasmanian Studies’ The Companion to Tasmanian History, online at http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Macquarie%20Harbour%20penal%20settlement.htm, and T. J. Lempriere’s contemporary account of the brutality is in The Penal Settlements of Van Diemen’s Land, Macquarie Harbour, Maria Island and Tasman’s Peninsula. The Franklins’ grueling trip comes to life in “Narrative of the Overland Journey of Sir John Franklin and Lady Franklin and Party from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour,” Colburn’s United Service Magazine and Naval and Military Journal, published in June, 1843.

  Ward and Lock’s Pictorial Guide to London is an 1879 travel guide that lists the Admiralty’s semaphore tower as a Victorian London landmark. The original architectural drawing of the Admiralty Screen is online at Sir John Soane’s Museum Drawings, http://collections.soane.org/ARC1031. D. Murray Smith gives an account of Franklin’s meeting with Lord Haddington in the 1877 book Arctic Expeditions from British and Foreign Shores from the Earliest Times to the Expedition of 1875–76. The Admiralty’s instructions to Franklin for his 1845 expedition are printed in full in Accounts and Papers: Twenty-eight Volumes: Army, Navy and Ordnance (Session 18 November 1847–5 September 1848, Vol. XLI, Arctic Expedition). The Parry Expedition’s ordeal, which hints at what life may have been like for Franklin and his men decades later, is revealed in fascinating detail in the explorer’s 1821 journal: William Edward Parry, Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific; Performed in the Years 1819–20 in His Majesty’s Hecla and Griper. S. R. C. Malin and D. R. Barraclough provide an excellent account of Alexander von Humboldt’s extraordinary contribution to global science in “Humboldt and the Earth’s Magnetic Field,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 32 (1991).

  Fitzjames’s letter to his wife describing Erebus’s upgrade is quoted in James P. Delgado’s excellent Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage. Lieutenant Peter Halkett’s adventurous trial run in his cloak boat is recalled in his book Boat-Cloak or Cloak-Boat constructed of Macintosh India-rubber cloth with Paddle, Umbrella-sail, Bellows, Also an Inflated India-Rubber Cloth-Boat for Two Paddlers, as quoted in “Footnotes to the Franklin Search,” The Beaver (Spring 1955). George Back recounts his exciting journey aboard HMS Terror in his 1838 Narrative of an Expedition in H.M.S. Terror, Undertaken with a View to Geographical Discovery on The Arctic Shores in the Years 1836–7.

  Chapter 2: HMS Erebus and Terror

  Richardson’s nearly fatal plunge, and the lesson learned, is described in riveting detail in Sir John Franklin, Thirty Years in the Arctic Regions; Or, The Adventures of Sir John Franklin, 1859. Richard J. Cyriax goes deep into the expedition’s pharmaceuticals in “A Historic Medicine Chest,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 57 (1947). To appreciate the rigors of daguerreotype photography, see George M. Hopkins, “Reminiscences of Daguerreotypy, Scientific American 56, no. 4 (January 1887), as quoted by The Daguerreian Society, http://daguerre.org/?page=DagFAQ.

  Ross wrote of his solemn promise to Sir John Franklin a decade later in Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin: A Narrative of the Circumstances and Causes Which Led to the Failure of the Searching Expeditions Sent by Government and Others for the Rescue of Sir John Franklin. Franklin expressed his regret at not being able to see his Van Diemen’s Land defense published before departing in the introduction to his 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. Geraldine Rahmani reports Crozier’s unrequited interest in Sophy in “Francis Crozier (1796–1848?),” Arctic 37 (1984).

  Chapter 3: Frozen In

  William Battersby probes the Erebus captain’s clouded family history in James Fitzjames: The Mystery Man of the Franklin Expedition. James Fitzjames wrote colorful descriptions of the Franklin Expedition ships, crew, and their final days before entering Lancaster Sound in his final journal, reprinted by James Mangles in 1852 in Papers and Despatches Relating to the Arctic Searching Expeditions of 1850–51–52. Ice master James Reid’s letter to his wife, dated July 11, 1845, was reprinted in May 1920 by The Register newspaper in Adelaide, Australia. Thomas Blanky’s optimistic prediction was quoted in “Search for Sir John Franklin,” Quarterly Review, reprinted in The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, May to August 1853. Ralph Lloyd Jones quotes the report of the positive reaction to the Royal Marines in “The Royal Marines on Franklin’s Last Expedition,” Polar Record 40 (2004).

  What caused the deaths of the sailors buried on Beechey Island is still a matter of debate among experts. Dr. Roger Amy, Rakesh Bhatnagar, et al., suspect a combination of factors in “The Last Franklin Expedition: Report of a Postmortem Examination of a Crew Member,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 135 (July 15, 1986). William Battersby debunks the theory that lead from canned food poisoned Sir John and his men in “Identification of the Probable Source of the Lead Poisoning Observed in Members of the Franklin Expedition, Journal of the Hakluyt Society (September 2008).

  B. Zane Horowitz, MD, investigates another possible lethal agent in “Polar Poisons: Did Botulism Doom the Franklin Expedition?” Clinical Toxicology 41 (2003). Exhumations carried out by forensic anthropologist Owen Beattie and his team in the mid-1980s revealed numerous details of their graves and corpses, including evidence of cannibalism described decades earlier by Inuit accounts. Beattie laid out his theory that lead poisoning might explain the Franklin Expedition’s demise in Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition, a book he cowrote with John Geiger. But more recent scientific studies have cast significant doubt on that hypothesis, including Keith Millar et al., in “A Re-Analysis of the Supposed Role of Lead Poisoning in Sir John Franklin’s Last Expedition, 1845-1848,” Polar Record 51 (May 2015). A 2013 study by University of Western Ontario chemists, including Professor Ron Martin, dismissing lead as the cause of death, is reported by the Canadian Press news agency in “Study Debunks Lead Poisoning Theory in Franklin Mystery,” posted by CBC News online on April 8, 2013, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/study-debunks-lead-poisoning-theory-in-franklin-mystery-1.1396399. Clifford G. Hickey et al. analyze “The Route of Sir John Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition: An Evaluation and Test of an Alternate Hypothesis,” in Arctic 46 (March 1993).

  Various versions of the Washington Bay encounter, which Woodman analyzes as perhaps the most solid Inuit description of a meeting with Franklin Expedition survivors, are recounted by searchers who heard the story in John Rae’s Arctic Corres
pondence 1844–1845 and in Narrative of the Second Arctic Expedition Made by Charles F. Hall: His Voyage to Repulse Bay, Sledge Journeys to the Straits of Fury and Hecla and to King William’s Land, and Residence among the Eskimos During the Years 1864-69, edited by J. E. Nourse USN, in 1879, and in Schwatka’s Search: Sledging in the Arctic in Quest of the Franklin Records, by William H. Gilder, second in command, published in 1881.

  PART II: THE HUNT

  Chapter 4: The Hunt Begins

  Nicolas Appert outlined his canning technique in 1811 in The Art of Preserving All Kinds of Animal and Vegetable Substances for Several Years, while Constantin Ardeleanu delves into the troubles of Stephen Goldner’s factory in “A British Meat Cannery in Moldavia (1844–52), Slavonic and East European Review 90 (2012). W. Gillies Ross profiles “William Penny (1809–1892)” in Arctic 36 (1983), while the life of Eenoolooapik (Bobbie) is described in Canadian Dictionary of Biography, Volume VII (1836–1850), http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/eenoolooapik_7E.html.

  Alexander McDonald gave a contemporary account of Eenoolooapik’s death in his 1841 book A Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Eenoolooapik, a Young Eskimaux, Who Was Brought to Britain in 1839. Clive A. Holland showed the Admiralty’s paltry support for Penny and his Inuit guide in “William Penny, 1809–92: Arctic Whaling Master,” The Polar Record 15 (1970).

  The severely cold summer of 1846 was recalled a few years later in “The Arctic Expeditions,” reprinted from Fraser’s Magazine in Littell’s Living Age 248 (February 17, 1849). William Penny’s letter to John Barrow was reprinted in the same edition of Littell’s Living Age. The Athenaeum: Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science and Fine Arts gave its high praise to Lady Franklin’s courage in “The Arctic Mystery” (July 1859). Charles Dickens’s walking tour with Longfellow is colorfully recounted in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, “Longfellow and Dickens: The Story of a Transatlantic Friendship,” The Cambridge Historical Society 28 (1943). The crewmen recall the horror of the Cove’s run-in with a vicious storm in M. J. Ross, Polar Pioneers: John Ross and James Clark Ross.