The rationale behind this decision was strangely varied. Some insisted the story must have been a muddled remembrance of the North Star’s winter stay at Wolstenholme Island the year before — this though little of Beck’s story fitted the North Star except that it was a navy vessel. Conflictingly, the searchers also labelled Beck a liar, insisting that he had manufactured the whole thing. Captain Austin, in charge of the naval flotilla, damned Beck as a “man in whom no faith could be placed” and called him “about the worst description of a civilized savage I ever saw.”4 Yet, John Ross stood by his interpreter at some personal cost and Charles Francis Hall met Beck ten years later when he concluded Beck had told the truth.
Still, as Woodman observed, “This calumny was to dog Adam Beck for the remainder of his life and into the history books.”5
Part of the problem with Beck’s story lies in its geographic origins. Once proof was found that the expedition had met its end on King William Island, the testimony of natives across Baffin Bay on the west coast of Greenland could not help but seem suspect. Yet, information could travel over vast distances in the Arctic. Nor did a story have to be passed linearly from tribe to tribe. A single Inuk in Prince Regent Inlet could have boarded a whaler which then dropped him off on the Greenland coast; once there, he might have related stories to the local natives. Indeed, Beck might have spoken to such a displaced Inuk without realizing it. Thus, it is entirely within the realm of plausibility that the Greenland Inuit might have had word of the fate of Franklin’s expedition. The problem comes when we try to interpret Adam Beck’s story.
ADAM BECK’S STORY
The story told to Beck was this:
“When [the natives] came to the ships and asked them [the men on the ships] said they had been here four winters. Tolloit also wintered upon our land. In 1846 two ships with three masts went from our land to Omanek; they arrived safely but the men are dead. Two ships encompassed by ice; otherwise they could not do. Their provisions were consumed. The men went to them; it is said they are dead. Tolloit is also dead.”6 Beck’s informers also assured him that “the ships were not whalers, and that epaulettes were worn by some of the white men.” Some of the crew were said to have drowned, while others spent “some time in huts and tents apart from the natives” and were “subsequently killed by the natives with darts and arrows.” The two ships had broken up in the ice and been “burnt by a fierce and numerous tribe of natives.”7
The story of the ships being burnt takes on a special interest, given that McClintock encountered Inuit on the east coast of King William Island who told him Franklin’s ships had burned in some way. McClintock had been unable to clarify the story and assumed the Inuit had burned down the masts of the stranded ship for wood.
Just as with the story of four survivors, some historians have argued that Adam Beck’s tale can be explained as a muddling together of a multitude of separate events, provided we are prepared to include in the list the sinking of a whaler and the burning of another which had taken place in 1835. Apart from the difficulty of explaining Adam Beck’s mistake in thinking the story referred to a recent event, neither of these other ships were navy, and so their officers would not have worn epaulettes. Indeed, once again, it seems far easier to assume that the Inuit (and Adam Beck) knew what they were talking about, rather than mixing and matching various events over the past decades.
Certainly, most of the details to Beck’s story were corroborated by other sources. The story of the burning ships may have been told to McClintock. The battle with natives had been related to Too-shoo-artthariu by Crozier. The Franklin ships had become beset in the ice and one had sunk, according to the Inuit. The expedition’s provisions would have been nearly exhausted and the men did indeed spend time in tents on King William Island.
In the end, if we assume the story really did refer to Franklin’s expedition, we are left with three questions. First, Adam Beck claimed the two ships “went from our land to Omanek.” Omanek, as Adam Beck well knew, was the Inuit name for Wolstenholme Island, slightly north of Cape York where he heard the story. Why would the Inuit have said the ships went to Omanek if they meant the ships had travelled to King William Island (called Kikertak)? Secondly, we must ask, who was “Tolloit”? This individual is oddly referred to since Tolloit seems to be separated from the two ships: “Tolloit also wintered upon our land.” Thirdly, the people on the ships had apparently told the Inuit that they had been there “four winters”. But the Franklin expedition had been in the Arctic only three winters by the time the ships were abandoned. In fact, only John Ross’ expedition back in 1829 had spent four winters in the Arctic.
The claim that the ships “went from our land to Omanek” is not as much of a stumbling block as it might appear. Beck knew there was a place near by with that name, which is why he took the searchers there. But it is possible he merely heard some name that sounded similar to Omanek and instantly assumed it was a reference to the near by Omanek.
Certainly, this theory has been considered before. Unfortunately, as David Woodman demonstrated in his book Unravelling the Franklin Mystery, there are quite a few places in the Arctic with names sounding like Omanek. In fact, Franklin’s expedition had transferred provisions from their tender at “Umanak” (Disko Bay) on the Greenland coast prior to crossing Baffin Bay. John Ross’ Victory had wintered at “Omanaq” (Lord Mayor Bay) on the east coast of Boothia Peninsula in 1829. There was an island named “Omanaq” near Montreal Island in the mouth of the Great Fish River. It was near here that George Back had fought with some Inuit during his explorations. In the 1960s Canadian Armed Forces helicopters landed on Taylor Island off the west coast of King William Island, there to search from Franklin relics on the basis of Inuit stories that a massacre had occurred on the island. One Inuit name for Taylor Island was “Ommanak”. (No traces of the expedition were discovered.) Worse, Woodman observed that there were so many islands with the name “Omanatluk” (meaning “heartshaped ones”) that “it seems to have been almost impossible for a European expedition to travel anywhere in the Arctic without becoming associated with one of them.”8
It may be there is no way to determine which place Beck’s story referred to. But it is also possible we are looking at the problem the wrong way. There is something decidedly odd about Beck’s tale. We are told the ships “went from our land to Omanek”. Thus, we assume the disaster took place on “Omanek”, somewhere away from “our land” (ie. Greenland). Yet, we are also told, “Tolloit also wintered upon our land.” This would suggest the disaster took place “upon our land” since Tolloit “also” wintered there. Both interpretations cannot be correct. Either the ships met with disaster on “Omanek” or on “our land”, but not both.
Suppose, though, we assume “our land” did not mean Greenland or Cape York or anything so specific. Suppose it merely meant “the Arctic”(“our land” being the land of the Inuit. Then Beck’s story takes on an entirely different meaning. The ships travelled from the Arctic to someplace else. Tolloit came from someplace else and wintered in the Arctic. The ships “arrived safely” at this other place, but somehow the men died anyway. The name of this other place sounded to Adam Beck like “Omanek”. But if the place referred to was not Omanek, what was it?
There is an Inuit word, “Qaumaneq”. There is no accurate way to translate it for the reason that it is a spiritual term. Barry Lopez, in his Arctic Dreams, translated “Qaumaneq” as “Shaman light”. It would seem to be a difficult concept to grasp, at once a mystical location somehow separate from the Arctic and a magic power possessed by shamans which allows them to “see” this place. In Lopez’s words: The angakoq, or Inuit shaman “has qaumaneq, the shaman light, the luminous fire, the inexplicable searchlight that enables him to see in the dark, literally and metaphorically.”9 Speaking of the Inuit’s attitude to their land, Lopez observed that “the evidence for a landscape in the Arctic larger than the one science reports, more extensive than that recorded on the United States Co
ast and Geodetic Survey quadrangle maps, is undeniable. It is the country the shamans shined their qaumaneq, their shaman light, into.”10
Given this new reading, Beck’s story takes on a far stranger meaning. Beck wasn’t being told the ships had gone from Greenland to King William Island, but rather from the Arctic to Qaumaneq, the shaman light.
Beck was also informed that they arrived safely, but the men died just the same. This could refer to the men who were killed by “natives” and those who drowned. Yet, it seems to refer specifically to the journey itself, rather than the battle afterwards. We have already considered the evidence which suggests some of the men may have died of radiation sickness. Could it be that the trip to the shaman light (and back again) was a success, but that men died from its after-effects — from radiation sickness? Could Fitzjames’ “All well” in the 1847 record have been a message to the Admiralty that the mission had been a success and “Qaumaneq” had been reached?
This line of reasoning quickly offers a solution to the second question raised by the Adam Beck story. Who was Tolloit who “also wintered upon our land”? The men, Beck learned, were dead. But he was told: “Tolloit is also dead.” Recalling the giant corpse with long teeth found by the Inuit aboard the stranded ship, we might wonder if “Tolloit” was merely Beck’s mistaken hearing of the word “Tunnit”?
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Rehearsal for Murder
It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
The Idylls of the King
FOUR EXPEDITIONS
As we have seen, the third question raised by the Adam Beck story concerns the length of time the massacred expedition had supposedly spent in the Arctic. Beck learned that the men aboard the ships had apparently told the Inuit “they had been here four winters”. But the Franklin expedition had spent only three winters in the Arctic.
Four winters would have been an exceptionally long period of time for any expedition to have wintered in the ice. In fact, only John Ross’ Victory could claim to have wintered for so long. In the case of the Victory, the stay was unintentional, arising from Ross’ poor choice of harbour. In the end, he was forced to abandon the Victory and escape by hitching a ride on a whaler. But, again, there is little else to suggest Beck’s tale referred to Ross’ expedition. Ross used only one ship, there was no hostile encounter between his crew and the Inuit, no fire, and no one died.
Perhaps, more important, Beck’s informers said, “When [the natives] came to the ships and asked them [the men on the ships] said they had been here four winters.” Beck’s story seems to imply the ships had already spent four winters in the Arctic by the time the Inuit encountered them for the first time. Yet, Ross only encountered the Inuit during the first two seasons. After that, there was no further meeting with the local inhabitants of Boothia Peninsula.
Again, perhaps we need a new perspective on the problem. Perhaps the testimony of the Greenland natives should not be taken so literally. We are assuming the four winters were sequential, during a single prolonged expedition. But what if we suppose the Inuit meant only that, when they encountered Franklin’s crew, the white men claimed to have been to that place (King William Island) four times, rather than for four winters? In other words, three expeditions had been there before and Franklin’s was the fourth.
This reading leads us into uncharted but possibly fruitful waters. Who were the three expeditions prior to Franklin’s? We know James Clark Ross sledged overland to Victory Point in 1830 during his uncle’s expedition in the Victory. We have also theorized that the Admiralty first learned of Victory Point and what was to be found there during Edward Parry’s voyage of the Fury, when that ship so mysteriously vanished without a trace. Thus we have three expeditions to King William Island — Edward Parry’s, James Clark Ross’, and Franklin’s.
So, who was the fourth?
In 1839, Thomas Simpson reached the south shore of King William Island. It was Simpson who erected the famous cairn which McClintock later found looted. Simpson’s visit took place nine years after James Clark Ross’. Unlike Ross, Simpson was acting under the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company, of which his older cousin George Simpson was governor. If we are correct in our new reading of the Adam Beck story, Thomas Simpson’s expedition must be the third of the four.
There is no evidence that Simpson travelled anywhere farther north than Cape Herschel on King William Island. Certainly there is no proof he visited Victory Point prior to Franklin’s disastrous visit. On the other hand, Thomas Simpson’s death only months after his expedition to the island has itself become a much pondered and disturbing mystery nearly as puzzling and sinister as the Franklin mystery it preceded by five years. Pierre Berton observed, “Since that day, Thomas Simpson’s death has been a matter of mystery and controversy.”1 Peter Newman noted that “the circumstances remain unexplained.”2
MURDER?
Thomas Simpson was not, in the modern vernacular, a happy camper. Simpson was egotistical, quick to find fault in others, and altogether too vocal in his criticisms. Writing to his brother Alexander, Simpson called his partner-in-exploration, Peter Warren Dease, “a worthy, indolent, illiterate soul” who “moves just as I give the impulse.”3 Of his cousin and employer, George Simpson, Thomas had harsh things to say, calling him “a severe and most repulsive master”, believing that the governor was bending a little too far over backward to avoid charges of nepotism.4
In 1836, George Simpson instructed his young cousin to travel down the Mackenzie River to the Arctic sea, there to seek the Northwest Passage in accordance with the requirement placed in the original Hudson’s Bay Company charter. With Peter Dease and a group of paddling voyageurs, Simpson reached the icy sea, where he left the exhausted Dease behind and travelled on in the company of five voyageurs. With some further assistance from Inuit in boats, Simpson managed to reach Point Barrow on the Alaska coast, thereby linking up with the area of previous explorations. Simpson and Dease returned to winter at Fort Confidence on Great Bear Lake.
The next summer, in 1838, they set off down the Coppermine River, this time intending to explore eastward along the roof of the continent. Reaching the Arctic waters at Coronation Gulf, they sighted Victoria Land across the water to the north and saw clear water to the east. But the party was exhausted and they were forced to turn back. The next year, they tried again.
This time Simpson and Dease managed to push eastward, first through Coronation Gulf, then through Dease Strait, then out into Queen Maud Gulf at the southern reaches of Victoria Strait. They were now just south and west of King William Island, which they thought was joined to Boothia. They planned to follow the King William Island coast up to James Clark Ross’ farthest travels at Victory Point. But, before they could do so, they discovered the strait running due east beneath King William Island and decided instead to follow this, which Simpson named Simpson Strait [see map 27].
They explored the strait to the mouth of the Great Fish River, then continued forty miles further east to the Castor and Pollux River. Then Simpson crossed over to King William Island to the north, completely missing the strait that separated it from Boothia. He explored the south shore, erected his cairn at Cape Herschel, then returned home after briefly visiting Victoria Island.
Map 27
Thomas Simpson visits King William Island, 1839
No sooner had he returned than he applied to the Hudson’s Bay Company to carry out one final expedition. He planned to travel down the Great Fish River to the Arctic sea directly south of King William Island. It was his contention that Simpson Strait continued east through Boothia, forming a passage out into the Gulf of Boothia at the bottom of Prince Regent Inlet. If true, then this waterway would form the final link in the Northwest Passage. He wished to prove the existence of this passage.
But why had he failed to seek this strait in
1839 when, at the Castor and Pollux River, the passage’s western entrance would only have been a few miles away? Why had he wasted time exploring the south coast of King William Island with success so nearly in his grasp?
His decision to turn back is difficult to explain, unless we presume the supposed strait was merely an excuse to return to King William Island — in which case we must assume that he knew no such strait existed, having already explored slightly east of the Castor and Pollux River. If true, the irony is black indeed. For, as we have seen, Crozier was almost certainly trying to reach Simpson’s mythical strait when he abandoned the ships and marched his crew to their graves.
Simpson dispatched his request to London, even offering to spend a fortune of his own money, five hundred pounds, on the venture. He waited for a reply. In London, the Hudson’s Bay Company approved Simpson’s plan, but it took too long for word to reach him back in Canada. Frustrated by the delay, Simpson resolved to travel to London to plead his case in person. On the way, while travelling through Dakota Sioux territory in the company of four “mixed-bloods”, Simpson camped near the Turtle River.
There were only two witnesses to what happened next. James Bruce and Antoine Legros, Jr. were engaged setting up a tent when they heard a gun shot. Turning, they saw Simpson shoot Legros’ father, Antoine Legros, Sr., with a shotgun. Another man, John Bird, had already been shot by the other barrel of the gun and lay on the ground dead. Simpson assured Bruce and Legros, Jr. he wouldn’t hurt them and that he had acted in self-defence (“that the laws of England would clear him”.5 The two men left Simpson with the bodies and went to get help. Returning some time later with more men, they heard a shot from the camp. Afraid Simpson was firing at them, they delayed before entering the camp. When they finally did, they found Simpson dead, shot in the head with a shotgun.
The Franklin Conspiracy Page 28