Captain Francis Crozier

by Michael Smith

  Crozier was not the first choice to sail as Franklin’s deputy, despite his record. The position was first offered to an officer called Captain Stokes, who turned it down.

  Harrington turned to Ross who once again urged the Admiralty to appoint Crozier. It was a critical intervention and on 3 March 1845 Crozier was officially appointed captain of Terror and the expedition’s second-in-command.

  He hurried back to London, seemingly eager to return to the familiar decks of Terror. On the way, he wrote home to the family in Dublin – the ‘old sisters’ as he called them – to break the news of his new expedition. He said:

  Of course, you are aware that this is a service more congenial to my feelings than any other and we all know that the same God rules in all places. Whether on sea or shore, He is ever with us.12

  chapter fifteen

  A Sense of Tragedy

  Francis Crozier was in the wrong frame of mind to make another long, punishing and hazardous voyage into the icy reaches of the North West Passage. A different man, one not driven by the ulterior motives of impressing Sophy Cracroft, would never have gone north. Crozier was struggling with two demons: he was depressed and lovelorn. But to add to his worries, Crozier soon began to develop serious reservations about the expedition itself. He was right to be concerned.

  Soon after arriving in London, Crozier discovered that the Admiralty had delivered an amazing snub to its most experienced serving Arctic officer. The Admiralty had given James Fitzjames, a novice in the ice, responsibility for handling some of the expedition’s most crucial affairs.

  Crozier, in effect, had been stripped of his responsibilities as the expedition’s second-in-command in favour of a younger man who, in all probability, had never seen an iceberg. To his chagrin, Crozier also discovered that Fitzjames, a charming and well-liked officer, had become a personal favourite of Franklin.

  Fitzjames, he learned, had been placed in charge of the vital issue of appointing the expedition’s 21 junior officers and the rest of the crew, traditionally the role of the second-in-command. It was an extraordinary decision since no one still active in the navy knew as much as Crozier about seamanship in the ice and the behaviour of Erebus and Terror.

  Crozier was a hard taskmaster, but his judgement in picking officers and crew, as he demonstrated in the Antarctic, was often right. Ross had left the task of officer and crew selection entirely in the hands of Crozier and the low casualty rate on the four-year expedition showed the wisdom of his selections. Death was commonplace on long sea voyages, but only three men died on Erebus during the lengthy trip and there were no fatal casualties on Crozier’s own vessel, Terror.

  Even more extraordinary was the Admiralty’s decision to hand over responsibility for the expedition’s magnetic studies to Fitzjames. It was an astonishing rebuke to Crozier, who at the time was the navy’s most experienced magnetic authority still on active service. He had clocked up more than twenty years in the field and his expertise was recognised at the highest level.

  In December 1843, just three months after returning from Antarctica, Crozier was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the distinguished scientific body. Only 22 men were elected to the exclusive Royal Society that year and it was a measure of his standing in the scientific community that some of the most prominent men of the day lined up to support his election. His sponsors for fellowship read like a ‘who’s who’ of mid-nineteenth-century maritime science and included the world-famous astronomer, Sir John Herschel. From navy circles he was backed by Barrow, Sabine, Beaufort and Sir George Cockburn, the then First Lord of the Admiralty. In accepting him into the select fold, the Royal Society saluted Crozier’s ‘untiring assiduity’ in the field of magnetism.

  It is not known why, after such a distinguished record, the Admiralty relieved Crozier of his natural responsibilities. After twenty years of valuable work and the Royal Society’s imprimatur, the decision was inexplicable. Or was it just one more example of the lack of respect for Crozier among the haughty autocrats of the Admiralty?

  There is little doubt that Crozier was wounded by the slight of losing key responsibilities to Fitzjames. But, as ever, he kept his feelings to himself. His only recorded comment on the rebuke was a typically dry and whimsical observation:

  I find by the [Admiralty] instructions that Fitzjames is appointed to superintend the magnetic observations. I will therefore take just so much bother there as may amuse, without considering myself as one of the staff.1

  Crozier was permitted to order the expedition’s instruments and another key aspect of his position was preserved in clause 21 of the Admiralty’s formal instructions to Franklin, which affirmed Crozier’s position as second-in-command and declared: ‘Should Sir John Franklin suffer a fatal accident, Captain Crozier may take command of the Erebus.’2

  The decision to give Fitzjames control over the selection of officers and crew was altogether more serious, especially when considering his complete lack of experience in the ice. Though a popular, well-meaning and affable character with a distinguished-service record in the Middle East and China, his choice of men for the expedition was poor.

  They appeared to be picked at random or were carried to the commission with a nauseous whiff of patronage. Many of the expedition’s officers came to the expedition on the personal recommendation of Fitzjames and most, like him, were total newcomers to the ice.

  Only seven of the 24 officers chosen for Erebus and Terror had been to the ice before. But only four – Crozier, Franklin and two ice-masters recruited from the whaling fleet – had any recognisable polar background. Barrow’s proud claim that many old Arctic hands were clamouring to serve was quietly forgotten as Fitzjames lined up a curious collection of Arctic beginners.

  The two ice-masters, Thomas Blanky and James Reid, stood out. Both were hugely experienced men with impressive records in the Greenland whaling industry. Blanky, who was assigned to Crozier on Terror, had served on three Arctic expeditions and had stood alongside Crozier on the decks of Hecla during Parry’s unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole in 1827.

  But the record of the three other officers with ice experience were less convincing. Lieutenant Graham Gore, a busy and energetic officer on Erebus, had spent only one season in the ice, during Back’s failed bid to reach Repulse Bay in 1836. Charles Osmer, the ship’s purser, travelled to the Bering Strait as a clerk with Beechey. The experience of Dr Alexander Macdonald, the assistant-surgeon on Terror, was limited to a single season on a whaling ship.

  The lopsided selections of Fitzjames were quite extraordinary considering the large pool of seasoned officers available after 25 years of relentless endeavours by the navy in the polar regions. The inexperience of the party was particularly severe on Crozier. Only Macdonald among Terror’s officers had seen the ice before. In the event, Crozier’s first lieutenant on Terror was Edward Little, who came from the Mediterranean fleet and had been on half-pay for eighteen months, while the second lieutenant, George Hodgson, was last engaged repelling pirates off the coast of Sumatra.

  The crew, according to Fitzjames, were all ‘fine heart fellows’. But even the Admiralty became concerned at some of the selections and before Erebus and Terror sailed, three young officers picked by Fitzjames were rejected. Among the replacements was Frederick Hornby, an unemployed junior officer with no Arctic record, who probably owed his appointment to having spent time with Franklin in Van Diemen’s Land.

  Crozier also found it necessary to jettison a further two of the men selected by Fitzjames for Terror. The men – an armourer and a sail maker – were branded ‘perfectly useless either at their trade or anything else’ in Crozier’s damning appraisal.

  Crozier was obliged to participate in a public display of unity when the Admiralty threw a reception to honour the departing expedition in May 1845. The guests of honour were Crozier and Franklin, but also there was Fitzjames, ostensibly third in the expedition’s pecking order but by now a more influential figure than Crozier. />
  The reception, held on 8 May, was a notable event – the last rollcall of the ageing generation of polar explorers cobbled together by Sir John Barrow in the years following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Or ‘Barrow’s Boys’, as one writer called them. Among the Arctic dignitaries sipping drinks and making polite conversation were Sir Edward Parry, Sir James Clark Ross, Colonel Edward Sabine, Sir George Back and the 81-year-old Barrow, who presided over his champions like a proud Roman emperor.

  The grand occasion reflected the general mood of supreme optimism that swept the country in the weeks before the ships sailed. Completing the last few miles of the North West Passage was regarded as inevitable. Only irritating troublemakers even considered the possibility of failure.

  Confidence was so high among the expedition that young officers on board urged their wives and girlfriends to write to them via Russia. The effusive Fitzjames summed up the buoyant mood when he announced: ‘You have no idea how happy we all feel – how determined we all are to be frozen and how anxious to be among the ice.’3

  Such blind optimism permeated from the top down. The complacent chiefs at the Admiralty were so convinced of success that it was not considered necessary to prepare the contingency of a relief expedition in the event of Erebus and Terror becoming trapped in the ice.

  Neither did the Admiralty think it prudent to name a predetermined spot in the Arctic where relief ships could be sent if, at worst, Erebus and Terror failed to emerge from the ice on schedule. The chilling reality that Parry’s Fury and John Ross’ Victory had been lost in the same area was barely discussed.

  The only acknowledgment of possible misfortune came in the form of a polite request to the Hudson’s Bay Company, which exercised enormous authority over large swathes of the Canadian Arctic, for its wandering emissaries to render assistance if required. How a handful of Hudson Bay trekkers in thousands of square miles of barren Arctic territory could possibly feed or assist well over a hundred seamen trapped in the ice was never fully explained. Beyond the tenuous involvement of a few Hudson’s Bay travellers, the men from Erebus and Terror were on their own.

  Some, such as Barrow, sincerely believed there would be no need for outside assistance. Barrow’s clique thought the ships would complete the journey in one season and emerge through the Bering Strait into the Pacific Ocean to spend the winter of 1845–46 basking in the inviting waters of Hawaii. It was much the same rhetoric used prior to John Ross’ voyage in 1818, the first of the Barrow-inspired attempts to find the passage.

  The official mood of optimism was inspired by the certain knowledge that the expedition would be the largest, best-equipped undertaking ever to leave British shores. It was a symbol of national virility and power. Defeat was unthinkable.

  Erebus and Terror were to carry a huge complement of 134 men and enough supplies to last for three years. The ships were refurbished at Woolwich Dockyard and fitted with an extra layer of sheet iron around their bows as protection against the ice.

  Both vessels were also equipped with the newest technology of the industrial age. The Admiralty, under the direction of Parry, had decided that the time had come to use steam engines in the ice and the ships were fitted with innovative screw propellers that could be lifted out of the water if the ships were beset. A deal was arranged to purchase two reliable steam locomotives from railway companies. Terror’s 20-horse-power vehicle came from the London and Birmingham Railway, while Erebus’ loco of the same capacity came from the nearby Greenwich Railway Company.

  The front wheels were removed and a team of ten horses dragged the cumbersome locomotives – each weighing 15 tons (15,241 kilograms) – to the quayside, where they were lowered sideways into the holds of Erebus and Terror. The propeller shaft, measuring 32 feet (9.8 metres), ran a third of the length of the ship before being attached to a 7-foot (2.1-metre) propeller.

  Crozier, using a steam-powered engine for the first time, took Terror on trials up and down the Thames and found that the old bomb ship, now 32 years old, could generate a top speed of 4 knots in the tranquil inland waters. Lieutenant John Irving of Terror reported that the ship made ‘dreadful puffings and screamings and will astonish the Esquimaux not a little’.

  Not everyone was convinced that the newly invented steam engines were necessary. Ross, whose 24 years of Arctic and Antarctic service had been entirely under sail, told the Admiralty in 1844 that he was not prepared to use steam power. ‘[Engines] alone would be a sufficient reason for not wishing to undertake the service’, he had written to Beaufort when rejecting the chance to lead the expedition.

  The inventory of supplies was daunting, even with precious space in the holds taken up by the bulky steam locomotives. The holds were stuffed full of provisions and equipment, including over 43 tons (43,700 kilograms) of preserved meat, 61 tons (62,000 kilograms) of flour and more than 16 tons (16,500 kilograms) of biscuits. As an antiscorbutic against scurvy, the ships took more than 4 tons (4,200 kilograms) of lemons, which were to be administered at the rate of 1 ounce (28 grams) per day.

  Officers and crew were meant to exist for up to three years on the staple navy diet of salted beef or pork and tinned vegetables. It was later discovered that much of the tinned food was probably tainted and unfit for human consumption even before the ships left London. Modern research suggests the canned meats were riddled with botulism. The cost-conscious Admiralty accepted the lowest bid to provide the expedition’s foodstuffs without adequate checks on the unscrupulous supplier and unwittingly shortened the odds of survival for the men of Erebus and Terror.

  The antiscorbutic value of the diet was worthless and the prescription of a few spoonfuls of lemon juice a day, though helpful, would not be enough to combat the effects of scurvy.

  Officers were to dine off the finest china and use their own neatly engraved silver cutlery, but there was no contingency for living off the land if the ships ran into trouble or the food ran out. Few on board, if any, were skilled hunters.

  The ships were also stocked with goods to help the men survive the winters in comfort. Over 3 tons (3,100 kilograms) of tobacco and 1.5 tons (1,524 kilograms) of soap were loaded and each vessel was provided with a library of 1,200 books together with slates, pencils and arithmetic tables that would provide the sailors with a modicum of learning during the long, dark nights. Both ships were given a hand-organ that could turn out a repertoire of 50 different tunes and an early daguerreotype apparatus that would take the first-ever photographs of an Arctic expedition was also loaded.

  The idea of photographing the expedition aroused some excitement. Crozier, Franklin, Fitzjames and a few other officers sat for William Beard, the photographer, a few days before the ships sailed and were impressed by the new-fangled device. But Crozier, looking slightly anxious under his peaked cap, was the only man from Terror to be photographed for posterity.

  The aura of invincibility was all-pervading and a stream of distinguished visitors and friends in a mood of growing expectation – among them Ross, Parry and Haddington – poured down the Thames to see the men and ships.

  Barrow heightened expectations with the audacious claim that there could be ‘no objection with regard to any apprehension of loss of ships or men’. Sir Roderick Murchison, president of the Royal Geographical Society, put it more simply: ‘The name of Franklin alone is, indeed, a national guarantee.’

  But the cocksure atmosphere surrounding the official preparations masked serious concerns felt elsewhere. Men with personal experience of the polar regions were able to pick holes in the scheme and urged the Admiralty, even at this late stage, to rethink their plans. Commander Archibald McMurdo, a veteran of the great Antarctic enterprise with Crozier and Ross, bluntly warned that Franklin would never return from the ice.4

  The shrillest notes of alarm were sounded by Ross’ uncle, Sir John Ross, and Dr Richard King, who had accompanied Back down the Great Fish River in the mid-1830s. A prickly outsider with few friends in the right quarters, King predicted unmitigate
d disaster. He firmly believed that the North West Passage could only be accomplished by deploying a smaller, lightweight party travelling overland along the Canadian coastline. This ran contrary to established naval thinking, which for centuries was content to send large ships and dozens of men at a time into the unknown.

  King solemnly warned the Admiralty that the vessels were doomed to entrapment in the ice and insisted the expedition would be ‘a lasting blot in the annals of our voyages of discovery’. The Admiralty, he concluded, was sending Franklin to the Arctic ‘to form the nucleus of an iceberg’. King was not a navy man, and his opinions, like those of Scorseby decades earlier, were imperiously swept aside by the naval establishment. But Franklin did pack a copy of King’s book about his 1833–35 journey with Back to read.

  The claims of Sir John Ross were not so easily swept aside. Although frozen out of the Admiralty inner circle, John Ross spoke as a man with two Arctic expeditions to his name and his well-founded claims could hardly be ignored. Specifically, he was the first to argue that the expedition – two ships and 134 men – was too large and too cumbersome to manage. Smaller expeditions were easy to handle in an emergency, as he had found when Victory was trapped a decade earlier. He also argued that the ships’ 19-foot (5.8-metre) draughts were too great for the shallow Arctic waterways. Victory, which was lost in Prince Regent Inlet, had a draught of only 9 feet (2.7 metres). He further feared that the officers and men selected by Fitzjames did not possess enough experience of the ice.

  Ross also urged Franklin to erect a chain of easy-to-spot cairns along the proposed route, each containing notes of the expedition’s position. Sensibly enough, he reasoned that the party would be easier to find if anything went wrong. Franklin politely ignored his advice, but dutifully placed a copy of John Ross’ book on the Victory expedition in the library of Erebus.