The vessels drew alongside and Martin spoke to both Reid and Franklin, an exchange that has baffled historians ever since. According to Martin, Franklin boasted that the expedition was provisioned for five years and might be able to stretch supplies out for seven years, particularly if they could kill extra game during their voyage. A day or two later, several of Franklin’s officers from Erebus dined on board the 350-ton Enterprise and Martin recalled that the expedition expected to be away for four to six years. Officially, Erebus and Terror were provisioned for only three years – a fact confirmed by Crozier’s letter to Henderson. In addition, the ships had sailed with the expectation of making the journey in one season or two years at most. The third year’s supplies were seen as an insurance against unforeseen events.
Either Martin was wrong or Franklin’s officers were carried away with the air of optimism on board. Erebus and Terror could never have sustained a journey of five, six or seven years without restocking or by an unprecedented and sustained feat of game-hunting spread over several years.
Franklin invited Martin to dinner on board Erebus, but the whaler, anxious not to lose time in the hunting season, politely declined. The chance to clarify the expedition’s intentions was lost.
Captain Dannet on Prince of Wales also had a brief meeting with officers from Erebus and recorded its position at 74° 48′ north, 66° 13′ west. He too turned down the chance to have dinner with Franklin as he was anxious not to lose the favourable winds.
Martin later told the Admiralty that the crews of both vessels were in ‘excellent health and spirits’ and calculated that in the prevailing ice conditions, the ships would cross Davis Strait and reach the entrance to Lancaster Sound by the middle of August.
Martin sailed to the hunting grounds some time between 29 and 31 July 1845 and for the next two days could see the masts of Erebus and Terror on the distant horizon. The vessels remained moored to an iceberg while waiting for the ice to break up and to continue the journey across Baffin Bay. All was normal.
Erebus and Terror and all 129 souls on board then vanished.
chapter seventeen
Ice
Erebus and Terror crossed Baffin Bay and went into Lancaster Sound, as anticipated, some time in early-to-mid-August. What happened next is a tantalising mixture of fact and fiction, with assorted fragments of hard evidence blended together with more than 150 years of rumour, conjecture and pure fantasy. While it is possible to piece together a reasonable account of the unfolding tragedy, the simple truth is that no one knows for sure what happened next.
The expedition’s first step, in line with Admiralty instructions, was to trace Parry’s route west to the end of Lancaster Sound to Barrow Strait, avoiding the temptation to venture into Prince Regent Inlet, which had already claimed Fury and Victory. At Cape Walker, on the brink of Melville Sound, the ships were to steer southwest into unexplored seas in the direction of the Bering Strait and the Pacific.
If the pathway ahead was blocked by ice, the expedition was urged to turn on its heels and steer northwards out of Lancaster Sound through Wellington Channel, the uncharted stretch of water that runs between Cornwallis Island and Devon Island. By penetrating far enough up Wellington Channel, it was assumed the party would run into the ‘Open Polar Sea’.
The ice around Cape Walker, which lies in Barrow Strait at the western end of Lancaster Sound, was evidently impenetrable in 1845 and the proposed course to the southwest was abandoned for that season. Reverting to the alternative plan, Erebus and Terror turned north towards Wellington Channel.
The change of plan suited Crozier and Franklin, both of whom felt more optimistic about probing the unknown waters of Wellington Channel than they did about pressing along the south-westerly route from Cape Walker. Both Crozier and Franklin subscribed to the ‘Open Polar Sea’ theory and were confident that one of the northern passageways out of Lancaster Sound or Barrow Strait – such as Wellington Channel – offered the best prospects for success. Franklin had confided as much to his family shortly before the expedition left London. The Wellington Channel, Lady Franklin later explained, was ‘not only the uppermost object in my husband’s mind when he left England, but it was also in Captain Crozier’s.’
Emily Tennyson, the wife of Franklin’s nephew, Alfred Tennyson, recalled her final conversation with John Franklin in the days before the expedition sailed. He told her: ‘If I am lost, remember Emily, my firm belief that there is open sea at the North Pole.’1
In the event, Erebus and Terror made a remarkable journey into Wellington Channel during the final sailing days of the 1845 navigation season. The expedition sailed about 150 miles (240 kilometres) up the unexplored strait between Devon Island and Cornwallis Island, but ran into heavy ice and was stopped at 77° north, one of the most northerly points ever reached by ship.
The area lies at the very edge of the permanent sea ice. Beyond lay assorted islands and over 5,000,000 square miles (8,000,000 square kilometres) of the vast, frozen Arctic Ocean. In other circumstances, this feat alone would have been recognised as a major triumph of navigation and perhaps help lay to rest the belief that open waters could be found at the top of the world.
With autumn closing in and the short season of open water coming to an end, Erebus and Terror retreated to the south. Travelling down the west coast of Cornwallis Island – completing the first circumnavigation of the island – the expedition re-entered the familiar seas of Barrow Strait. In the search for a safe winter harbour, the vessels turned back towards Lancaster Sound and at Beechey Island, at the western end of Lancaster Sound, found the ideal spot.
Beechey Island is a barren, wind-blasted lump of land, barely 3 miles (5 kilometres) across and linked to the far larger Devon Island by a thin spit of rocks and gravel. It was first discovered by Parry in 1819, but considered so desolate that he did not bother to land. An excellent natural anchorage was located on the little island’s north-eastern coast and subsequently named Erebus and Terror Bay. Lying over 500 miles (800 kilometres) inside the Arctic Circle, it was the most northerly place a naval party had ever spent a winter.
Map 9: The proposed route of Erebus and Terror in 1845.
The bleak winter of 1845–46 was colder than any of the men, with the exception of Crozier and Franklin, had ever before experienced. Only a few trips were made to survey the local region and before long the party settled into traditional over-winter routines of scientific readings, school lessons, recitals and passing the time as contentedly as possible.
But it was to be a troubled winter. Three men died during the long months spent at Beechey Island and their shipmates had to chisel graves from the frozen, rock-hard ground with pickaxes.
The first two men to perish – John Hartnell, a 25-year-old seaman on Erebus and John Torrington, a twenty-year-old stoker from Terror – died within days of each other during the first week of January 1846. William Braine, a 32-year-old marine private from Erebus, was dead by early April.
First casualties: three men from Erebus and Terror died in the first year of the expedition. Their headstones on the remote Beechey Island were a grim forewarning of a greater disaster.
Based on the past experience of earlier Arctic expeditions, it seems likely that Erebus and Terror spent at least ten months at Beechey Island, not being released until July or August 1846. Countless relics of the party’s winter quarters were later found, including three outhouses, piles of empty food tins and a pair of cashmere gloves apparently left out to dry and never retrieved by the owner.
A cairn was built at the southern end of the island overlooking Barrow Strait, but, surprisingly, no written records of the expedition’s stay or future intentions were found inside. The cairn may have been raided by passing Eskimos, or it is possible that no record was ever left because the expedition, seeing a favourable change in the weather, left in a hurry.
After the unsuccessful examination of Wellington Channel to the north, the expedition next turned to the Admiralty’s fir
st choice of route and headed for the southwest. Along Barrow Strait, the vessels came to a new channel trending to the south between Somerset Island and Prince of Wales Island – the precise area they intended to explore.
Erebus and Terror turned south into the strait, which is today known as Peel Sound. The ships made decent progress down Peel Sound in the first few days of September and successfully navigated the channel separating the two large islands. At the end of Peel Sound, the ships reached Franklin Strait, from where the northern shores of the Canadian mainland were apparently within easy reach. Erebus and Terror continued south, entering a broader expanse of water where Franklin Strait meets the wider McClintock Channel. Directly ahead lay Victoria Strait and the imposing sight of King William Island. Just beyond the horizon was the Canadian coastline.
The expedition now faced a critical choice. It could either take the south-westerly track around King William Island or steer around the landmass to the southeast. As the expedition’s orders were to head towards the Bering Strait, Franklin made the logical decision to take the south-westerly route. It was a fatal mistake.
In 1846, King William Island was known as King William Land because it was still thought to be attached to the Boothia Peninsula. But King William Land (Island) is cut off from the mainland to the east by two channels: the James Ross Strait and Rae Strait. From the south, the island is separated from the Canadian mainland by the narrow Simpson Strait.
For a brief period in the late summer, the Ross Strait and Rae Strait are navigable, and Simpson Strait is open water, leading eventually to the Bering Strait. It is the final section of the North West Passage.
But to the southwest of King William Island, the seas of Victoria Strait are a jumble of heavily packed and impenetrable ice. The area is a repository for huge floes of ice that originate far to the west in the Beaufort Sea before being driven down the waterways of McClure Strait, Melville Sound and McClintock Channel. Once in Victoria Strait, the ice stockpiles against the landmasses of the Boothia Peninsula and King William Island.
James Ross, the first European to encounter the scene, reported ice driven half a mile inland by the force of the pressure build-up. Awestruck by the immensity of ice piled up before his eyes, he wrote a graphic description of the area:
The pack of ice which had, in the autumn of that year, been pressed against that shore, consisted of the heaviest masses that I have ever seen in such a situation. With this, the lighter floes had been thrown up, on some parts of the coast, in a most extraordinary and incredible manner; turning up large quantities of the shingle before them, and, in some places, having travelled as much as half a mile beyond the limits of the highest tide-mark.2
It must be assumed that Crozier discussed conditions in the Victoria Strait area with Ross while staying at Blackheath in the weeks before the expedition sailed and therefore knew what to expect. But Franklin pressed on, apparently convinced that the passage was within easy sailing. Entrapment was inevitable and the grim warnings of Dr King – that the expedition would be forced to abandon its ships – had become a chilling reality.
It is impossible to blame Crozier or Franklin for making the wrong choice of route. Admiralty charts of the time showed King William Land as part of the Canadian mainland and sailing down the east side of the island, as far as anyone knew, was taking the ships into a cul-de-sac.
Even if the expedition had chosen the correct route to the south-east, it is not certain that Erebus and Terror were capable of navigating the 40-mile-long (60 kilometres) Simpson Strait. The channel, it was later discovered, is shallow, filled with dangerous and irregular ice and studded with dangerous reefs. At its narrowest, it is less than 2 miles (3 kilometres) wide. The heavily laden vessels, with a draft of at least 19 feet (6 metres), may have found it impossible to plot a course through the waterway. Erebus and Terror were designed for the high seas, not the shallow channels of the Arctic.
In August 1846, Erebus and Terror pressed on southwards directly into the region where Ross had witnessed the ‘heaviest masses’ of ice he had ever seen. On 12 September, only a few weeks after entering the Victoria Strait, the ships came to a halt, surrounded on all sides by a mass of solid ice. They were never released.
Erebus and Terror were beset at 70° 5′ north, a few miles to the north of King William Island. Trapped in the ice, the ships were carried slowly southwards by the currents and ran alongside the north-western shores of King William Island. On board, the remaining party of 126 men calmly sat through the second long, dark Arctic winter.
By May 1847, the ships were still firmly locked in the ice. On past experience, a release some time in July or August would have been anticipated. Franklin was so confident of being released that he sent an eight-man party ashore to inspect the immediate King William Island area and to scout the ice conditions in the general direction of Simpson Strait. The expedition probably felt their ordeal was coming to an end when, in reality, it was just beginning.
The shore party was led by Lieutenant Graham Gore, a capable and intelligent officer with recent experience of the ice gained during Back’s misadventure in the Arctic. Taking six crewmen and Charles Des Voeux, the mate from Erebus, he travelled along the barren western shores of the island and made some progress to the south, probably by tracing the coastline.
It is not known if Gore’s group was able to reach Simpson Strait in the south and establish the existence of the North West Passage. What is known is that Gore deposited several records of the expedition in copper cylinders along the shoreline.
The notes, written by Fitzjames, were signed by Gore and Des Voeux and placed in cairns a few days after the shore party left the ships on 24 May 1847. The brief message reported the short journey up Wellington Channel in 1845, the winter spent at Beechey Island in 1845–46 and Gore’s exploratory trip to King William Island in the spring of 1847. It read:
28 May 1847
HM ships ‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’ wintered in the ice in
Lat 70° 5′N Long 98° 23′W
Having wintered in 1846–47 at Beechey Island in Lat 74°
43′ 28″ N Long 91° 39′ 15″W after having ascended
Wellington Channel to Lat 77° and returned to the West
side of Cornwallis Island
Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition.
All well.
Party consisting of 2 officers and 6 men left the ships
on Monday 24th May 1847.
Gm Gore, Lieut.
Chas. F. Des Voeux, Mate3
The document contained an obvious error: the expedition had wintered at Beechey Island in 1845–46, not 1846–47, as the marked graves on Beechey Island could solemnly testify.
But less than three weeks after Gore left the cheery ‘All well’ message on King William Island, Sir John Franklin was dead.
Crozier, the reluctant venturer, formally assumed full command of the North West Passage expedition on 11 June 1847, the day of Franklin’s sudden death. After 26 years of dedicated work in the polar regions, Crozier was finally in command.
He had promised the Eskimo bands at Igloolik two decades earlier that he would return to the Arctic as esh-e-mu-ta – the captain of a ship. But while he now held office, he was not in power. Control of events rested with the merciless Arctic environment.
chapter eighteen
‘No Cause for Alarm’
The death rattle of the North West Passage expedition was sounding as Captain Crozier took command in June 1847. Erebus and Terror were irretrievably trapped in the ice, scurvy was taking its deadly grip on the men and the inexorable countdown to disaster was gathering speed.
Matters had taken a severe turn for the worse in mid-1847 and all of Crozier’s long experience in the ice must have told him that the party was in dire straits. There was only enough food for another twelve months, yet with the continuous build-up of ice in Victoria Strait, he could not be certain of Erebus and Terror being released during the summer.
&n
bsp; The most pressing problem was food. The holds of Erebus and Terror were once filled with enough food to feed the party for at least three years, but it was now necessary to ration supplies carefully, while making sure not to damage morale by cutting back too hard. Crozier, a practical and unruffled man, doubtless tried to augment supplies by sending hunting parties across the sea ice to King William Island in search of fresh meat.
However, British naval expeditions sent to the Arctic in the nineteenth century were invariably ill-prepared and lacked the know-how to successfully live off the land by killing game. There was little thought of practising marksmanship or hunting skills when navy ships – a ‘home from home’ – were stocked with ample quantities of salt beef and bacon. While officers sat down to dinner in dress uniforms and ate their meals off fine bone china, the urgency to learn how to hunt fresh game and live off the land seemed irrelevant.
As a result, successive expeditions to the Arctic never bothered to learn the Eskimo skills of hunting, such as stalking caribou or patiently waiting hours over a hole in the ice for a seal to stick its head out. Most of the weapons from the expedition found scattered on the Arctic tundra years later were shotguns, the type of gun more suited to popping pheasants on a country estate than felling a 9-foot (3-metre) bear in the Arctic wastes.
Hunting in the Arctic was often considered a spot of fun for British naval officers and it was already too late when they finally realised that killing wildlife was a matter of life and death. When the food ran out the men were cruelly vulnerable.
Crozier’s predicament was made worse by the appalling condition of the tinned food carried from London. Crozier was also highly unfortunate in that the ships had come to grief on the western shore of King William Island. It is a barren wildlife desert incapable of supporting a handful of people, let alone over 100 hungry men. Even the native Eskimos, who invariably moved around in small parties, avoided the western flank of King William Island because it offered little chance of a good meal. Large animals such as bears or muskoxen were rare and Crozier’s men, at best, might have shot the odd hare or bird.
Captain Francis Crozier Page 17