John Franklin
Sir
John Franklin FRGS (
April 15,
1786 –
June 11,
1847) was an
English sea captain and
Arctic explorer whose expedition disappeared while attempting to chart and navigate the
Northwest Passage in the
Canadian Arctic. The entire crew was lost and its fate remained a mystery for 14 years.
Franklin was born in
Spilsby,
Lincolnshire in
1786 and educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth. He was the ninth of 12 children of a family which had prospered in trade. One of his sisters became the mother of
Emily Tennyson (wife of the poet).
Although his father initially opposed him, Franklin was determined to have a career at sea. Reluctantly, his father allowed him to go on a trial voyage with a merchant ship. This hardened young Franklin's resolve, so at the age of 14, his father secured a
Royal Navy appointment on
HMS Polyphemus. Franklin was later present at the
Battle of Copenhagen in
1801. Following this he went on an expedition to explore the coast of Australia on the
HMS Investigator with his uncle, Captain
Matthew Flinders. Following that expedition, he returned to the Napoleonic Wars, serving aboard
HMS Bellerophon at the
Battle of Trafalgar in
1805. In 1815, he was at the
Battle of New Orleans.
Franklin first travelled to the Arctic in 1818, as a lieutenant under the command of
John Ross, and became fascinated by it. On a disastrous overland expedition into the
Northwest Territories of
Canada along the
Coppermine River in
1819-
1822, Franklin lost 11 of the 20 men in his party. Most died of starvation, but there was also at least one murder and suggestions of cannibalism. The survivors were forced to eat
lichen and even attempted to eat their own leather boots. This gained Franklin the nickname of "the man who ate his boots".
In
1823, after returning to England, Franklin married a poet,
Eleanor Porden. She died of
tuberculosis in
1825, shortly after persuading her husband not to let her ill-health prevent him from setting off on another expedition to the
Arctic. This expedition, a trip down the
Mackenzie River to explore the shores of the
Beaufort Sea, was better supplied and more successful than his last.
In
1828, he was knighted by
George IV and in the same year married
Jane Griffin, a seasoned traveller who proved indomitable in the course of their life together. He was appointed
Governor of
Tasmania in 1836, but was removed from office in 1843, partly because of his attempts to reform the penal colony there.
Exploration of the Arctic coastal mainland since Franklin's last Arctic expedition had left less than 500
km of unexplored Arctic coastline. It was decided that a well-equipped Arctic expedition would be sent to finally chart the Northwest Passage. Franklin was eager to lead the expedition, and was given command on February 7,
1845. He set off with a party of 129 men on May 19,
1845, in two ships,
HMS Erebus and
HMS Terror. The ships were sturdily built, and were outfitted with steam heating for the comfort of the crew, large amounts of reading and educational material, and three years' worth of preserved food supplies. They were last seen by whalers at
Baffin Bay on July 26.
After two years and no word from the expedition, Lady
Jane Franklin, his wife, urged the Admiralty to send a search party. This was the largest group they had ever lost. But the crew carried supplies for three years, so the Admiralty waited another year before launching the search and offering a £20,000 reward for success. Not only was this a huge sum for the time, but Franklin's disappearance had captured the popular imagination. At one point, there were 10 British and two American ships headed for the Arctic. (More ships and men were lost looking for Franklin than in the expedition). Ballads telling of Franklin and his fate became popular. The ballad
Lady Franklin's Lament commemorated Lady Franklin's search for her lost husband.
|
The note found by McClintock on King William Island in 1859, detailing the fate of the Franklin expedition. |
In the summer of
1850, several of the ships converged on
Beechey Island, in
Wellington Channel, where the first relics of the Franklin expedition were found: the graves of three men who had died from natural causes in
1846. But no messages had been left there by the Franklin party to provide further clues for the searchers. The bodies of the explorers had been preserved in the frozen ground, and
autopsies showed they had died of
tuberculosis.
In
1854, explorer
John Rae discovered further evidence of the Franklin party's fate. Rae was not searching for Franklin at all, but rather exploring the
Boothia Peninsula on behalf of the
Hudson's Bay Company. On this journey, Rae met an
Inuit who told him of a party of 35 to 40 white men who had died of starvation near the mouth of the
Back River. The Inuit also showed him many objects that were identifiable as having belonged to Franklin and his men.
Lady Franklin commissioned one more expedition under
Francis Leopold McClintock to investigate Rae's report. In the summer of
1859, the McClintock party found a document in a
cairn on
King William Island left by Franklin's second-in-command, giving the date of Franklin's death. The message, dated
April 25,
1848, also reported that the ships had been trapped in the ice, that many others had died, and that the survivors had abandoned the ships and headed south towards the
Back River. McClintock also found several bodies and an astonishing amount of abandoned equipment, and heard more details from the Inuit about the expedition's disastrous end.
|
Statue of John Franklin in his home town of Spilsby, Lincolnshire, England. |
There are several things that contributed to the loss of the Franklin expedition. Franklin was culturally conservative, observing wasteful rituals in inappropriate locales; for example, he and his men carried silver plates, crystal decanters, and many extraneous personal effects with them. They attempted to haul much of this heavy gear along with them even after abandoning the ships. They were unwilling or unable to learn survival techniques from the natives. Moreover, their expedition was a naval one, not equipped for hiking over land, so none of the sailors had thick boots or jackets. Their ships were locked in the ice for two winters running as a result of an unusually cold period that did not allow the icebound passages to melt in the summer of 1846. The party's morale and cohesion was damaged by psychological effects of
lead poisoning from the
solder that sealed their
tinned food supply. This has been confirmed by lead found in both skeletal and soft tissue remains of expedition sailors conducted by Dr Owen Beattie of the
University of Alberta. They also were weakened by internal bleeding from
scurvy after the first two years when the preventive lemon juice they carried lost its potency. The Inuit witnesses had reported that crew members exhibited the blackened mouth and bruised skin typical of that disease.
There is evidence of cut marks found on bones from some of the crew, that suggests conditions were so dire that some resorted to
cannibalism. In the end, it was likely a combination of poor planning, bad weather, poisoned food, and ultimately starvation that killed them.
For years to come, however, the Victorian media chose to portray Franklin as a hero, leading his men in the quest for the Northwest Passage. At the constant pressure of Lady Franklin, stories about the expedition's disappointing demise were suppressed, and her husband was elevated to a hero. A statue of Franklin in his home town bears the inscription 'Sir John Franklin - Discoverer of the North West Passage'. Statues of Franklin outside the
Athenaeum in
London, and in
Tasmania, bear similar inscriptions.
An alternative view is that Franklin was portrayed as a hero because of his many achievements, and the fact that he died in a gallant attempt to complete his discovery of the Northwest Passage did not diminish his standing in the eyes of the public. The expedition's fate, including the possibility of cannibalism, was not suppressed but in fact widely reported and debated in the newspapers of the day. The mystery still surrounding Franklin's last expedition was the subject of a 2006 episode of the
NOVA TV series,
Arctic Passage.
*The 1981 song
Northwest Passage by
Stan Rogers makes reference to John Franklin.
*The ballad
Lady Franklin's Lament, aka
Lord Franklin, has been recorded by numerous artists, including
Martin Carthy,
Pentangle,
Sinéad O'Connor, and the
Pearlfishers. The melody was also used for
Bob Dylan's song
Bob Dylan's Dream, as well as
David Wilcox's
Jamie's Secret.
*The song
I'm Already There on the
Fairport Convention album
Over the Next Hill is sung from the point of view of a member of one of Franklin's Expeditions.
*The book
The Terror, a novel by
Dan Simmons, will feature a supernatural take on the events of John Franklin's arctic expedition. It will be released on January 8,
2007.
*The novel
Solomon Gursky Was Here by
Mordecai Richler has a subplot involving the last Franklin expedition.
*The song "900," the B-side to the
Breeders' 1993
Cannonball single, has lyrics based on the Franklin expedition, particularly referencing the unnecessary luggage they carried south.
* 1848–1849,
James Clark Ross in
Investigator and
Enterprise* 1848–1851,
John Richardson and
John Rae overland expedition
* 1848–1851,
Plover and
Herald via
Bering Strait* 1849
William Penney (Captain) John Anstruther Goodsir (naturalist) in whaling vessel
Advice * 1850–1854,
Robert McClure in
Investigator via
Bering Strait* 1850–1855,
Richard Collinson in
Enterprise via
Bering Strait* 1850–1851,
William Penny in
Lady Franklin and
Sophia* 1850–1851,
Horatio T. Austin in four-ship
Royal Navy expedition
* 1850–1851, Sir
John Ross in private expedition
* 1850,
Charles Codrington Forsyth in
Prince Albert, financed by Lady Franklin
* 1850–1851,
Edwin J. De Haven in first
Grinnell expedition
* 1851–1852,
William Kennedy and
Joseph René Bellot in
Prince Albert, financed by Lady Franklin
* 1852–1854, Sir
Edward Belcher in a five-ship
Royal Navy expedition
* 1852,
Edward Augustus Inglefield in
Isabel, financed by Lady Franklin
* 1853–1855,
Elisha Kent Kane in second
Grinnell expedition
* 1853–1854,
John Rae on behalf of the
Hudson Bay Company* 1857–1859,
Francis Leopold McClintock in
Fox, financed by Lady Franklin
* 1864–1869,
Charles Francis Hall* 1875,
Allen Young in
Pandora, in a private expedition
* 1876,
Allen Young in
Pandora, in a second private expedition which also took despatches to the expedition of Sir
George Nares for the Admiralty
* 1878–1880,
Frederick Schwatka, sponsored by the
American Geographical Society*
NOVA - Arctic Passage Part 1 - Prisoners Of The Ice (TV documentary)
Frozen In Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition,
Owen Beattie and John GeigerThe Arctic Grail,
Pierre Berton*
Deadly Winter, Martyn Beardsley
*
The Royal Navy in Polar Exploration, Frobisher to Ross, E C Coleman 2006 ISBN 0 7524 3660 0
*
The Royal Navy in Polar Exploration, Franklin to Scott, E C Coleman 2006
*
British polar exploration and research : a historical and medallic record with biographies, 1818-1999 , Neville W. Poulsom & J. A. L. Myres (London: Savannah 2000)
*
Franklin Saga Deaths: A Mystery Solved? National Geographic Magazine, Vol 178, No 3, Sep 1990
The Artic Fox - Francis Leopold McClintock, Discoverer of the fate of Franklin, David Murray, 2004. Cork: The Collins Press, ISBN 1-55002-523-6
*
Five's Revealed: Franklin's Lost Expedition*
NOVA's companion website for Arctic Passage*
Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online *
The Fate of Franklin (Russell Potter) *
The Life and Times of Sir John Franklin *
Free ebook of John Franklin at
Project Gutenberg 
