Frozen in Time (6 page)
While the physical demands of these sledge searches doubtless contributed to the outbreak of illness, those left aboard also fell sick. On 15 June 1849, Henry Mathias, assistant surgeon on the
Enterprise,
died. The death was blamed on consumption, which, “imperceptibly gaining on his strength, brought him to the grave.” John Robertson wrote that Mathias was “greatly beloved and respected by all in the expedition,” but that there was no hope of “getting him alive out of Port Leopold the grave of so many.” Ross observed: “Several others of the crews of both ships were in a declining state, and the general report of health was by no means cheering.” Even the
Enterprise'
s surgeon fell seriously ill. Robertson wrote that he suffered from scurvy and only “narrowly escaped destruction,” though he would continue to suffer active symptoms of “this abominable scourge” seven months later, even after his return to England.
There was another death on 8 July.
Before the ships departed from Port Leopold, Ross ordered that a depot be established. In it, he left behind a steam launch (with fuel), a shelter with carpenter's tools, blankets, sleeping bags, stoves, provisions and other essential supplies, and an account of the expedition and its future plans. Gilpin: “Here then should any of Sir John Franklin's people reach, they would ï¬nd the means of subsistence and escape.”
After departing Port Leopold, Ross attempted to travel west, but the ships were beset on 1 September and carried by ice towards Baffin Bay. After three weeks they were freed, but with the intensifying malevolence of the disease amongst his men, Ross was forced to cut his losses, abandon his search and make a run for home. The
Investigator'
s cook died on 16 September during the homeward passage; the last case appeared less than a week before the ships limped into the English port of Scarborough in November 1849. Some of the sailors remained ill enough to require hospitalization, and one died shortly afterwards.
On 17 November, the
Illustrated London News
announced the expedition's disappointing results, reporting the “great difficulty” encountered by the sledge parties and noting the deaths: “The assistant-surgeon, a very intelligent young man, and three able seamen of the
Enterprise,
with three of the crew of the
Investigator,
have died since the vessel left Woolwich in the spring of 1848.” The
Athenaeum
declared the search for Franklin “very incomplete”:
⦠the public mind can arrive at no conclusion for its anxiety from what has been done. But the issue of such examination as Sir James Ross
has
been enabled to institute makes a painful addition to the melancholy suggestions arising out of the long and death-like silence which has fallen over the former Expedition.
Ross's own health was broken. While many critics felt he should have braved a second winter, lamenting his “puny efforts,” John Robertson, the surgeon on the
Enterprise,
thought most of the men would not have survived another year:
There were few men in the ship who were not more or less afflicted by scurvy, and I cannot help fearing that had we remained out an other winter, few if any would have ever returnedâthis the more certain since our antiscorbutics proved such perfect failures.
One officer on the expedition wrote: “We have certainly had to grapple with difficulties of no ordinary nature.” Years later, M'Clintock reï¬ected that “we underwent as much privation and fatigue as in any equal period of my subsequent travel.” Yet the truth was that Ross's expedition was the only one with at least a theoretical chance of saving some of Franklin's men. When his ships reached Port Leopold, some of the men may still have been alive; with Ross's defeat, any chance of their being saved was lost.
Struggling to understand the severity of the sickness suffered aboard Ross's ships, some historians have theorized that the problem might have been compounded by the crews being accepted for the expedition without medical examinations. Ross's own officers complained that the ships' canned provisions were not only underweight but of inferior quality, in Robertson's words, “a disgrace to the contractor.” The same contractorâStephan Goldnerâhad supplied Franklin's expedition. Doubts about the antiscorbutic value of the lime juice carried on-ship were also raised, with subsequent chemical analysis concluding that there was no guarantee of “the initial soundness of the fruit.” This grave conclusion unfastened an exhaustive inquiry by Sir William Burnett, the navy's medical director-general. All juice then in the victualling stores was analyzed, with the conclusion that it was all below the proper standard of acidity. It was, of course, a mistake to suppose that acidity was the vital element.
In the end, the Admiralty attributed the health problems that beset the expedition, and the unusual number of deaths, to scurvy. Ross, who had seen scurvy's effects on some of his earlier expeditions, was unconvinced. He pointedly did not use the word “scurvy” in his official report of the expedition nor, indeed, did his men when later examined, saying that there had been “debility but no scurvy.” The ferocity of the illness was unequalled in nineteenth-century Arctic exploration. Not even Franklin's expedition during its ï¬rst year came close to experiencing the crippling losses encountered by James Clark Ross's during its lone Arctic winter; at one point, twenty-six men were on the sick list. The mortality on Ross's expedition was more than twice that of Franklin's 1845â46 winter losses.
On 4 april 1850, the
Toronto Globe
published an advertisement announcing a £20,000 reward to be given by “Her Majesty's Government to any party or parties, of any country, who shall render efficient assistance to the crews of the discovery ships under the command of Sir John Franklin.” A further £10,000 was offered to anyone able to relieve any of the crews or bring information leading to their relief. Finally, another £10,000 was offered to anyone succeeding in ascertaining the fate of the expedition.
By the autumn of 1850, a ï¬eet of ships was combing the Arctic's waterways for a sign of the missing explorers. The British Admiralty alone sent three expeditions consisting of a total of eight ships into the Arctic. One of the search expeditions, made up of the HMS
Enterprise
and HMS
Investigator
under the command of Captain Richard Collinson and Commander Robert McClure, was sent through the Bering Strait; Captain Horatio Thomas Austin, with second-in-command Captain Erasmus Ommanney, was ordered to take four ships into Lancaster Sound, while the third expedition, led by Arctic whaling master Captain William Penny, was sent north into Jones Sound.
As early as February 1849, Jane, Lady Franklin travelled to Hull, a port from which whalers sailed to Baffin Bay, “with a view to plead her anxieties and distresses and to animate the commanders to her cause.” She was among those active in the race to save her husband and his men, and with the help of supporters sent a ship to join in the search. As well, the United States Navy Department assisted New York merchant Henry Grinnell, who outï¬tted two ships under Lieutenant Edwin J. De Haven, while aging explorer Sir John Ross led an expedition funded by the Hudson's Bay Company and public subscription.
The Hudson's Bay Company also sent John Rae, an expert in Arctic survival, to assist with what would be his second search. Rae, who travelled overland and by boat to Victoria Island, would discover two pieces of wood on the southern shore of the island, wood that could only have come from a ship. Yet there was no proof that the debris was from either the
Erebus
or
Terror,
and his survey ended on the southeastern corner of the island, where the ice that clogged Victoria Strait prevented him from crossing to nearby King William Island.
View of the spot on Cape Riley, Devon Island, where in 1850 Captain Ommanney of the HMS Assistance found evidence of a Franklin expedition encampment.
Finally, on 12 October 1850, the
Illustrated London News
was able to report: “some faint gleams of hopeful light have at last been thrown upon the gloom of uncertainty which hangs over the fate of Sir John Franklin and his companions.” For on 23 August 1850, Captain Erasmus Ommanney and some of the officers of the search ship HMS
Assistance
found signs of Franklin's expedition at Cape Riley, on the southwest shore of Devon Island. After two years of disappointments, the Royal Navy at last had leads in the search for the missing men. Ommanney recalled:
I had the satisfaction of meeting with the ï¬rst traces of Sir John Franklin's expedition, consisting of fragments of naval stores, ragged portions of clothing, preserved meat tins, &c⦠and the spot bore the appearance of an encampment.
But those relics told only of a brief stop, perhaps for magnetic observation early in the expedition, and gave away nothing in regard to Franklin's whereabouts.
Ommanney pushed on, combing the shoreline for clues, until a large cairn was spotted high up on the headland of a nearby islet named Beechey Island. Lieutenant Sherard Osborn, commander of the steamship HMS
Pioneer,
which was also part of the Royal Navy search expedition under the overall command of Captain Horatio Thomas Austin, painted a dramatic picture of the men rushing towards the “dark and frowning cliffs⦠too steep for even [a] snow-ï¬ake to hang upon”:
A boatful of officers and men proceeded on shore. On landing, some relics of European visitors were found; and we can picture the anxiety with which the steep slope was scaled and the cairn torn down, every stone turned over, the ground underneath dug up a little, and yet, alas! no document or record found.
Osborn was undeterred; he still held great hope that more discoveries would follow: “[The cairn] seemed to say to the beating heart, âfollow them that erected me!' ”
A ï¬otilla of search ships converged on the area, among them the
Lady Franklin
under Captain William Penny. The gritty Scot swore to scour the area “like a blood-hound” until answers to the mystery were found. More traces of Franklin's crew were discovered on Devon Island, this time at nearby Cape Spencer. Penny found the remains of a hut built of stones, artefacts that included scraps of newspaper dated September 1844, a fragment of paper with the words “until called,” more food tins, torn glovesâand that was all. Then, on 27 August, a breathless sailor brought Penny startling news: “Graves, Captain Penny! Graves! Franklin's winter quarters!”
Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, ship's surgeon under American searcher Edwin De Haven, was present when the news arrived and described what happened next:
Captain De Haven, Captain Penny, Commander Phillips, and myself⦠hurried on over the ice, and, scrambling along the loose and rugged slope that extends from Beechey to the shore, came, after a weary walk, to the crest of the isthmus. Here, amid the sterile uniformity of snow and slate, were the head-boards of three graves, made after the old orthodox fashion of gravestones at home.
The tombs lay side by side in a line with the headboards facing Cape Riley. Two of the grave mounds were “neatly paved round” with limestone slabs. Their inscriptions, chiselled into the headboards, read:
Sacred
to the
memory of
William Braine, R.M.,
h.m.s. Erebus
Died April 3d, 1846
aged 32 years
âChoose ye this day whom ye will serve'
Joshua, ch. xxiv., 15.
The second was:
Sacred to the memory of
John Hartnell, A.B. of H.M.S.
Erebus,
died January 4th, 1846
aged 25 years.
âThus saith the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways.'
Haggai, i., 7.
The third grave, representing the earliest death, was not as carefully ï¬nished as the others, but Kane felt “its general appearance was more grave-like.” The headboard was inscribed:
Sacred
to
the memory of
John Torrington
who departed
this
life January 1st,
A.D. 1846,
on board of
H.M. ship Terror
aged 20 years
Osborn noted that some seashells from the bay had been collected and “prettily arranged⦠by some old messmates.” The orderly arrangement of what Kane called the “isthmus of the graves” reminded Osborn of a parish cemetery.
⦠it breathes of the quiet churchyard in some of England's many nooks⦠and the ornaments that nature decks herself with, even in the desolation of the frozen zone, were carefully culled to mark the seaman's last home.
The searchers hoped the discovery of the expedition's winter campsite and the graves of its ï¬rst three victims would somehow point to Franklin's whereabouts. The dates inscribed on the headboards showed that the doomed expedition had passed the winter of 1845â46 nestled in a small bay on the east side of Beechey Island, and there was more.
The three Franklin expedition graves on Beechey Island.
Drawn from a sketch by Dr. E.K. Kane
Searchers sweeping the windblown island during the shortening days of late summer found other signs, including the remains of tenting sites, an armourer's forge, a large storehouse, a carpenter's house and a few other, smaller structures. Deep ruts left by sledges were found on the gravel terraces of Devon Island, leaving Osborn to observe “how little Franklin's people were impressed with the importance of rendering their travelling equipment light and portable.” A polar bear killed by one of the searchers revealed an earlier bullet wound. The bullet was retrieved from the beast's ï¬esh and identiï¬ed as having been ï¬red from a weapon like those supplied to Franklin. Kane found “inexpressibly touching” the discovery of a little garden scraped into the gravel, with anemones still growing. Wrote Kane: “A garden implies a purpose either to remain or to return: he who makes it is looking to the future.” This discovery on Beechey Island, especially moving to a nation of gardeners, inspired a verse by Charles Dickens:
O then
Pause on the footprints of heroic men,
Making a garden of the desert wide
Where PARRY conquer'd and FRANKLIN died.
Another large cairn was discovered, this one made of more than 600 discarded food tins ï¬lled with gravel, but nowhere was there a message telling where Franklin and his crews had sailed. Why these empty cans had been stacked 7 feet (2.1 metres) high in such a manner was unclear. It was usual for Arctic expeditions to leave messages under cairns describing their current status and plansâbut here there was no note. Such was the scale of popular interest in each development during the Franklin searches that even this peculiar discoveryâa cairn of tins built without apparent purposeâfound its way into another literary work,
Walden,
where Henry David Thoreau asked, “Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to ï¬nd him?”
Wrote Thoreau: “Explore your own higher latitudes with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign.” But a sign of what in this case? What did it mean? With each discovery the Franklin mystery only seemed to deepen. As well, the trail that began at Cape Riley on Devon Island seemed to end on Beechey Island, just 1.25 miles (2 km) away. Osborn expressed the mood of the searchers this way: “Everyone felt that there was something so inexplicable in the non-discovery of any record, some written evidence of the intentions of Franklin and Crozier on leaving this spot⦠”
Although death was expected on expeditions of discovery through accident or illness, three deaths during the ï¬rst winter was still considered unusual. The suggestion that the graves at Beechey Island could represent problems with the expedition's food supply was discussed by the searchers and publicly stated by Ommanney in evidence given to the British government in 1852: “We know that 3 of their men (young men) died the ï¬rst year, from which we may infer they were not enjoying perfect health. It is supposed that their preserved meats were of an inferior quality.”
Ommanney was referring to the possibility that some of the canned food was spoiled, or in his words, represented a “putrid abomination.” Sherard Osborn also noted angrily that “their preserved meats were those of the miscreant, Goldner.” Tinned-food supplier Stephan Goldner had had quality control problems with provisions supplied to later expeditions. In January 1852, it was reported that an examination at Portsmouth of a consignment of Goldner's preserved meat (delivered fourteen months earlier), revealed that most of the meat had putreï¬ed. According to the
Times:
“If Franklin and his party had been supplied with such food as that condemned, and relied on it as their mainstay in time of need, the very means of saving their lives may have bred a pestilence or famine among them, and have been their destruction.” Even before the Franklin expedition had sailed, Commander Fitzjames expressed concern that the Admiralty would buy meat from an unknown supplier simply because he had quoted a lower price. Indignation over the spoiled meat led to an inquiry, however it concluded that Goldner's meat had been satisfactory on previous contracts. Wrote one Admiralty official: “From that period (1845) Goldner's preserved meats have been in constant use in the navy, and it is only, I believe, latterly that they have been found to consist of such disgusting material.”
Dr. Peter Sutherland, surgeon on Penny's expedition, believing some important clues to the health and the fate of Franklin's expedition might be harboured within the graves, proposed their exhumation:
It was suggested to have the graves opened, but as there seemed to be a feeling against this really very proper and most important step, the suggestion was not reiterated. It would have been very interesting to have examined into the cause of death; it is very probable there would be no difficulty in doing this, for the bodies would be found frozen as hard as possible, and in a high state of preservation in their icy casings.
Sutherland went on to speculate on possible causes of death for the three sailors:
The cause of Braine's death, which happened in April, might have been scurvy supervening upon some other disease. The ï¬rst two deaths had probably been caused by accidents, such as frost bite or exposure to intense cold in a state of stupor, or to diseases of the chest, where there might have been some latent mischief before leaving England, which the changeable weather in September and October rekindled, and the intense cold of November and December stimulated to a fatal termination.
In August 1852, a squadron of ships returned to Beechey Island, and the searchers resumed their research there, but these further investigations were hampered by the frenzied activity that had taken place at the time of the discovery of Franklin's ï¬rst winter quarters two years earlier. Sherard Osborn, in a communication to the Royal Geographical Society, wrote of the destruction of the site:
after a couple of hundred seamen had, in 1850, turned everything topsy-turvy, and carried and dropped things far from where they were originally deposited, those who ï¬rst visited the place in 1852 can have but little idea of what the place was like when we found it as it had been left by the âErebus' and âTerror'.
Together, the rescue vessels had traced the ï¬rst season of Franklin's voyage from its disappearance into silence down Lancaster Sound in August 1845 until as late as September 1846. At most, searchers had found at Beechey Island only a partial record of the expedition's ï¬rst year beyond the reach of civilization. No one knew where to look next.