Resolute (17 page)

In the end, the Forsyth expedition would be made most memorable by the man Lady Franklin selected to be Forsyth's second-in-command. Of all those who would be involved in the Franklin saga, W. Parker Snow was among the most colorful and certainly had the most checkered background. After spending four years at sea as a youth, the thirty-three-year-old eccentric, egotistical Snow had gone to live in the Australian outback, where he had openly associated with known criminals and had undoubtedly engaged in illegal activities himself. Rejoining the navy, he had been in and out of scrapes, but had saved his career through various heroics, including risking his own life to save a seaman who had been attacked by a shark. What may have persuaded Jane Franklin that he was the right man to assist Forsyth was her knowledge of a suggestion that Snow had made to the Admiralty. He had seriously proposed that convicts, because of their daring and their ability to work their way out of tight situations, should be used in the search for the lost expedition. Not surprisingly, the Admiralty had been offended by the suggestion, but not Lady Jane. In her opinion, anything that might possibly help find her husband should be tried.

With Forsyth's departure, there were now eleven British vessels engaged in the Franklin search. And they were not alone. Almost at the same time that Austin's fleet had left for the Arctic, two American vessels had joined in the hunt. Jane Franklin's pleadings with President Zachary Taylor had borne fruit.

In December 1849, Lady Franklin had followed up her first letter to the president by once again pleading with him for an American rescue effort. By this time, Matthew Maury, one of the United States' foremost scientists and a man who would come to be regarded by many as the father of modern oceanography, had published his paper “proving” the existence of a Northwest Passage. Motivated partially by a desire to have the passage be an American discovery and sincerely moved by Jane Franklin's latest entreaties, Taylor asked Congress to fund a rescue mission. When legislators balked at releasing the funds, New Bedford native Henry Grinnell, whose New York shipping firm had earned him a fortune, stepped in and offered to provide and provision two ships for the mission if Congress would place them under the control of the United States Navy.

The two American vessels, the 144-ton
Advance
and the 81-ton
Rescue
sailed under the command of Lieutenant Edwin De Haven. But the Grinnell Expedition would be made noteworthy not by De Haven, but by its chief medical officer, twenty-nine-year-old Elisha Kent Kane. In all the annals of Arctic exploration, there would never be a more unlikely candidate for fame and adulation than Kane.

While attending the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, the slender and frail Kane had contracted rheumatic fever, a condition so serious that he literally never knew if each day would be his last. After briefly practicing medicine in Philadelphia, he had joined the United States Navy as a physician in the hope of traveling around the world. He got his wish; his first tour of duty took him to such diverse locales as Brazil, India, and the Philippines, where, on a mission to obtain water samples, he descended into the crater of the active volcano Taal, only to be overcome by fumes. Kane narrowly escaped with his life.

After two additional tours of naval duty, and still craving more adventure, he received the dangerous assignment of carrying a message to General Winfield Scott, commander of the American forces in Mexico City during the Mexican-American War. On the way, Kane—and his mercenary escorts—had a run-in with a Mexican troop led by a General Gaona. Although Kane and his men prevailed, there were injuries on both sides; Kane had received a nasty lance wound and Gaona's son had been seriously injured. Despite his own injury, Kane saved the young man by stitching up his wounds using thread and the tine of a fork. As if the lance wound was not enough, Kane also contracted “congestive typhus” in Mexico, tick fever in Macao, and coast fever in Africa, all before his career was over. These were only a few of the many incredible happenings that Kane would experience in his all-too-brief life. His friends were convinced that the risks that he continually sought were the result of his knowing that his days were numbered. They were probably right.

Whatever the reason, he would become the most celebrated American explorer of his day. Organizations around the world would beg him to present lectures. His books would be enormous best sellers. Future giants of Arctic achievement Roald Amundsen and Robert Peary would credit Kane's descriptions of his northern adventures with having directly inspired their becoming explorers.

But that was all ahead of him. Now Kane stood aboard the
Advance
as she and the
Rescue
reached Smith Sound, one of the main targets of their search. It was only the middle of August but to Kane's amazement the sound was completely frozen over. A few days later another ship was sighted, heading for the sound. It was the
Lady Franklin
, commanded by William Penny, who had attempted to search Jones Sound only to find that it, too, was impassable. Two days later yet another sail hove to view. This time it was John Ross's schooner
Felix
towing the yacht
Mary
behind it. Despite all the orders the commanders had been given, despite the widespread search they had intended to make, the Arctic had once again dictated the movements of those who would challenge its waters.

Kane, for one, was delighted to encounter John Ross. He had read all of the accounts of the veteran's Arctic adventures. He was aware of the fact that all five of the vessels were anchored almost at the very spot where Ross had been saved by the
Isabella of Hull
more than seventeen years ago. And he was in awe of the man who, at the age of seventy-three, was braving the Arctic once more to keep a promise to a friend. “Here he is again,” Kane would write in his journal, “in a flimsy cockle-shell, after contributing his purse and his influence, embarked himself in the crusade of search for a lost comrade.”

All of the commanders knew they had to move on. Winter was obviously approaching and they needed to fan out as much as possible. The American, De Haven, decided to explore the harbor at Port Leopold, where James Clark Ross had been icebound during his search for Sir John. No sooner had De Haven found it icebound again than he was unexpectedly joined by another ship. It was the
Prince Albert
, whose two officers, Forsyth and Snow, made their way aboard the
Advance
for a visit.

For Kane and Snow, it was a most pleasant encounter. Immediately, they discovered that they were kindred spirits, both animated, both passionate, both delighting in each other's stories. “Dr. Kane,” Snow later wrote in his account of the voyage, “turned his attention to me, and a congeniality of sentiment and feeling soon brought both of us deep into pleasant conversation. I found that he had been in many parts of the world, by sea and land, that I myself had visited… Old scenes and delightful recollections were speedily revived. Our talk ran wild; and there in that cold, inhospitable, dreary region of everlasting ice and snow, did we again, in fancy, gallop over miles and miles of lands far distant and more joyous … with all these was he personally familiar, in all he had been a traveler, and in all I could join him.”

The carefree discussions were soon tempered, however, by the news that Forsyth delivered. Having attempted to search Prince Regent Inlet, he and Snow had progressed as far as Fury Beach, where the ice prevented them from going any further. Worse yet, at least in Snow's eyes, it seemed that Forsyth had had enough of his first encounter with the Arctic. He told a disappointed Snow that in order to escape the coming winter they were heading for home.

De Haven and Kane, on the other hand, were determined to search on. Making their way across channels that were still open in Barrow Strait, they reached a limestone projection of land that had been named Cape Riley. There, from on deck, the men of the
Advance
and the
Rescue
spotted two cairns rising above the shoreline. Immediately a small party from each vessel went on shore where they found a note telling them that two of Horatio Austin's ships had been there two days before and had made the first discovery in the agonizing Franklin search. Written by Captain Erasmus Ommanney of the
Assistance
, the note stated: “I had the satisfaction of meeting with the first traces of Sir John Franklin's expedition, consisting of fragments of stores and tagged clothing and the remains of an encampment.”

As the Americans searched the area, they saw that the encampment that Ommanney had discovered included a roughly constructed fireplace marking where the tents had been erected, the rusted top of a tin container, and scraps of canvas. Kane, having read all the accounts of the previous Arctic voyages, knew that no other nonnatives had been in that area since Edward Parry, and that Parry had not camped at Camp Riley. Who else could have been there but some of the members of the lost expedition?

At this point, Penny and Ross, having also been rebuffed in their attempts to find any unclogged passageways, once again joined up with De Haven's vessels. Across from Cape Riley lay Beechey Island, and it was there that the three commanders decided to meet on shore to decide what to do next. They had hardly begun their discussion when suddenly one of Penny's sailors came rushing down one of the island's ice-covered hills.

“Graves, Captain Penny,” the man shouted, “graves!” Rushing up the hill, the commanders and officers, and the men they had taken ashore with them, encountered an agonizing sight. Before them lay three mounds of earth, each marked by a weather-beaten headboard containing a carved inscription:

Noting that the headboards marking the graves had been placed facing westward in the tradition of honoring all those who died in the cause of British exploration, the commanders and their men then searched the wide area surrounding the burial site. There they found the remains of a smith's forge, an enormous pile of some six hundred empty cans that had obviously held preserved meat, charred areas where fires had been built, blankets, fragments of rope, scraps of paper, and animal bones. Two days later, Austin's ships arrived and joined in the search of the island. One of his officers found a pair of gloves that had obviously been laid out to dry, weighted down with small stones to keep them from blowing away.

It had been a vital discovery, the first indisputable evidence of the lost expedition. But there was deep frustration as well. Early in the search, a party scouring the island's coastline had come across what promised to be the most rewarding find of all: It was a cairn, and surely it contained a message from Franklin stating where he was headed from Beechey Island. But instead of pointing the searchers in the right direction, the discovery of the cairn only deepened the Franklin mystery. For it was completely empty.

“The cairn,” Kane wrote, “was mounted on a high and conspicuous portion of the shore, and evidently intended to attract observation; but though several parties examined it, digging around it in every direction, not a single particle of information could be gleaned. This is remarkable; and for so able and practiced an Arctic commander as Sir John Franklin, an incomprehensible omission.”

As the search of the island was about to end, John Ross abruptly returned to his ship and then came back carrying a small box. Inside were two carrier pigeons, each bearing a note Ross had written informing those back home of what had been discovered. As the birds circled the island before beginning their more than two-thousand-mile journey, each of those who watched them disappear into the Arctic sky was lost in his own thoughts. Where had Franklin gone? Why had he left no note? Would the ever-deepening mystery ever be solved?

THE THREE GRAVES
found at Beechey Island in 1850 startled their discoverers. Later, the graves would reveal shocking information about the fate of the Franklin expedition. This haunting engraving of the scene is by the artist James Hamilton, based on a sketch by Elisha Kent Kane.

For whatever reason, Franklin had left no message in the cairn. But there was one clue as to where he might have headed after leaving Beechey Island. Along with the graves and the remains of the encampment, the rescuers had found sledge tracks heading north up the east coast of Wellington Channel. Lieutenant Griffin of the
Rescue
had followed the tracks for some forty miles until deteriorating conditions forced him to turn back to his ship.

WINTER
, as Griffin had discovered, was now fast setting in, and what had become a flotilla of Austin's, Penny's, Ross's, and De Haven's ships had to move out and seek safe winter shelter before they became trapped in an unprotected spot. Penny and Ross, after difficult maneuvering, were able to find a haven in a small cove on the coast of Cornwallis Island. Austin managed to find a suitable spot for his four vessels some fifteen miles away, close to Griffith Island. Aware of the close proximity of the various rescue vessels, Austin named the area Union Harbor.