The Search for Sir John Franklin.
(FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF AN OFFICER OF THE "FOX")
The last of the Government expeditions in search of Franklin returned in
1854, without bringing further intelligence than had been previously
ascertained, namely, that the missing ships had spent their first winter,
1845-46, at Beechey Island, and had departed thence without leaving a
single record to say whence they came or in what direction they intended
to explore in the following season.
The war with Russia engrossed the public attention, and the Admiralty determined that nothing more could be done for our missing sailors.
Franklin and his companions were pronounced to be dead, and the search to be closed. But many Arctic officers and private persons thought otherwise. By the extraordinary exertions of the previous expeditions the country to be searched had been reduced to a limited area in which the ships must be, if above water, and through which the crews must have travelled when they left their ships. Every other retreat from the Arctic Seas had been explored, and the Great Fish River alone remained unexamined.
Later in the same year (1854), Dr. Rae, the celebrated traveller for the Hudson Bay Company, who was endeavouring to ascertain the northern extreme of America, brought home intelligence, which he had obtained from the Esquimaux of Boothia, of forty white people having been seen upon the west coast of King William Land in the spring of 1850: that they were travelling southward, and that later in the same year it was supposed they had all died in the estuary of a large river, which Dr. Rae conjectured to be the Great Fish River.
In 1855, the Hudson Bay Company, at the request of the Admiralty, sent an expedition, conducted by Mr. Anderson, to explore the Fish River. Mr. Anderson returned, having ascertained that a portion of the missing crews had been on Montreal Island, in the mouth of that river; but Mr. Anderson, without an interpreter, or the means of going beyond the island, could only gather the most meagre information by signs from the Esquimaux, and by a few relics found upon the land. Where the ships had been left, or what had become of the people, seemed as great a mystery as ever.
It was then that Lady Franklin (who had already sent out three expeditions) urged again that the search should be continued, and that our countrymen should not thus be left to their fate; but although her appeal was backed by the most competent officers, the season of 1856 passed away without endeavours to clear up the mystery; and determining that another year should not be lost in vain entreaties, Lady Franklin once more undertook the responsibilities and the expenses of a final effort to rescue our long-lost sailors from their perhaps living death among the
