Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 1/The last voyage of Sir John Franklin - Part 1
338
ONCE A WEEK.
[October 22, 1859.
THE LAST VOYAGE OP SIB JOHN FRANKLIN.
BY CAPTAIN SHERARD OSBORN, R.N.
Stopped by the Ice. (See page Ml.)
“There is yet one thing left undone, whereby
a great mind may become notable,” wrote worthy
Master Purchas — that one deed was the discovery of
a north-west passage to the Indies. Many long years
afterwards, the words of the good Dean of St. Paul’s
sounded like a trumpet-call to his countrymen,
and many an aspiring spirit essayed to do that
deed whereby bright honour and immortality were
to be won. The
veil which hid
from human ken
the mysteries of
the Arctic zone
was not to be
rent by one bold
stroke; it was to
be the test of
British persever-
ance, patience,
and hardihood.
The frozen north would only re- veal its wonders slowly and un- willingly to the brave men who devoted them- selves to the task.
The dread realms of frost and silence were only to be penetrated by the labours of two generations of seamen and travellers. The consummation of the discovery of the north-west passage was to be obtained but by the self-sacrifice of a hundred heroes.
From 1815 to 1833 England sent forth her sons to the north in repeated expeditions by sea and
land. The earnestness of many eminent public
men, members of the Royal Society — such as Sir
John Barrow and Sir Francis Beaufort — kept
general interest directed to those regions, in
which Frobisher, Baffin, Davis, and Fox had so
nobly ventured. There were no falterers; every
call for volunteers was nobly responded to by
officers of the Royal Navy; and John Franklin,
Richardson, John and James Ross, Parry, Back, and King, with much devotion, toil, and suffering, forced open the portals beyond which the Eliza- bethan school of discoverers had not been able to penetrate, and added much to our knowledge of the geography and physical con- dition of the Arc- tic zone between Greenland and Behring’s Straits. Fifteen years of labour hadfailed, however, to solve the question as to the actual existence of a water communication between the Pacific and Atlantic. Repeated disappointment had damped public zeal. Just at this juncture, between 1838 and 1843, the success of Captain Sir James Ross in an expedition to the Antarctic Pole with H.M.S. Erebus and Terror, as well October 22, 1869.]
THE LAST VOYAGE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.
339
as the completion of the northern coast-line of
America by the Hudson Bay Company’s servants,
Dease and Simpson, caused the attention of the
nation to again revert to its old channel — the
North-west Passage. Anno Domino 18“found
England with a surplus revenue, a vast body of naval
officers begging for employment, and eager for any
opportunity of winning honours and distinction;
Franklin's flist Winter Quarters, Beechejr Island. (See paste 342.)
and the Erebus and Terror, safe and sound from
the perils of Antarctic seas, riding at anchor off
Woolwich. All was most propitious for carrying
out the darling object of the then venerable
Secretary of the Admiralty. A mind like that
of Sir John Barrow’s, richly stored with the
records of his country’s glories in the exploration
of every quarter of the globe, was keenly alive to
the importance of keeping her still in the van-
guard of geographical discovery; and it must be
remembered that he had lived in a century when
men, in spite of a long and terrible war, were
almost yearly excited by the world-wide fame of
the discoveries of Anson, Cooke, Flinders, and
Mungo Park. Was it not natural, therefore,
that he, and such as he, should desire to add to
those triumphs the achievement of the greatest
problem man ever undertook to solve.
The chart of the Arctic regions was in the unsa- tisfactory condition shown in the chart on the opposite page.
How simple an undertaking it appeared to con- nect the water in which Parry had sailed to Melville Island, in 1819, with Dease and Simpson’s eastern- most position off the coast of America in 1838.
The summer of 18“saw many an eager face poring over that Arctic chart. Whisperings were heard that Sir John Barrow, Beaufort, Parry, Sabine, Ross, and Franklin himself, had expressed strong opinions in favour of another effort. The Royal Society, through its president, the Marquis of Northampton, was known to have urged the resumption of Arctic exploration upon the Government and Admiralty. Many an enthusiastic officer strove hard by zeal and interest
to insure being one of those selected for the
glorious work. Then it was that Fitzjames, and
such men as Graham Gore, Fairholme, Hodgson,
and Des Vceux, succeeded in enrolling themselves
on the list of the chosen few who were next year
to sail for the far north-west. We see them now,
as they told us so, and with glistening eye pro-
phesied their own success. Gallant hearts! they
now sleep amidst the scenes of their sore trial, but
triumphant discovery.
It was at one time intended that Fitzjames (whose genius and energy marked him as no ordi- nary officer) should command the expedition; but just at this time Sir John Franklin was heard to say that he considered the post to be his birth- right as the senior Arctic explorer in England. He had recently returned from his post as Gover- nor of Van Diemen’s Land: his sensitive and generous spirit chafed under the unmerited treat- ment he had experienced from the then Secretary of State for the Colonies, and sick of civil employ- ment, he naturally turned again to his profession, as a better field for the ability and devotion he had wasted on a thankless office. Sanguine of success, forgetful of past suffering, he claimed his right to command the latest, as he had led the earliest, of modern Arctic expeditions, Directly it was known that he would go if asked,
I the Admiralty were of course only too glad to ! avail themselves of the experience of Franklin;
but Lord Haddington, then First Lord, with that
kindness which ever distinguished him, suggested that Franklin might well rest at home on his laurels. “I might find a good excuse for not I letting you go, Sir John,” said the peer, “in the 340 ONCE A WKkk. [Octobkr 22, iS5t.
tell-tale record which informs me that you are
sixty years of age.” “No, no, my lord,” was
Franklin’s rejoinder, “I am only fifty-nine!'1
Before such earnestness all scruples yielded — the
offer was officially made and accepted — to Sir John
Franklin was confided the Arctic Expedition, con-
sisting of H.M.S. Erebus, in which he hoisted his
pendant, and H.M.S. Terror, commanded by
Captain Crozier, who had recently accompanied
Sir James Boss in his wonderful voyage to the
Antarctic seas.
The 18th of May, 1845, found the Erebus and Terror at Greenhithe in the Thames. On board of each ship there were sixty-nine officers and men, every possible comer was carefully filled with stores and provisions— -enough, they said, for three years; and, for the first time in Arctic annals, these discovery vessels had auxiliary screws and engines of twenty-horse power each. Hope rode high in every breast, and the cry of Hurrah! for Behring’s Straits! succeeded their last hearty cheer as the gallant ships weighed on the morrow for Baffin’s Bay.
A month they sailed across the Atlantic before they reached their first halting-place, Disco, or the Whale Fish Islands, on the west coast of Greenland, in latitude 69° north. Thither a store- ship had accompanied them from England, in order that the expedition might be completed with every necessary up to the latest moment before entering the polar ice. That voyage of thirty days had served to make the officers and men thoroughly acquainted with their chief, and with each other. Of him the warm-hearted Fitzjames writes: “That Sir John was delightful; that all had be- come very fond of him, and that he appeared remarkable for energetic decision in an emergency. The officers were remarkable for good feeling, good humour, and great talents; whilst the men were fine hearty sailors, mostly from the northern sea-ports.” Love already it is apparent, as much as duty, bound together the gallant souls on board the Erebus and Terror.
Away from Disco they sped with all haste; the Bay of Baffin is fairly entered, and their long and arduous labours commence with an Arctic tempest so severe that their brother seamen of the store-ship, hastening homeward, think with anxiety of the deep-laden Erebus and Terror. He who is strong to save guides the gallant barks, how- ever, past the dangers of an iron-bound coast, and amongst the huge, ghost-like ice-bergs which glimmer through the storm. We see them, in better weather, urging under all sail their strong but clumsy ships, before a favourable gale, along that coast of Greenland, every headland of which has its record of human trial and noble endurance. There the lofty headland of Sanderson-his-Hope (of a North-west Passage) rears its crest of black granite, rich with crimson lichen, and crowned with snow. Norseman and Dane and Englishman have alike sailed under its stupendous cliffs, or sought shelter in quaint Uppemavik which nestles at its feet. The Erebus and Terror may not delay. Greenland has no charms for men whose leader already talks sanguinely of the yet far distant Mackenzie and Copper-mine rivers.
The floes and broad masses of the Middle-ice
now rise upon their sight; the northern horizon
gleams with reflected light from the frozen surface
of the sea; the south wind fails; the ships sail
from the black mists and fog-laden atmosphere
common to open water in the Arctic regions, into
the bright skies, smooth lanes, and mirror-like
pools generally found amongst the pack during the
summer season. The ice is streaming southward;
the eager novices in either ship look forward with
delight to the first onset with the foe they have
come to do battle with. Wiser heads know that
mother- wit will do more than dashing gallantry in
the conflict with packed ice; the sails are taken
in so as to reduce the speed, and the experienced
ice-master from the crow’s nest at the masthead
selects the weakest looking point through which
to force the ships into a lane of water, that winds
snake-like along the landward edge of the pack.
“So -ho! steady — steer her with a small helm, my lad!” baw ls out, in strong North-country dialect, the honest old ice-pilot, who has grown grey killing whales in Greenland. “Stand by to brail up the after-sails, if you please, sir; and to pack all the canvass upon her directly we break through the pack-edge,” he urges to the officer of the watch. The churning and growling of the ice now strikes upon the ear, and at the same moment the Erebus and Terror take it man- fully. There is a shock: for a second the pieces of ice hold their ground, but they yield to the weight of the ships: one mass tilts up, and slips over another, another sinks under the bows, and is heard scraping along the bottom of the ship: the road is opening. “Hard up with the helm,” shouts the ice-master, and at the same time the sail is set forward to urge the ship faster through the pack; the speed accelerates, and in a few minutes they are fairly in the ice. We need not follow them in their daily labour. Ice is now on every hand: open water scarce. The crews often drag the ships for hours with ropes along the edge of the land floe that is still fast to the face of the glacier which curves round Melville Bay. Now we see them perfectly beset, the vessel s secured to the lowest icebergs that can be found: they studiously avoid those lofty masses which, with spires, and domes, and steeples, resemble huge cathedrals of crystal, — for they know that such icebergs are prone to turn over, or break up suddenly, and would infallibly crush any ship that might be near them.
For a while the discovery ships meet the whaling-vessels of Aberdeen and Hull, striving; like themselves, to get through the loose ice into the waters of Pond’s Bay. On July 26th they part company from the last of them, and pursue their solitary course alone. Again they pass from the northern edge of the pack into open water, — if such may be called an open sea, where ice- bergs are strewn plentifully. The course is now shaped for Lancaster Sound. August has set in; the sun, which has hitherto wheeled round the heavens without setting, again commences to dip below the horizon; its absence and already de- clining power is marked by the nightly formation of thin, glass-like ice, known as bay-ice. The south wind freshens; the Erebus and Terror press on, staggering in a heavy sea, all the more Ootomr 22, 18M.] THE LAST VOYAGE OF SIB JOHN FRANKLIN. 341
remarkable that a hundred mil*** of ice have just
been passed through behind them. The great
entrance of Lancaster his Sound breaks out of
the clouds to the westward. Capes Warrender
and Hay frown grimly over the angry sea, backed
by lofty mountain ranges, whose dark precipices,
streaked with snow, look as if they were formed
of steel and inlaid with silver.
“On, on! to the westward I” is the cry. Why need to stop and erect cairns, and deposit records of their progress. Do they not intend to pass into the Pacific next year? Have not they ordered their letters to be directed to Petro- paulskoi and the Sandwich Isles? Why lose one precious hour at the threshold of their labour?
The ice is again seen: it extends along the southern side of Barrow’s Straits, and is streaming out into Baffin’s Bay; the ships haul in for the coast of North Devon. The scene changes con- siderably from what ur explorers have seen in Greenland. No glaciers stretch from the interior, and launch their long, projecting tongues into the sea: no icy cliffs reflect there the colours of the emerald and turquoise: Arctic vegetation, wretched as it is, does not gladden the eyesight in even the most favoured spots. They have passed from a region of primary rock into one of magnesian lime- stone. Greenland is paradise, in an Arctic point of view, to the land they have now reached: it is desolation’s abiding place; yet not deficient in the picturesque. The tall and escarped cliffs are cut by action of frost and thaws into buttresses and abutments, which, combined with broken castellated summits, give a Gothic-like aspect to the shores of North Devon. Valleys and plains are passed, all of one uniform dull colour; they oonsist simply of barren limestone. The barren- ness of the land is, however, somewhat compen- sated for by the plentiful abundance of animal life upon the water. The seal, the whale, and the walrus abound; whilst wild fowl in large flocks feed in the calm spots under beetling cliffs or in shallow lakes, which can be looked down upon from the mast-head.
It is not far to the entrance of Wellington Channel: they reach Beechey Island, and mark the value of the bay within it as a wintering-place, and its central position with respect to the chan- nels leading towards Cape Walker, Melville Island or Regent’s Inlet. Ice again impedes their pro- gress. Their first instructions from the Admiralty were to try to the south-west from Cape Walker. They cannot now advance in that direction, for it is a hopeless block of heavy floes; but Wellington Channel is open, and smiles and sparkles in blue and sunlit waves, as if luring them to the north-west. Why not try a north- about passage round the Parry Islands? urges Fitjames. Franklin agrees with him that any- thing is better than delay, and at any rate they determine to explore it, and ascertain whither it led. Away they press northward, until what we know as Grinnel Land rises a-head, and they have to turn more to the west. From Wellington Channel they pass between Baillie Hamilton Island and the striking cliffs of Cape Majendie.
Eager eyes are straining from the mast-head; is it a mere bay, or is it a strait they are sailing
through? “Water, water! — large water!” replies
the ice-master from his eyry to the anxious
queries of the veteran leader. Away, away they
press — every studding sail alow and aloft — the old
ships never went so fast before— no, not on that
gieat day in their history when they were the
first to sail along the Victoria continent of the
Southern Pole. From 744° to 77° north latitude
they pushed up this noble strait, but not, as they
hoped, to reach an open or navigable sea, but to
find as we found in 1852— a wide expanse of
water perfectly choked up with ice, extending
from the head of Wellington Channel far to the
westward for hundreds of miles. Baffled but not
beaten, the prows of the stout ships are again
turned southward, and aided by a greater share of
success than has fallen to the lot of those who
have come after Sir John Franklin in those same
quarters, the gallant Erebus and Terror sailed down
a channel which is thus proved to exist between
Cornwallis and Bathurst Islands and entered Bar-
row’s Straits at a point nearly due north of Cape
Walker, in which direction Franklin was now
constrained to alone look for a route whereby to
reach the sea off the coast of North America.
It was well known that this southern course was that of his predilection; founded on his judg- ment and experience. There are many in England who can recollect him pointing on his chart to the western entrance of Simpson’s Strait and the adjoining coast of North America, and saying i —
“If I can but get down there my work is done; thence it’s all plain sailing to the westward.”
Franklin might well say this, since he and Richardson had explored nearly all that coast of Arctic America towards Behring’s Straits.
The fortnight, however, which had been spent in Wellington Channel, was the short period of navigation common to the ice-choked seas within Lancaster Sound. September and an Arctic autumn broke upon them. Who that has ever navigated those seas can ever forget the excite- ment and danger of the autumn struggle with ice, snow-storm, and lee-shores. We see those lonely barks in the heart of a region which appears only to have been intended to test man’s hardihood, and to show him that, after all, he is but a poor weak creature. Channels surround them in all directions, down and up which, let the wind blow from any quarter, an avalanche of broken floes and ugly packed ice rolls down, and threatens to engulph all that impedes its way, checked alone by the isles which strew Barrow’s Straits and serve, like the teeth of a harrow, to rip up and destroy the vast floes which are launched against them. Around each island, as well as along the adjacent coasts, and especially at projecting capes and headlands, mountains of floe-pieces are piled mass on top of mass, as if the frozen sea would invade the frozen land. The Erebus and Terror, under the skilful hands of their noble ships’ companies, flit to and fro; seek shelter first under one point, and then another. Franklin, Fitzjames, and Crozier, are battling to get into Peel Channel, between Capes Walker and Bunny. The nights are getting rapidly longer, the temperature often falls fifteen degrees below freezing point, the 342
ONCE A WEEK.
[October 22, 1859.
pools of water on the great ice-fields as well as
on the land are again firmly frozen over. The
wild fowl and their offspring are seen hastening
south; the plumage of the ptarmigan and willow
grouse are already plentifully sprinkled with
white; the mountain-tops and ravines are
already loaded with snow, which will not melt
away for twelve long months. Enough has been
done to satisfy the leaders that a further advance
this season will be impossible. Winter quarters
(To be «
must be sought; there is none nearer that they
know of than Beechey Island; the “Erebus’*
and “Terror” bear away for it. Fortune favours
them, they are not caught in the fatal grip of
the winter-pack, and drifted out into the Atlantic,
as many subsequent voyagers have been. Their
haven is reached, and with hearty cheers the
ships are warped into Erebus and Terror Bay,
and arrangements rapidly made to meet the
coming winter of 1845-46.
tinned.)
COLDSTREAM.
large party is
assembled to cele-
brate the feast of
' St. Partridge at
Ravelstoke Hall, an
old country house
about two miles
distant from the
north- west coast of
Devon. The vari-
ous branches of
English society are
very fairly repre-
sented by its com-
ponent parts.
There are two
peers, three mem-
bers of the lower
house, some
Guardsmen, some
undergraduates, a
clergyman, and a
lieutenant in the
navy. But our hero
is not a representa-
tive man: yet he
belongs to a class
which, called into
existence by the ac-
cumulated wealth
of the nineteenth
century, is ever on
the increase.
Frederick Ty- rawley resembles Sir Charles Cold- stream, inasmuch as he has been everywhere and done everything; but he is by no means used up, and can still take an
interest in whatever his hand finds to do. Nor is his everything everybody else’s everything. It is not bounded by Jerusalem and the pyramids.
Mr. Tyrawley has fought in more than one state of South America, and has wandered for more than two years from isle to isle of the Pacific. A mysterious reputation hovers round him. He is supposed to have done many things, but no one is very clear what they are; and it is not likely that much information on the point will be obtained from him, for he seldom talks much, and never speaks of himself. His present mission appears to be to kill partridges, play cricket, and dress himself. Not that it must be supposed that he has ever been in the habit of wearing less clothing than the custom of the country in which he may have been located required; but only that at the