BOOTHIA
Christopher Middleton—Wager River—Repulse Bay—Parry's second
north-west voyage—Melville Peninsula—Fury and Hecla Strait—John
Ross's second Arctic voyage—Introduces steam navigation into the
Arctic regions—The whaler _John_—Ross misses the North-West
Passage—Snow houses—Eskimo geographers—James Clark Ross finds the
Magnetic North Pole—Lyon in the _Griper_—Back in the
_Terror_—Rae's journey round Committee Bay—Sir John Franklin's
last voyage—Kennedy and Bellot—Discovery of Bellot Strait—Rae's
journey in 1854—His Franklin discoveries—M'Clintock's voyage in
the _Fox_—Lady Franklin's instructions—Captain Charles
Hall—Frederick Schwatka—Amundsen accomplishes the North-West
Passage.
In July, 1742, Christopher Middleton, working northwards in Hudson Bay
from Fort Churchill, made his way up Rowe's Welcome and entered a deep
inlet apparently leading to the South Sea. Middleton—who gained his
Fellowship of the Royal Society for his variation observations at Fort
Churchill, and was the first to practise the modern method of finding
longitude by eight or ten different altitudes of the sun or stars when
near the prime vertical—spent eighteen days in the inlet observing the
tides, and then came to the conclusion that it was an estuary; and he
named it Wager River after Sir Charles Wager, who was First Lord of the
Admiralty when he began his voyage. Proceeding north, he reached his
Repulse Bay, and at the north-east end of it saw Frozen Strait, as he
called it, stretching away along the north of Southampton Island towards
Cape Comfort. Here, also from tidal observations, he satisfied himself
that Repulse Bay afforded no passage to the westward and that Frozen
Strait led into Fox Channel.
[Illustration: AN IGLOOLIK ESKIMO CARRYING HIS KAYAK]
His opinions were disputed by those who only knew the coast from his
chart, and two vessels were sent out to prove he was wrong. The reports
of the captains of these—there is no need to mention their names—were
embarrassing. Neither had been to Repulse Bay, but both had been to
Wager River, and they agreed that it was unmistakably a river and not a
strait; but in every other respect, even in naming the places they had
seen, they were at variance. Thus the matter was left in sufficient
doubt to encourage some people in believing in a north-west passage
through Repulse Bay, just at the Arctic Circle, and to seek this, Parry,
on his return from Melville Island, was despatched on his second voyage.
This time the _Hecla_ was commanded by George Francis Lyon—the North
African traveller—Parry being in the _Fury_, a sister ship; both
vessels, at Parry's suggestion, being exactly alike so that their gear
and fittings were interchangeable. They sailed from the Little Nore on
the 8th of May, 1821, and going direct up Frozen Strait, with much
trouble from the ice, ran into Repulse Bay on the 22nd of August. Here
after a careful examination it was ascertained beyond a doubt that no
passage existed through to the westward. "Thus," says Lyon, "the
veracity of poor Middleton, as far as regards this bay at least, was now
at length established; and in looking down the strait we had passed, he
was fully justified in calling it a frozen strait. We were now
indisputably on our scene of future action, the coast of America; and it
only remained for us to follow minutely the line of shore in
continuation from Repulse Bay."
During a stay at Gore Bay red snow was brought off to the _Fury_, its
colour being much fainter than that found in the _Isabella_ voyage at
Crimson Cliffs in Greenland; "the appearance of the mass was not unlike
what is called raspberry ice, in a far better climate, where cold is
made subservient to luxury." The colouring of this is due to one of the
Algæ, _Protococcus nivalis_, and not as Peter Paterson said in
1671—ninety years before De Saussure—to the rocks being "full of white,
red, and yellow veins, like marble; upon any alteration of the weather,
these stones sweat, which, together with the rains, tinges the snow
red." The day on which this snow was found, the 30th of August, was so
warm that the party were glad to pull off their coats and waistcoats.
"The valleys were fertile in grasses and moss; and the fineness of the
weather had drawn forth a number of butterflies, spiders, and other
insects, which would, by their gay colours and active motions, have
almost deceived us into an idea that we were not in the Arctic regions,
had not the Frozen Strait, filled with huge masses of moving ice,
reminded us but too forcibly, that we were in the most dangerous of
them."
[Illustration: PARRY'S FARTHEST ON HIS THIRD VOYAGE]
Early in October the ships took up their quarters at Winter Island on
the coast of Melville Peninsula in 66° 32´, and there, during the
cordial intercourse with the Eskimos, Parry heard of the way through
further north which led him on his release in the following July to
discover Fury and Hecla Strait, along which the ships passed to find
their progress blocked by the ice just beyond its entrance into Regent
Inlet. Returning through the strait, they reached the island of Igloolik
at the eastern entrance, and there they passed the winter, Igloolik
being an important Eskimo settlement, with four fixed places of
residence on it, to which as the season changes the natives move in
rotation. From this island, as the health of the men did not permit of
his venturing to spend another winter in the ice, Parry retraced his
route and returned to England.
The ships dropped anchor in the Thames on Trafalgar Day, 1823. Next
year, on the 19th of May, they were off again to the north to seek a
passage to the west down Prince Regent Inlet, Parry in the _Hecla_,
Hoppner in the _Fury_. It was a bad season. The ships were late in
leaving Baffin Bay and were hindered by new ice in Lancaster Sound. So
far from reaching the strait discovered two years before, they could get
no further south than Port Bowen, in 73° 12´, where they spent the
winter in a singularly barren part of Cockburn Land. Starting in July
they went down to Cresswell Bay, the ships being forced by the weather
and the ice to work—as is not unusual under such circumstances—in almost
every possible direction within every mile, their track—as shown in the
illustration—being most complicated. The end of it all was that the
_Fury_ was wrecked and her stores carefully taken out and left, on what
was named Fury Beach, for the use of future callers in want of them. And
the _Hecla_ came home alone.
Four years afterwards Captain John Ross, anxious for further work in the
north, started in search of the passage by the same route. After some
years of effort he had succeeded in organising an expedition, the
expenses of which to the amount of over £17,000 were borne by Felix
Booth, with the exception of over £2000 added by Ross himself. It was a
memorable voyage in many respects, and for one thing in particular that
is frequently passed unnoticed. This was the introduction of steam into
Arctic navigation. The _Victory_ was an old Isle of Man packet-boat of
eighty-five tons, which, by raising her sides five feet, Ross increased
to one hundred and fifty tons. Taking out her old paddles, he replaced
them with a pair of Robertson's patents, hoistable out of water in a
minute, so as to clear the ice. The engine was also a patent, by
Braithwaite and Ericsson, who built the Novelty that appeared at
Rainhill. But neither Braithwaite nor Ericsson was any happier in this
production. Its great feature was the doing away with the funnel, no
flue being required owing to the fires being kept going by artificial
draught derived from two bellows of unequal sizes—"the bellows draught,"
in fact, like that of the Novelty which broke down in the great
locomotive contest won by the Rocket. Had not Ross been a man of
enterprise he would never have ventured to sea with such an experimental
arrangement; but he did, and he suffered for it.
[Illustration: THE "VICTORY"]
The "execrable machinery," as he inadequately called it, went wrong from
the first. On the way from Galleons Reach to Woolwich, part of it became
displaced, causing a delay for repairs. At Woolwich, Sir Byam Martin,
the Comptroller of the Navy, and Sir John Franklin went on board and
said uncomplimentary things about it, as also did the Duke of Orleans
(afterwards King Louis Philippe) and the Duke of Chartres, though the
Frenchmen were more gentle in their phrases. From Woolwich to Margate
this remarkable engine, aided by the sails, took the _Victory_ in just
over twelve hours, the boiler leaking so much that the additional
forcing pump had to be kept working by hand all the time. Passing the
Lizard, the piston-rod was found to be so much worn on one side by
friction against the guide-wheels that a piece of iron had to be brazed
on to it. Then the keys of the main shaft broke and the substitutes made
on board broke one after the other. "The boilers also continued to leak,
though we had put dung and potatoes in them by Mr. Ericsson's
directions." The air-pump drew quantities of water; the feeding pump was
insufficient to supply the boiler. The big bellows nearly wore out; so
did the small one. Off the Mull of Galloway the stoker fell into the
machinery and had his arm crushed and nearly severed above the elbow.
Then the teeth of the fly-wheel of the small bellows were shorn off, and
the boiler joints gave way, and the water, or rather the potato soup,
flowed out of the furnace doors and put out the fire.
Enough has been said to show the difficulties under which Ross first
used steam on a voyage to the northern seas. The list of damages need
not be continued. Every constituent part of the apparatus gave way in
turn; and when the _Victory_ became imprisoned for the winter, and the
engineering staff had some time on their hands, they employed it in
taking what was left of the installation, piece by piece, out of the
ship, laying it on the ice, and leaving it there.
Ross was to be accompanied by the whaler _John_, but the men mutinied
and refused to start, so that he went on from Loch Ryan alone. The
following year the crew of the _John_, then on a whaling voyage in
Baffin Bay, again mutinied, killed the master, put the mate adrift in a
boat in the manner of Henry Hudson, and lost the ship on the western
coast, where most of them were drowned.
With the _Krusenstern_, a boat of eighteen tons, in tow, Ross crossed
the Atlantic, sighting Sanderson's Hope on the 29th of July, having left
Scotland six weeks before. Early in August he sailed through Lancaster
Sound, and, taking the opportunity of removing his Croker's Mountains to
the north-east corner of North Somerset, went down Prince Regent Inlet
to Fury Beach. After completing his provisions for twenty-seven months
from the stores left behind by Parry, he crossed Cresswell Bay, passed
Cape Garry, Parry's farthest south, on the 15th of August, and next day,
Sunday, "I went on shore," he says, "with all the officers, to take
formal possession of the new-discovered land; and at one o'clock, being
a few minutes after seven in London, the colours were displayed with the
usual ceremony, and the health of the King drunk, together with that of
the founder of our expedition, after whom the land was named."
[Illustration: NORTH HENDON]
"From the highest part of this land, which was upwards of a hundred feet
above the level of the sea," he continues, "we had a good view of the
bay and the adjoining shores, and had the satisfaction to find that the
ice was in motion and fast clearing away. We therefore resolved to wait
patiently till we could see an opening; and proceeded to the northern
quarter of this spot to make some observations on the dip of the
magnetic needle.... To this place I gave the name Brown Island, after
the amiable sister of Mr. Booth; the inlet was named Brentford Bay, and
the islands Grimble Islands." And in his book is a beautiful steel
engraving by W. Chevalier, "Taking Possession. Cape Hussard, Grimble
Isle, Brentford Bay, Brown's Island." In short, Ross found the place,
landed on it, took possession of it, named it and sketched it. "The
sketches from which the drawings were made were taken by Mr. Ronald's
invaluable perspective instrument, and therefore _must_ be true
delineations."
And Ross passed on, apparently quite pleased with himself. But the Fates
had again been against him, for this was the very North-West Passage he
had come specially to find; the bay, as Kennedy was to show, being the
entrance to Bellot Strait in which the _Fox_ was to winter when on the
Franklin search. He had blundered along from the island of North
Somerset to the mainland of America, and passed unheeded its
northernmost point, which M'Clintock was to name Cape Murchison.
Working down the coast of the newly-named Boothia, the _Victory_ reached
Felix Harbour, and there she wintered. No Eskimos were seen until the
9th of January, when thirty-one came to the ship and were invited on
board, a return visit being paid next day to their village, which Ross
named North Hendon. As this was a typical Eskimo snow camp we may as
well copy his picture and quote his description.
"The village soon appeared, consisting of twelve snow huts, erected at
the bottom of a little bight on the shore, about two miles and a half
from the ship. They had the appearance of inverted basins, and were
placed without any order; each of them having a long crooked appendage,
in which was the passage, at the entrance of which were the women, with
the female children and the infants. We were soon invited to visit
these, for whom we had prepared presents of glass beads and needles; a
distribution of which soon drove away the timidity which they had
displayed at our first appearance. The passage, always long, and
generally crooked, led to the principal apartment, which was a circular
dome, being ten feet in diameter when intended for one family, and an
oval of fifteen by ten where it lodged two. Opposite the doorway there
was a bank of snow, occupying nearly a third of the breadth of the area,
about two feet and a half high, level at the top, and covered by various
skins, forming the general bed or sleeping place for the whole. At the
end of this sat the mistress of the house, opposite to the lamp, which,
being of moss and oil, as is the universal custom in these regions, gave
a sufficient flame to supply both light and heat; so that the apartment
was perfectly comfortable. Over the lamp was the cooking dish of stone,
containing the flesh of deer and of seals, with oil; and of such
provision there seemed no want. Everything else, dresses, implements, as
well as provisions, lay about in unspeakable confusion, showing that
order, at least, was not in the class of their virtues. It was much more
interesting to us to find, that among this disorder there were some
fresh salmon; since, when they could find this fish, we were sure that
it would also furnish us with supplies which we could not too much
multiply. On inquiry, we were informed that they were abundant; and we
had, therefore, the prospect of a new amusement, as well as of a
valuable market at the mere price of our labour."
[Illustration: ESKIMO LISTENING AT A SEAL-HOLE]
A few weeks later Ross was to see how these houses were built. "Four
families," he says, "comprising fifteen persons, passed the ship to
erect new huts about half a mile to the southward. They had four
heavy-laden sledges, drawn each by two or three dogs, but proceeded very
slowly. We went after them to see the process of building the snow
house, and were surprised at their dexterity; one man having closed in
his roof within forty-five minutes. A tent is scarcely pitched sooner
than a house is here built. The whole process is worth describing.
Having ascertained, by the rod used in examining seal holes, whether the
snow is sufficiently deep and solid, they level the intended spot by a
wooden shovel, leaving beneath a solid mass of snow not less than three
feet thick. Commencing then in the centre of the intended circle, which
is ten feet or more in diameter, different wedge-shaped blocks are cut
out, about two feet long, and a foot thick at the outer part; then
trimming them accurately by the knife, they proceed upwards until the
courses, gradually inclining inwards, terminate in a perfect dome. The
door being cut out from the inside before it is quite closed serves to
supply the upper materials. In the meantime the women are employed in
stuffing the joints with snow, and the boys in constructing kennels for
the dogs. The laying the snow sofa with skins and the insertion of the
ice window complete the work; the passage only remaining to be added, as
it is after the house is finished, together with some smaller huts for
stores"—the design being similar to that of the yurts of the Eskimos of
the north, with a change of material, snow for stone, and ice instead of
seal-gut for the window over the entrance.
Making friends with the Eskimos, and gaining a great reputation by the
carpenter fitting one of them with a wooden leg, Ross obtained much
valuable information from them, particularly as to the geography of the
district. Like all Arctic men, he was impressed by their quickness in
understanding maps and their skill in drawing them upon anything, snow,
paper, or otherwise, that lay handy. One of them, Ikmallik, drew in the
ship's cabin a map, which he reprints in his book, showing the
coast-line of the country south of the _Victory's_ quarters, with the
capes, inlets, and islands, giving the isthmus of Boothia and Committee
Bay, and Repulse Bay on the other side of the Melville Peninsula, which
is really wonderful, for neither the Eskimo, nor Ross, had anything to
copy from, it being nearly twenty years before Rae's exploration; and
the one thing it clearly demonstrated was that there was no waterway to
the westward, south of Felix Harbour.
Ross owed much to Ikmallik, and really a good deal of the time of the
expedition was spent in confirming the statements of that well-informed
man. The west coast of Boothia was surveyed down to Bulow Bay; the east
side from Cape Nicholas down to Cape Porter, including the crossing of
the upper part of James Ross Strait, the discovery of Matty Island and
the north-east coast of King William Land from Cape Landon, opposite
Cape Porter—where Ross, as usual, missed a strait—westward to capes
Franklin and Jane Franklin, within sight of which in the days that were
coming, by one of those remarkable coincidences so frequent in the
north, the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ were to meet their fate.
The one conspicuous triumph of the expedition was the journey of James
Ross to the site of the Magnetic North Pole, which he found on the
western coast of Boothia on the 1st of June, 1831. In the younger Ross's
own words, "the land at this place is very low near the coast, but it
rises into ridges of fifty or sixty feet high about a mile inland. We
could have wished that a place so important had possessed more of mark
or note. It was scarcely censurable to regret that there was not a
mountain to indicate a spot to which so much of interest must ever be
attached; and I could even have pardoned any one among us who had been
so romantic or absurd as to expect that the magnetic pole was an object
as conspicuous and mysterious as the fabled mountain of Sinbad, that it
even was a mountain of iron, or a magnet as large as Mont Blanc. But
Nature had here erected no monument to denote the spot which she had
chosen as the centre of one of her great and dark powers; and where we
could do little ourselves towards this end, it was our business to
submit, and to be content in noting by mathematical numbers and signs,
as with things of far more importance in the terrestrial system, what we
could but ill distinguish in any other manner.... We fixed the British
flag on the spot and took possession of the North Magnetic Pole and its
adjoining territory in the name of Great Britain and King William the
Fourth. We had abundance of materials for building, in the fragments of
limestone that covered the beach; and we therefore erected a cairn of
some magnitude, under which we buried a canister containing a record of
the interesting fact; only regretting that we had not the means of
constructing a pyramid of more importance and of strength sufficient to
withstand the assaults of time and of the Eskimos. Had it been a pyramid
as large as that of Cheops, I am not quite sure that it would have done
more than satisfy our ambition, under the feelings of that exciting day.
The latitude of this spot is 70° 5´ 17˝, and its longitude 96° 46´ 45˝
west."
The _Victory_ in the short summer of 1830 sailed a few miles further
south and spent the winter in Victoria Harbour, to be there abandoned in
May, 1832. Ross in his boats made for Fury Beach, where, at Somerset
House, as he called it, he passed the following winter. On the 26th of
August, 1833, when in his boats off the eastern mouth of Lancaster
Sound, he was picked up by the _Isabella_, his old ship, and in her he
reached the Humber in October of that year after four successive winters
in the ice, having been enabled to make so long a stay by his fortunate
find of the stores left by Parry.
[Illustration: H.M.S. "TERROR" LIFTED BY ICE]
In 1824 Captain Lyon was sent out in the _Griper_ to winter at Repulse
Bay, and thence crossing the isthmus described by the Eskimos continue
along to Franklin's Point Turnagain; but the _Griper_ was nearly wrecked
in Rowe's Welcome and did not reach Wager River. The discoveries of Ross
led to the renewal of this attempt by Captain Back in the _Terror_ in
1836. He was to go to Wager River or Repulse Bay, and then make his way
into Prince Regent Inlet, and so west; but he became imprisoned in the
ice off Cape Comfort during one of the severest winters known. Drifting
up Frozen Strait amid most perilous experiences, the ship, lifted high
above sea-level by pressure, lay at times almost horizontal. Once "they
beheld," he says, "the strange and appalling spectacle of what may be
fitly termed a submerged berg, fixed low down, with one end to the
ship's side, while the other, with the purchase of a long lever
advantageously placed at a right angle with the keel, was slowly rising
towards the surface. Meanwhile, those who happened to be below, finding
everything falling, rushed or clambered on deck, where they saw the ship
on her beam-ends, with the lee boats touching the water, and felt that a
few moments only trembled between them and eternity."
Day after day the _Terror_ defied the persistent effort of the ice to
smash her, but suffering much in almost every timber she withstood it
sufficiently to keep together. For four months she was entirely out of
water, and when at last she was free, Back wrapped her up as best he
could, and brought her home with the water pouring into her so that the
men were so wearied out that they could hardly have continued at the
pumps another day; and he ran her ashore in Lough Swilly only just in
time. Upwards of twenty feet of her keel, together with ten feet of the
stern-post, were driven over more than three and a half feet on one
side, leaving a frightful opening astern for the free ingress of water.
The forefoot was entirely gone; numbers of bolts were either loosened or
broken; and when, besides this, the strained and twisted state of the
ship's frame was considered, there was not one on board who did not
express astonishment that they had ever floated across the Atlantic.
The next attempt to complete the coast of the American mainland was made
from the land, and at the cost of the Hudson's Bay Company. Really it
was the expedition proposed by Simpson some five years before, of which
he would have been the leader had he not been shot; and it was entrusted
to the capable hands of Dr. John Rae.
After wintering at York Factory, Rae reached Repulse Bay with two boats,
the _Magnet_ and _North Pole_, on the 25th of July, 1846, and in his
usual style started immediately across the chain of lakes and portages
which make up the isthmus that now bears his name, launching his boats
in the tidal water of Committee Bay on the 1st of August. Stopped by ice
on the west side and then on the east he returned to Repulse Bay, where
he built Fort Hope of stones and roofed it with sails, and lived in it
through the winter on what he could shoot and catch, for many weeks
venturing on only one meal a day. Outside the men kept themselves warm
chiefly by building snow houses and playing football; inside, as the
only fuel used was for cooking, the only thing they could do was to wrap
themselves in furs, and trust to their natural heat in a temperature
that ranged about zero.
[Illustration: FRACTURED STERN-POST OF H.M.S. "TERROR"]
In April, with a couple of sledges, eight dogs, and five men, he crossed
the isthmus again and went straightaway up the east side of Boothia to
Ross's farthest south, thus completing that coast-line. Back he went to
Fort Hope after a trip of nearly six hundred miles, to start again on
the 12th of May up the west coast of the Melville Peninsula to Cape
Ellice, which Parry had sighted from the strait on that side. And he was
back once more at Fort Hope on the 9th of June. Thus the survey of the
northern coast was complete with the exception of the gap between the
Boothia isthmus, on the west side, and Castor and Pollux River of Dease
and Simpson, which Rae in another famous effort from Repulse Bay was to
link up later on.
When Rae reached Lord Mayor's Bay on the east coast of Boothia,
Franklin, with the _Erebus_ and _Terror_, was off its west coast in the
same latitude. This was the reappearance of the _Terror_ in the north.
After Back's voyage she had been repaired to sail with the _Erebus_,
under Sir James Clark Ross, when he discovered the South Magnetic Pole;
and on their return the barques had been thoroughly overhauled and
fitted with auxiliary screws, the first time that the screw propeller
was used in Arctic work. Franklin was in the _Erebus_, the _Terror_
being commanded by Francis R. M. Crozier as she had been in the
Antarctic voyage. Crozier was one of Parry's men, he having been in the
_Fury_ in 1821 and in the _Hecla_ on her two subsequent expeditions.
The ships left England on the 19th of May, 1845, and were last seen and
spoken with on the 26th of July in Melville Bay on their way to
Lancaster Sound. According to information gained during the long series
of searches, they passed through the sound and went north for about a
hundred and fifty miles, to 77°, up Wellington Channel into Penny
Strait—the first time the passage had been made. Returning down the west
side of Cornwallis Island, discovering the strait between it and
Bathurst Island, they wintered at Beechey Island, where three of the men
died and were buried; and where the most significant relic was about
seven hundred tins of preserved meat that seemed to have been condemned
as bad, just as the stock of similar stuff had in the same year been
condemned and thrown overboard at Portsmouth.
Leaving Beechey Island in 1846, they went south down Peel Sound, being
the first to pass through it, and Franklin Strait—another new
discovery—to within twelve miles of Cape Felix in King William Land,
where, on the 12th of September, they were beset about half-way between
Cape Adelaide in Boothia and Pelly Point in Victoria Land. Hereabouts
the second winter was passed, and on the 24th of May a party under
Lieutenant Gore crossed the ice to Point Victory, probably on a journey
to examine the unknown coast between there and Cape Herschel. On the
11th of June, 1847, Sir John Franklin died. The ships drifted a short
distance during their imprisonment in the ice, and the third winter was
passed some twenty miles further south down Victoria Strait, where, on
the 22nd of April, 1848, when fifteen miles north-north-west of Point
Victory, they were abandoned, and the officers and crews, a hundred and
five in all, under Crozier's command, started for Back's Great Fish
River, some of them completing the first North-West Passage in crossing
Simpson Strait and reaching Montreal Island.
The first undoubted traces of the lost expedition were those discovered
at Beechey Island, the news reaching England in the _Prince Albert_ in
the autumn of 1850. As soon as the winter was over this excellent little
schooner was again sent out by Lady Franklin under the command of
Captain William Kennedy, who took with him as a volunteer Lieutenant
Joseph René Bellot of the French navy, and also John Hepburn, who had
been with Franklin on the land journey in 1819. Kennedy wintered at
Batty Bay in North Somerset, and during a remarkable sledge journey, in
which he made the circuit of the island, he and Bellot reached Brentford
Bay, and, on the 21st of April, 1852, discovered the strait named after
the gallant Frenchman. But he found no traces of the expedition through
turning to the north and crossing to Prince of Wales Island, instead of
going to the south at the western mouth of the strait. He had, however,
discovered the termination of Boothia, the north point of the American
continent which men had been seeking for three centuries.
To the southern end of Boothia came the indefatigable Rae. That cheery
hero of the north left Repulse Bay on the 31st of March, 1854, to
complete the Hudson's Bay Company's survey. On the 20th of April he met
a young Eskimo in Pelly Bay, who told him the fate of the _Erebus_ and
_Terror_, and from him and his people Rae obtained a number of small
articles, forks and spoons and so forth, which had undoubtedly come from
the ships, one of which had been crushed in the ice, the other sinking
after drifting further south.
Rae was not the man to return until he had attacked the work he had set
out to do, and he continued his surveying with his customary accuracy,
despatch, and general alertness, striking across the peninsula,
discovering the Murchison River, reaching Simpson's farthest at Castor
and Pollux River, and thence proving the insularity of King William Land
by travelling up the east coast of the strait now named after him—and he
was back again in August. He had almost finished the survey of the
northern coast-line; and he had ascertained how and where Franklin's
voyage had ended, for which discovery the British Government gave him
the reward of £10,000, letting it be understood that so far as they were
concerned the Franklin searches were at an end.
But Lady Franklin thought one more effort should be made to unravel the
mystery of her husband's fate, and there were many who thought the same.
Helped to a certain extent by a public subscription, she organised
another expedition. The steam-yacht _Fox_ was bought from the executors
of Sir Richard Sutton and altered for Arctic work by her builders, the
Halls of Aberdeen clipper fame. As leader went Captain, afterwards Sir,
Frederick Leopold M'Clintock, who had done such brilliant sledge-work in
the north; like his second in command, Lieutenant W. R. Hobson, he gave
his services gratuitously, as also did Dr. David Walker and Captain,
afterwards Sir, Allen Young, then of the Mercantile Marine, who also
subscribed £500 towards the fund. Carl Petersen, the Eskimo interpreter
on the voyages of Penny and Kane, came to join from Copenhagen, having
landed there from Greenland only six days previously. The British
Government, although declining to send out an expedition, contributed
liberally to the supplies, and sent on board all the arms and ammunition
and ice-gear and every instrument that was asked for.
[Illustration: THE "FOX" ESCAPING FROM THE PACK]
Lady Franklin's instructions were so characteristic of the noble-hearted
woman whose name can never be forgotten in Arctic story that they must
be given in full:—
"ABERDEEN, _June 29, 1857_.
"MY DEAR CAPTAIN M'CLINTOCK,
"You have kindly invited me to give you 'Instructions,' but I cannot
bring myself to feel that it would be right in me in any way to
influence your judgment in the conduct of your noble undertaking;
and indeed I have no temptation to do so, since it appears to me
that your views are almost identical with those which I had
independently formed before I had the advantage of being thoroughly
possessed of yours. But had this been otherwise, I trust you would
have found me ready to prove the implicit confidence I place in you
by yielding my own views to your more enlightened judgment; knowing
too as I do that your whole heart also is in the cause, even as my
own is. As to the objects of the expedition and their relative
importance, I am sure that you know that the rescue of any possible
survivor of the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ would be to me, as it would be
to you, the noblest result of our efforts.
"To this object I wish every other to be subordinate; and next to it
in importance is the recovery of the unspeakably precious documents
of the expedition, public and private, and the personal relics of my
dear husband and his companions.
"And lastly, I trust it may be in your power to confirm, directly or
inferentially, the claims of my husband's expedition to the earliest
discovery of the passage, which, if Dr. Rae's report be true (and
the Government of our country has accepted and rewarded it as such),
these martyrs in a noble cause achieved at their last extremity,
after five long years of labour and suffering, if not at an earlier
period.
"I am sure that you will do all that man can do for the attainment
of all these objects; my only fear is that you may spend yourselves
too much in the effort; and you must therefore let me tell you how
much dearer to me even than any of them is the preservation of the
valuable lives of the little band of heroes who are your companions
and followers.
"May God in His great mercy preserve you all from harm amidst the
labours and perils which await you, and restore you to us in health
and safety as well as honour. As to the honour I can have _no_
misgiving. It will be yours as much if you fail (since you _may_
fail in spite of every effort) as if you succeed; and be assured
that, under _any and all circumstances whatever_, such is my
unbounded confidence in you, you will possess and be entitled to the
enduring gratitude of your sincere and attached friend,
"JANE FRANKLIN."
[Illustration: THE "FOX" ON A ROCK]
The men of the _Fox_ were worthy of the confidence placed in them.
Leaving Aberdeen on the 1st of July, M'Clintock reached Disco on the
last day of the month, and, proceeding northwards, was, by a perverse
freak of fortune, beset in Melville Bay on the 8th of August, and kept
imprisoned thence onwards all through the winter, drifting south through
Baffin Bay and Davis Strait. On the 26th of April, 1858, after a drift
of 1194 geographical miles, the _Fox_ escaped from the pack and steamed
to the eastward amid the most perilous of ice experiences. Most men
would have returned and tried again; not so M'Clintock. He boldly ran up
the Greenland coast as if nothing had happened and, making good
deficiencies, resumed his voyage. Soon after leaving Sanderson's Hope
the _Fox_ was nearly wrecked near Buchan Island, remaining on a rock
until the tide rose again to set her free. After calling at Beechey
Island, M'Clintock followed Franklin's track down Peel Sound until
stopped by the pack, when he retraced his course and tried Prince Regent
Inlet, reaching Bellot Strait on the 21st of August. At Port Kennedy in
this famous waterway—which is like a Greenland fiord, about twenty miles
long and scarcely a mile wide at its narrowest part, the water four
hundred feet deep within a quarter of a mile of its northern shore—he
passed the winter.
On the 1st of March he reached by sledge the Magnetic Pole and fell in
with four of the Boothian Eskimos, who, at the cost of a needle each,
built him a snow hut in an hour, in which they all spent the night.
"Perhaps," says M'Clintock, "the records of architecture do not furnish
another instance of a dwelling-house so cheaply constructed!" Halting at
Cape Victoria the Eskimos came up from their village close by with a
number of small relics of the lost expedition. Returning to the _Fox_
after a journey of four hundred and twenty statute miles in which the
survey of the west coast of Boothia was completed, everything was made
ready for three long sledge journeys of two sledges each, the captain
taking that for Montreal Island, and giving Hobson the best chance of
promotion by sending him round the west coast of King William Land,
while Young took the Prince of Wales Land route.
On the east coast of King William Land M'Clintock met with more Eskimos,
from whom he obtained relics and obtained information. Pushing on, he
reached Montreal Island on the 15th of May, where the only traces of a
boat were some scraps of copper and an iron-hoop bolt. A crossing to the
mainland on the 18th of May revealed no more; and next day the return
journey began. Six days afterwards, walking along a gravel ridge near
the beach on the way to Cape Herschel, M'Clintock found the first
skeleton, partly exposed, with a few fragments of clothing appearing
through the snow, evidently one of the men who, as the old Eskimo woman
said, fell down and died as they walked along. Visiting Simpson's cairn
at Cape Herschel and meeting with nothing, he went on for about twelve
miles, where he caught sight of a small cairn built by Hobson's party at
their furthest south, reached six days before, containing a note with
the great news that at Point Victory they had found what is now known as
the Franklin record.
This record, which has frequently been printed—in a smaller size than
the original—was one of the navy bottle-papers with the request in six
languages that it should be forwarded to the Admiralty. A pale blue
paper, twelve and a half inches by eight, it was filled up in the
ordinary way, and then added to round the four margins in the
handwriting of Lieutenant Gore, Captain FitzJames, and Captain Crozier,
and signed by these and C. F. Des Vœux. It had been first deposited four
miles away, so it said, "by the late Commander Gore," in 1847, and next
year found by Lieutenant Irving, added to, and removed to the new cairn
on the site of Sir James Ross's pillar.
[Illustration: DISCOVERY OF THE CAIRN]
Brief as it was, it contained all the authentic information regarding
Franklin's voyage up to the time the ships were abandoned. Resuming the
return journey along the edge of the strait where the meeting of the
Pacific and Atlantic tides keeps the ice drifting down from the
north-west almost constantly packed, M'Clintock reached a boat with two
skeletons and other relics already visited by Hobson, who had found
other cairns and many relics, and, in Back Bay, another record by Gore,
also deposited in 1847, but giving no additional news.
Hobson was dragged alongside the _Fox_, on the 14th of June, so ill with
scurvy that he was unable to walk or even stand without assistance.
M'Clintock arrived five days later; and on the 27th Allen Young returned
after an exploration of three hundred and eighty miles of coast-line,
which, added to that discovered by M'Clintock and Hobson, gave a total
of eight hundred geographical miles of new coast as the work of the
expedition, besides what it had done in clearing up the Franklin
mystery.
In 1869 Captain C. F. Hall collected other relics and sufficient
information to account for seventy-nine men out of the hundred and five
who left the ships. Ten years after that, Schwatka, in his long, careful
search of King William Land, discovered the grave of Lieutenant Irving,
in which were some fragments of his instruments and the prize medal he
won at the Royal Naval College. Near by were many traces indicating that
it was the site of the first encampment of the retreating crews after
leaving their ships; and down the coast he traced camp after camp, and
death after death. Irving's remains were brought away and are buried at
Edinburgh. The spot where they were found was Cape Jane Franklin.
More fortunate than Franklin was Captain Roald Amundsen. Leaving
Christiania in the _Gjöa_ on the 16th of June, 1903, he crossed the
Atlantic and proceeded down Peel Sound, past Bellot Strait, and along
the west coast of Boothia, where a fire on the ship did a certain amount
of damage, and, struggling thereafter for ten days among shoals and
rocks, down James Ross Strait, past Matty Island into Rae Strait, he
dropped anchor in Petersen Bay, King William Land. For his base station
he required a site in which the inclination was eighty-nine degrees, and
at Gjöahaven, in this bay, he found it in 68° 30´ N., 96° W.
Here he arranged his headquarters for his observations on the Magnetic
Pole which were kept going night and day for nineteen months; and here
he stayed for two winters, moving about in the country around and over
into Boothia, where he proved that the Pole was not immovable and
stationary, but in all likelihood in continual movement. Leaving the
south-eastern corner of King William Land in his little ship he passed
through Simpson Strait, linking up with Collinson; and, like him, he was
delayed for a winter on the coast of the American mainland. Through
Bering Strait he reached San Francisco, where the voyage ended in the
sale of the _Gjöa_. Thus of Amundsen it can be said, without any
qualification whatever, that he accomplished the North-West Passage.