Across Frozen Seas

by John Wilson

  As the London Times newspaper stated but one week ago, “The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty have, in every respect, provided most liberally for the comforts of the officers and men of an expedition which may, with the...advantages of modern science, be attended with great results.”

  All these men look resplendent in their uniforms adorned with glittering medals and honours, but they are eclipsed by the figure standing a few feet from me. Sir John has no cold now and he looks positively regal standing on the quarter deck of the Erebus acknowledging the cheers of the crowd with a wave of his gold baton. Beside him stands Fitzjames, looking almost too young, despite his receding hairline, to be captain of such a ship. He has never been to the Arctic, but he has experience of ships and men. Just three years ago, he was leading a rocket brigade in China and he was on the first expedition to navigate the Euphrates River. Today, his round face is wreathed in smiles as he quietly gives the orders which will take us down the river to the open ocean.

  Of course, George and I are not up there among the officers. We stand on the main deck among the common sailors and marines. Weeks have passed since we stood shivering on Sir John’s doorstep. We have been assigned to the same duties aboard the Erebus. As I will soon be twelve and George is fourteen, we are cabin boys, although some of the sailors are not much older than George. I am amazed how fast I have learned the Navy routine. All it seems to require is silence in the presence of officers and a rapid and unquestioning obedience to orders. It is hard work, but we are well fed and it is paradise compared to living on the streets.

  Now all the preparation is over and we are off. Amid all the confusion, my attention settles on Neptune, the ship’s dog. He is large, brown, and very companionable. He is one of two pets on board, the other being a trained monkey called Jacko. Neptune seems to me to be the only one here not happy with the proceedings. He is sitting in a corner gazing mournfully around at the bustling crowd. He does not seem pleased to be accompanying us, although he has been on other voyages and is said to enjoy them greatly. Perhaps the occasion is too much for him. My thoughts are interrupted by George touching my arm. He points up.

  “Look,” he says, “a dove on the masthead. It is the bird of peace and harmony—a good omen.”

  An omen to confirm what we all feel to be true. What luck we have to be a part of such an adventure. I cannot imagine being happier.

  Icebergs glitter all around us in the midnight sun. Yesterday I counted eighty-five. I have not yet mastered the art of sleeping in a hammock, so I have come up on deck to get some air. Yesterday, July 12, 1845, we left Disco on the coast of Greenland after taking aboard the last of our supplies and saying farewell to our supply ship, the Barretto Junior under Lieutenant Griffiths. Our decks are now stacked even higher with coal and crates and we sit very low in the water. We slaughtered the ten oxen we brought up with us and shall have our last fresh meat until we reach the other side of the world.

  “It is quite wonderful, is it not?”

  I am startled by the soft voice beside me. Turning I see Mister Fitzjames leaning on the rail. Hurriedly I stand at attention. “Aye sir,” I answer.

  “Stand easy boy,” Fitzjames smiles slightly and turns to look back over the ice. “It is too much of an adventure to waste in sleep, I think. They say the spring is early this year and we shall have an easy passage across Baffin Bay. Perhaps one season might even see our journey complete. I hope not. I have an urge to spend a winter in the ice and it would be a great opportunity to take the magnetic readings commissioned by the Royal Society.”

  All the while, Mister Fitzjames is gazing over the side of the ship and talking to the dark water. His reverie is broken as six sleek shapes break the surface beside us and leap forward in a halo of bright phosphorescence.

  “Porpoise,” he says happily. “A good omen for us.” He turns to face me. “Keep your eyes open and watch everything young lad. Sir John has charged us with examining all we see, from a flea to a whale, and giving our opinion of it. No one has come this way as well equipped to study this land as we, and I feel we will be remembered for what we do here many years after we return.

  “What is your name?”

  “Davy, sir,” I reply haltingly.

  “Well Davy,” he continues, looking at me keenly, “what do your parents think of you coming on this adventure with us?”

  “My parents are dead sir,” I reply. “It was the cholera.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” he says tilting his head and gazing back at the icebergs. “Mine are too. They died when I was seven. I was taken in by my uncle, but he is dead some years ago. The Navy is my family now.

  “Perhaps it will be yours as well,” he says, looking back at me. “It doesn’t matter what your beginnings are, it is what you do with what you have that counts. Life in the Navy is hard, but there is no feeling on earth like that of sailing into some exotic port beneath palm-covered hills and a tropical sky.”

  His smile broadens.

  “But we must have this adventure first, and I fear we shall see precious few palm trees in the next year or two.”

  Fitzjames pauses and his gaze drifts over to the red sun low on the western horizon.

  “Well,” he continues, “it is late. I must bid you good-night. Sleep well lad.”

  As I watch Fitzjames return to his cabin, I reach into my pocket and clutch Jack Tar. Silently, the icebergs slip by like snowy mountain peaks adrift on glass. This is the adventure I always dreamed of.

  CHAPTER 5

  That morning I lay awake for the longest time, savouring the lingering feeling of the dream. Everything was so unbelievably fresh and new. I was a part of something so thrilling that having to step out of that world and back into my own left a knot in the pit of my stomach.

  As I lay in bed going over the details of our send-off and my conversation with Fitzjames, I thought about being alone. I always had friends at school and I went to parties, but I was never really close to anyone. I was just as happy sitting on my own, reading. I used to love escaping into an adventure story that took me to a different world. It could be a different planet, or a different time, or a fantasy world. It didn’t matter as long as I could escape. Sometimes, if I was reading a really good story, I would read until midnight or one in the morning and have the hardest time getting up for school. The following day would be a blur, but as soon as I got home I would be back into the book again. It was getting to be like that now. I had only just woken up and yet I was already looking forward to the next night’s dreams.

  But there was something I could do to fill my waking time—I could learn about the actual Franklin expedition. Jim had given me a start, but I was sure there was more I could discover. So I haunted the local library. It didn’t offer much, but there were a couple of general books and the staff could order more from Saskatoon. I read everything I could get about Franklin and his men. I read about his earlier expeditions and I read about the expeditions sent to look for him. I read about James Ross reaching the Magnetic Pole, and William Parry being the first man to successfully winter his crew in the High Arctic. I read the journals of men who had been on the Arctic ships. Some of these accounts were not very readable. Others transported me to the world of their authors. More than once, I was struck by the fact that I was reading the very books that were in the library of the Erebus, books read by my dream self.

  I became an expert on the Franklin expedition. Not that there was a vast amount of concrete information to become an expert on, but what I did learn confirmed what I had dreamt. The Erebus, the Terror, and their crews had indeed set off to sail through the Northwest Passage in May of 1845. Then they disappeared.

  For a long time no one back in England worried. The expedition was well supplied and was expected to last several years. Less prepared crews had spent three or four winters in the Arctic with no loss of life. However, people became concerned when no word had been received from the expedition by 1848. Search ships were sent out, but it wasn’t un
til 1850 that traces of Franklin and his men were finally found. These consisted of discarded equipment, cairns and the foundations of several buildings on Beechey Island, where the expedition had spent its first winter in 1845-46. Three graves also marked the spot. In succeeding years, Inuit stories were heard of large groups of white men struggling across the Arctic and, later, of camps surrounded by bodies.

  This was enough evidence for the British government, who did not want to spend more money on a fruitless search, but Franklin’s wife was more determined. Lady Jane Franklin harried and badgered the stuffy politicians to make them find out what had happened to her husband. When she couldn’t get them to do anything more, she resolved to unearth the answer herself.

  In 1857, she financed a private expedition under Captain Francis McClintock. This was the expedition on which Jim’s ancestor collected the Naval button. In the spring of 1859, McClintock explored the coast of King William Island (it was called King William Land in those days) by sled. He found many relics including an abandoned boat-sled containing skeletons. Most dramatically, he found the only written record of Franklin and his men. It was in a cairn at Victory Point close to where both the Erebus and Terror were trapped in the ice over the winters of 1846-47 and 1847-48. It consisted of two messages. The first was written in May, 1847 and had been deposited by Lieutenant Gore as he set off to explore King William Island and complete the last unknown stretch of the Northwest Passage. It ended with a cheerful “All well.”

  The second note was written in the margin, around the first, and was dated April 25, 1848. By this time Franklin and Gore were both dead and Crozier was leading the one hundred five survivors away from the ships. Many relics and bodies were found scattered along the coast of King William Island and on the Adelaide Peninsula where, several years later, the final resting place of a large party of Franklin’s men was discovered at Starvation Cove. Based on this evidence, it was assumed that all the men died in 1848 in the attempt to escape south to a Hudson’s Bay post.

  Other traces were found over the years. As recently as 1993, the remains of eleven of Franklin’s crewmen were found on the barren shores of King William Island, but nothing that contradicted the early accounts. Inuit stories were told to explorers as late as the 1920’s, and though these were detailed, they were often confused in poor translation. They did not always support the generally accepted view, but were usually ignored where they didn’t match. The Inuit told of finding large quantities of paper with writing on it, but it was considered of no importance and given to the children to play with. No one ever found the ships or any other written record of what had happened.

  More recently, studies of the bodies buried on Beechey Island have suggested that the canned food on board the ships was contaminated with lead and that this poisoned some of the crew. Since only a portion of the expedition’s food was canned, it is not possible to say what effect this had on the fate of the group as a whole.

  All this information was in the books I read on Arctic exploration. After I had finished four or five, it was all so familiar that I began to almost believe that Jim had been right when he said I was remembering things I had read long ago. Maybe my waking mind had simply forgotten the details which were stored in my subconscious, feeding my dreams. But I didn’t really believe it. The dreams were too detailed, too vivid.

  What upset me most was reading the accounts of finding the pitiful relics scattered along the bleak shoreline. It sent chills down my spine. Was this how my dreams would end? Were George and my dreamself destined to starve or freeze beneath a canvas tent or under some upturned boat? I didn’t know, but I had to find out.

  Every night I would escape into a world of my own, driven by the urge to know what happened next. Every night I went to sleep in a fever of expectation. I was not often disappointed.

  CHAPTER 6

  It is like we are going through a gate to another world. On the horizon, on both sides of our ships, lie snow-capped peaks sitting atop black, wave-washed cliffs. The air is crystal, the sea calm and dotted with gleaming ice floes. The crew are crowding the masts to catch a glimpse of this new world we have come to explore. Even Neptune seems happy.

  We have not had the easy crossing of Baffin Bay that Mister Fitzjames hoped for. The winds and the ice have held us back and for weeks we have had to tack back and forth through the towering icebergs. At the end of July we met with two whaling vessels, the Prince of Wales and the Enterprise. We anchored to a large iceberg and used the time for celestial observation. Sir John and the other officers exchanged visits and many of the crew shouted messages across as some of the whalers knew each other from earlier voyages to these waters. After several days of pleasant company the wind changed and we completed our crossing to Lancaster Sound, the beginning of the fabled Northwest Passage. We expect to see no one else until we sail around Alaska. We are now alone: one hundred twenty-nine men, two ships and enough food for at least four years. We are happy now, but how will we feel by the time we reach the other end?

  “Well, we’re doing it Davy boy!” George is as jubilant as the rest of the crew. “This is a better life than old Marbacks workhouse, eh?”

  I nod. It’s true; the fresh air, the companionship, the regular food, even double pay for Arctic service….! would not have believed any of this possible only a few months ago. Most importantly, for the first time in six years, I feel like I belong.

  The summer I turned six, my parents died. I remember little of them; my mother doing chores, my father sitting in his armchair reading the newspaper. It’s evening and my father has just returned from work. He’s tired, but he beckons me over to sit on his knee.

  “Do you know what today is?” he asks.

  “No sir,” I reply, aware only that it must be something special.

  “Today,” he continues, “you are six. Quite a young man, so I have brought you a present.”

  With that he produces a small package from behind his back. The only presents I remember receiving were small wooden toys and, last Christmas, a carved boat. This is obviously something different.

  “Go on, open it,” my mother encourages.

  Almost reverently, I unwrap the small box and remove the lid. There, lying on a bed of crushed paper is Jack Tar. He gleams, bright in his freshly-painted uniform. He is turned slightly to the side and holds one hand up to shield the sun from his eyes as he looks off to a distant horizon. He is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Barely able to say thank you, I slide to the floor and begin the first of many games with him.

  Two months later, cholera sweeps through London and both my parents are dead. I am about to begin a different life in institutions and “homes.” Some orphanages are good and some are bad, but none make me feel like I belong the way I did on that long ago birthday. Now, with George and my shipmates beside me, I feel that way again. I put my hand in my pocket and protectively clutch Jack Tar.

  “Yes, George,” I reply as he puts his arm over my shoulder, “we have been very lucky.”

  “Lucky! Lucky nothing. We made it all happen. We ran away. We lived on the streets. We found Sir John. We did it all.”

  This is typical of George. His parents abandoned him as a baby and he lived his entire life (except for a period with some charitable ladies who taught him to read and write) either on the streets or in the workhouse. Since we first met, over two years ago, he has been the leader and always planned our escapes.

  The numbing drudgery of the workhouse was often no worse than the empty-bellied freedom of living on the streets. Marback’s was the worst place of all. It was there that George came up with the idea of joining the Navy. So here we are. I belong again and I am the one who is shielding his eyes to look at the wonders of a strange world.

  The only source of discontent in my life at the moment is moving towards us. Abraham Seeley is a brute. He is a large, rough man with a straggly beard and a receding hairline. His teeth are brown and decayed and he always has a long clay pipe full of t
he foulest smelling tobacco clenched between them. A north country whaler like so many of the crew, Seeley seems to take pleasure in bullying anyone weaker than himself. I just catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye before his thick, hairy hand slaps the back of my head and sets my ears ringing.

  “What are you two lazy louts doing here staring into space? There’s work to be done below. Get to it.”

  “We’re just watching the mountains,” I say, the words escaping before I can stop them.

  “Talk back to me, will you? I’ll teach you manners, you street urchin.”

  One of Seeley’s huge hands grabs the back of my collar, the other holds George. Almost lifting us off our feet, he turns towards the hatch-cover. I know a beating is coming. Bitterly, I regret giving Seeley the excuse he was looking for.

  A figure moves forward and blocks our way. The man is taller than Seeley, almost six feet, and he wears the uniform of the Royal Marine soldiers who are present on every Navy ship. Both his height and his manner give the impression that he can handle himself in trouble. He has a curly beard and black hair which has receded to show an ugly-looking scar running across his forehead.

  “Leave them boys alone, Seeley,” his voice is quiet but firm. Seeley hesitates.

  “There’s work to be done and they talked back. I was just going to teach them a lesson.”

  “There’s no work needs doing right now.” The soldier doesn’t move an inch. “Let them be.”