by John Wilson
“A fire.”
I turned to see Mr. Fitzjames lying on his side, staring out at the blaze.
“Yes,” I said, “and we have deer meat as well. I shot it.”
He smiled weakly. “What happened?”
“You collapsed,” I said. “I dragged you back up here, found some old barrel staves and shot the deer. The meat’s cooking.” I felt stupidly proud of my accomplishments, even though the simple tasks had taken me a whole day.
I reached out and grabbed a chunk of deer meat from the fire. It was hot and required some juggling, and the outside was charred while the inside was raw, but it tasted wonderful. Even the hot fat running down my chin was a thrill. I tore small pieces off with my teeth and offered them to Mr. Fitzjames. He shook his head.
“You must eat,” I said.
“I am past hunger,” he said with a weak smile. Perhaps because I was feeling so much better after the triumphs of my day, Mr. Fitzjames’s appearance was shocking. When I had first spied him on board Erebus at Woolwich, his face had been fleshy and cheerful. Now his cheekbones threatened to burst through his skin, and his eyes were dark-rimmed and sunken. His beard was patchy and his filthy hair straggled over his ears and down his back. When he spoke, his thin lips pulled back over bleeding gums and missing teeth.
“You must go,” he told me, pausing to catch a rattling breath between each word. “Head north along the shore. There is still time to find a whaler.”
“I will not leave you,” I said.
Mr. Fitzjames sighed. “You are stubborn.” His gaze drifted away from me and out the door of our shelter. He took a deep breath and seemed to gain strength from it. “Perhaps we were all too stubborn — stubborn and arrogant. This land does not forgive. Either meet it on its own terms, as the natives who live here do, or it will destroy you, as we are destroyed.”
He laughed weakly. “We began this adventure measuring time in years. Would our food last for three years or four? Would we make it through the Passage this year or next? Now our great adventure is measured in days. Will our strength last for another day or two? Will rescue come in the next few hours? The world has narrowed from grand ideas of sailing across the world and travelling the width of Russia to a few yards of frozen ground. I should like to have gone to Russia.”
This was the most Mr. Fitzjames had said in days.
“You must rest, Mr. Fitzjames,” I said. “Conserve your strength.”
“For what?” he asked. I didn’t have an answer. “I do not regret coming here. I have been close to death before. I suppose sooner or later it had to win. I regret only two things: all the lost years for those who died, and that no one will ever know how we struggled and what we achieved. I’m sorry I brought you to this.”
“You did not,” I said, my throat tightening. “I made my own choices. As Davy did. As we all did.”
Mr. Fitzjames looked at me, a faint smile on his thin, blackened lips. “I suppose we did, for better or for worse; that is all any of us can do. I’m tired.” He closed his eyes and slept.
I crawled into my sleeping sack and stared into the flames as the last staves were consumed and the fire died back to glowing embers. Eventually I fell into a fitful slumber, huddled on the hard rocks.
The cold seeping up from the frozen ground and the chilling air above dragged me back from sleep. I reached out for a piece of meat from the rocks beside the fire, but found nothing. I hauled myself out of my sack, stood and stretched cold-stiffened limbs. It was still dark, but I soon discovered that the remaining pieces of meat had vanished. It must have been taken by foxes while I slept.
Misery and despair overwhelmed me and my emotions swung wildly from weeping to cursing and back again. I should have replaced the meat in my satchel. I looked around. My satchel had disappeared as well. It had been soaked in blood from carrying the raw meat, so the foxes must have dragged it off, too. The thought of going and hacking more meat off the deer exhausted me. My emotions swung over to an unnatural calm.
“The foxes have stolen our meat,” I said to Mr. Fitzjames.
I got no response, so I reached over and shook him. His head lolled from side to side. His eyes were open but staring at nothing. My last friend was dead.
Epilogue
The Shores of Boothia Felix, September, 1849
The sun is lowering in the western sky. How long have I been drifting in the past? Long enough to use up the remaining hours of daylight. As I stand up, every joint aches. My legs are numb, so I stamp my feet to encourage my circulation. Even that slight effort makes me break out in a sweat, and cough. I feel dizzy, so I sit on the rock and scan the empty horizon.
I remember how I agonized over my decision not to go with Davy and to return to the ships. Now, knowing that it made no difference, I wonder if there was anything we could have done that would not have led to this sorry end.
The darkening sky is heavy with clouds. The snow is still holding off, but I don’t think it will for much longer. There is no wind, but it is noticeably colder than yesterday.
A single large snowflake drifts slowly down in front of me. It spirals and turns through the cold, still air. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so beautiful, but such beauty cannot last. I hold out my hand and watch the flake melt as it lands on my palm.
Sighing, I take one last look at the grey horizon and begin the long journey back down the hill. I pass the remains of the deer, cross the stream and bid goodnight to Mr. Fitzjames. I crawl into the lean-to and wrap my sleeping sack about me. Outside, more snowflakes drift down. I feel comfortable and warm and sink into a deep sleep. Perhaps tomorrow there will be a ship.
Historical Note
Sir John Franklin’s expedition of 1845 was intended to be the pinnacle of nineteenth-century British Arctic exploration. Building on the work of John and James Ross, William Parry, George Back and others, Franklin was to complete the final short, unknown stretch of the Northwest Passage. His was to be a scientific expedition, tasked with studying the land and the sea, and the animals and peoples who inhabited both. Most important were the magnetic studies, which were to provide a vital part of the ongoing study of Earth’s magnetic field across the British Empire.
The total loss of the expedition — not one of the 129 officers and men survived, and the two ships have not been found — shocked the Victorians and provided an enduring mystery that still fascinates today. Dozens of expeditions went in search of survivors — and, later, answers. In doing so, they mapped vastly more of the Canadian Arctic than Franklin could ever have managed, and dramatically increased knowledge of these inhospitable lands.
In 1850, search expeditions discovered the first Franklin wintering site on Beechey Island and the graves of Petty Officer John Torrington, Able Seaman John Hartnell and Royal Marine Private William Braine. Oddly, although a cairn, piles of discarded cans, the site of a magnetic camp, traces of shore buildings and the tracks of exploration parties were found, no written message was apparently left there.
The searches continued, driven in large part by Jane Franklin, until in 1859, parties led by Francis McClintock and William Hobson discovered human bones, a ship’s boat containing two skeletons, piles of abandoned clothing and supplies and, at Victory Point, the only written record of the Franklin Expedition, in a tin can underneath a cairn originally built in 1830 by James Ross.
The search for answers continues to this day. In the 1980s, Dr. Owen Beattie, Professor of Anthroplogy at the University of Alberta, dug up the remarkably preserved bodies of Torrington, Hartnell and Braine. He carried out autopsies and analyzed samples of flesh for cause of death. All three men had a range of conditions. Pneumonia killed them, probably as a result of them having tuberculosis, which was called consumption in 1845. They also — particularly Torrington — had high levels of lead in their bodies, which Beattie ascribed to the solder sealing the cans containing the preserved food. He postulated that this was the main cause of the disaster.
Beattie�
�s conclusions have recently been questioned, particularly the solder being the source of the lead in the men’s bodies. In any case, the situation is not simple. If all the crew had been ingesting lead at the rate of Torrington, Hartnell and Braine, lead poisoning would have killed everyone long before the 105 survivors abandoned ship and left the note at Victory Point in 1848. The bones on King William Island indicate scurvy and cannibalism, so the mystery remains.
In recent years, several searches have been conducted for Erebus and Terror, but they have not yet been found. Neither has Franklin’s grave nor any of the expedition’s records.
In the 1860s, Charles Francis Hall lived with the Inuit to the east of King William Island and wrote down any stories he heard about Europeans in the area. The stories suffered from the vagaries of translation, Hall’s prejudices and confusion with other expeditions. Nevertheless, they offer some tantalizing hints. The Inuit stories tell of a ship crushed in the ice and driven ashore, and of another abandoned with a large dead man on board. They tell of meeting desperate groups of starving men hauling sleds over the ice, and of the discovery of a camp with many bodies and evidence of cannibalism (at a place that I call Franklin Bay in the story). Most intriguingly, there are tales of small groups of men on Boothia and the Melville Peninsula years after all of Franklin’s men were supposed to have died.
The officers on the expedition are quite well known from their letters and other records. Sir John Franklin was considered a very liberal ship’s captain for his day and had been a midshipman on Billy Ruffian at Trafalgar. He led two overland expeditions down the Coppermine River to Canada’s Arctic coast. On the first of these, eleven of his party of twenty died, and Franklin became known as The Man Who Ate His Boots. He later became Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) before being appointed to head his final expedition.
Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier was probably the most experienced polar explorer on the expedition. In 1845 he had recently returned from being second-in-command to James Ross on his epic circumnavigation of Antarctica, and had been to the Arctic with George Back. His previous experience may explain why, in his letters before they sailed, Crozier does not share the almost universal enthusiasm and confidence in the expedition’s outcome.
James Fitzjames was an up-and-coming star in the British Navy after undertaking an expedition along the Euphrates River and fighting in the Opium War in China. He was generally thought to be an orphan, but recent research by William Battersby shows that he was in fact the illegitimate son of Sir James Gambier, a diplomat and member of a very prominent aristocratic family. Fitzjames’s letters show him to be a very modern man with a great sense of wonder at the world about him, and a wicked sense of humour. On the final voyage, he kept a detailed and very entertaining journal, the first part of which he sent back to England from Greenland in the summer of 1845. The remainder was lost with the expedition.
Of the lower ranks on Franklin’s expedition, not much is generally known apart from their names, ages and what little information can be found in their record of Navy service.
George William Chambers’s great-great-great-nephew lives in England and has researched his family. He is descended from George’s younger sister Ellen. George did grow up at 58 Church Hill, Woolwich; his father, Thomas, may have fought at Trafalgar. His brother Thomas disappears suddenly from the record and George’s two younger brothers, Alexander and William, both joined the Navy.
George and Davy would indeed have had a range of duties and have been at the beck and call of almost anyone needing a task done. However, they would have shared their responsibilities to the officers with a number of other servants, most notably three stewards: Captain’s Steward Edmund Hoare, Gunroom Steward Richard Aylmore and Subordinate Officers’ Steward, John Bridgens. To simplify the cast of characters in Graves of Ice, and to ease the development of the relationship between George and Fitzjames, I have omitted the stewards and given the cabin boys a greater responsibility than they might have had. I apologize to the ghosts of Hoare, Aylmore and Bridgens.
William Braine was photographed when Owen Beattie opened his grave. He had a scar on his forehead and rotten teeth, and had been buried with a red scarf over his face. Signs of decay and animal activity suggest that he died some time before he was buried. The most likely explanation for this is that he died some way from the ship, possibly with an exploring party, although this would not have been normal duty for a marine.
Two of Franklin’s men were brought home from the North. Lieutenant Irving’s body was identified from a medal found in his grave at Victory Point; he is buried in Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh. For many years a skeleton found on the south shore of King William Island was thought to be that of Lieutenant Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte. Recent studies of the bones, when the skeleton was reinterred in the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, suggest that this identification is wrong and that the remains are those of Assistant Surgeon Harry Goodsir.
The expedition was given the best technology available in 1845, including complete steam engines to help propel them through the ice. There was a Daguerrotype apparatus on board and Mr. Beard did come aboard Erebus to take a series of now-famous images of the officers, including Franklin with the flu and two poses of James Fitzjames.
The Navy carefully catalogued the supplies given to the expedition, including the thousands of cans delivered at the last moment. There were over 2000 kilograms of chocolate on board Erebus.
Officers’ pets were surprisingly common on ships. Fitzjames himself came back from China with a pet leopard, and there was a monkey called Jacko and a dog called Neptune on Erebus.
The dock at Greenhithe from which Erebus and Terror departed on May 19, 1845, and the inn in which John and Jane Franklin stayed the night before, both still exist. As the ships sailed on that May morning in 1845, Jane did not come to the dock, but watched from one of the upstairs windows of the inn.
The note found by William Hobson at Victory Point in 1859 is one of the most intensely examined Arctic documents in existence. Despite this, it is still open to interpretation. It was originally deposited by Graham Gore and his sledging party in late May or early June of 1847 as they travelled towards Cape Herschel. This note was written by Fitzjames; it gives the location of the ships, a brief record of their achievements and concludes, All Well.
In this note, Fitzjames wrongly gives the date of wintering at Beechey Island as 1846/47 and not 1845/46. A confusion with dates is a typical early sign of lead poisoning. The note is open to interpretation as well. Depending how you read it, the ships explored Wellington Channel in 1845 or 1846.
In April of the following year, the note was retrieved from the cairn and a second message written around the margin, also in Fitzjames’s hand. It is from this note that we know Sir John died on June 11, 1847, that only 105 of the original 129 remained alive, and that the ships were being deserted. Frustratingly, the note gives no reason for the desertion, or details of what the survivors’ intentions were. After Fitzjames completed the note, Crozier signed it and added and start on tomorrow 26th for Back’s Fish River. Crozier does not state whether the journey south is an attempted escape or a desperate search for fresh food to stem the spread of scurvy.
Undoubtedly, the greatest legacy of the Franklin Expedition was the incredible amount of exploration that was undertaken by the search parties that set out looking for him. They increased European knowledge of the Arctic vastly more than would have been the case had Franklin succeeded in his task.
However, Franklin’s men did make significant discoveries before they died. They sailed up Wellington Channel, which no one before had done, and proved Cornwallis to be an island. They probably discovered what is now called Peel Sound (I have them call it Lady Jane Franklin Strait), and confirmed that King William Island was not attached to Boothia. Lieutenant Gore almost certainly completed the last section of the Northwest Passage by travelling overland to Cape Herschel. There must have been countless other
discoveries and explorations, but the records of these — at least for now — are lost.
Both Parks Canada and a handful of individual researchers are still scouring the Arctic for remains of the two lost ships, Franklin’s grave and any scrap of records that might have been missed. Maybe one day a sunken ship or a grave containing records or diaries will be found on or near King William Island. If so, questions will be answered and a part of the mystery solved. However, after all these years, we can be certain that anything found will pose as many new questions as it answers. There is no danger that Franklin’s mystery will be fully solved or that it will cease to capture our imagination.
Images and Documents
Image 1: A daguerrotype of James Fitzjames carrying his telescope was taken aboard Erebus a few days before the expedition sailed.
Image 2: Bodies surround one of Franklin’s boats after the men left the ships. The painting is titled They forged the last links with their lives.
Image 3: This boat plank, presumed to be from one of the small boats used after the crews abandoned the ships, was found near Payer Point, King William Island, in 2011.
Image 4: This message, written in 1847, with notes up the side added by Fitzjames in 1848, was found by the McClintock Expedition near Victory Point in 1859.
Image 5: This cairn was found on Gore Point, Collinson Inlet. It contained a document similar to the one found by the McClintock Expedition at the Victory Point cairn.
Image 6: The skull of a European was found by Tom Gross near Booth Point, King William Island. Gross has travelled to the Arctic in search of Franklin artifacts for almost a quarter century.
Image 7: Various items from the 1845 Franklin Expedition include sun goggles, a sextant, a watch, a powder flask and a musket.
