Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage

by McGoogan, Ken

  Franklin turned then and headed back up the Mackenzie, with the men “tracking” or towing the boats against the current. The party reached their winter quarters on the evening of September 5. During the past couple of months, the veteran fur trader Peter Warren Dease had supervised construction of Fort Franklin, which comprised several buildings at an old fur-trading site on Great Bear Lake.

  In his famous Character Book, governor George Simpson had assessed Dease in 1832: “Very steady in business, an excellent Indian Trader, speaks several of the Languages well and is a man of very correct conduct and character. Strong, vigorous and capable of going through a great deal of Severe Service but rather indolent, wanting in ambition to distinguish himself in any measure out of the usual course . . . His judgement is sound, his manners are more pleasing and easy than those of many of his colleagues, and altho’ not calculated to make a shining figure, may be considered a very respectable member of the concern.”

  Approximately fifty people settled in for the winter, among them Dease, four naval officers, nineteen British sailors, nine voyageurs, the two Inuit, yet another interpreter, four hunters, ten women and a few children. Over the next few months, the officers taught classes and took meteorological and magnetic readings. The carpenters built a fourth boat, and the men hunted and fished and hauled firewood. Many of the sailors were Highland Scots, and one of them, a bagpiper named George Wilson, found his talents much in demand. The men also played ball hockey, danced and enjoyed occasional puppet shows mounted by George Back.

  By June 22, after much preparation, all the men were out on the water except Dease, who happily stayed behind to maintain Fort Franklin. The men proceeded down the Mackenzie River to the coast, where on July 4, 1826, at Point Separation, Franklin divided the expedition. With the interpreter Ouligbuck and nine other men, Richardson and Kendall went east in two boats, the Dolphin and the Union. They had twenty-six bags of pemmican and enough food to last eighty days. They would proceed to the mouth of the Coppermine River, and return to Fort Franklin by ascending that waterway.

  Franklin and George Back, with fourteen men, including Tattannoeuck, would follow the Arctic coast westward. They hoped to reach Icy Cape, pinpointed by James Cook, and there possibly meet a naval vessel coming from the Pacific under Frederick Beechey. If they succeeded, they would sail home on that ship. If not, they would reverse their outwards journey. For three days, Franklin and his men probed the island maze, seeking a westward channel.

  Then, at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, came the great crisis of the expedition. July 7, 1826. Early afternoon. With fifteen men and two sturdy boats, the Lion and the Reliance, Franklin hit upon a westward channel. He was preparing to set out along the coast when one of his men spotted a “crowd of Esquimaux tents” on an island four kilometres distant. The sailors took out an assortment of gifts and covered everything else.

  They proceeded slowly under sail. About two kilometres out, shallow waters forced a halt. The visitors beckoned to the Inuit to approach. Three canoes set out from the island, followed by seven more, and then an additional brigade of ten. Then came another brigade, and another, and Franklin found himself surrounded by 250 Siglit Inuit in seventy-eight canoes.

  The older men in the first canoe, clearly the leaders, kept their distance until Tattannoeuck managed to assure them, as Franklin wrote, “of our friendly intention.” He explained that the visitors were “seeking a channel for ships”—the Northwest Passage—that would benefit the local people.

  The Siglit Inuit, who would later be superseded in this area by Inuvialuit, expressed delight. In the shallow water, and with the tide at a low ebb, they crowded around. Franklin ordered the two boats seaward to escape the crush, but both ran aground in midstream. Several Inuit tried to help, but “we unluckily overturned one of the canoes with our oars.”

  This was obviously a kayak, because the Inuk was “confined in his seat, and his head under water.” Franklin granted permission to haul him aboard. To warm the man, Tattannoeuck wrapped him in his own greatcoat. The welcome prompted other Inuit to try to come aboard. Two of the leaders communicated that if they were permitted to do so, they would keep the others away. Franklin allowed this.

  George Back, his second-in-command, managed to get the second boat, the Reliance, afloat. He waited nearby. But now a number of Inuit were walking “in the water not up to their knees . . . and striving to get into the boats.” They proceeded to drag the two boats ashore, still smiling and expressing friendly intentions by tossing their knives and arrows into the Reliance. As soon as that first boat reached shore, however, forty men crowded around with knives in their hands. They began plundering the Reliance, and though badly outnumbered, Back and his men fought them for every article.

  Meanwhile, as other Inuit dragged the Lion ashore, the two chiefs in the boat caught hold of Franklin’s wrists, one to each side, “and made me sit between them.” Three times Franklin struggled free, but “they were so strong as to reseat me and had I judged it proper to have fired I certainly could not have done it.”

  Tattannoeuck “was most active on this trying occasion,” Franklin wrote. He jumped into the water “and rushing among [the Inuit] on the shore, endeavoured to stop their proceedings, till he was quite hoarse with speaking.” George Back got the Reliance afloat and ordered his crew “to present their guns.” This “so alarmed the Esquimaux that they ran off in an instant behind the canoes.”

  Franklin then got the Lion afloat. The two boats reached deeper water, but soon ran aground again. A party of eight men approached and invited Tattannoeuck to speak with them. At first, Franklin refused to hear of this. But the interpreter “repeatedly urged that he might be permitted, as he also was desirous of reproving them for their conduct.” Franklin relented.

  But for the courage of Tattannoeuck (Augustus), Franklin’s second overland expedition would almost certainly have ended in disaster. Robert Hood drew this portrait at Fort Enterprise.

  Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

  Tattannoeuck “intrepidly went and a complete explanation took place.” He pointed out, Franklin writes, “that it was entirely forbearance on our part that many of them had not been certainly killed, as we were provided with the means of firing at a long distance. He told them that we were come here entirely for their benefit.” He said that he himself, well clothed and comfortable, was proof “of the advantages to be derived from an intercourse with the whites.” Tattannoeuck went on in this vein with more than forty people around him, Franklin wrote, “and all of them with knives, and he quite unarmed. A greater instance of courage has not been I think recorded.”

  The Siglit said they were sorry, that they had never before seen white men, and that everything looked so new and desirable “that they could not resist the temptation.” They promised that they would never repeat this reception. When Tattannoeuck relayed this information, Franklin asked him to test their sincerity by demanding the restoration of a kettle and a tent. This he did and soon got them back.

  Tattannoeuck remained on shore with the Siglit Inuit and sang with them, delighting them “as they found the words he used to be exactly those used by themselves on occasions of a friendly interview.” The tide began to rise at midnight, with the sun still visible in the sky. Around 1:30 a.m., Franklin and his men were able to set off rowing.

  Without Tattannoeuck, these events at “Pillage Point”—the worst crisis of Franklin’s second expedition—would certainly have ended differently. Franklin and his men might well have shot dead a couple of dozen Inuit before they themselves were overpowered and killed. Imagine the repercussions, the way Britain would have reacted, and give thanks for Tattannoeuck.

  Franklin and his men proceeded westward. Over the next few weeks, battling gales, fog, blizzards and lingering ice, they made slow progress. The expedition met several groups of friendly Inuit, some of whom expressed surprise that they had brought no sleds or dogs so they could travel over the ice. On July 31, the
expedition reached “Demarcation Point,” which then marked the boundary between Russian and British territories, and today indicates the border between Alaska and Yukon.

  The first two weeks of August brought more ice, fog and stiff breezes. With rare exceptions, the men could travel westward only ten or eleven kilometres a day. Finally, on August 16, at a place he called Return Reef, Franklin acknowledged that he would not be able to reach Icy Cape. He was just shy of 149° west longitude. From the mouth of the Mackenzie, he had travelled little more than halfway to Icy Cape. Later he would learn that a boat sent from Beechey’s ship had reached within 260 kilometres of Return Reef.

  A brief sunny spell allowed Franklin to extend his survey twenty-four kilometres more to Beechey Point, but on August 18, he started back towards the Mackenzie. During the ensuing journey, more than once, friendly Inuit told Tattannoeuck that some of the hunters who had assaulted the expedition at Pillage Point intended to attack again, and this time to take what they wanted. They would do so under the guise of seeking to return stolen kettles. Franklin and his men kept a close watch, but did not again encounter the aggressive Siglit.

  On September 21, after a tough slog up the Mackenzie, the expedition reached Fort Franklin. The party had added 630 kilometres to the coastal map. John Richardson had already returned and, as a naturalist, departed to do more scientific research. His eastern detachment, having travelled 2,750 kilometres in seventy-one days, had mapped 1,390 kilometres along the coast between the Mackenzie and the Coppermine. With their Mackenzie River journeying, Franklin and his men had travelled farther, a total of 3,295 kilometres. But they had charted less. The expedition as a whole had mapped 2,018 kilometres of coastline.

  Canadian scholar Richard Davis writes that “Franklin’s contribution as leader of the main expedition . . . should not be eclipsed by Richardson’s greater success.” That accords with hierarchical Royal Navy conventions, certainly, which bestow all accomplishments on the nominal leader of any enterprise. But with Richardson (and Ouligbuck) having charted almost 70 percent of the total, some readers may wonder why Franklin should get all the credit.

  John Franklin left winter quarters in late February 1827. He travelled mostly overland to Great Slave Lake and then to Fort Chipewyan, on Lake Athabasca, where he watched the arrival of spring. On May 26, the annual fur-trade brigade departed for York Factory. A few days later, Franklin set out for Cumberland House, where, for the first time in eleven months, he met up with Richardson.

  The two men agreed that they had virtually completed the discovery of the Northwest Passage—although how, exactly, is hard to say. The southern channel they had begun mapping lacked a south-north link to Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound. Yet, writing to his wife, Richardson articulated the first of several specious claims he would advance: “The search has extended over three centuries, but now that it may be considered as accomplished, the discovery will, I suppose, be committed, like Juliet, to the tomb of all the Capulets, unless something more powerful than steam can render it available for the purpose of mercantile gain.”

  At Norway House, Franklin and Richardson said goodbye to Tattannoeuck, who reportedly grew teary-eyed at the separation. He swore that the two naval officers could count on him, should they ever need him again. The two naval officers carried on to Lachine, near Montreal, and settled accounts with the Hudson’s Bay Company. They proceeded south to New York City and, on September 1, 1827, sailed for home in a packet ship.

  Tattannoeuck made his way from Norway House to Fort Churchill, where he spent three years working as a hunter and interpreter. He then did the same at Fort Chimo, in what is now northern Quebec. In 1833, he heard that George Back was organizing an expedition to search for John and James Clark Ross, who had disappeared into Prince Regent Inlet on a private expedition. Having enjoyed working with Back during the two Franklin expeditions, Tattannoeuck hurried to Fort Churchill, bought supplies—a pound of gunpowder, two pounds of ball shot, one-half pound of tobacco—and set out on foot to join the naval officer at Fort Resolution.

  After travelling for weeks, he reached that location and learned that Back had moved 320 kilometres northeast to Fort Reliance. Tattannoeuck set out to join him there but got lost when a storm came on. He tried to retrace his steps but died at Rivière-à-Jean, just 32 kilometres from Fort Resolution. On hearing what had happened, a saddened George Back wrote: “Such was the miserable end of poor Augustus!—a faithful, disinterested, kind-hearted creature, who had won the regard not of myself only, but I may add of Sir John Franklin and Dr. Richardson also, by qualities, which, wherever found, in the lowest as in the highest forms of social life, are the ornament and charm of humanity.”

  To that, a contemporary reader might add that George Back was forgetting the best reason of all to remember Tattannoeuck. At the mouth of the Mackenzie River, in July 1826, that brave and modest Inuk saved John Franklin and his second overland expedition from almost certain destruction. Tattannoeuck saved the life of Franklin, which meant that, two decades later, that naval officer was still alive when the British Admiralty began casting about for someone to lead yet another expedition to solve the riddle of the Northwest Passage.

  Part Three

  MYSTERIES AND COMPLICATIONS

  10.

  James Clark Ross Locates Magnetic North

  The nineteenth-century search for the Northwest Passage was linked to the drive to solve the mystery of the shifting north magnetic pole. The two quests, geographical and scientific, had been intertwined since the 1300s, when science-minded “philosophers” began wrestling with geomagnetism. They were responding to European mariners who claimed that, when they sailed far to the north, their compasses ceased to be reliable.

  By the 1500s, with the growth of international trade dependent on ships, this problem grew more urgent. Leading thinkers suggested that compass needles might be attracted by Polaris, the pole star, or perhaps by a magnetic mountain or island situated near the North Pole. But given the fixed position of such natural attractors, why would compasses behave so erratically? Perhaps the instruments themselves were faulty?

  In 1538, to test this theory, the chief pilot of the Portuguese navy sailed out of Lisbon on a three-year voyage to the East Indies. João de Castro carried the most advanced magnetic compass yet made, a splendid “shadow instrument” that measured magnetic direction and solar altitude. De Castro made forty-three careful observations, and his wildly fluctuating readings made no sense whatsoever.

  Bizarre theories about the shifting north magnetic pole persisted through the nineteenth century. They were reflected in this fanciful depiction of the 1831 celebration that ensued when James Clark Ross became the first to locate the pole.

  Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library, Special collections.

  A few years after de Castro returned with his bewildering results, the royal cosmographer of Seville, Pedro de Medina, published a widely translated manual insisting that compass variation was the result of inconsistent materials and human error. From his armchair in southern Spain, he declared, reassuringly, that well-made compasses would always point to the geographical North Pole. The manufacturers were at fault.

  Those who built the instruments thought otherwise. Robert Norman, a leading British compass maker, began experimenting. He mounted compass needles on a vertical pivot and so discovered “magnetic dip” or inclination: the needles always dipped below the horizon line. The north-south or bipolar nature of any magnet had been established three centuries before. Now, Norman concluded that the north end of a magnet was pulled downwards by a “point respective” inside the Earth. In 1581, he published this argument in an influential pamphlet called The Newe Attractive. Moving beyond theorizing, it sought to provide mariners with practical solutions to navigational challenges. In this, however, it proved useless.

  Mariners continued blaming their compasses until the early 1600s, when Englishman William Gilbert, physician to Queen Elizabeth I, revolutionized thinking on the
subject. Born in Colchester, England, in 1544, Gilbert was the son of a prosperous “borough recorder” or magistrate. He attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, and graduated as a doctor at age twenty-five. Then he travelled on the continent and practised medicine in London, becoming a fellow of the College of Physicians in 1573, and president of that institution in 1600.

  While ascending to professional eminence, Gilbert devoted his attention to exploring the mysteries of Earth’s magnetism. Writing in Latin, he defined the north magnetic pole as the point where a compass needle points vertically downwards—a definition that still stands. And in 1600, he published De Magnete, usually referred to in English as On the Magnet. This pioneering work relied on physical experiments to make its case. It surfaced at the tail end of the Renaissance, when universities were still teaching that the heavens revolved around the Earth and the natural magnet, or “loadstone,” could attract or move iron because it had a soul.

  De Magnete was revolutionary in both argument and method. By relying mainly on experimentation—on trial, error and discussion—Gilbert pioneered what would become known as the scientific method. He built a “terrella,” a model Earth with a magnet inside. He used this to test compass needles and demonstrate, by analogy, the workings of planetary magnetism. By carving out miniature “oceans” and adding tiny “mountains,” he showed how raised or lowered land masses can cause compass variations. He also designed a “dip circle” to measure magnetic inclination. He hoped that navigators might be able to use this instrument to determine latitude, a practice that would show “how far from unproductive magnetic philosophy is.”