Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage

by McGoogan, Ken

  A friend of Thomas Simpson, Chief Factor John Dugald Cameron, offered the only credible explanation in a letter to James Hargrave of York Factory: “I am sure there must have been a quarrel between him and the others before the work of blood began. Mr. Simpson was a hardy active walker. Anxious to make an expeditious journey, he would have found fault with the slow pace of his fellow travellers.” He would have made harsh remarks, Cameron added, prompting fellows as fiery as himself, and who had no great love for him, to respond in kind. This “would have soon led into quarrels—and from quarrels to the work of death.”

  The man’s bigotry, impatience and egotism proved his undoing. If Thomas Simpson had lived to lead his 1841 expedition, he would have found Rae Strait—a discovery that would almost certainly have precluded the tragedy that engulfed the Franklin expedition. The fact remains that, in concert with Peter Warren Dease, he added roughly six hundred kilometres to the map of the southern channel of the Northwest Passage. He also identified the area where crucial discoveries were yet to be made. And when, in 1854, John Rae embarked on his last great Arctic expedition, he started its crucial final leg from the mouth of the Castor and Pollux River, where Simpson and Dease had left off.

  12.

  What If This Inuk Had Sailed with Franklin?

  In September 1839, when Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson were completing their epic boat journey along the northern coast of the continent, a nineteen-year-old Inuk went looking for a visiting whaling captain. Far to the east of the two Hudson’s Bay Company explorers, on tiny Durban Island off the east coast of Baffin Island, Eenoolooapik had heard that Captain William Penny was asking questions about the whale-rich bay called Tenudiakbeek (Cumberland Sound). Eenoolooapik had grown up in that bay on Qimisuk (Blacklead Island). He had already explored much of the east Baffin coast, which faced towards Greenland, and yearned to venture farther.

  He located Penny, who was rightly worried about the decline of the Arctic whale fishery. Three times, Penny had tried and failed to find this particular bay. Now, Eenoolooapik or “Bobbie,” as he came to be called, convinced the captain that he could lead him directly to it. When Penny sailed for home in the Neptune, Eenoolooapik went with him. He would become the second Inuk to make his mark in Scotland. In Some Passages in the History of Eenoolooapik, Alexander McDonald—a doctor who later sailed with the adventurer—wrote that Penny brought home a “young Esquimaux of considerable intelligence, from whom, he had reason to think, much additional information might be obtained, not only on the subject of the whale fishery, but also concerning the geography of those partially explored regions.”

  This portrait of Eenoolooapik, dressed in the latest British fashion, graces A Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Eenoolooapik, published in 1841. Author Alexander McDonald would soon sail as a doctor with the Franklin expedition.

  Courtesy of the British Library Board.

  The Castle of Mey, built around 1570, is situated on the north coast of Scotland, roughly ten kilometres west of John o’ Groats. Eenoolooapik was denied entry in autumn 1839, but the castle and garden are now open to the public most days between May 1 and September 30. The castle featured in episode eight of the Netflix show The Crown.

  Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  The Neptune landed on the Scottish coast of Caithness, McDonald writes, near an edifice called the Castle of Mey. Eenoolooapik thrilled to the sight, and asked to see inside the building. “This, however, was denied him by the keeper of the mansion,” McDonald continues, “who, with true Cerberus-like obstinacy, refused to allow the party even to walk round it.”

  On the morning of November 9, when Eenoolooapik debarked in Aberdeen, crowds gathered in the harbour to get a glimpse of him. A few days later, on the River Dee, the Inuk gave a display of his kayaking ability. He over-extended himself in the cold water and contracted pneumonia. McDonald, who had graduated from Edinburgh’s Royal College of Surgeons five years after John Rae, declared Eenoolooapik to be suffering “an inflammatory affection of the lungs. It was extremely severe, but it presented no other remarkable peculiarity.”

  For the next few months, the young man hovered on the brink of death. Penny had become aware of his intelligence and ability, and had intended to teach him boat building. This plan fell by the wayside. But even from his sick bed, Eenoolooapik showed a sense of humour. The Aberdeen Herald of November 16, 1839, reported that “one of the men at the Neptune’s boiling-house drew the outline caricature of a broad face, and said, ‘That is an Esquimaux.’ Bobbie immediately borrowed the pencil, and, drawing a very long face, with a long nose, said ‘That is an Englishman.’” Eenoolooapik was a gifted mimic. Having recovered from his illness, he demonstrated by behaving like a born gentleman at the theatre, at dinner parties and at two balls in honour of the Queen’s wedding.

  Captain Penny tried to interest the British Admiralty in a map he prepared with Eenoolooapik of the whale-rich bay. The governing board took no interest in whaling but, remembering the usefulness of John Sakeouse, did send a small sum to assist the Inuk. On April 1840, the young adventurer sailed with Penny and McDonald on the Bon Accord, carrying numerous gifts for distribution, among them a china teacup and saucer for his mother.

  Penny spent the summer whaling, and then, guided by Eenoolooapik, brought the Bon Accord into Tenudiakbeek, which John Davis had called Cumberland Gulf (now Sound). The information Eenoolooapik shared with Penny would transform the Arctic whaling fishery, and launch the colonization by Scottish whalers of Baffin Island.

  Meanwhile, McDonald wrote of his friend Eenoolooapik: “If he had ever entertained any thought of returning to Britain with us, it was now evident, from the manner in which he employed himself, that he had abandoned such intention.” Eenoolooapik married and settled at Tenudiakbeek. For several years, he traded baleen with Penny. In these years, too, among his own people, he became a renowned storyteller.

  As such, he had still more impact on the story of Arctic discovery, mainly because he profoundly influenced one of his younger sisters: Tookoolito. Inspired by his example, she set out to master the English language and, after sojourning in England, would return to the Arctic to become one of the most crucial figures in determining what happened to the lost expedition of John Franklin. Eenoolooapik died of consumption in the summer of 1847. A brief biography of him, the first ever written about an Inuk, had appeared in 1841. Four years after that, its author, Alexander McDonald, sailed on the Franklin expedition as an assistant surgeon on the Terror.

  The question arises: What if? What if, when Penny and McDonald returned to Britain on the Bon Accord, Eenoolooapik had come back with them? Had he been available to the Admiralty, then he, too, would almost certainly have sailed in 1845 with John Franklin. Would his presence have made a difference? Some of the final survivors interacted with Inuit hunters. What if Eenoolooapik had been present to communicate with them?

  13.

  Lady Franklin Sends Her Husband to Conquer the Passage

  In 1843, with Eenoolooapik unavailable to the Royal Navy, several influential figures submitted a proposal to the British Admiralty for “an attempt to complete the discovery of a Northwest Passage.” Designed by John Barrow and Edward Sabine, the presentation struck a nationalistic chord, alluding to Russia in highlighting “the unwisdom of yielding the palm of discovery to other nations active in the North.” It also stressed “the importance of such a voyage for the completion of the magnetic survey of the globe.”

  This last provision gained the enthusiastic support of the Royal Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The Society stressed that time was of the essence, because an international cooperative program of simultaneous geomagnetic observation—an initiative that had evolved out of the work of Alexander von Humboldt—was nearing its end. The association underscored the importance of building a global network of permanent magnetic observatories—one would be established in Toronto—and welcomed the prospect of more obs
ervations near the north magnetic pole.

  Edward Sabine, the prime mover behind British involvement in the Magnetic Crusade, won over the Admiralty with his argument that the instruments and methods of observation had improved greatly in recent years. He pointed out that the only magnetical observations obtained from the Arctic were a quarter of a century old, and not nearly as reliable as could now be taken. And, he concluded, according to the Admiralty, “the passage through the polar Sea could afford the most important service that now remains to be performed towards the completion of the magnetic survey of the globe.”

  In a 2009 biography, Royal Navy historian Andrew Lambert uses this idea to explain how Sir John Franklin gained the leadership of the 1845 Northwest Passage expedition. He insists that “magnetic science dominated the genesis and direction of the Franklin expedition,” adding that “without a magnetic impulse there would have been no arctic mission.” Franklin had been “at the heart of the magnetic crusade from the outset.” He was “not an explorer, a traveller or a discoverer,” Lambert writes, but “a navigator.” He argues that Franklin gained command “because he had impeccable credentials, extensive Arctic experience, proven leadership and above all because he was a first-rate magnetic scientist.”

  The Admiralty, in its instructions to Franklin and others, reiterated that “the effecting of a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific is the main object of this expedition.” Yet Lambert is right to insist that the expedition’s secondary purpose was geomagnetic observation. In Science and the Canadian Arctic, Trevor Levere traces the formulation and advance of that objective. And Franklin did work, as Levere writes, “with the instrument maker Robert Were Fox to develop and promote an improved instrument for measuring magnetic dip and force.”

  It is interesting to note, however, given Lambert’s insistence that John Franklin was a master of geomagnetic science, that Edward Sabine opposed his appointment to lead the 1845 expedition. Although he was a friend of Franklin, and had travelled in Ireland with him, Sabine wanted James Clark Ross to assume the leadership. As leader of the Magnetic Crusade, he argued against appointing Franklin. Instead, he fought long and hard for Ross, and strove to make him change his mind. How, then, did Franklin gain command of the prestigious expedition? The answer can be stated in two words: Lady Franklin.

  In Great Britain, a woman wed to a knighted male could take on the courtesy title of “Lady,” provided she coupled it with her husband’s surname. As the wife of John Franklin, Jane Griffin could style herself either Lady Franklin or Jane, Lady Franklin, but not, properly speaking, Lady Jane or Lady Jane Franklin—though today these formulations are popular. The young lady in question, who in 1818 had shown avid interest in the Royal Navy search for the Northwest Passage, had taken charge of the star-crossed Franklin in November 1828, when she married him.

  John Franklin had expressed his interest in “Miss Jane” late the previous year, when as a recent widower he returned from his second overland expedition. After interviewing Franklin, Jane’s father summoned his daughter to his study. How much did she know of this Captain John Franklin, who had, to his astonishment, inscribed the name “Griffin” on the map of the Arctic? And who had, it would appear, returned from that distant region with the intention of paying her court?

  Picture John Griffin striding around his study with his hands clasped behind his back. He had taken the liberty of making enquiries. John Franklin, born in 1786—five years before Jane—came of modest circumstances. His father had kept a shop in the market town of Spilsby, Lincolnshire. The ninth of twelve children, and lacking any obvious way forward, Franklin had joined the Royal Navy at twelve. With the husband of an older sister, Captain Matthew Flinders, he had sailed on a voyage of discovery to Australia.

  This sketch is based on a portrait done in Geneva when Jane Griffin was twenty-three. It is held in the Emmet Collection of Manuscripts at the New York Public Library.

  Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

  Then, after serving at the battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar, he had turned to Arctic exploration. For his service in the North, Captain Franklin would soon be awarded a knighthood. If Jane were to marry him, she would become Lady Franklin, gaining thereby both prestige and the freedom she coveted. On a previous occasion, he well remembered, Jane had demurred when a widower had offered to make her a lady—but that suitor, although wealthy and distinguished, had been far older. With Franklin, the difference was a mere five years. Presumably she could see the advantages of becoming Lady Franklin?

  Jane Griffin had by this time rejected several proposals of marriage. Now in her mid-thirties, she might almost be considered a spinster—a deplorable situation. Franklin offered her a chance to trade her inherited wealth for increased status and carte blanche entrée into upper-echelon drawing rooms around the world. By making her Lady Franklin, this projected marriage would give her the freedom she had always craved—a range and autonomy approaching that enjoyed by men of her station.

  As well, because she had befriended Franklin’s first wife, Jane Griffin had discerned a special quality in the widower. Unlike the vast majority of middle-class British males, this man could take instruction from a woman. He had grown up with several older sisters, all of whom inevitably knew more than he did, and some of whom almost certainly bossed him around. As a result, Franklin could be guided by a powerful female. To a strong-minded, adventurous woman of this era, few things could be more attractive. On November 5, 1828, in the picturesque village of Stanmore, roughly twenty-five kilometres from her home in the heart of London, Miss Jane Griffin, one month shy of thirty-seven, married Captain John Franklin, forty-two.

  The honeymoon did bring the occasional shock. While celebrating their marriage in France, the newlywed Franklins were welcomed at court by King Louis Philippe, an old friend of Jane’s uncle. There, an aristocratic French woman openly expressed her astonishment at the size and rotundity of the famous explorer, who already, at five foot six, weighed 210 pounds. Jane Franklin could scarcely believe the woman’s rudeness. But never mind. In April 1829, when Franklin received his knighthood, she became Jane, Lady Franklin, and at last the world lay open before her.

  With Arctic exploration at a low ebb, Jane Franklin encouraged her husband to accept the captaincy of the Rainbow, a twenty-eight-gun frigate assigned to patrol the Mediterranean. That gave her reason to visit him. She left England on August 7, 1831, bringing with her a maid, a manservant and a four-posted iron bedstead that functioned like a tent. With these, after visiting Franklin at the naval base in Gibraltar, she went travelling around the Mediterranean. Over the next three years, Lady Franklin rode a donkey into Nazareth, sailed a rat-infested boat up the River Nile and explored the Holy Land with a handsome missionary given to serenading her by moonlight. I detail her adventuring in Lady Franklin’s Revenge.

  In October 1834, when finally she rejoined Franklin in England, his Mediterranean mission long since completed, she found him languishing as just another naval officer on half-pay. John Barrow of the Admiralty had sent the captain’s former subordinate, George Back, to lead a search expedition for John Ross and James Clark Ross, who had disappeared into the Arctic. The Rosses had resurfaced to widespread astonishment in October 1833, but by then George Back had reached North America. Naturally, he proceeded to the Arctic coast. Late in 1835, having charted the Great Fish River (later called the Back River), he arrived back in London and became the toast of the town.

  This former subordinate had recently begun suggesting that the Admiralty could complete the survey of the northern coast of the continent with one more naval expedition—led by himself, of course. After sailing through Hudson Strait to Wager Bay, he proposed to haul boats overland to the west coast of Chantrey Inlet. He and his men would then make their way westward to Point Turnagain. Nobody in England, not even the Arctic experts, appreciated the difficulties of such an undertaking—the distances involved, the harshness of the terrain.

  But the proposal r
esembled one Franklin had advanced a decade before, and at Jane’s urging, he pointed this out. He lobbied hard to gain the looming commission. Early in March 1836, however, rumours began swirling that George Back had carried the day. And soon enough, Lord Glenelg, the recently appointed secretary of state for War and the Colonies, confirmed the worst: George Back would lead the next Arctic sortie. To assuage Franklin’s disappointment, Glenelg offered him a posting to Antigua, an island in the Caribbean, where the captain could serve as lieutenant governor. This would put him in the diplomatic line, as Glenelg said, and might lead to another appointment. Nor would it harm his naval prospects.

  In Dover, where she was visiting relatives, Jane Franklin analyzed the offer. Was she prepared to live on a pittance in Antigua, a tiny island in the southern group of the British West Indies? Antigua was one of several Leeward Islands, which collectively had their own governor-in-chief. Sir John would therefore be a subordinate—or, as she put it to him in naval terms for clarity’s sake, “little more than first lieutenant of a ship of the line.” She told Franklin to refuse the offer, and to make it clear, politely, that he regarded such a position as beneath him.

  John Franklin did precisely as Jane instructed. Lord Glenelg graciously accepted his refusal, admitting that, official rank aside, Franklin enjoyed “a high station in public regard and in private society.” Glenelg was an eminent colonial administrator who, as president of the Board of Trade, had altered the constitution of the government of India. Yet he understood only vaguely that by marrying Jane Griffin, Franklin had acquired powerful allies.