Captain Francis Crozier

by Michael Smith

  The spacious holds of Erebus and Terror were stocked with supplies and equipment for three years, including 6 tons (over 6,000 kilograms) of tinned meat and almost 7 tons (7,000 kilograms) of vegetables. Although the navy was no nearer to identifying the real cause of scurvy, the ships took the customary stocks of fresh lemon juice in the hope of combating the ailment.

  As with earlier expeditions, the comfort of the officers and crew for the long journey was highly important. One feature handed down from the original Parry expeditions was the Sylvester heating system that had kept parties warm through many Arctic winters, though Crozier found Sylvester, the inventor, a frustrating man to handle.

  Crozier, a practical and uncomplicated character, was irritated by the professorial Sylvester, who was long on philosophy and short on practice. Crozier wrote to Ross that

  Mr Sylvester seems a very strange fellow … He talked a great deal in theory but I begged him to fit us as near as possible as he did before. He will require a great deal of stirring up.4

  Crozier’s attention to detail was mirrored in the selection of the men. He was adamant that only straightforward, proficient seamen would be suitable candidates for a long, challenging voyage where men would be expected to place their lives in the hands of their comrades and forced to endure months of close confinement with each other. ‘We do not want a philosopher’, he once said.

  Crozier’s choice of deputy, his first lieutenant, was Archibald McMurdo, a respected, reliable and experienced officer who had been north with George Back in 1836 and who had recently won promotion for outstanding courage in saving the crew of a shipwrecked whaler from hostile natives in southern seas.

  Ross turned to an experienced former shipmate, Edward Bird, as his second-in-command on Erebus. Bird, a friend of Crozier and Ross for almost twenty years, had ventured on three Arctic voyages with Parry and was of established quality.

  Despite Crozier’s best efforts, the suitability of the ordinary seamen was a concern. About two-thirds of Crozier’s men on Terror were on their first naval posting, though some were drawn from the whaling fleets and had spent time in the ice. Joseph Hooker, the surgeon, noted that the men on Terror were ‘much inferior’ to those on Erebus.

  Curiously, none of the 128 men bound for the Antarctic – 64 on each ship – was a qualified scientist, even though the expedition’s principal aim was scientific. Ross was confident that, after years in the Arctic, he and Crozier were suitably qualified to handle tasks such as magnetic calculations, water samples and astronomical readings.

  Nevertheless, as preparations neared completion, Crozier hurried to Dublin to consult the distinguished Professor Humphrey Lloyd at Trinity College. Lloyd, one of the world’s leading authorities on magnetism, offered his valued advice and personally assisted Crozier in choosing the instruments the expedition would take south.

  Crozier bought the appliances at his own expense and arranged for the precious cargo to be shipped to London a few weeks before departure. What should have been a simple procedure, however, was soon entangled in bureaucratic red tape and it took an irritating struggle with Treasury officials to ensure he was fully reimbursed.

  The frustrating diversion made Crozier even more eager to sail. In a letter to Ross, he wrote: ‘I wish you were down [at Chatham] and we were off, clear of old commodores and dockyard nonsense.’5

  Another distraction was a visit from their former commander, Sir Edward Parry, who had been knighted after retiring from active exploration and was now in charge of the Admiralty’s tentative programme to develop steam-powered vessels for the navy. Although Parry’s reputation had been built entirely on expertise with sail, he was now better placed than anyone to appreciate the value of motorised vessels in navigating the ice. No doubt he pondered the wisdom of sending sailing ships into unknown Antarctic waters without the back-up of auxiliary power.

  All such considerations were swept aside as the ships, helped by favourable winds, sailed down the River Thames on 25 September 1839 on the first leg of the long journey to the Antarctic. But within a few hours of departure, the vulnerability of relying on sail was underlined when the two vessels were stopped in their tracks by stormy gusts of wind.

  chapter ten

  Flirting with Love

  Erebus and Terror departed home shores without any of the fuss or fanfare that had surrounded Parry’s voyages. The mood at home was far more restrained. After two decades of effort, polar exploration was no longer so fashionable.

  Yet fuss and fanfare would have been appropriate since Erebus and Terror were to enter the least-known waters on earth. People knew more about the moon from looking through telescopes than was known about Antarctica. Only a few men had actually seen the continent and no one had yet set foot on the mainland.

  Antarctica has always occupied a curious place in the imagination. The continent appeared on maps centuries before anyone actually saw it. Greek philosophers as early as the sixth century BC insisted that a vast southern land existed at the bottom of the world because of the need to ‘balance’ the weight of the known lands in the northern hemisphere. As the discoveries in the north lay beneath the constellation of the Bear – Arktos – the counterbalancing lands in the south were called the opposite: Antarktikos.

  The first modern attempt to locate the great unknown land – referred to as Terra Australis Incognita – was made in 1773 when Captain James Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle. Cook took his small sailing ships, Resolution and Adventure, to within 75 miles (120 kilometres) of the continent, but never saw land. Retreating to warmer waters, he claimed the desolate region had nothing to offer – an opinion that became the accepted wisdom at the Admiralty for more than half a century. Others were more confident, driven by the promise of untold wealth from the southern seas teeming with whales. Entrepreneurial whalers literally went to the end of the earth to make money in the Southern Ocean. They were little bothered about geographical discovery, even when their hunting trips took them into uncharted seas.

  Serious exploration began again after 1819 with a flurry of voyages by some outstanding navigators, including William Smith, Edward Bransfield, James Weddell, Nathaniel Palmer and Thaddeus von Bellingshausen. In keeping with the continent’s enigmatic aura, there was some dispute about who first saw Antarctica. Bellingshausen, an Estonian in the Russian navy, sighted land on 27 January 1820 off what is today known as Dronning Maud Land, but the self-effacing sailor did not bother to record his sighting. Bransfield, the Irish-born naval lieutenant, saw the tip of the Antarctic peninsula just three days later from his ship, Williams.

  Fresh discoveries followed, particularly as seal and whale ships penetrated further south in search of new hunting grounds. But only a small fraction of the coastline was mapped by the time Erebus and Terror sailed south in 1839 and no one, as yet, had stepped ashore on the mainland.

  Britain had traditionally shown little official interest in the Antarctic, partly because of Barrow’s obsession with the North West Passage and North Pole and partly because the Admiralty still clung to Cook’s belief that Antarctica was a useless, frozen wasteland. But the mood changed dramatically in the mid-1830s as news reached London that American and French expeditions were heading south.

  The American lieutenant Charles Wilkes came to London in 1837 to buy navigational and astronomical instruments for his proposed Antarctic voyage and the Admiralty also learned that France had approved a plan by Admiral Jules Sebastian-Cesar Dumont D’Urville to probe the newly discovered waters of the Weddell Sea. Both expeditions were also intent on locating the South Magnetic Pole and in Britain there was mounting fear that the country was falling behind in the magnetic sphere. France had made great strides and the Admiralty – assessing the impact of building new ships from steel – was anxious to ensure an unwavering compass needle.

  Fresh impetus came when the British Association for the Advancement of Science – founded around the time Ross located the North Magnetic Pole in 1831 – set up a committee
to solve the mystery of how the earth’s magnetic fields affected navigation. One of the earliest conclusions was that large gaps existed in magnetic readings in southern waters and by the mid-1830s there was a growing clamour to mount an Antarctic expedition with the objective of establishing a series of observatories in latitudes between Cape Horn and Australia.

  The committee, whose membership included Ross and Professor Lloyd, met in Dublin in 1835 to demand that the government launch an Antarctic expedition to find the South Magnetic Pole and to conduct a major programme of observations that would be co-ordinated with readings taken by other European countries. By 1839, with the French and American expeditions already underway, the government had finally approved the scheme and Erebus and Terror were made ready by the eager Crozier.

  The journey south began uneasily and despite an impressive Arctic track record, the slower-moving Terror proved something of a liability. The vessel lacked speed in open seas and could not keep pace with Erebus, which frequently had to take in sails to enable Terror to catch up. As Crozier struggled with his ship, progress was further impeded by heavy storms and the near-loss of three crewmen as the expedition passed through the Bay of Biscay.

  Terror eventually anchored at Madeira, the expedition’s first rendezvous point, four days later than Ross. Both Crozier and Ross cursed the slow progress made by the plodding Terror. ‘The Terror has been a sad drawback to us, having every now and then to shorten sail for her’, Ross wrote.

  Crozier acknowledged that the ships were moving far slower than anticipated. In a letter to his sister Sarah, he warned that ‘our scientific friends in England’ would be disappointed at the expedition’s progress. ‘But little do they know the heavy sailing ships we have’,1 he added.

  Christmas was spent on the high seas and the isolated island of St Helena was reached at the end of January 1840, more than twenty years since Crozier’s first visit there. The island had been chosen as the location for a permanent magnetic observatory and a site was found near the former home of the exiled emperor Napoleon.

  Crozier assumed much responsibility for the magnetic work and spent long periods engrossed in the painstaking mathematics of the readings. ‘I think on my return I shall be fully qualified to teach accounts in a county seminary’, he joked to Sarah in his letter. Unfortunately, the island’s volcanic rocks interfered with the magnetic measurements and the observatory was a disappointment.

  The ships ran into more thick weather rounding the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and all were disappointed that conditions did not improve as they entered the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. By mid-May – following weeks of treacherous weather – the two ships stood alongside each other close to Îles Kerguelen, the archipelago of around 300 islets which lies in the so-called Roaring Forties about halfway between Africa and Australia.

  Reaching the Kerguelens in the wretched weather was perilous. Gales lashed the vessels as they approached and Erebus and Terror struggled for days to enter the shelter of Christmas Harbour, a natural bowl-shaped haven on the main Kerguelen island. William Cunningham, a marine sergeant aboard Terror, described the area as the ‘most dangerous place I was ever in’. He added, ‘If the weather is always like this off the coast of Kerguelen’s head, I don’t care how soon I am clear of it’.

  Gales blew for 45 of the 68 days spent at Christmas Harbour and the men from Erebus and Terror enjoyed only three days of respite from the heavy rain and driving snow storms. Men were blown off their feet by the fury of the wind and on occasions the ships were tipped over onto their beam ends. Ross declared it a ‘most dreary and disagreeable’ spot, while, on shore, Crozier struggled to erect the observatory under the horrendous conditions. On 27 May, Cunningham wryly reported ‘a hurricane with lulls for a few minutes’. It was, he admitted, ‘very trying’ for Crozier and the other officers coping with the observatory and other scientific work.

  Two days later, the wind blew so fiercely that it was impossible to send boats ashore with provisions for Crozier. Cunningham reported that the officers were ‘very much fatigued’ when they finally managed to return to the ships and he concluded that they ‘seemed anxious not to go again’.

  Erebus and Terror left the Kerguelens on 20 July with few regrets and an accompanying gale. Within hours of sailing, the ships lost sight of each other in a swirling storm and days later a fatal hurricane struck the vessels. Boatswain Roberts of Erebus was lost overboard at the height of the storm and four seamen were almost drowned in a desperate attempt to save him.

  Crozier and Ross were separated for three weeks during the tempestuous journey through the Roaring Forties to Van Diemen’s Land (renamed Tasmania in 1855). Winds surged to force ten (up to 63 mph/101 km/h), and sails were ripped to shreds in the incessant storms that left the ships rolling and pitching at crazy angles. Crozier, in the logbook of Terror, noted ‘Squalls increasing in violence’. But to the surprise of all, the slower-moving Terror managed to reach Hobart, the island’s capital, on 15 August, some 24 hours before Ross brought Erebus into port.

  After a brief reunion on Erebus, Crozier and Ross went ashore to Hobart’s Government House to meet the lieutenant governor – their old friend and an Arctic veteran, Sir John Franklin. Franklin was delighted to see his naval comrades, who brought a welcome reminder of home and a rare opportunity to mix with like-minded souls. He was badly in need of the relief provided by the visit of Crozier and Ross.

  Van Diemen’s Land was an unpleasant, half-forgotten penal colony on the fringe of the Empire. Over 17,000 of the island’s population of 42,000 were shackled convicts and many of the free citizens were former prisoners. In the words of one commentator, Van Diemen’s Land was ‘a cage for the vultures of mankind’.

  To Franklin and his feisty, strong-willed wife, Lady Jane Franklin, it was a hellhole. To round things off, almost everyone in the suffocating, reactionary frontier community disliked the Franklins, who were regarded as outsiders and dangerous liberals.

  Lady Franklin, an assured, unconventional woman in her late forties, simply grated. ‘A man in petticoats’, one disgruntled observer complained. They found her aggressive and disconcertingly radical, especially when she defied convention by straying into unwelcome areas, such as her attempts to improve the island’s mediocre schools or to highlight the miserable living conditions of the island’s unfortunate women prisoners.

  John Franklin was a square peg in a round hole. He was a genial and inoffensive man who had very little in common with the hostile colonialists or the wretched convicts and often found himself at the mercy of wily civil servants in the Colonial Office. He was uncomfortable with the finery and pomp that went with the role of governor and had only drifted into the job because of his ambitious wife’s insistence he attain a position of substance, and because the Admiralty – still struggling to cope with the surplus of naval officers – could not find him a suitable commission. He was a sailor, not a diplomat nor a jailer. Parry, normally reserved and circumspect, had tried to prevent Franklin taking up the post. Regarding it as a backward step, he warned that ‘the Australian colonies are not fit for any gentleman to govern’.

  The coming of Crozier and Ross brought welcome respite to the Franklin household. According to Lady Franklin:

  The arrival of Captains Ross and Crozier added much to Sir John’s happiness … They all feel towards one another as friends and brothers and it is the remark of people here that Sir John appears to them quite in a new light, so bustling and frisky and merry with his new companions.2

  Crozier and Ross spent three months at Hobart, indulging in a mixture of hard work for the expedition and frequent partying. Their primary task by day was to build an observatory and prepare the ships for the first leg of the journey into the icy waters of Antarctica. Their nights were filled with a hectic round of parties, balls, dinners and other social get-togethers orchestrated by the grateful Franklins.

  Crozier also found love. He and Ross had been invited to lodge with
the Franklins at Government House and it was there that Crozier fell deeply in love with Sophia Cracroft, Franklin’s pretty young niece.

  Sophia Cracroft – known as Sophy – was the fascinating, intelligent, twenty-four-year-old daughter of a prominent Lincolnshire gentleman farmer, Thomas Cracroft and Isabella Franklin, John Franklin’s younger sister. A contemporary described her as ‘a young lady of beauty and fortune’. She was one of six children who sprang from an old-established Lincolnshire family with roots back to the thirteenth century and who were long-time associates of the Franklins. When her father Thomas Cracroft died in 1824, the nine-year-old Sophy was immediately taken under the wing of the Franklins. John Franklin was very attached to his sister Isabella and Sophy fitted easily into the family circle. While he was in the Arctic, it was Isabella who cared for Eleanor, Franklin’s only daughter from his first, brief, marriage.

  Equally, Sophy had become good friends with Jane, John Franklin’s second wife, long before their marriage in 1828. Despite a significant age difference – Jane Franklin was 24 years older than Sophy Cracroft – the two became very close. Jane, who was nearly 37 years old when she married John Franklin, had no children of her own and Sophy was, perhaps, the daughter she never had. In 1837, Sophy Cracroft, still only twenty years of age, had travelled with the Franklin entourage when her uncle John had taken up the post of lieutenant governor of Van Diemen’s Land.

  Sophy and Jane became inseparable as Sophy matured into full womanhood and for the next four decades the lives of Sophy Cracroft and Jane Franklin became inextricably interwoven. While Jane Franklin’s life was often tested by setbacks and disaster, the one constant factor was the reassuring presence and unwavering support of the resourceful, devoted and unquestioning Sophy Cracroft.