The Lost Expedition
Finding safe and quick passages for shipping routes during the 19th century was key to helping businesses thrive as well as making trade quicker and easier. One of the hardest trade routes for the British Empire was the Northwest Passage. A shipping route that was proving difficult to navigate due to the fact that it was in arctic waters and it was incredibly perilous to travel because of ice flows.
The Northwest Passage is in the arctic waters off of the Queen Elizabeth Islands and is located near Victoria and Baffin Island. The Franklin Expedition was sent in order to find a safe route through the Northwest Passage for ships to have a safe passage. Captain Sir John Franklin was given command of the expedition. He was given a crew of 24 officers and 110 men, along with two ships: Erebus and HMS Terror. The only members of the entire crew who had any Arctic experience were Franklin, Francis Crozier (Captain of HMS Terror), and two other officers. The ships and crews were given their provisions: three years worth of preserved meat in hastily soldered tin cans.
The Erebus and HMS Terror set sail from England in May of 1845; the expedition would last be seen in July of that year. By 1846 three crew members had died of tuberculosis while the crew spent the winter on Beechey Island. In September of 1846, the ships became stuck within the ice of King William Island, the crew then wintered on this island until 1847. One of the notes that were recovered from the expedition reported that everyone was well in May of 1847. Sir John Franklin had died in June of 1847, the ships did not thaw from the ice and this meant the crew had to spend another winter on the island. In 1848, the crew abandoned the expedition and had lost 24 men by April of 1848. The rest of the crew soldiered on, between that moment and afterwards, it is not known what had happened. The local Inuit reported to have seen men walking north from the ships.
What is known is that all 128 men on the expedition had died. The interesting bit is that during the subsequent searches and excavations, the discovery of what the men had died of was not what men would have died from in these kinds of conditions. Some of the autopsies performed on the bodies in the 20th century showed signs of tuberculosis, hypothermia, pneumonia, scurvy and astronomically high levels of lead. The reason that the lead levels were so high was due to the tinned meat they had with them on the ship. The soldering on the tins was shoddy and the lead from the solder would drip onto the food. This shows that even if they had managed to find rescue, they would eventually have died from lead poisoning. The most gruesome discovery was that some of the bones had saw marks on them leading to the assumption that at some point the other survivors had resorted to cannibalism.
A safe route through the Northwest Passage was found later on, and is still in use today. So there you have it, exploration at that time was incredibly dangerous and risky, but without these explorers it would be years before discoveries would be made.
Sir John Franklin’s expedition to find the Northwest Passage was not his first foray into Canadian waters. He was tasked with finding the Northwest Passage and in 1819 made his first of three expeditions to find it. The 1819 expedition is known as the Coppermine Expedition.
The entire expedition was plagued with problems from the very beginning. Franklin was given vague instructions on what he should do after reaching the coast of the Coppermine River. He was told to head towards Repulse Bay and meet up with Sir William Parry (another explorer charged with finding the Northwest Passage only by sea) and from there either mapping the coastline of the Coppermine and Mackenzie river or heading for completely unchartered territory.
The problems arose further since the expedition was to rely heavily on outside help mostly from the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company both of whom were feuding with each other. To further elevate the problems, Franklin was only given three additional Navy personnel. It was up to Franklin and his crew to enlist men along for the journey. Most of the men they encountered were trappers and fur traders and most of them wanted nothing to do with the expedition. Additionally, some of these men had loyalties to each of the feuding companies and didn’t want to help the other side, so to speak. Their Indian guides did not know the area they were exploring too well, and also would not set foot on Inuit territory. The winters came early and were more cold than usual which meant for poor hunting and scarce supplies. Once they were left on their own in Inuit territory, they discovered that they had to turn back due to poor conditions and low rations. Throughout the entire ordeal, 11 of the 20 crew members had died. The starvation was so severe that Franklin and some of his crew boiled and ate their shoe leather. Franklin was welcomed home as a hero and promoted to a Captain upon his return to England. The crew’s harrowing story entranced the citizens and Franklin from then on was known affectionately as “the man who ate his boots.”