LITMIR.BIZ

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and materialistic century.

      When in 1845 the British Government decided to send out an expedition for the northwest passage, all thoughts turned to Franklin. Notable among the naval giants of his day through deeds done at sea and on land, in battle and on civic duty, he was an honored type of the brave and able captains of the royal navy. Following the glorious day of Trafalgar came six years of arctic service – whose arduous demands appear in the sketch, "Crossing the Barren Grounds" – followed by seven years of duty as governor of Tasmania. But these exacting duties had not tamed the adventurous spirit of this heroic Englishman. Deeming it a high honor, he would not ask for the command of this squadron, for the expedition was a notable public enterprise whereon England should send its ablest commander.

      When tendered the command the public awaited eagerly for his reply. He was in his sixtieth year, and through forty-one degrees of longitude – from 107° W. to 148° W. – he had traced the coast of North America, thus outlining far the greater extent of the passage. But his arctic work had been done under such conditions of hardship and at such eminent peril of life as would have deterred most men from ever again accepting such hazardous duty save under imperative orders.

      Franklin's manly character stood forth in his answer: "No service is dearer to my heart than the completion of the survey of the northern coast of North America and the accomplishment of the northwest passage."

      Going with him on this dangerous duty were other heroic souls, officers and men, old in polar service, defiantly familiar with its perils and scornful of its hardships. Among these were Crozier and Gore, who, the first in five and the last in two voyages, had sailed into both the ice-packs of northern seas and among the wondrous ice islands of the antarctic world.

      Sailing May 26, 1845, with one hundred and twenty-nine souls in the Erebus and the Terror, Franklin's ships were last seen by Captain Dennett, of the whaler Prince of Wales, on July 26, 1845. Then moored to an iceberg, they awaited an opening in the middle pack through which to cross Baffin Bay and enter Lancaster Sound.

      Franklin's orders directed that from Cape Walker, Barrow Strait, he should "endeavor to penetrate to the southward and to the westward, in a course as direct to Bering Strait as the position and extent of the ice, or the existence of the land at present unknown, may admit."

      His progress to the west being barred by heavy ice, he sailed up the open channel to the west of Cornwallis Land, reaching 77° N., the nearest approach to the north pole in the western hemisphere that had been reached in three centuries, and exceeded alone by Baffin in 1616, who sailed forty-five miles nearer. Returning to the southward, the squadron went into winter quarters at Beechey Island, 74° 42′ N., 91° 32′ W.

      Knowing the virtue of labor, the captain set up an observatory on shore, built a workshop for sledge-making and for repairs, and surely must have tested the strength and spirit of his crews by journeys of exploration to the north and to the east. It is more than probable that the energy and experiences of this master of arctic exploration sent the flag of England far to the north of Wellington Channel.

      Affairs looked dark the next spring, for three of the men had died, while the main floe of the straits was holding fast later than usual. As summer came on care was given to the making of a little garden, while the seaman's sense of order was seen in the decorative garden border made of scores of empty meat-cans in lieu of more fitting material.

      They had built a canvas-covered stone hut, made wind-proof by having its cracks calked, sailor-fashion, by bunches of long, reddish mosses. This was the sleeping or rest room of the magnetic and other scientific observers, who cooked their simple meals in a stone fireplace built to the leeward of the main hut. Here with hunter's skill were roasted and served the sweet-meated arctic grouse savored with wild sorrel and scurvy grass from the near-by ravines.2

      Looking with eager eyes for all things new, as must those who sailed with Franklin, they saw strange sights – unknown forms of nature to non-arctic sailors. In the days of melting snow, during the quick-coming, swift-flying polar spring, among all things white and colorless, they must have been struck by the high colors of the many little fresh-water pools whose vivid greens and brilliant reds catch and please an eye wearied and dulled by the sombre arctic landscape. Around the edge of these tiny ponds form thick coatings of bright-green, thread-like algæ (fresh-water plants somewhat like kelp or sea-weed). The stones at the bottom of the centre of the pools were incrusted by the red snow plant whose rich colors gave a sense of life to the near-by shallows.

      In such haste Franklin put to sea that the customary rule was not observed of building a cairn in a prominent place and of placing therein a record of operations to date. Doubtless the sea opened suddenly by one of those offshore winds which bring ice-free water as by magic. But they must have left the land for the open sea with the free joy of the sailor, not knowing that fate had been kinder to the three comrades who rested under the arctic sky in the quiet island graves than to those who with brave hearts and high hopes sailed ever onward and onward.

      Soon Franklin sighted Cape Walker, whence he should sail to the west and south as conditions of the land and the ice might permit. From the record recovered from the cairn at Point Victory, he seems to have been forced to go south through Peel Sound into Franklin Strait, where we know that both the flag-ship Erebus and the Terror were beset in the floe-ice of the open sea and were frozen up in the winter pack twelve miles north-northwest of King William Land. This besetment, on September 12, 1846, must have been a grievous blow to Franklin, who was now practically assured of the existence of the northwest passage along the continental coast of North America. He was directly to the north of and only eighty-four miles distant from Cape Herschel, King William Land, which in 1839 had been discovered and visited by that successful explorer, Thomas Simpson, one of the most active of the many energetic agents of the Hudson Bay Company.

      The polar winter, tedious and dreary at any time, must have been of fearful and almost unendurable length to those eager, ambitious men who, helpless and idle in their ice-held ships, knew that they had substantially finished the search which for two hundred and forty-nine years had engaged the heart and hand of the best of the marine talent of England. The winter passed, oh! how slowly, but it ended, and with the welcome sun and warmer air of coming spring there was a cheerful sense of thankfulness that death had passed by and left their circle unbroken and that "all were well."3

      A man of Franklin's type did not let the squadron remain idle, and it is certain that the shores of Victoria and Boothia Peninsula were explored and the magnetic pole visited and definitely relocated.

      The only sledge-party of which there exists a record is that which left the ships on May 24, 1847, consisting of Lieutenant Graham Gore, Mate Des Voeux, and six men. Its small crew, led by a junior officer, indicates that its objects were subordinate to those pursued by other parties. Most probably it was a hunting-party in pursuit of the game of King William Land, which now was a matter of grave urgency to Franklin. The excessive number of empty meat-cans at Beechey Island is believed to be due to the inferior character of the meat which led to much being condemned. The large number of deaths which quite immediately followed Gore's journey may well have been associated with the coming of scurvy from malnutrition.

      At all events, Gore reached Point Victory, King William Land, on May 28, and there built a cairn and deposited the one of the two only records of Franklin's squadron of any kind that have been found.4 It set forth Franklin's discoveries around Cornwallis Land, the wintering at Beechey Island, and the besetment and wintering in the pack of the Erebus and Terror in 70° 05′ N., 98° 23′ W. It ended with the encouraging statement that all were well and Sir John Franklin in command.

      From the Crozier record, to be mentioned later, it is known that evil days followed immediately the favorable conditions set forth by Gore. Sir John Franklin was spared the agony of watching his men and officers perish one by one of exhaustion and starvation, for the record tells us that he died on the ice-beset Erebus, June 11, 1847, fourteen days after the erection of the Point Victory cairn. Death was now busy with the squadron, and within the next eleven months seven officers, including Gore, and twelve seamen perished, probably from scurvy.

      Franklin's

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