The Terror

⁹ FRANKLIN

Captain Sir John Franklin may have been the only man aboard either ship who remained outwardly serene when spring and summer simply did not arrive in April, May, and June of 1847.

At first, Sir John had not formally announced that they were stuck for at least another year; he didn’t have to. The previous spring, up at Beechey Island, the crew and officers had watched with eager anticipation not only as the sun returned but as the close pack broke up into discrete floes and slushy brash ice, open leads appeared, and the ice gave up its grip. By late May of 1846 they had been sailing again. Not so this year.

The previous spring crew and officers had observed the return of the many birds, whales, fish, foxes, seals, walruses, and other animals, not to mention the greening of the lichen and low heather on the islands they were sailing toward by early June. Not this year. No open water meant no whales, no walruses, almost no seals — the few ring seals they spied were as hard to catch or shoot now as they had been in early winter — and nothing but dirty snow and grey ice as far as the eye could see.

The temperature stayed cold despite the longer hours of sun each day. Although Franklin had the masts fully stepped, the spars reset, the rigging redone, and fresh canvas on both ships brought up by mid-April, there was no purpose to it. The steam boilers remained unfired except to move warm water through the heating pipes. Lookouts reported a solid table of white extending in all directions. Icebergs stayed in place where they had been frozen in place the previous September. Fitzjames and Lieutenant Gore, working with Captain Crozier from Terror, had confirmed from their star sightings that the current was pushing the ice flow south at a pitiful one and a half miles per month, but this mass of ice on which they were pinned had rotated counterclockwise all winter, returning them to where they had begun. Pressure ridges continued to pop up like white gopher burrows. The ice was thinning — firehole teams could saw through it now — but it was still more than ten feet thick.

Captain Sir John Franklin remained serene through all of this because of two things: his faith and his wife. Sir John’s devout Christianity buoyed him up even when the press of responsibility and frustration collaborated to press him down. Everything that happened was, he knew and fervently believed, God’s will. What seemed inevitable to the others need not be in a universe administered by an interested and merciful God. The ice might suddenly break up in midsummer, now less than six weeks away, and even a few weeks of sailing and steaming time would bring them triumphantly to the North-West Passage. They would steam west along the coast as long as they had coal, then sail the rest of the way to the Pacific, escaping the far northern latitudes sometime in mid-September just before the pack ice solidified again. Franklin had experienced greater miracles in his lifetime. Just being appointed commander of this expedition — at age sixty, after the humiliation of Van Diemen’s Land — had been a greater miracle.

As deep and sincere as Sir John’s faith in God was, his faith in his wife was even deeper and sometimes more frightening. Lady Jane Franklin was an indomitable woman… indomitable was the only word for her. Her will knew no bounds and in almost every instance, Lady Jane Franklin would bend the errant and arbitrary ways of the world to the iron command of her will. Already, he imagined, after being out of touch for two full winters, his wife had mobilized her very impressive private fortune, public contacts, and apparently limitless force of will to cajole the Admiralty, the Parliament, and God alone knew what other agencies into searching for him.

This last fact bothered Sir John somewhat. Above all else, he did not want to be “rescued” — approached either overland or by sea during the brief summer thaw by hastily assembled expeditions under the command of whiskey-breath Sir John Ross or the young Sir James Ross (who would be forced out of his arctic retirement, Sir John was sure, by Lady Jane’s demands). That way lay shame and ignominy.

But Sir John remained serene because he knew that the Admiralty was not moved quickly on any matter, not even by such a forceful fulcrum and lever as his wife Jane. Sir John Barrow and the other members of the mythical Arctic Council, not to mention Sir John’s official superiors in the Royal Navy Discovery Service, knew quite well that HMS Erebus and HMS Terror had provisions for three years, longer if severe rations were imposed, not to mention the capability of fishing and hunting game should they ever come in sight of any. Sir John knew that his wife — his indomitable wife — would force a rescue should it come to that, but the terrible and wonderful inertia of the Royal Navy would almost certainly ensure that such a rescue attempt would not be outfitted until the spring and summer of 1848, if not later.

Accordingly, in late May of 1847, Sir John prepared five sledge parties to look over the horizons in each direction, including one instructed to sledge back the way they had come, searching for any open water. They departed on May 21, 23, and 24, with Lieutenant Gore’s party — the crucial one — departing last and sledging toward King William Land to the southeast.

Besides reconnoitering, First Lieutenant Graham Gore had a second important responsibility — leaving Sir John’s first written message cached ashore since the beginning of the expedition.

Here Captain Sir John Franklin had come as close to disobeying orders as he ever had in his Naval lifetime. His instructions from the Admiralty had been to erect cairns and to leave messages in caches for the length of his exploration — should the ships not appear beyond the Bering Strait on schedule, this would be the only way for Royal Navy rescue ships to know in which direction Franklin had headed and what might have caused their delay. But Sir John had not left such a message at Beechey Island, even though he had almost nine months to prepare one. In truth, Sir John had hated that first cold anchorage — had been ashamed of the deaths of the three crewmen by consumption and pneumonia that winter — so he had privately decided to leave the graves behind as the only message he needed to send. With any luck, no one would find the graves for years after his victory of forcing the North-West Passage had been bannered everywhere in the world.

But it had now been almost two years since his last dispatch to his superiors, so Franklin dictated an update to Gore and set it in an airtight brass cylinder — one of two hundred he’d been supplied with.

He personally instructed Lieutenant Gore and Second Mate Charles Des Voeux on where to put the message — into the six-foot-high cairn left on King William Land by Sir James Ross some seventeen years earlier at the westernmost point of his own explorations. It would be, Franklin knew, the first place the Navy would look for word of his expedition, since it was the last landmark on everyone’s maps.

Looking at the lone squiggle of that last landmark on his own map in the privacy of his cabin on the morning before Gore, Des Voeux, and six crewmen set out, Sir John had to smile. In an act of respect seventeen years ago — not to mention an act now generating some minor irony — Ross had named the westernmost promontory along the shore Victory Point and then named the nearby highlands Cape Jane Franklin and Franklin Point. It was as if, Sir John thought, looking down at the weathered sepia map with its black lines and large unfilled spaces to the west of the carefully marked Victory Point, Destiny or God had brought him and these men here.

His dictated message — it was in Gore’s handwriting — was, Sir John thought, succinct and businesslike:

Franklin instructed Gore and Des Voeux to sign the note and fill in the date before sealing the canister and setting it deep inside James Ross’s cairn.

What Franklin hadn’t noticed during his dictation — nor Lieutenant Gore corrected — was that he had given the wrong dates for their winter at Beechey Island. It had been the first winter of 1845–46 in their sheltered ice harbour at Beechey; this year’s terrible time in the open pack ice had been the winter of 1846–47.

No matter. Sir John was convinced that he was leaving a minor message to posterity — possibly to some Royal Navy historian who wished to add an artifact to Sir John’s future report on the expedition (Sir John fully planned to write another book, the proceeds of which would bring his private fortune almost up to that of his wife’s) — and not dictating a report that would be read by anyone in the immediate future.

On the morning that Gore’s sledge party set out, Sir John bundled up and went down onto the ice to wish them Godspeed.

“Do you have everything you need, gentlemen?” asked Sir John.

First Lieutenant Gore — fourth in overall command behind Sir John, Captain Crozier, and Commander Fitzjames — nodded, as did his subordinate, Second Mate Des Voeux, the mate flashing a smile. The sun was very bright and the men were already wearing the wire mesh goggles that Mr. Osmer, Erebus’s purser, had issued them to prevent blindness from the sun’s glare.

“Yes, Sir John. Thank you, sir,” said Gore.

“Plenty of woollies?” joked Sir John.

“Aye, sir,” said Gore. “Eight layers of well-woven good Northumberland sheep shearings, Sir John, nine if one counts the woolen drawers.”

The five crewmen laughed to hear their officers banter so. The men, Sir John knew, loved him.

“Prepared for camping out on the ice?” Sir John asked one of the men, Charles Best.

“Oh, aye, Sir John,” said the short but stocky young seaman. “We have the Holland tent, sir, and them eight wolfskin blanket robes what we sleep on and under. And twenty-four sleeping bags, Sir John, which purser sewn up for us from the fine Hudson’s Bay blankets. We’ll be toastier on the ice than aboard the ship, m’lord.”

“Good, good,” Sir John said absently. He looked to the southeast where King William Land — or Island, if Francis Crozier’s wild theory was to be believed — was visible only as a slight darkening of the sky over the horizon. Sir John prayed to God, quite literally, that Gore and his men would find open water near the coast, either before or after caching the expedition’s message. Sir John was prepared to do everything in his power — and beyond — to force the two ships, as beaten up as Erebus was, across and through the softening ice, if only it would soften, and into the comparative protection of coastal waters and the potential salvation of land. There they might find a calm harbour or gravel spit where the carpenters and engineers could make repairs enough to Erebus — straightening the propeller shaft, replacing the screw, shoring up the twisted internal iron reinforcements and perhaps replacing some of the missing iron cladding — to allow them to press on. If not, Sir John thought — but had not yet shared the thought with any of his officers — they would follow Crozier’s distressing plan from the previous year and anchor Erebus, transfer its diminishing coal reserves and crew to Terror, and sail west along the coast in that crowded (but jubilant, Sir John was sure, jubilant) remaining ship.

At the last moment, the assistant surgeon on Erebus, Goodsir, had implored Sir John to allow him to accompany the Gore party, and although neither Lieutenant Gore nor Second Mate Des Voeux were enthusiastic about the idea — Goodsir was not popular with the officers or men — Sir John had allowed it. The assistant surgeon’s argument for going was that he needed to gain more information on edible forms of wildlife to use against the scurvy that was the primary fear of all arctic expeditions. He was particularly interested in the behavior of the only animal present this odd nonsummer arctic summer, the white bear.

Now, as Sir John watched the men finish lashing their gear to the heavy sledge, the diminutive surgeon — he was a small man, pale, weak-looking, with a receding chin, absurd side whiskers, and a strangely effeminate gaze that put off even the usually universally affable Sir John — sidled up to start a conversation.

“Thank you again for allowing me to accompany Lieutenant Gore’s party, Sir John,” said the little medico. “The outing could be of inestimable importance in our medical evaluation of the antiscorbutic properties of a wide variety of flora and fauna, including the lichens invariably present on the terra firma of King William Land.”

Sir John involuntarily made a face. The surgeon could not have known that his commander had once survived on thin soup made from such lichen for several months. “You’re very welcome, Mr. Goodsir,” he said coolly.

Sir John knew that the slouching young popinjay preferred the title of “Doctor” to “Mister,” a dubious distinction since, although from a good family, Goodsir had trained as a mere anatomist. Technically on par with the warrant officers on board both ships, the civilian assistant surgeon was entitled, in Sir John’s eyes, only to be called Mr. Goodsir.

The young surgeon blushed at his commander’s coolness after the easy banter with the crewmen, tugged at his cap, and took three awkward steps backward on the ice.

“Oh, Mr. Goodsir,” added Franklin.

“Yes, Sir John?” The young upstart was actually red-faced, almost stammering with embarrassment.

“You must accept my apologies that in our formal communiqué to be cached at Sir James Ross’s cairn on King William Land, we referred only to two officers and six men in Lieutenant Gore’s party,” said Sir John. “I had dictated the message prior to your request to accompany the party. I would have written an officer, a warrant officer, an assistant surgeon, and five men had I but known you would be included.”

Goodsir looked confused for a moment, not quite sure of what Sir John was trying to tell him, but then he bowed, tugged at his cap again, mumbled, “Very good, there is no problem, I understand, thank you, Sir John,” and backed away again.

A few minutes later, as he watched Lieutenant Gore, Des Voeux, Goodsir, Morfin, Ferrier, Best, Hartnell, and Private Pilkington diminish across the ice to the southeast, Sir John, under his beaming countenance and outward serenity, actually contemplated failure.

Another winter — another full year — in the ice could undo them. The expedition would be out of food, coal, oil, pyroligneous ether for lamp fuel, and rum. This last item’s disappearance might well mean mutiny.

More than that, if the summer of 1848 were as cold and unyielding as this summer of 1847 fully promised to be, another full winter or year in the ice would destroy one or both of their ships. Like so many failed expeditions before them, Sir John and his men would be fleeing for their lives, dragging longboats and whalers and hastily clabbered-together sledges across the rotten ice, praying for open leads and then cursing them when the sledges fell through the ice and the contrary winds blew the heavy boats back on the pack ice, leads that meant days and nights of rowing for the starving men. Then, Sir John knew, there would be the overland part of any escape attempt — eight hundred miles and more of featureless rock and ice, rivers of constant rapids strewn with boulders each capable of smashing their smaller boats (the larger boats could not get down northern Canada’s rivers, he knew from experience), and native Esquimaux who were hostile more often than not and thieving liars even when they seemed to be friendly.

Sir John continued watching as Gore, Des Voeux, Goodsir, and the five crewmen and single sledge disappeared in the ice glare to the southeast and wondered idly if he should have brought dogs on this trip.

Sir John had never liked the idea of dogs on arctic expeditions. The animals were sometimes good for the men’s morale — at least right up to the point when the animals had to be shot and eaten — but they were, in the final analysis, dirty, loud, and aggressive creatures. The deck of a ship carrying enough dogs to do any good, that is to harness to sledges the way the Greenland Esquimaux liked to do, was a deck filled with incessant barking, crowded kennels, and the constant stench of excrement.

He shook his head and smiled. They’d only brought one dog along on this expedition — the mutt named Neptune — not to mention a small monkey named Jocko — and that, Sir John was sure, was quite enough of a menagerie for this particular ark.

The week after Gore’s departure seemed to crawl for Sir John. One by one the other sledge parties reported in, their men exhausted and frozen and their woolen layers soaked with sweat from the exertion of hauling their sledge across or around countless ridges. Their reports were the same.

From the east toward the Boothia Peninsula — no open water. Not even the smallest lead.

From the northeast toward Prince of Wales Island and the path of their approach to this frozen desert — no open water. Not even the hint of dark sky beyond the horizon which sometimes suggested open water. In eight days of hard sledging the men had not been able to reach Prince of Wales Island, nor even catch a glimpse of it. The ice was more tortured with ridges and icebergs than the men had ever seen.

From the northwest toward the unnamed strait that led the ice stream south toward them around the west coast and southern tip of Prince of Wales Island — nothing seen except white bears and frozen sea.

From the southwest toward the presumed landmass of Victoria Land and the theoretical passage between the islands and the mainland — no open water, no animals except the confounded white bears, hundreds of pressure ridges, so many frozen-in-place icebergs that Lieutenant Little — the officer from HMS Terror whom Franklin had put in command of this particular sledging party, made up of Terrors — reported that it was like trying to struggle west through a mountain range of ice where the ocean should be. The weather had been so bad on the last part of the trip that three of the eight men had seriously frostbitten toes and all eight of them were snowblind to some extent, Lieutenant Little himself completely blind for the last five days and sick with terrible headaches. Little, an old arctic hand, Sir John understood, a man who had gone south with Crozier and James Ross eight years earlier, had to be loaded onto the sledge and hauled back by the few men who could still see well enough to pull.

No open water anywhere in the twenty-five straightline miles or so they had explored — twenty-five straightline miles gained in perhaps a hundred miles of marching around and over obstacles. No arctic foxes or hares or caribou or walruses or seals. Obviously no whales. The men had been prepared to haul their sledge around cracks and small leads in search of real open water, but the surface of the sea, Little reported, his sunburned skin peeling away from his nose and temples below and above the white bandages over his eyes, was a white solid. At the outermost point on their western odyssey, perhaps twenty-eight miles from the ships, Little had ordered the man with the best remaining eyesight, a bosun’s mate named Johnson, to climb the tallest iceberg in their vicinity. Johnson had taken hours to do so, hacking out narrow steps for his feet with his pickaxe and then digging in the cleats the purser had driven through the soles of his leather boots. Once on the top, the seaman had used Lieutenant Little’s telescope to look northwest, west, southwest, and south.

The report was dismal. No open water. No land. Jangles of seracs, ridges, and bergs to the distant white horizon. A few white bears, two of which they later shot for fresh meat — but the livers and heart were unhealthy to humans they’d discovered. The men’s strength was already depleted from hauling the heavy sledge over so many ridges, and in the end they cut out less than a hundred pounds of the gamy, muscular meat to fold in tarps and haul back to the ship. Then they skinned the larger bear for its white fur, leaving the rest of the bears to rot on the ice.

Four of the five scouting expeditions returned with bad news and frostbitten feet, but Sir John waited most anxiously for Graham Gore’s return. Their last, best hope had always been to the southeast, toward King William Land.

Finally, on the third of June, ten days after Gore’s departure, lookouts from high in the masts called down that a sledge party was approaching from the southeast. Sir John finished his tea, dressed appropriately, and then joined the mob of men who’d rushed on deck to see what they could see.

The surface party was visible even by men on deck now, and when Sir John lifted his beautiful brass telescope — a gift from the officers and men of a twenty-six-gun frigate Franklin had commanded in the Mediterranean more than fifteen years earlier — one glance explained the look-outs’ audible confusion.

At first glance all seemed well. Five men were pulling the sledge, just as during Gore’s departure. Three figures were running alongside or behind the sledge, just as on the day Gore left. All eight accounted for then.

And yet…

One of the running figures did not appear to be human. At a distance of more than a mile and glimpsed between the seracs and ice-rubble upthrusts that had once been the placid sea here, it looked as if a small, round, headless but very furry animal was running behind the sledge.

And worse, Sir John could not make out Graham Gore’s distinctive tall figure in the lead nor the dashing red comforter he sported. All of the other figures hauling or running — and certainly the lieutenant would not have been hauling the sledge while his subordinates were fit — seemed too short, too bent, and too inferior.

Worst of all, the sledge seemed far too heavily packed for the return trip — the rations had included a week’s extra canned goods, but they were already three days over the estimated maximum round-trip time. For a minute Sir John’s hopes soared as he considered the possibility that the men had killed some caribou or other large land animals and were bringing in fresh meat, but then the distant forms emerged from behind the last large pressure ridge, still more than half a mile away across the ice, and Sir John’s telescope revealed something horrible.

Not caribou meat on the sledge, but what appeared to be two dead human bodies lashed atop the gear, one man stacked atop the other in a callous fashion that could only mean death. Sir John could now plainly make out two exposed heads, one at each end of the stack, with the head belonging to the body on top showing long white hair the likes of which no man aboard either ship possessed.

They were rigging ropes down the side of the canted Erebus to aid their portly captain’s descent onto the steep ice there. Sir John went belowdecks only long enough to add his ceremonial sword to his uniform. Then, pulling his cold-weather slops on over uniform, medals, and sword, he went up on deck and then over the side — puffing and wheezing, allowing his steward to help him down the slope — to greet whoever or whatever was approaching his ship.