The Arctic Grail Page 11
Something had obviously gone wrong on that previous and tragic expedition, although there isn’t a whisper of it in either Franklin’s or Richardson’s accounts. There Back comes through as a steadfast companion and an extraordinary traveller. After all, he had made that twelve-hundred-mile snowshoe trip in the winter of 1820-21 to bring provisions from Fort Chipewyan to Fort Enterprise, proudly recording that he had succeeded beyond Franklin’s most optimistic expectations. More, he had saved his starving leader’s life by pushing Akaitcho and his Indians to bring help to the beleaguered party. At the time of Franklin’s second expedition he was twenty-nine years old, with two Arctic endeavours behind him and a strong war record. (He had been a prisoner of the French for five years.)
But he did not fit the Franklin pattern of the even-tempered, morally upright explorer. He was a boaster; he was vain; he could be rude and peremptory; and he had an eye for the native women – there was that nasty contretemps with young Hood over the beguiling Greenstockings. That alone would have been enough to offend his pious leader. Back was also indiscreet; he talked too much, and Franklin would not have cared for that.
Yet Franklin had no intention of making a public issue over what he considered George Back’s failings. One of the reasons why the British expeditions into the Arctic appear so tranquil when compared with the stormy American attempts was that the Americans told all, or almost all, while the British closed ranks and kept any hint of trouble out of their journals. Back got the job only because Franklin’s first choice died unexpectedly. He remained a controversial figure. Franklin’s niece, Sophia Cracroft, later referred to him as “selfish, sly and sycophantic.” John Hepburn, reminiscing in his old-age years, recalled that he was not very brave “but charming to those from who he hopes to gain something.”
Given these assessments and the divergent temperaments of the two officers, who were thrown together on this second expedition for four months under conditions that were often trying, it’s hard to believe that there was no clash of personalities. But Franklin never mentioned it.
He had learned something from the previous disaster. Well-disciplined British seamen would replace French-Canadian voyageurs on the new expedition. The boats would be constructed of mahogany and ash, not flimsy birchbark, but would be light enough to be carried on the shoulders of half a dozen men. With memories of that ghastly coastal voyage, Franklin ordered waterproof clothing. And he made sure that enough supplies were shipped ahead from England this time, besides presents for the Indians, who would still do all the big-game hunting since neither Franklin nor his officers knew how.
Perhaps this did not matter, for conditions had changed in the North West. The two warring fur companies had amalgamated, and George Simpson, the new governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, had declared there wasn’t a man in the service, including himself, “who would not be happy to form a member of the Expedition and share your danger.” No doubt there were mercantile considerations in Simpson’s effusive remarks; on the far side of the Mackenzie Mountains, his Russian rivals were making inroads into the fur trade.
In that first summer of 1825, John Franklin and his companions travelled 5,083 miles from New York. Their former Indian comrades greeted them with enthusiasm when they arrived at Great Slave Lake. From that point it was an easy passage north down the Mackenzie, a placid waterway free of rapids.
Franklin reached the delta on August 16, a glorious autumn day, with the channels free of ice and the waters alive with seals and whales frolicking in the waves. He was elated at the spectacle. There were no obstacles to his ambitions in sight. This time his expedition seemed to be crowned with success.
Then his mood darkened. On a small island in the skeinwork of the great delta, he unfurled his dead wife’s silk flag, true to his promise that it would not be produced until the Arctic was reached. Now, as he planted it in the half-frozen soil, he felt a surge of grief, difficult to control. But control it he did, for he had no desire to cloud this moment of triumph for his companions. This was only the third occasion on which a white expedition had reached the Mackenzie’s mouth. With the best grace he could muster, he maintained a cheerful countenance and accepted the congratulations of the company.
They returned to a wintering spot on Great Bear Lake, which they named Fort Franklin. There they spent a cheerful nine months. The officers taught the men to read and figure. Richardson gave the officers lectures on the flora, fauna, and geology of the region. Franklin read Dante and Milton. There were games of shinny and blindman’s buff. And nobody went hungry.
Franklin’s second expedition with Back and Richardson, 1825-27
In late June, 1826, they were ready to set off again. Franklin and Back would take two boats and fourteen men and trace the unknown coastline from the Mackenzie westward, expecting to link up with the British vessel on the Alaskan coast. Richardson would explore the uncharted coast between the mouths of the Mackenzie and the Coppermine.
The Eskimos, whom Franklin shortly encountered, were a little baffled by the white man’s method of travel. Why, they asked, didn’t the explorers use dogs and sleds as they did? The ice conditions along the coast made water travel difficult. But these were naval men with no training in dog driving.
An Eskimo interpreter, Augustus, an old friend from the previous expedition, accompanied Franklin. He explained to the first Eskimos they met – a band of two hundred – that Franklin’s explorations might lead to the opening of trading relations that could only benefit the natives. A wild scene followed. The Eskimos became excited and tried to steal everything from the party, even cutting the buttons from their naval jackets. The women howled, the men clamoured as they seized canteens, kettles, tents, bales of blankets, shoes, even a jib sail. Franklin remained cool. Ordering his men not to provoke the natives, he managed to get them all away in the boats. The Eskimos, warned by Augustus that the white men would use their rifles if necessary, did not give chase.
The next day they all apologized, explaining that they’d never before seen white men and couldn’t resist seizing items that seemed incredibly valuable. As a sign of friendship they agreed to return a large kettle and a tent. Franklin was convinced that his forbearance had prevented bloodshed; the man who wouldn’t hurt a fly had forestalled the probable massacre of his party.
On July 27, 1826, the party reached the most westerly river of the British dominions near the border of Russian Alaska. Franklin named it the Clarence River after the Lord High Admiral. Up went another flag to the accompaniment of the inevitable three hearty cheers from the members of the party. This schoolboy enthusiasm was a mark of British naval forays into the Arctic. No expedition was launched, no sledge trip mounted, no returning party welcomed, no discovery made without seamen and officers alike waving their caps and shouting triple hoorahs.
Franklin now had no doubt he could round the northwest corner of the continent, reach his ultimate goal of Icy Cape, rendezvous with the British ship that would come up from Kotzebue Sound to meet him, and return in triumph to England. Like Parry, he reckoned without the unaccommodating Arctic. Ice, fog, sleet, and gales hampered his movements. The boats were trapped on a bleak headland, which he ruefully named Foggy Island. On August 16, a year to the day after he’d planted his wife’s flag at the Mackenzie’s mouth, he was forced into a painful decision. He had reached the point “beyond which perseverance would be rashness.” He was only half way to his goal, but this time he recognized that he had “higher duties to perform than the gratification of my own feelings.” Franklin had learned something from that previous savage journey. His fatal dallying on the Kent Peninsula had taught him the tragedy of indecision.
The wind was already rising. They struggled back through mountainous waves and a sea churned white with foam, constantly bathed in spray and bailing for their lives. They made camp at last to wait until the gale died down. A party of Eskimos met them, astonished that any had survived.
Two days later, a pair of young natives dashed br
eathlessly into the camp to announce that a band of fierce Indians planned to attack the boats and kill every man. They were furious because they felt that these white men were ruining their trade with the Eskimos – a trade based on Russian goods. The Eskimos told Franklin he must embark at once and make for the Mackenzie with all speed, not stopping to rest unless they could find an island out of gunshot. Franklin took this advice seriously – it turned out to be accurate – and made for the delta with the Indians somewhere behind him. He reached it on the thirtieth in safety and by the end of September was back in winter quarters at Fort Franklin. His summer had covered 2,048 miles, 610 of them through unexplored territory. Richardson, when he returned to Fort Franklin, had done equally well, covering 1,980 miles of which 1,015 were previously undescribed.
What Franklin did not know was that the naval vessel Blossom was only 150 miles to the west when he turned back. Had he realized that he would certainly have pressed on to a triumphant rendezvous. As it was, he and Richardson had opened up most of the Arctic coastline of North America, leaving a gap of only 150 miles between Point Turnagain and Icy Cape. It was a remarkable achievement that would eventually win both men knighthoods.
But there was still another blank on the map. The area between Point Turnagain and Repulse Bay also remained unexplored. Franklin was convinced that the coastline ran east in that direction without impediment and that there were no insurmountable obstacles in the way. In short, he thought the main work of exploration had been completed. All that was required was to link up his discoveries with those of Parry and the Passage was a fait accompli.
It would not be that easy. Twenty-five years were to pass before another expedition would make an effective link. That expedition would be led by none other than John Franklin – Sir John by that time; but Franklin himself would not live to bask in the glory of that achievement.
5 Treadmill to the Pole
In the spring of 1826, while John Franklin was preparing to leave his winter quarters to explore the coastline, the course of William Edward Parry’s life was changing. Not only had he fallen in love again but he had also reversed his decision to abandon Arctic exploration. Now it was the North Pole that beckoned; ever the optimist, Parry was sure he could reach it in a single season. He wrote two letters that spring, one to Lord Melville in April putting his polar proposal on paper, the other to Sir John Stanley of Alderley, asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Neither bore immediate fruit.
Parry had first met Isabella Stanley when she came aboard the Hecla before that last ineffective voyage. Now, through his friend Edward Stanley, Isabella’s brother, he renewed acquaintance with the family. He was clearly seeking a wife, and Isabella, a zesty twenty-four-year-old, fragile looking in the style of the period but undeniably beautiful – perhaps the most beautiful of all the lively Stanley daughters – was available. By May he was in love and sure enough of her agreement to approach her father. Of course he did not use the word “love” to Sir John. It would, perhaps, have been considered unseemly in those formal days to admit to something as unrefined as passion. He merely said he was “irresistibly drawn towards … Isabella by sentiments much warmer than those of common esteem and regard.…”
The real obstacle was not the gouty Sir John; it was his wife, Maria Josepha, mother of nine living children, an intelligent, liberal, and tough-minded woman who couldn’t abide Parry’s obsessive religious beliefs. There might also have been some objection to Parry’s station in life, for the Stanleys were not above snobbery; they sneered at the wealthy cotton magnates from Manchester as “cottontots.” Lady Stanley and the Arctic hero had what he called “a long and not very agreeable conversation” in which she tried “to scold me out of my religious sentiments.” Isabella sided with Parry, despite her less ardent piety. But she admired his consistency even though, as he put it, “I see a storm brewing in the distant horizon.”
Parry was adamant: “I trust in God, that whatever happens, I may never give Him up, – no, not even if I have to give up Isabella herself!”
An ominous two-month silence followed in which the lovebirds were kept from each other. There was an equally ominous silence from Lord Melville, who was, as he later said, not “sanguine” about the success of Parry’s North Pole proposal. But behind Parry stood the formidable figure of John Barrow, advising, suggesting, nudging, and, with the help of the Royal Society, pressuring the Admiralty. Although the assault on the Pole (by way of Norway this time) had originally been John Franklin’s idea, Barrow, who knew his man, had seen to it that Parry got a copy of Franklin’s plan; Parry quickly seized the idea.
In July, Lord Melville gave in and so did the Stanleys. “Mama is changed and not unkind,” is the way Isabella put it. (One senses the residue of a certain coolness.) The two were married in October. Isabella’s first gift to her husband was a Bible and prayer book. On their honeymoon night, he read aloud from the 107th Psalm. “I required comforting this evening,” she confided to her diary, “and dearly indeed did he comfort me.”
For her, any separation was an agony. The first occurred in March 1827, when he was called to Deptford to preside at a court martial. She was wretched: “Never have I passed a more truly miserable day than this. The utter loneliness of it. The feeling of desolation. The first Sunday since we married that we have been separated. I could only feel that he was gone.…”
She knew that a longer and more agonizing parting was to come. Parry’s plans to reach the Pole were well developed. He expected to leave England in the Hecla that April for weeks, months – who knew? – perhaps even years.
As usual he was the incurable optimist; “… few enterprises are so easily practicable,” he wrote. But he ignored the experts. The best advice for would-be polar travellers – and it was to stand the test of time – had been laid out by the whaling captain William Scoresby in an address to the Wernerian Society eleven years before. Scoresby made several important points. First, he said, the best mode of travel was by light, flexible sledges built on slender wood frames and covered with waterproof skins – the kind the Eskimos used. Second, the sledges should be pulled by either reindeer or dogs; Scoresby preferred dogs. These, he explained, would have to come from the area being explored and would require trained drivers, for the handling of Eskimo dogs was a specialized art. Third, he said, any expedition seeking the Pole must be prepared to set out on the ice when it was frozen hard and relatively flat, in late April or early May. Later on, higher temperatures created grave problems as pools formed, hummocks appeared, slush covered the surface, and rains made travel difficult.
Scoresby knew what he was talking about. He’d had sixty thousand miles of experience travelling on and through the ice. His book, An Account of the Arctic Regions, published in 1820, had shown him to be the foremost authority on the physical geography of the Arctic. All of this, together with the fact that he was now a minister of the cloth, ought to have recommended him to Parry. But Parry paid no attention to all his common-sense proposals, for Scoresby was only a whaling captain. Whaling captains were often used as “ice masters” on naval vessels in the North, but they were never placed in charge.
Yet Scoresby had been farther north than any other white explorer – to a latitude of 82°30′. It was an unofficial record, not one that Scoresby himself appeared to care about; on that occasion he and his father had been after whales, not fame.
So Parry went ahead building two cumbersome amphibious boat sleds, each seventy feet long with a twenty-foot beam, weighing three quarters of a ton and equipped with steel runners so that they could be dragged over the ice. He did not take dogs, and the eight domestic reindeer he purchased were never used. Again, he ignored Scoresby’s advice about making an early start. He didn’t propose to head off across the ice until June 1, and even that late deadline was missed. Beset off Spitzbergen, he spent ten precious days seeking a safe harbour for the Hecla and did not get away until June 21. His optimism was undiminished. “The main object of our exerci
se appeared almost within our grasp,” he wrote.
Parry was deeply in love. It had been a wrench to part with Isabella and even more wrenching for her, since she found herself pregnant. Unable to write to him, she confided her feelings to her diary, longing for the moment when he would return. By that time, she hoped, he would find that she had attained “more truly the real spirit of religion, more strength to resist temptation and to bear the trials to which he may be exposed.”
Here was nothing resembling the spirited ripostes of Eleanor Franklin, who, sick or not, had insisted on worshipping her God in her own fashion. In spite of her mother’s misgivings, Isabella Parry had given herself to her husband heart and soul, without a murmur of complaint. “How truly, how earnestly will I strive that my beloved husband may find me thus improved,” she wrote. “… I know there are times when I shall fail when my natural evil inclination will get the better of me, but I know also that if I try earnestly to do what is right, if I pray fervently for help, He who knows all weaknesses will help me.…” She yearned for her husband’s presence that spring and spoke to him through her diary: “… I would not recall you, your path leads to glory and honour and never would I turn you from that path when I feel and know it is the path you ought to go.…”