Lost Ships - The Franklin Expedition

BAOR (27CIB)
The story of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition remains largely a mystery even though 40 expeditions, so far, have attempted to complete the full story. The lead editorial in the Waterloo Region Record dated 30 Aug 2011 had the following heading: "Lost ships search a worthy quest". The lost ships referred to were HMS Erebus and HMS Terror under command of Captain Sir John Franklin. His mission was to explore the elusive Northwest passage in the Canadian arctic. His ships with a total complement of 128 officers and men sailed from England in 1845. The ships became trapped in the ice in 1846 and Franklin and his entire crews perished in gruesome and horrific circumstances.
The editor of the Record explains the new quest as follows: "Stephen Harper's Conservative government, which has invested money and energy in commemorating this 200th anniversary year of the War of 1812 and to remind Canadians of the importance of that event, also has a $275,000 stake in the latest public private quest to solve the mystery of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. And good on the government." The editorial goes on as follows:" The latest high-tech search by a crack research team will also provide valuable data about the Arctic waters, information that can't hurt as Canada flexes its muscles about our nation's claim to sovereignty in the region in a highly charged dispute involving Russia, the U.S., Denmark, and Norway."

Sir John Franklin

HMS Erebus
Those readers who may wish to update themselves with much further information on this story should Google," The Franklin Expedition".
Ritter

I'm sure I watched a programme about this some time ago, haven't remains been found of some of the Franklin expedition? I seem to remember a modern day expedition finding graves marked by piles of stones, I may be getting my expeditions confused. Shackleton is my personal hero but it must be said, all those early pioneers were heroes.

PS, spent a great year at CFB Suffield. 1981, happy days.

BAOR(27CIB)
Wilf
Pleased to hear that you have good memories of your service at CFB Suffield (BATUS) in 81. Yes, your memory is serving you well; there has been a number of very interesting documentaries about the final outcome of the Franklin Expedition and while the two sunken ships have never been located there is considerable forensic and gruesome evidence about what happened to the ill-fated crew. Some of the answers are found in the account which follows.

Francis Crozier, Commander of HMS Terror

Lady Franklin as shown in 1816. Lady Franklin pressured the British Admiralty to investigate the long overdue ships and when she was dissatisfied with their findings she used her personal wealth to outfit further search expeditions.
The Franklin Searches 1848-2011
In 1984 and 1986, professional research anthropologists from the University of Alberta exhumed three Franklin Expedition crew members preserved in the arctic permafrost at Beechy Island. The exhumations were carried out with great difficulty owing to the depth of the caskets (6 feet) in permafrost, followed by hours of thawing with warm water in order to protect soft tissue. The three crew members were selected for autopsies because they were among the earliest deaths in 1846 of crew members who had abandoned their ships. Analysis of the soft tissue samples indicated that the three men had suffered from lead poisoning. They established that the source of the lead poisoning was the solder used to seal the canned food. Severe lead poisoning can lead to dementia which may explain the disastrous decision making for the attempted overland escape to the South. The trail of their ill-fated trek has been well documented by the path of skeletal remains.

Crewman John Hartnell

Stoker John Torrington's autopsy also indicated diseased lungs from smoking and coal dust.

Stoker John Torrington

Royal Marine Willis Brain
For further suggested reading:
Owen Beattie & J. Geiger,"Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition" 1993.
ritter

Wasn't my fault they got lost. I was posted in CFS Alert (the most northenly permanet inhabitaded spot in the world) in 1980 for 6 months. I was the baker, so don't be laying the fault on me.

I remember watching a documentary about the exhumation, some years ago.
I remember the scientists were unnerved by the facial expressions on the corpses.
At the time I felt it was wrong to disturb the bodies.

BAOR(27CIB) Franklin Expedition,
Brum et al,
You indicated that you were initially troubled about the exhumations of crew members from the Franklin Expedition. Probably this was attributable to the ongoing view about the sanctity of burials. This remains an issue with burials today but more and more it is being overridden by demands for further forensic evidence and is central to the quest for information in the ongoing and prolonged interest in the fate of the crew of the Expedition. The three recorded exhumations were selected from a group of about 14 burials of crew on the Beechey Island burial site. These three were of particular interest because their deaths took place just over a year into the expedition and well before the deprivations experienced by later crew members. The eleven further burials all appeared to have taken place very hurriedly. It is very unlikely that ongoing exhumations conducted by research teams will be challenged by any surviving descendants. BTW has anyone ever researched the family tree of Sir John and Lady Franklin for possible descendants. I would be interested in this research but will decline owing to my difficulty of accessing, easily, civil, church, and census records in England. Brum, given your ongoing interest in burials this may be an interesting challenge for you. I should bring to the attention of the readers that the research team discovered another interesting detail from the burials. One of the deceased, Royal Marine Willis Brain, had an amputation of his left arm probably done at the time of his burial and necessitated by the small size of his casket. The arm was buried in the casket with him.
I am hoping that our PM who is interested in the Franklin Expedition and who has already bankrolled further research in the arctic will require that all of the burials and skeletal remains be collected for reburial in one site and that a suitable memorial be erected to the memory of the heroic crew members.

And if I play my cards right in the possible ongoing spin of this thread, I may qualify for an honourable promotion in this forum. LOL
ritter

Don wasn't there also some talk of lead poisoning from early canned goods used by the expidition?

Arctic remains believed to be Franklin crew
Rough weather slows search
By: Dene Moore

Posted: 1:00 AM | Comments: 0
0 5Reddit0Tumblr0 16Print E–mail ARCHEOLOGISTS involved in the hunt for the wreckage of the Franklin Expedition in Canada's Arctic have discovered human remains they believe are from a member of the doomed crew.

Despite bad weather, the journey has been a productive one so far, says the chief of underwater archaeology for Parks Canada, and it should get even better with the addition of an automated underwater vehicle from the University of Victoria.

"Work is going well... (but) we haven't found the ships yet," Marc-Andre Bernier said in a telephone interview after leaving the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier last week.

What they have found in a search on land are more artifacts from the ill-fated expedition. At Erebus Bay, where at least a dozen members of the Franklin crew are known to have died, more human remains have been recovered.

"They did find a human tooth, and some bone and a toothbrush," Bernier said. "These were really exciting finds."

Sir John Franklin set out from England on May 19, 1845, on a mission to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic. He had two ships -- the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror -- a crew of 135, and provisions for a three-year journey.

In August 1845, two European whaling ships had a chance meeting with the Franklin Expedition as they waited to cross Baffin Bay. It was their last contact with the outside world.

In 1859, a search party hired by Lady Jane Franklin found a message left in a cairn on Victory Point, King William Island. The ships had become trapped in the ice in Victoria Strait in late 1846, and remained there for a year and a half.

The message said Sir John Franklin died on June 11, 1847 -- by spring 1848 another 24 members of the crew had perished. In April 1848 the rest of the crew left a note saying they were setting out on foot, for a destination they never reached.

There have been many efforts to find the ships, to no avail.

The 2012 Expedition being led by Parks Canada is a continuation of surveys conducted in 2008, 2010 and 2011.

Bad weather in recent days has hampered this year's search somewhat, but the automated underwater vehicle from the University of Victoria will help, Bernier said.

"Because of the nature of the environment, they had to do a lot of testing. That testing is done so it's ready to join in the search," he said Friday. "We're in full operation now, and things are going well."

Dr. Colin Bradley, director of the University of Victoria's Ocean Technology Lab, said the torpedo-shaped robotic vehicle is equipped with downward-looking sonar to map the sea floor and detect anything of archeological interest. At about the halfway point, things are going well, he said.

"From time to time we've had to pull the vessel in because the weather's been very rough," he said. "It's been an interesting couple of weeks."

The high-tech equipment has had to be adapted to the realities of the Arctic. "There've been some minor problems but nothing that has halted progress, so we're very happy about that," Bradley said.

Whether or not the ships are found, there is a lot of progress being made in mapping the sea floor in that region -- an important task of the expedition, he said.

"As we know, unfortunately, with the variability and the changing of the climate in the North, the ice coverage seems to be diminishing which means that there are more areas becoming exposed that are uncharted," Bradley said. "And with more vessels being used in the North, the requirement to map the sea floor becomes even greater.

The Sir Wilfrid Laurier is expected to continue with the search until the middle of this week, while the Martin Bergmann, a research vessel belonging to the private, non-profit Arctic Research Foundation, will continue

BAOR(27CIB)
The Franklin Expedition
"Stand By Your Man"
In the ongoing saga of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, a secondary story remains to be told. It is the role played by Lady Jane Franklin which follows:

The picture above was artistically enhanced and noted for its symbolic message. Franklin, the centre piece, is surrounded by a cathedral of ice stretching skyward in a vain attempt to join heaven and earth and urged upward by the beckoning and spectacular aurora borealis. The exact date of the drawing is not known but it appeared following the failed attempts by the Admiralty in London to locate the long overdue ships with Franklin and his crews. It was probably commissioned by Franklin's wife, Lady Jane Franklin, who sponsored several fund raisers to bank roll further searches after her personal wealth was depleted.
Sir John Franklin had two marriages, the first in 1823 to Eleanor Anne Porden
who died of TB in 1825; they had one child, Eleanor Isabella. In 1828 he remarried to Jane Griffin who had been a friend of his first wife. Jane Griffin took the title of Lady Jane Franklin when her husband was knighted in 1829 by King George IV. Franklin was well deserving of his knighthood: his naval career was exemplary. He had fought in three naval battles, the first in the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, second as an officer on HMS Bellerophon in the famous , and historic Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and in the Battle for New Orleans. As well and just as importantly he had commanded two polar expeditions to the Arctic Ocean in North America. Both of these expeditions were done overland to the arctic, the first in 1819-1822 and the second in 1825-1827. He has been credited with the mapping of 2000 miles of the Arctic shores of Canada for almost its entire length as well as the mapping of the MacKenzie River to its mouth. Franklin was well acquainted with the daunting challenges of overland exploration in the arctic along with the ravages of disease and starvation. On his second expedition, his men were forced to eat lichens , rotting deer hides, as well as an attempt to eat the shoe leather of their boots. He was able to return with nine men out of his complement of twenty. There is no doubt that he was the best qualified officer to command the mission for the completion of the Northwest Passage. And now on to the role of Lady Jane Franklin. When three years passed without any word from Franklin's expedition, Lady Jane successfully pressured the Admiralty to send at least three search expeditions to the arctic for the lost ships and Franklin's crews. When the Admiralty pulled the plug on further searches and declared Franklin and his crews lost, she refused to accept the findings and organized about seven further expeditions and when they failed she organized a number of fund raisings to support further searches. One of these searches found a cairn on an island which stated very briefly that Sir John had died on 11 Jun 1847 approximately two years from the start of the expedition. It was a devastating blow for the crews as his experience, leadership, and courage were what was needed when the decision was reached to abandon the two ships on 22 Apr 1848 and to attempt an overland dash South to a Hudson Bay outpost.
Lady Jane's legacy was that she was a liberated woman and became a social activist in Victorian England about a hundred years before the onset of female activism and as well she deserves to be the precursor for Tammy Wynette's signature song, "Stand By Your Man" in 1969. Tammy was the famous chanteuse who became an icon for the Country and Western music genre at the Grand Ole Opry at Nashville.

Lady Jane Franklin

Tammy Wynette
Sadly Tammy did not follow her own advice in her famous line; she was married five times.
And now what remains to be told about the Franklin story. The answer probably can be summarized with the following message from PM Stephen Harper which he made on 23 Aug 2012 at Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
" I told the crew of the boat yesterday that I'm sure some day they'll come around the bend there's going to be the ship and there's going to be the body of Franklin over there, right on the wheel waiting all this time"
ritter

LADY FRANKLIN'S LAMENT

We were homeward bound one night on the deep
Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep
I dreamed a dream and I thought it true
Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew

With a hundred seamen he sailed away
To the frozen ocean in the month of May
To seek a passage around the pole
Where we poor seamen do sometimes roll

Through cruel misfortune they vainly strove
Their ships on mountains of ice was drove
Where the Eskimo with his skin canoe
Was the only one that could ever come through

In Baffin's Bay where the whale fish blow
The fate of Franklin no man may know
The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell
Lord Franklin among his seamen do dwell

And now my burden it gives me pain
For my long lost Franklin I would cross the main
Ten thousand pounds I would freely give
To know that on earth my Franklin do live

Hello grimmy,
You found a very fitting finale to summarize this fascinating story.
The 4th stanza is an excellent epitaph for Sir John and his crew
The 5th stanza is a testament to Lady Jane Franklin's undying love for her
husband and her determination to "Stand by her Man"
Thanks.
Bob

Bob,

If you ever get the chance, listen to Nic Jones singing that song - wonderful.

http://lyrics.wikia.com/Nic_Jones:In_Search_Of_Nic_Jones_(1998)

Grimmy

Grimmy,
Thanks for the heads up on "The Lady Franklin Lament" by Nic Jones. I was able to access it through your hyperlink but it was very persistent in trying to direct me to payment on my cell phone. However, I was able to find several versions of it by typing in Lady Franklin's Lament by Nic Jones on u tube. There was one version which was very good as it was supported by images of the expedition.
Cheers
Bob

BAOR(27CIB)
Epilogue for the Franklin Expedition story, 1845-48
The ill fated Franklin Expedition is a compelling narrative because it has all of the classic elements of a great novel- setting , plot, character development, and mystery. The setting for the story is in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago one of the most notorious , inhospitable, and unforgiving regions known to man. The plot is the time worn theme, man pitted against the powerful forces of nature. Some more recent examples of this theme are the sinking of the Titantic in 1912 and the loss of the space ships "Challenger" in 1986 and "Columbia" in 2003, both memorable examples of man's dangerous quest for travel in space. The characters in our narrative are drawn from the Royal Navy, the most powerful naval force in the world during the Victorian era in Britain. The RN was given the mission of finding the elusive Northwest passage and it was the belief of the British Admiralty that this was within its grasp. The planning for the mission was exceptional. Two RN ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were refitted with iron sheeting to their bows and each ship was fitted with a railway locomotive boiler to provide additional propulsion. In addition, these boilers were adapted to provide heating to the sleeping quarters in the ships. As well, desalination units were added to the galleys and each ship had a library with hundreds of books. Sir John Franklin, Commander of the expedition along with carefully selected officers were all deemed the most experienced for an arctic mission.
The narrative also had a subplot, the love story between Sir John and his wife Lady Jane Franklin which stirred the romantic imaginations of the British public.

Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin
While the expedition failed to fulfill its mission of finding the elusive Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific, it nevertheless served to inspire and to spawn over 60 subsequent searches for the missing ships and crews. This ultimately completed the mapping of a successful Northwest passage The early death of Sir John and four other crew members during the first year of the expedition were very puzzling and troublesome to the Admiralty. It was not until further searches in the early 1980's, by forensic anthropologists and professional technologists from the University of Alberta that these mysteries were solved. The exhumations and autopsies of three crewmen from their graves on Beechey Island revealed that they had died of scurvy, lead poisoning, pneumonia, toxic food, and hypothermia as well as the debilitating effects of the harsh climate. The lead poisoning found in the food was attributed to faulty soldering of a large number of the 8000 tin cans of food. A surprising discovery was that lab results of the tissues found in the abdominal organs of the bodies showed that cultures could still be grown from bacteria found in the tissues after 140 years.
On 22 Apr 1848, the remaining 105 remaining officers and men of the Erebus and Terror abandoned their ships. With a boat lashed to a sled and a food supply they made what was determined to be an ill advised trek to the mainland in the hope of finding a route on the Back River to a very distant (2210Km) Hudson Bay outpost at Fort Resolution. All of the crew perished largely as result of debilitation and starvation. Their trail was traceable with the discovery of the skeletal remains culminating with the gruesome find of the boat which surprisingly was pointing North. It was believed that the few remaining survivors had decided to attempt a return to their abandoned ships. Many skeletons were found in and around the boat.

Artist's rendition of the gruesome discovery of the last survivors of the expedition

Oil painting by W. T. Smith showing Franklin's men dying beside the boat which they had planned to ascend the Back River to Fort Resolution.
The legacy which remains of the Expedition is that Franklin and his crews are revered as iconic heroes of Canadian folklore and are deservedly credited with the discovery of the Northwest Passage. In 1880 the British Government turned over all of the research and mapping results of the Expedition and all subsequent searches to the Canadian Government.
One final mystery remains- the location of the Erebus and the Terror.

Parks Canada continues to search for the wrecks of the , Erebus and Terror but still no sightings since 1845.

Hi there,
Just watched the Billy Connelly documentary of his journey through the north west passage, he took some time in the area of the graves etc and explained a short version of the expedition........
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

Pinky,
Thanks for the heads up on that Connelly documentary; i will check at my library for it.
BTW, the book, "Frozen in Time, The fate of the Franklin Expedition " by Beattie & Geiger 1993 is excellent. I got a copy through inter library loan.
Cheers
ritter

BAOR 27CIB
Postscript No1 to the Lost Ships - The Franklin Expedition which was posted to this forum initially on 31/8/2012. A recent report in the Waterloo Region Record by Robert Park indicated that a further attempt to locate the lost ships during Aug-Sep 2012 failed to locate HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Park an archeologist from the University of Waterloo was a member of a multi -agency quest led by Parks Canada. The search quest was headed by Doug Stenton, Director of Heritage for the Territory of Nunavut. The Canadian Coast Guard Ice Breaker, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, with underwater sonar equipment was commissioned to scan the seabed in the area of King William island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago where the ships had been stranded in the ice packed strait for three years and abandoned (1845-48). It was in the same area where HMS Investigator was sent by the British Admiralty in 1850 to search for the missing crews of the Franklin Expedition. The wreck of the Investigator was located by underwater archeologists in a search made in 2010. The wreck was located in shallow water off Banks Island where ice had sheared off the superstructure of the ship down to the deck level. The following pictures show first an artist's rendition of HMS Investigator stranded in the ice and the second picture the underwater wreck taken in 2010.


Archeologist Park in his report indicated that further searches for the elusive missing ships would continue.

Interesting for sure.

BAOR(27CIB)
Postscript No. 2 A finale for the Victorian Gothic horror story about the ill-fated Franklin
Expedition's mission to find the elusive North-West Passage in the Canadian Archipelago.
But first, a brief re-cap of the tragic events which took place when the crews of the ships Erebus and Terror decided to abandon their ships to follow a desperate plan to make an overland trek south west via the Back River to a distant 2500km Hudson Bay fort on Great Slave Lake. The mission was doomed to failure because of the crushing physical demands and more importantly the devastating results of starvation and the debilitating effects of disease. Two artistically drawn pictures shown below trump any attempt to to describe in words the final result.

In the eternal evolution of the conflict of man against nature the following quote is appropriate:
"What man composes, God disposes"

BAOR(27CIB)
Postscript No.3 to Franklin's Lost Ships and relating to the desecration of the grave sites on Beechey Island, Canadian Archipelago.
The following is taken from an article entitled, "The Arctic's preservation power has met its match- and it's us." by Ken McGoogan and updated in 6 Sep 2012. "The preservation power has loomed large in the Canadian imagination since 1987, when Owen Beattie and John Geiger published, 'Frozen in Time'. Arriving in two ships late in 1846, the Franklin Expedition spent one winter on Beechey Island before sailing south to its terrible fate. Four years later in 1850, an American explorer, Elisha Kent Kane, was among the first men to discover the site. The artistic, articulate Kane sketched the three gravestones, copied their inscriptions, and scoured the area, turning up countless artifacts. A quarter of a mile from the graves, he found a neat pile of 600 preserved meat cans. Today, all that Kane described, only the three headstones and the bodies beneath remain and these headstones are not the originals, which are preserved in Yellowknife. Franklin's original campsite is today nothing but a shallow pit, unmarked. The 6oo pebble-filled tin cans are long gone. A priceless historical record is being destroyed, a part of our cultural heritage."
BAOR readers in these forums are well aware of the action which had to be taken at Stone-henge, one of England's most historic sites, where tourists were attacking the stone pillars in order to remove pieces for later 'shown and tell' accounts. More and more cruise ships are now following the North West Passage and flushing out these tourist scavengers at sensitive historic sites like Beechey Island.

The Franklin crew grave site on Beechey Island

This picture is not taken at the Beechey Island site but it is indicative of the methods used by nearby cruise ships to move tourists to the shore at historic sites in the Canadian Arctic.

Ritter, I feel your anger. And yes we are losing not only our heritage but our history in the name of 'tourism' If Sir John Franklin could see the NW passage today I'm sure he would be gutted... although it may have more to do with global warming and the third world rapidly becoming the first world, hey ho, there's nothing we can do about it. It is apparently called 'progress'!

Franklin, Scott, Shackleton, kids of my generation were told about people like those at school, (I bet they're not now !).

Ritter, in a similar vein, one of the memorials I photographed in a local churchyard carries the name John Hornby and "Died in the Polar regions, May 1927".

I've had a quick look on wickipedia and there he was, it looks like another interesting story there.

BAOR(27CIB)
Brum et al,
Thank you for alerting me to your discovery of the unique memorial in a local churchyard dedicated to John Hornby with the captive words," Died in the Polar regions, May 1927". These words by themselves serve to challenge our inquisitive natures and demand that we pursue the outcome of this story. Brum, you turned to Wikipedia and your lead prompted me to do the same. John Hornby is a name almost totally unknown to most people which is surprising as he was the subject of a novel, several documentaries, some dramatic productions, and finally a movie. The story about Hornby(1880-1927) begins with his military service to his country in WW1 where he was decorated and which was followed by his disillusionment with the shallow and civilized lifestyles of his country following the war. He becomes attracted to a moral alternative by emigrating to Canada where he gravitates to the lifestyle of an explorer in the subarctic region of the North West Territory. After a number of years, he returns to England to attend his father's funeral and while there he meets a young teenage second cousin, Edgar Christian. Christian becomes enthralled and captivated by his Great Uncle's adventures and lifestyle in the wilds of Canada. Hornby totally wins over his nephew and convinces him with his parental approval to return to Canada with him in April 1926. Together they start moving North from Edmonton, Alberta and along the way they add a third member to their party, Harold Adlard who is also seeking adventure. Hornby explains his mission to spend the approaching winter in an idyllic site on the northerly edge of the tree line in the sub polar region of the NWT. Hornby is convinced that they will be able to subsist in one of the harshest climates by hunting and fishing. His infallible theory is that their chosen site is on one of the migratory routes of the caribou. While travelling further North the party meet a prospector who is known to Hornby. After listening to Hornby's explanation of his mission, the prospector warns Christian and Adlard not to do it and leaves them with the unstated axiom that, " Failing to plan is planning to fail".
For the foreboding climax to this tale look for the next installment.
Thanks, Brum
Ritter

Hardrations wrote:

Wasn't my fault they got lost. I was posted in CFS Alert (the most northenly permanet inhabitaded spot in the world) in 1980 for 6 months. I was the baker, so don't be laying the fault on me.

Was it chilly?...