![]() The few details known about this escape plan were in a single sentence in a brief written document found 11 years later at the staging camp near Victory Point (Cyriax, Reference Cyriax1939). Four days later, they embarked on a 400 km journey to the Back River, from which to reach the interior of northern Canada to obtain aid at a Hudson Bay Company Post. ![]() ![]() Crozier, deserted the ships and moved tons of equipment and supplies, including several boats, by sledges across 28 km of sea ice and encamped on the northwest coast of King William Island, a few kilometres south of Victory Point. On 22 April 1848, the 105 surviving officers and crew, under the command of Captain F. By April 1848, at which time HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were icebound in northern Victoria Strait, an additional 21 men had died, including John Franklin. Three men died during the first year of the expedition and were buried on Beechey Island, near which the ships overwintered in 1845–1846. The emotional impact of the shocking scale of the loss of life was further intensified by grisly reports of cannibalism. The feature that differentiated the 1845 Franklin expedition from all others was its attainment of catastrophic status resulting from the loss not only of both ships, but also of all 129 members of the expedition. The distinguishing feature of the 1845 British northwest passage expedition led by Sir John Franklin was not its presumed failure to have met its principal objective, as other 19th century British polar expeditions had also failed to successfully complete a transit of a northwest passage. It is suggested that approximately one-third of the identifications have been based on information that is inadequate to confidently assign the human remains as those of Franklin expedition personnel. This paper presents a summary of these findings and examines the criteria used to attribute them to the Franklin expedition. These discoveries have played a central role in reenactments of events thought to have occurred during the failed attempt to reach the Back River and to the disastrous outcome of the expedition. All of the men died before reaching their destination, and their remains have been found at 35 locations along the route of the retreat. They assembled at a camp south of Victory Point on the northwest coast of King William Island and made the final preparations for the next step, a 400 km trek along the frozen seashores of King William Island and Adelaide Peninsula to the Back River. But they had enough supplies for about three years, and British expeditions were experienced at overwintering in the Arctic.On 22 April 1848, after three years in the Arctic, and 19 months spent ice-bound in northern Victoria Strait, the 105 surviving officers and crew of the Franklin Northwest Passage expedition deserted HMS Erebus and HMS Terror as the first step of their escape plan. They couldn’t rely on local people for meat, clothing, and oil, as other expeditions had. It was also, at times, breathtakingly beautiful, with dazzling colours and glowing skies.įranklin’s ship was trapped in the ice in a remote and desolate area, which Inuit rarely visited, calling it Tununiq, ‘the back of beyond’. The Arctic could be a place of freezing fog and heaving seas, and the expedition crews were sometimes at the mercy of the immense pressure of the sea-ice and the unpredictable behaviour of icebergs. Unfamiliar wildlife might be glimpsed, such as narwhals (which were called ‘sea-unicorns’), and splashes of botanical life, including vivid yellow poppies. ![]() Using these, we can come as close as we possibly can to understanding what the crews of Erebus and Terror might have seen and felt.Įxpeditions set off in the spring, so that they could get as far as possible before the winter, when their progress was halted. We don’t yet have any of the journals or logbooks that would have been written aboard ship.īut we do have lots of evidence from other sources about what the men might have gone through. The short answer is, we don’t know what life was really like.
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