Coppermine Expedition of 1819–1822
Encyclopedia
The Coppermine Expedition of 1819–1822 had as its goal the exploration of the northern coast of Canada
, which was accessed by way of the Coppermine River
. The British
expedition was organised by the Royal Navy
as part of its attempt to discover and map the Northwest Passage
. It was the first of three Arctic
expeditions to be led by John Franklin
, and also included George Back
and John Richardson
, both of whom would become significant Arctic explorers
in their own right.
The expedition was plagued by poor planning, bad luck and unreliable allies. The expected assistance from the local fur trading
companies and native peoples
was less forthcoming than expected, and the dysfunctional supply line, coupled with unusually harsh weather and the resulting absence of game, meant that the explorers were never far from starvation. Eventually the Arctic coast was reached, but barely 500 mi (804.7 km) had been explored before the exhaustion of the party's supplies and the onset of winter forced them to turn back.
The expedition made a desperate retreat across uncharted territory in a state of starvation, often with nothing more than lichen
to eat. Eleven of the twenty strong party died amid accusations of murder and cannibalism
before the survivors were rescued by native people of the Yellowknife tribe
, who had previously given them up for dead.
In the aftermath of the expedition, Franklin was much criticised by local fur traders for his haphazard planning and failure to adapt to the circumstances he faced, but in Britain he was received as a hero, fêted for the courage he had shown in extreme adversity. The expedition captured the public imagination, and in reference to a desperate measure he took while starving, he became known as "the man who ate his boots".
In the years following the Napoleonic Wars
the British Navy, under the influence of Sir John Barrow
turned its attention to the discovery of the Northwest Passage, a putative sea route around the north coast of Canada which would allow European ships easy access to the markets of the Orient
. Evidence for the existence of a passage came from the fact that whaler
s in the Bering Strait
had killed whales which carried lance
s of the type used in Greenland
and vice versa, but the maze of islands
to the north of Canada was almost completely unmapped, and it was not known whether a navigable, ice-free passage existed. In fact, by 1819 the northern coast of Canada had been glimpsed only twice by Europeans. In 1771 Samuel Hearne
had followed the Coppermine River to the sea at a point around 1500 mi (2,414 km) east of the Bering Strait. He was followed in 1789 by Alexander MacKenzie, who traced what is now the Mackenzie River
to open sea 500 mi (804.7 km) west of the mouth of the Coppermine.
In 1818 Barrow had sent his first expedition to seek the Northwest Passage. Led by John Ross
, it ended ignominiously when Ross entered the Lancaster Sound
, the true entrance to the Passage, but judging it to be a bay turned around and returned to Britain. At the same time, David Buchan
made an attempt to sail directly to the North Pole
from Britain (Barrow was a believer in the Open Polar Sea
hypothesis), but returned only with the news that the pack ice north of Spitsbergen
was a barrier which could not be breached.
The following year, Barrow planned two further expeditions to the Arctic. A seaborne expedition under William Edward Parry
would follow on from Ross' work, seeking an entrance to the Northwest Passage from Lancaster Sound. Simultaneously, a party would travel overland to the Canadian coast by way of the Coppermine river and map as much of the coastline as possible, and perhaps even rendezvous with Parry's ships. John Franklin, a Lieutenant
who had commanded one of Buchan's ships the previous year, was chosen to lead the overland party.
Franklin's orders were somewhat general in nature. He was to travel overland to Great Slave Lake
, and from there go to the coast by way of the Coppermine River. On reaching the coast he was advised to head east towards Repulse Bay
and Parry's (hopefully victorious) ships, but if it seemed better he was also given the option of going west to map the coastline between the Coppermine and the Mackenzie rivers, or even heading north into wholly unknown seas.
More serious than the ambiguity of the instructions was the fact that the expedition was organised on a shoestring budget. Franklin was to take only a minimum of naval personnel, and would be reliant on outside help for much of the journey. Manual assistance was meant to be provided by voyageurs
(local furriers of mixed French
and aboriginal descent) supplied by the Hudson's Bay Company
and the rival North West Company
, while the local Yellowknives would act as guides and provide food should Franklin's supplies run out.
Only four naval personnel accompanied Franklin; the doctor, naturalist and second in command John Richardson, two midshipmen
named George Back and Robert Hood who had sailed with Buchan in 1818, and Ordinary Seaman John Hepburn.
on 23 May on a Hudson's Bay Company supply ship, after three months of planning, and immediately hit a note of farce. The ship had stopped briefly off the Norfolk
coast, where Back had business to attend to, but before he had returned a favourable wind blew up and the ship sailed off, leaving Back to make his own way to their next stop in Orkney by stagecoach
and ferry. A more serious problem arose in Stromness
when the expedition, now reunited with Back, attempted to hire local boatmen to act as manhaulers
for the first part of the trek across Canada. The people of Stromness were far less keen to sign up than the navy had anticipated, and only four men were recruited, and even they agreed to go only as far as Fort Chipewyan
on Lake Athabasca
.
On 30 August, Franklin's men reached York Factory
, the main port on the southwest coast of Hudson Bay
, to begin the 1700 mi (2,735.9 km) trek to the Great Slave Lake. They immediately encountered the first of the supply problems which were to plague the expedition. Much of the assistance which had been offered by the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company failed to materialise; the companies had spent the preceding years in a state of virtual war, co-operation between them would be virtually nonexistent, and they had few resources to spare. Franklin was provided with a boat which was too small to carry all his supplies (he was assured the rest would be sent on) and proceeded along normal trading routes
to Cumberland House
(at the time little more than a log cabin which was home to 30 Hudson's Bay men) where he and his men spent the winter. The winter was a harsh one, and ominously, the local Indians
who came to the post for supplies reported that game had become so scarce that some families were resorting to cannibalism to survive.
The following January, Franklin, Back and Hepburn formed an advance party to head through the pine forests to Fort Chipewyan, to hire voyageurs and arrange supplies for the next leg of the expedition. Led by Canadian guides, the Britons, who had no experience of the harsh Canadian winter, found the journey extremely arduous. The cold froze both their tea almost immediately after it had been poured, as well as the mercury
in their thermometer
s. Without tents, they were grateful for snowfall, as it provided an extra layer of insulation over their blankets. Franklin would later write that the journey brought "a great intermixture of agreeable and disagreeable circumstances. Could the amount of each be balanced, I suspect the latter would much preponderate."
The advance party arrived at Fort Chipewyan in late March, having covered 857 mi (1,379.2 km) in six weeks. Once there, Franklin found equipping his expedition far harder than had been anticipated. The harsh winter meant that food stocks were barely available, and he had to make do with a vague promise that hunters would feed them on route, and that the chief of the Coppermine Indians would offer assistance. Furthermore, the best voyageurs were preoccupied with the conflict between the two fur trading companies, or unwilling to risk a journey into unknown terrain, far outside their normal range and with uncertain supplies. Eventually Franklin was able to recruit a team of sixteen voyageurs, but most of the men fell well below the standard he desired.
Reunited with Hood and Richardson, the party left for the Great Slave Lake in July, reaching Fort Providence
on its northern shore ten days later. Here they met Chief Akaitcho
(Big Foot), the leader of the local Yellowknives who had been recruited by the North West Company as guides and hunters for Franklin's men. Akaitcho, described as a man "of great penetration and shrewdness" understood the concept of the Northwest Passage, and patiently listened as Franklin explained that its use would bring wealth to his people. Apparently realising that Franklin was exaggerating the benefits, he asked a question which Franklin was unable to answer; why, if the Passage was so crucial to trade, had it not been discovered already?
His point effectively made, Akaitcho discussed his terms with Franklin. In return for the cancellation of his tribe's debts to the North West Company, and some supplies of weapons, ammunition and tobacco, his men would hunt and guide for Franklin on the northward journey down the Coppermine river, and leave depots of food for their return. However, they would not enter the Inuit
lands at the far north of the river (they and the Inuit viewed each other with mutual hostility and suspicion), and Akaitcho warned Franklin that in such a hard year, he could not guarantee that food would always be available.
Franklin and his men spent the remainder of the summer trekking north to a point on the bank of the Coppermine river which Akaitcho had chosen as their winter quarters. Food quickly ran short and the voyageurs began to lose faith in their leader; Franklin's threats of severe punishment prevented a mutiny in the short term, but eroded the remaining goodwill felt by the men. The encampment, which Franklin named Fort Enterprise was reached without further incident, and wooden huts were constructed as winter quarters.
The expedition's second winter in Canada was another difficult one. Supplies arrived only intermittently; the rival companies each preferring to let the other provide them. Ammunition ran short, and the Indians hunters were less effective than had been hoped. Finally, with the party at risk of starvation, George Back was sent back to Fort Providence to browbeat the companies into action. After a 1200 mi (1,931.2 km) journey on snowshoe
s, often with no shelter beyond blankets and a deerskin in temperatures as low as -67 F, Back returned having secured enough supplies to meet the expedition's immediate needs.
There was also continuing unrest in the camp. The voyageurs, led by the two interpreters Pierre St Germain and Jean Baptiste Adam, again rebelled. This time Franklin's threats were ineffective, St Germian and Adam insisting that as continuing into the wilderness would mean certain death, the threat of execution for mutiny
was laughable. Negotiation by Willard Wentzel, the North West Company's representative, eventually restored an uneasy truce. The discord was not confined to the voyageurs; Back and Hood had fallen out over their rivalry for the affections of an Indian girl nicknamed Greenstockings, and would have fought a duel
over her had Hepburn not removed the gunpowder
from their weapons. The situation was defused when Back was dispatched south, and Hood subsequently fathered a child with the girl.
The winter passed and Franklin set out again on 4 June. His plans for the coming summer were vague; he had decided to explore east from the mouth of the Coppermine in the hope of either meeting Parry or reaching Repulse Bay
, where he might obtain adequate supplies from local Inuit to allow him to return directly to York Factory by way of Hudson Bay. However, if Parry failed to appear, or he was unable to reach Repulse Bay he would either retrace his outward route or, if it seemed better, return directly to Fort Enterprise across the uncharted Barren Lands to the east of the Coppermine river.
The journey down the Coppermine river took far longer than planned, and Franklin quickly lost faith in his Indian guides, who in fact knew the area little better than he did, and assured him that the sea was close, then far, then close again. The Arctic Ocean
was finally sighted on 14 July, shortly before the expedition encountered its first Inuit camp. The Inuit fled, and Franklin's men never had the opportunity to make further contact or trade for supplies as he had hoped. The abandoned camp gave a further indication of the scarcity of food in the area; the stocks of dried salmon were rotting and maggot-infested, and the meat which was drying consisted mainly of small birds and mice.
The Indians turned for home as had been agreed, as did Wentzel, leaving Franklin with fifteen voyageurs and his four Britons. Franklin gave orders to those departing that caches of food were to be left on route and that most importantly Fort Enterprise be stocked with a large amount of dried meat. With the lateness of the season the latter point was crucial because Franklin now feared that if, as seemed likely, he failed to reach Repulse Bay, the sea would freeze and prevent him returning to the mouth of the Coppermine. If so, he would be forced to make a direct return across the Barren Lands, where he and his men would be dependent on whatever food they could forage. There was therefore a real risk that they would be close to starvation by the time they reached Fort Enterprise; he repeated again and again that their survival would depend on the huts being well stocked.
At the mouth of the Coppermine Franklin set off east in three canoes with enough food for fourteen days. Their progress was impeded by storms which frequently damaged the canoes, and their attempts to supplement their rations by hunting were so unsuccessful that Franklin suspected the voyageurs of deliberately failing to find game, in order to compel him to turn around. After mapping 500 mi (804.7 km) of coastline, Franklin stopped on 22 August 1821 at a place on the Kent Peninsula
which he named Point Turnagain. As he had feared, rough seas and the damage to their canoes made a return via the Coppermine impracticable, and Franklin party decided upon a return via the Hood River, from which they would attempt to make an overland return across the Barren Lands.
The going across the Barren Lands was extremely arduous. The ground was a treacherous expanse of sharp rocks which cut their boots and their feet, and constantly threatened more serious injury. Richardson remarked that "if anyone had broken a limb here his fate would have been melancholy indeed, as we could neither have remained with him, nor carried him on with us". The canoes, which were proving difficult to carry, were dropped by the voyageurs (Franklin suspected deliberately) and became completely unusable. Winter arrived early, game became even scarcer than it had already been, and by the 7 September the expedition's rations were exhausted. Apart from the rare deer they managed to kill, they were reduced to eating barely nutritious lichens, which they christened tripe de roche
, and the occasional rotting carcass left by packs of wolves
. So desperate did they become that they even boiled and devoured the leather
from their spare boots.
The voyageurs, who were carrying an average of 90 lb (40.8 kg) each and had been promised a ration of 8 lb (3.6 kg) of meat a day when they signed up, suffered most from the hunger, and their discontent again turned into rebellion. They secretly discarded some of the heavy equipment, including the fishing nets, which would prove a serious loss. Richardson wrote that they "became desperate and were perfectly regardless of the commands of the officers." The only thing which was preventing them deserting en masse and attempting to reach Fort Enterprise by themselves was that they did not know how to find it. However, they began to realise that Franklin had little idea of where he was going either - his compass
was of little use as the magnetic deviation
for the area was unknown, and the constant cloud cover made navigating by the sun or stars impossible. A full scale mutiny was averted only by the fact that on 26 September they reached a large river which was undoubtedly the Coppermine.
The party's joy at reaching the Coppermine quickly turned to despair when it became obvious that without boats, it would be impossible to cross the river to reach Fort Enterprise, which Franklin estimated lay 40 mi (64.4 km) away on the far bank. The fast-flowing river was 120 yd (109.7 m) wide in places, and attempts to find a spot where it could be forded proved futile. The voyageurs, according to Richardson, "bitterly execrated their folly in breaking the canoe" and became "careless and disobedient... [and] ceased to dread punishment or hope for reward." One of them, Juninus, slipped away, perhaps hoping to reach safety by himself, and never returned. Richardson himself risked his life trying to swim across the river with a line tied around his waist, but losing the feeling in his limbs he sank to the riverbed and had to be hauled back. The hypothermia
he suffered sapped his remaining strength and left him a virtual invalid.
With the starving party weakening rapidly, the situation was saved by St Germain, who alone had the strength and willpower to construct a makeshift, one man, canoe from willow
branches and canvas
. The other men cheered when, on 4 October, he crossed the river, trailing a lifeline. The rest of the party crossed one at a time. The boat sank lower and lower in the water as they did so, but all crossed safely.
Fort Enterprise now lay less than a week's march away, but for some of the starving men, that would prove to be an insurmountable barrier. At the back of the line, the two weakest voyageurs, Credit and Vaillant, collapsed and were left where they fell. Richardson and Hood were also too weak to continue. At this point, Franklin split his party. Back, the fittest remaining officer, was sent ahead with three voyageurs to bring food back from Fort Enterprise. Franklin would follow at a slower pace with the remaining voyageurs. Hood and Richardson would stay in their camp, with Hepburn to look after them, in the hope that one of the other parties could bring them food. Franklin was disturbed by the apparent abandonment of Hood and Richardson, but they were insistent that the party would have a better chance of survival without them.
Franklin had only gone a short distance towards Fort Enterprise when four voyageurs—Michel Terohaute, Jean Baptiste Belanger, Perrault, and Fontano—said they were unable to continue and asked to return to Hood and Richardson's camp. Franklin agreed. He staggered on towards Fort Enterprise with his five remaining companions, growing weaker and weaker. No game was to be found, even if any of them had been strong enough to hold a rifle, and recounting the story, Franklin made a comment which would become famous: "There was no tripe de roche, so we drank tea and ate some of our shoes for supper."
Franklin's party reached Fort Enterprise on 12 October, two days after Back. They found it deserted and unstocked. The promised supplies of dried meat had not appeared, and there was nothing to eat except bones from the previous winter, a few rotting skins which had been used as bedding, and a little tripe de roche. A note from Back explained that he had found the fort in this state, and that he was heading towards Fort Providence to look for Akaitcho and his Indians. The party despaired. Two voyageurs, Augustus and Benoit, set off upriver in the hope of meeting some Indians there. The rest of the group remained, too weak to go any further. Two of voyageurs lay down crying and waited to die, and even the normally optimistic Franklin wrote of how quickly his strength was evaporating. None of them had eaten meat for four weeks.
Over the next few days, however, Michel's behaviour became more and more erratic. He disappeared for short periods, refusing to say where he had gone. He would not gather tripe de roche. When asked to go hunting he refused, replying that "there are no animals, you had better kill and eat me." He later accused the Britons of having eaten his uncle.
At some point (Richardson's journal is unclear on when), Richardson and Hood began to suspect that Michel had killed the three missing voyageurs, and was disappearing from camp to feed on their corpses. The "wolf meat" they had eaten was probably human flesh. Then, on 20 October while Richardson and Hepburn were foraging, they heard a shot from the camp. They found Hood dead, and Michel standing with a gun in his hand.
Michel's explanation was that Hood had been cleaning his gun and that it had gone off, shooting him through the head. The claim was self-evidently absurd; the rifle was too long for a man to shoot himself with, moreover Hood had been shot in the back of the head, apparently while reading a book. But with Michel stronger than them and armed, there was nothing Hepburn and Richardson could do for the next three days, as Michel refused to let them out of his sight, became more and more aggressive, repeatedly asking to know if they thought he had murdered Hood. Finally on 23 October Michel left them for a short time to gather lichen. Richardson took the opportunity to load his pistol, and on Michel's return, he shot him dead.
For over a week the men at Fort Enterprise subsisted on tripe de roche and rotten deerskins, which they ate complete with the maggot
s, which tasted "as fine as gooseberries." Two of the voyageurs, Peltier and Samandré, died on the night of 1 November. The third, Adam, was close to death. Hepburn's limbs began to swell with protein deficiency oedema. Finally, on 7 November, help arrived with the arrival of three of Akaitcho's Indians, with whom Back (who had also lost a man to starvation) had finally managed to make contact. They brought food, caught fish for the survivors, and treated them "with the same tenderness they would have bestowed on their own infants." After building up their strength for a week, they left Fort Enterprise on 15 November, arriving at Fort Providence on 11 December.
Akaitcho explained why Fort Enterprise had not been stocked with food as promised. Part of the reason was that three of his hunters had been killed when they fell through the ice on a frozen lake, and he had not been supplied with ammunition at Fort Providence, but he admitted the main reason the fort had been abandoned; he had believed that the white men's expedition was the height of folly, and that they would not return to Fort Enterprise alive. In spite of this, Franklin refused to blame Akaitcho, who had shown him much kindness during the rescue, and due to the ongoing dispute between the fur companies, had not received the payment he had been promised.
By almost any objective standard, the expedition had been a disaster. Franklin had travelled 5500 mi (8,851.4 km) and lost eleven of his nineteen men, only to map a small portion of coastline. He got nowhere near his goal of Repulse Bay
or to meeting up with Parry's ships. When the party arrived back at York Factory in July 1822, George Simpson
of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had objected to Franklin's expedition from the start, wrote that "They do not feel themselves at liberty to enter into the particulars of their disastrous enterprise, and I fear they have not fully achieved the object of their mission." Simpson and other fur traders who knew the terrain were scathing in their descriptions of the expedition's poor planning and assessment of Franklin's competence. His reluctance to deviate from his original plan, even when it became obvious that supplies and game would be too scarce to complete the journey safely, were cited as evidence of his inflexibility and inability to adapt to a changing situation. Had Franklin been more experienced, he might have reconsidered his goals, or abandoned the expedition altogether. In a particularly harshly worded letter, Simpson also wrote of Franklin's physical failings; "[He] has not the physical powers required for the labor of moderate Voyaging in this country; he must have three meals per diem, Tea is indispensable, and with the utmost exertion he cannot walk above Eight miles in one day, so that it does not follow if those Gentlemen are unsuccessful that the difficulties are insurmountable." However, it should be kept in mind that many of the fur traders resented having had to assist Franklin in the first place, and Simpson in particular was angry with what he saw as Franklin's support for the rival North West Company in their trade war.
There were also dark murmurings about what exactly had happened to Robert Hood and Michel Terohaute. The only account of the incident was Richardson's, published after consultation with Franklin, and there was nothing to prove that he and Hepburn had not killed and eaten Hood and the four voyageurs themselves. Wentzel, the North West Company interpreter who was blamed for failing to ensure that Fort Enterprise was stocked, went so far as to accuse Richardson of murder, and demanded that he be brought to trial. Back subsequently wrote to him that "to tell the truth Wentzel, things have taken place which must not be known." The Admiralty
launched no official inquiry and the matter was quietly dropped.
On Franklin's return to England, none of the rumours or criticism mattered. The failure to meet the expeditions key goals was overlooked in favour of admiration of his tale of courage in the face of adversity. Franklin, who had been made a commander
in his absence was promoted to captain
on 20 November 1822 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
, while Back was made a lieutenant. Franklin's account of the expedition, published in 1823, was regarded as a classic of travel literature and, when the publishing company could not keep up with demand, second hand copies sold for up to ten guinea
s. Ordinary people would point him out in the street, and recalling his desperate measures to avoid starvation, he became affectionately known as "the man who ate his boots".
Franklin made another expedition to the Arctic in 1825. With a party which included Richardson and Back he journeyed down the Mackenzie River to map a further section of Canada's coast. This time the expedition was better organised, with less reliance on outside help, and all the major objectives were met. After spells commanding ships outside the Arctic and an unhappy period as Governor of Tasmania
, he led a final expedition to discover the Northwest Passage in 1845. Franklin vanished almost without trace, with all 132 of his men, and the mystery of his fate has still to be fully unravelled (see Franklin's lost expedition
).
The story of the Coppermine Expedition was to serve as an influence on Roald Amundsen
, who would eventually become the first man to navigate the entire Northwest Passage, as well as the first to reach the South Pole
. At the age of fifteen he read Franklin's account, and decided that he wanted to be a polar explorer. He later recalled
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, which was accessed by way of the Coppermine River
Coppermine River
The Coppermine River is a river in the North Slave and Kitikmeot regions of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada. It is long. It rises in Lac de Gras, a small lake near Great Slave Lake and flows generally north to Coronation Gulf, an arm of the Arctic Ocean...
. The British
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
expedition was organised by the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
as part of its attempt to discover and map the Northwest Passage
Northwest Passage
The Northwest Passage is a sea route through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways amidst the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans...
. It was the first of three Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
expeditions to be led by John Franklin
John Franklin
Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin KCH FRGS RN was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. Franklin also served as governor of Tasmania for several years. In his last expedition, he disappeared while attempting to chart and navigate a section of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic...
, and also included George Back
George Back
Admiral Sir George Back FRS was a British naval officer, explorer of the Canadian Arctic , naturalist and artist.-Career:...
and John Richardson
John Richardson (naturalist)
Sir John Richardson was a Scottish naval surgeon, naturalist and arctic explorer.Richardson was born at Dumfries. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and became a surgeon in the navy in 1807. He traveled with John Franklin in search of the Northwest Passage on the Coppermine Expedition of...
, both of whom would become significant Arctic explorers
Arctic exploration
Arctic exploration is the physical exploration of the Arctic region of the Earth. The region that surrounds the North Pole. It refers to the historical period during which mankind has explored the region north of the Arctic Circle...
in their own right.
The expedition was plagued by poor planning, bad luck and unreliable allies. The expected assistance from the local fur trading
Fur trade
The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of world market for in the early modern period furs of boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals have been the most valued...
companies and native peoples
Aboriginal peoples in Canada
Aboriginal peoples in Canada comprise the First Nations, Inuit and Métis. The descriptors "Indian" and "Eskimo" have fallen into disuse in Canada and are commonly considered pejorative....
was less forthcoming than expected, and the dysfunctional supply line, coupled with unusually harsh weather and the resulting absence of game, meant that the explorers were never far from starvation. Eventually the Arctic coast was reached, but barely 500 mi (804.7 km) had been explored before the exhaustion of the party's supplies and the onset of winter forced them to turn back.
The expedition made a desperate retreat across uncharted territory in a state of starvation, often with nothing more than lichen
Lichen
Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic organism composed of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner , usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium...
to eat. Eleven of the twenty strong party died amid accusations of murder and cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
before the survivors were rescued by native people of the Yellowknife tribe
Yellowknives
The Yellowknives, Yellow Knives, Copper Indians, Red Knives or T'atsaot'ine are Aboriginal peoples of Canada, one of the five main groups of the Dene indigenous people that live in the Northwest Territories of Canada...
, who had previously given them up for dead.
In the aftermath of the expedition, Franklin was much criticised by local fur traders for his haphazard planning and failure to adapt to the circumstances he faced, but in Britain he was received as a hero, fêted for the courage he had shown in extreme adversity. The expedition captured the public imagination, and in reference to a desperate measure he took while starving, he became known as "the man who ate his boots".
Background
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
the British Navy, under the influence of Sir John Barrow
Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet
Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet, FRS, FRGS was an English statesman.-Career:He was born the son of Roger Barrow in the village of Dragley Beck, in the parish of Ulverston then in Lancashire, now in Cumbria...
turned its attention to the discovery of the Northwest Passage, a putative sea route around the north coast of Canada which would allow European ships easy access to the markets of the Orient
Orient
The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...
. Evidence for the existence of a passage came from the fact that whaler
Whaler
A whaler is a specialized ship, designed for whaling, the catching and/or processing of whales. The former included the whale catcher, a steam or diesel-driven vessel with a harpoon gun mounted at its bows. The latter included such vessels as the sail or steam-driven whaleship of the 16th to early...
s in the Bering Strait
Bering Strait
The Bering Strait , known to natives as Imakpik, is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, the easternmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, USA, the westernmost point of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65°40'N,...
had killed whales which carried lance
Lance
A Lance is a pole weapon or spear designed to be used by a mounted warrior. The lance is longer, stout and heavier than an infantry spear, and unsuited for throwing, or for rapid thrusting. Lances did not have tips designed to intentionally break off or bend, unlike many throwing weapons of the...
s of the type used in Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
and vice versa, but the maze of islands
Canadian Arctic Archipelago
The Canadian Arctic Archipelago, also known as the Arctic Archipelago, is a Canadian archipelago north of the Canadian mainland in the Arctic...
to the north of Canada was almost completely unmapped, and it was not known whether a navigable, ice-free passage existed. In fact, by 1819 the northern coast of Canada had been glimpsed only twice by Europeans. In 1771 Samuel Hearne
Samuel Hearne
Samuel Hearne was a an English explorer, fur-trader, author, and naturalist. He was the first European to make an overland excursion across northern Canada to the Arctic Ocean, actually Coronation Gulf, via the Coppermine River...
had followed the Coppermine River to the sea at a point around 1500 mi (2,414 km) east of the Bering Strait. He was followed in 1789 by Alexander MacKenzie, who traced what is now the Mackenzie River
Mackenzie River
The Mackenzie River is the largest river system in Canada. It flows through a vast, isolated region of forest and tundra entirely within the country's Northwest Territories, although its many tributaries reach into four other Canadian provinces and territories...
to open sea 500 mi (804.7 km) west of the mouth of the Coppermine.
In 1818 Barrow had sent his first expedition to seek the Northwest Passage. Led by John Ross
John Ross (Arctic explorer)
Sir John Ross, CB, was a Scottish rear admiral and Arctic explorer.Ross was the son of the Rev. Andrew Ross, minister of Inch, near Stranraer in Scotland. In 1786, aged only nine, he joined the Royal Navy as an apprentice. He served in the Mediterranean until 1789 and then in the English Channel...
, it ended ignominiously when Ross entered the Lancaster Sound
Lancaster Sound
Lancaster Sound is a body of water in Qikiqtaaluk, Nunavut, Canada. It is located between Devon Island and Baffin Island, forming the eastern portion of the Northwest Passage. East of the sound lies Baffin Bay; to the west lies Viscount Melville Sound...
, the true entrance to the Passage, but judging it to be a bay turned around and returned to Britain. At the same time, David Buchan
David Buchan
David Buchan was a Scottish naval officer and Arctic explorer.-Exploration:In 1806, Buchan was appointed as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and from about 1808 to 1817 he operated in and around Newfoundland...
made an attempt to sail directly to the North Pole
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...
from Britain (Barrow was a believer in the Open Polar Sea
Open Polar Sea
The Open Polar Sea was a hypothesized ice-free ocean surrounding the North Pole. This unproven theory was once so widely believed that many exploring expeditions used it as justification for attempts to reach the North Pole by sea, or to find a navigable sea route between Europe and the Pacific...
hypothesis), but returned only with the news that the pack ice north of Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...
was a barrier which could not be breached.
The following year, Barrow planned two further expeditions to the Arctic. A seaborne expedition under William Edward Parry
William Edward Parry
Sir William Edward Parry was an English rear-admiral and Arctic explorer, who in 1827 attempted one of the earliest expeditions to the North Pole...
would follow on from Ross' work, seeking an entrance to the Northwest Passage from Lancaster Sound. Simultaneously, a party would travel overland to the Canadian coast by way of the Coppermine river and map as much of the coastline as possible, and perhaps even rendezvous with Parry's ships. John Franklin, a Lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
who had commanded one of Buchan's ships the previous year, was chosen to lead the overland party.
Expedition planning
Great Slave Lake
Great Slave Lake is the second-largest lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada , the deepest lake in North America at , and the ninth-largest lake in the world. It is long and wide. It covers an area of in the southern part of the territory. Its given volume ranges from to and up to ...
, and from there go to the coast by way of the Coppermine River. On reaching the coast he was advised to head east towards Repulse Bay
Repulse Bay, Nunavut
Repulse Bay is an Inuit hamlet located on the shore of Hudson Bay, Kivalliq Region, in Nunavut, Canada.-Location and wildlife:The hamlet is located exactly on the Arctic Circle, on the north shore of Repulse Bay and on the south shore of the Rae Isthmus. Transport to the community is provided...
and Parry's (hopefully victorious) ships, but if it seemed better he was also given the option of going west to map the coastline between the Coppermine and the Mackenzie rivers, or even heading north into wholly unknown seas.
More serious than the ambiguity of the instructions was the fact that the expedition was organised on a shoestring budget. Franklin was to take only a minimum of naval personnel, and would be reliant on outside help for much of the journey. Manual assistance was meant to be provided by voyageurs
Voyageurs
The Voyageurs were the persons who engaged in the transportation of furs by canoe during the fur trade era. Voyageur is a French word which literally translates to "traveler"...
(local furriers of mixed French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and aboriginal descent) supplied by the Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...
and the rival North West Company
North West Company
The North West Company was a fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in what was to become Western Canada...
, while the local Yellowknives would act as guides and provide food should Franklin's supplies run out.
Only four naval personnel accompanied Franklin; the doctor, naturalist and second in command John Richardson, two midshipmen
Midshipman
A midshipman is an officer cadet, or a commissioned officer of the lowest rank, in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Kenya...
named George Back and Robert Hood who had sailed with Buchan in 1818, and Ordinary Seaman John Hepburn.
England to Fort Enterprise
The expedition sailed from GravesendGravesend, Kent
Gravesend is a town in northwest Kent, England, on the south bank of the Thames, opposite Tilbury in Essex. It is the administrative town of the Borough of Gravesham and, because of its geographical position, has always had an important role to play in the history and communications of this part of...
on 23 May on a Hudson's Bay Company supply ship, after three months of planning, and immediately hit a note of farce. The ship had stopped briefly off the Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
coast, where Back had business to attend to, but before he had returned a favourable wind blew up and the ship sailed off, leaving Back to make his own way to their next stop in Orkney by stagecoach
Stagecoach
A stagecoach is a type of covered wagon for passengers and goods, strongly sprung and drawn by four horses, usually four-in-hand. Widely used before the introduction of railway transport, it made regular trips between stages or stations, which were places of rest provided for stagecoach travelers...
and ferry. A more serious problem arose in Stromness
Stromness
Stromness is the second-biggest town in Orkney, Scotland. It is in the south-west of Mainland Orkney. It is also a parish, with the town of Stromness as its capital.-Etymology:...
when the expedition, now reunited with Back, attempted to hire local boatmen to act as manhaulers
Manhauling
Manhauling, often expressed as man-hauling, means the pulling forward of sledges, trucks or other load-carrying vehicles by human power unaided by animals or machines...
for the first part of the trek across Canada. The people of Stromness were far less keen to sign up than the navy had anticipated, and only four men were recruited, and even they agreed to go only as far as Fort Chipewyan
Fort Chipewyan, Alberta
Fort Chipewyan, commonly referred to as Fort Chip, is a hamlet in northern Alberta, Canada within the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. It is located on the western tip of Lake Athabasca, adjacent to Wood Buffalo National Park, approximately north of Fort McMurray.Fort Chipewyan is one of...
on Lake Athabasca
Lake Athabasca
Lake Athabasca is located in the northwest corner of Saskatchewan and the northeast corner of Alberta between 58° and 60° N.-History:The name in the Dene language originally referred only to the large delta formed by the confluence the Athabasca River at the southwest corner of the lake...
.
On 30 August, Franklin's men reached York Factory
York Factory, Manitoba
York Factory was a settlement and factory located on the southwestern shore of Hudson Bay in northeastern Manitoba, Canada, at the mouth of the Hayes River, approximately south-southeast of Churchill. The settlement was headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company's Northern Department, from 1821 to...
, the main port on the southwest coast of Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay , sometimes called Hudson's Bay, is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada. It drains a very large area, about , that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, most of Manitoba, southeastern Nunavut, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota,...
, to begin the 1700 mi (2,735.9 km) trek to the Great Slave Lake. They immediately encountered the first of the supply problems which were to plague the expedition. Much of the assistance which had been offered by the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company failed to materialise; the companies had spent the preceding years in a state of virtual war, co-operation between them would be virtually nonexistent, and they had few resources to spare. Franklin was provided with a boat which was too small to carry all his supplies (he was assured the rest would be sent on) and proceeded along normal trading routes
Trade route
A trade route is a logistical network identified as a series of pathways and stoppages used for the commercial transport of cargo. Allowing goods to reach distant markets, a single trade route contains long distance arteries which may further be connected to several smaller networks of commercial...
to Cumberland House
Cumberland House, Saskatchewan
Cumberland House is a village in Census Division No. 18 in north-eastern Saskatchewan, Canada on the Saskatchewan River. It is the oldest community in Saskatchewan and has a population of about 2000 people...
(at the time little more than a log cabin which was home to 30 Hudson's Bay men) where he and his men spent the winter. The winter was a harsh one, and ominously, the local Indians
First Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
who came to the post for supplies reported that game had become so scarce that some families were resorting to cannibalism to survive.
Mercury (element)
Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum...
in their thermometer
Thermometer
Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient using a variety of different principles. A thermometer has two important elements: the temperature sensor Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer (from the...
s. Without tents, they were grateful for snowfall, as it provided an extra layer of insulation over their blankets. Franklin would later write that the journey brought "a great intermixture of agreeable and disagreeable circumstances. Could the amount of each be balanced, I suspect the latter would much preponderate."
The advance party arrived at Fort Chipewyan in late March, having covered 857 mi (1,379.2 km) in six weeks. Once there, Franklin found equipping his expedition far harder than had been anticipated. The harsh winter meant that food stocks were barely available, and he had to make do with a vague promise that hunters would feed them on route, and that the chief of the Coppermine Indians would offer assistance. Furthermore, the best voyageurs were preoccupied with the conflict between the two fur trading companies, or unwilling to risk a journey into unknown terrain, far outside their normal range and with uncertain supplies. Eventually Franklin was able to recruit a team of sixteen voyageurs, but most of the men fell well below the standard he desired.
Fort Providence, Northwest Territories
Fort Providence is a hamlet in the South Slave Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada...
on its northern shore ten days later. Here they met Chief Akaitcho
Akaitcho
Akaitcho was a Copper Indian, and Chief of the Yellowknives...
(Big Foot), the leader of the local Yellowknives who had been recruited by the North West Company as guides and hunters for Franklin's men. Akaitcho, described as a man "of great penetration and shrewdness" understood the concept of the Northwest Passage, and patiently listened as Franklin explained that its use would bring wealth to his people. Apparently realising that Franklin was exaggerating the benefits, he asked a question which Franklin was unable to answer; why, if the Passage was so crucial to trade, had it not been discovered already?
His point effectively made, Akaitcho discussed his terms with Franklin. In return for the cancellation of his tribe's debts to the North West Company, and some supplies of weapons, ammunition and tobacco, his men would hunt and guide for Franklin on the northward journey down the Coppermine river, and leave depots of food for their return. However, they would not enter the Inuit
Inuit
The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...
lands at the far north of the river (they and the Inuit viewed each other with mutual hostility and suspicion), and Akaitcho warned Franklin that in such a hard year, he could not guarantee that food would always be available.
Franklin and his men spent the remainder of the summer trekking north to a point on the bank of the Coppermine river which Akaitcho had chosen as their winter quarters. Food quickly ran short and the voyageurs began to lose faith in their leader; Franklin's threats of severe punishment prevented a mutiny in the short term, but eroded the remaining goodwill felt by the men. The encampment, which Franklin named Fort Enterprise was reached without further incident, and wooden huts were constructed as winter quarters.
The Coppermine River and the Arctic coast
Snowshoe
A snowshoe is footwear for walking over the snow. Snowshoes work by distributing the weight of the person over a larger area so that the person's foot does not sink completely into the snow, a quality called "flotation"....
s, often with no shelter beyond blankets and a deerskin in temperatures as low as -67 F, Back returned having secured enough supplies to meet the expedition's immediate needs.
Mutiny
Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...
was laughable. Negotiation by Willard Wentzel, the North West Company's representative, eventually restored an uneasy truce. The discord was not confined to the voyageurs; Back and Hood had fallen out over their rivalry for the affections of an Indian girl nicknamed Greenstockings, and would have fought a duel
Duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...
over her had Hepburn not removed the gunpowder
Gunpowder
Gunpowder, also known since in the late 19th century as black powder, was the first chemical explosive and the only one known until the mid 1800s. It is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate - with the sulfur and charcoal acting as fuels, while the saltpeter works as an oxidizer...
from their weapons. The situation was defused when Back was dispatched south, and Hood subsequently fathered a child with the girl.
The winter passed and Franklin set out again on 4 June. His plans for the coming summer were vague; he had decided to explore east from the mouth of the Coppermine in the hope of either meeting Parry or reaching Repulse Bay
Repulse Bay, Nunavut
Repulse Bay is an Inuit hamlet located on the shore of Hudson Bay, Kivalliq Region, in Nunavut, Canada.-Location and wildlife:The hamlet is located exactly on the Arctic Circle, on the north shore of Repulse Bay and on the south shore of the Rae Isthmus. Transport to the community is provided...
, where he might obtain adequate supplies from local Inuit to allow him to return directly to York Factory by way of Hudson Bay. However, if Parry failed to appear, or he was unable to reach Repulse Bay he would either retrace his outward route or, if it seemed better, return directly to Fort Enterprise across the uncharted Barren Lands to the east of the Coppermine river.
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions...
was finally sighted on 14 July, shortly before the expedition encountered its first Inuit camp. The Inuit fled, and Franklin's men never had the opportunity to make further contact or trade for supplies as he had hoped. The abandoned camp gave a further indication of the scarcity of food in the area; the stocks of dried salmon were rotting and maggot-infested, and the meat which was drying consisted mainly of small birds and mice.
The Indians turned for home as had been agreed, as did Wentzel, leaving Franklin with fifteen voyageurs and his four Britons. Franklin gave orders to those departing that caches of food were to be left on route and that most importantly Fort Enterprise be stocked with a large amount of dried meat. With the lateness of the season the latter point was crucial because Franklin now feared that if, as seemed likely, he failed to reach Repulse Bay, the sea would freeze and prevent him returning to the mouth of the Coppermine. If so, he would be forced to make a direct return across the Barren Lands, where he and his men would be dependent on whatever food they could forage. There was therefore a real risk that they would be close to starvation by the time they reached Fort Enterprise; he repeated again and again that their survival would depend on the huts being well stocked.
Kent Peninsula
The Kent Peninsula is a large peninsula, almost totally surrounded by water, in Nunavut's northern Canadian Arctic mainland. From a narrow isthmus, it extends westward into the Coronation Gulf. It is south of Dease Strait which separates the peninsula from Victoria Island and the Finlayson...
which he named Point Turnagain. As he had feared, rough seas and the damage to their canoes made a return via the Coppermine impracticable, and Franklin party decided upon a return via the Hood River, from which they would attempt to make an overland return across the Barren Lands.
Return to Fort Enterprise
Rock tripe
Rock tripe is a lichen of the genus Umbilicaria that grows on rocks. It can be found throughout northern parts of North America such as New England and the Rocky Mountains...
, and the occasional rotting carcass left by packs of wolves
Gray Wolf
The gray wolf , also known as the wolf, is the largest extant wild member of the Canidae family...
. So desperate did they become that they even boiled and devoured the leather
Leather
Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...
from their spare boots.
Compass
A compass is a navigational instrument that shows directions in a frame of reference that is stationary relative to the surface of the earth. The frame of reference defines the four cardinal directions – north, south, east, and west. Intermediate directions are also defined...
was of little use as the magnetic deviation
Magnetic deviation
Magnetic deviation is the error induced in a compass by local magnetic fields, which must be allowed for, along with magnetic declination, if accurate bearings are to be calculated....
for the area was unknown, and the constant cloud cover made navigating by the sun or stars impossible. A full scale mutiny was averted only by the fact that on 26 September they reached a large river which was undoubtedly the Coppermine.
The party's joy at reaching the Coppermine quickly turned to despair when it became obvious that without boats, it would be impossible to cross the river to reach Fort Enterprise, which Franklin estimated lay 40 mi (64.4 km) away on the far bank. The fast-flowing river was 120 yd (109.7 m) wide in places, and attempts to find a spot where it could be forded proved futile. The voyageurs, according to Richardson, "bitterly execrated their folly in breaking the canoe" and became "careless and disobedient... [and] ceased to dread punishment or hope for reward." One of them, Juninus, slipped away, perhaps hoping to reach safety by himself, and never returned. Richardson himself risked his life trying to swim across the river with a line tied around his waist, but losing the feeling in his limbs he sank to the riverbed and had to be hauled back. The hypothermia
Hypothermia
Hypothermia is a condition in which core temperature drops below the required temperature for normal metabolism and body functions which is defined as . Body temperature is usually maintained near a constant level of through biologic homeostasis or thermoregulation...
he suffered sapped his remaining strength and left him a virtual invalid.
Willow
Willows, sallows, and osiers form the genus Salix, around 400 species of deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere...
branches and canvas
Canvas
Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame...
. The other men cheered when, on 4 October, he crossed the river, trailing a lifeline. The rest of the party crossed one at a time. The boat sank lower and lower in the water as they did so, but all crossed safely.
Fort Enterprise now lay less than a week's march away, but for some of the starving men, that would prove to be an insurmountable barrier. At the back of the line, the two weakest voyageurs, Credit and Vaillant, collapsed and were left where they fell. Richardson and Hood were also too weak to continue. At this point, Franklin split his party. Back, the fittest remaining officer, was sent ahead with three voyageurs to bring food back from Fort Enterprise. Franklin would follow at a slower pace with the remaining voyageurs. Hood and Richardson would stay in their camp, with Hepburn to look after them, in the hope that one of the other parties could bring them food. Franklin was disturbed by the apparent abandonment of Hood and Richardson, but they were insistent that the party would have a better chance of survival without them.
Franklin had only gone a short distance towards Fort Enterprise when four voyageurs—Michel Terohaute, Jean Baptiste Belanger, Perrault, and Fontano—said they were unable to continue and asked to return to Hood and Richardson's camp. Franklin agreed. He staggered on towards Fort Enterprise with his five remaining companions, growing weaker and weaker. No game was to be found, even if any of them had been strong enough to hold a rifle, and recounting the story, Franklin made a comment which would become famous: "There was no tripe de roche, so we drank tea and ate some of our shoes for supper."
Franklin's party reached Fort Enterprise on 12 October, two days after Back. They found it deserted and unstocked. The promised supplies of dried meat had not appeared, and there was nothing to eat except bones from the previous winter, a few rotting skins which had been used as bedding, and a little tripe de roche. A note from Back explained that he had found the fort in this state, and that he was heading towards Fort Providence to look for Akaitcho and his Indians. The party despaired. Two voyageurs, Augustus and Benoit, set off upriver in the hope of meeting some Indians there. The rest of the group remained, too weak to go any further. Two of voyageurs lay down crying and waited to die, and even the normally optimistic Franklin wrote of how quickly his strength was evaporating. None of them had eaten meat for four weeks.
Murder
Of the four voyageurs who had left Franklin's party to return to Hood and Richardson, only Michel Terohaute reached the camp, having taken several days to cover the 4 mi (6.4 km) from where they left Franklin. He told the Britons that he had become separated from the others, and assumed that they would be following. Whatever doubts the officers may have had about his story gave way to gratitude when he presented them with meat, which he said had come from a hare and partridge he had managed to kill on the way. Two days later he went hunting and brought back meat he said came from a wolf he had found. The Britons were delighted, and eagerly devoured the meat.Over the next few days, however, Michel's behaviour became more and more erratic. He disappeared for short periods, refusing to say where he had gone. He would not gather tripe de roche. When asked to go hunting he refused, replying that "there are no animals, you had better kill and eat me." He later accused the Britons of having eaten his uncle.
At some point (Richardson's journal is unclear on when), Richardson and Hood began to suspect that Michel had killed the three missing voyageurs, and was disappearing from camp to feed on their corpses. The "wolf meat" they had eaten was probably human flesh. Then, on 20 October while Richardson and Hepburn were foraging, they heard a shot from the camp. They found Hood dead, and Michel standing with a gun in his hand.
Michel's explanation was that Hood had been cleaning his gun and that it had gone off, shooting him through the head. The claim was self-evidently absurd; the rifle was too long for a man to shoot himself with, moreover Hood had been shot in the back of the head, apparently while reading a book. But with Michel stronger than them and armed, there was nothing Hepburn and Richardson could do for the next three days, as Michel refused to let them out of his sight, became more and more aggressive, repeatedly asking to know if they thought he had murdered Hood. Finally on 23 October Michel left them for a short time to gather lichen. Richardson took the opportunity to load his pistol, and on Michel's return, he shot him dead.
Rescue
Richardson and Hepburn struggled on to Fort Enterprise and were appalled by the scene when they arrived on 29 October. Of the four men who remained, only Peltier was strong enough to stand and greet them. The floorboards had been dug up for firewood, and the skins which covered the windows had been removed and eaten by the starving men. Richardson wrote that "the ghastly countenances, dilated eyeballs and sepulchral voices of Captain Franklin and those with him were more than we could at first bear."For over a week the men at Fort Enterprise subsisted on tripe de roche and rotten deerskins, which they ate complete with the maggot
Maggot
In everyday speech the word maggot means the larva of a fly ; it is applied in particular to the larvae of Brachyceran flies, such as houseflies, cheese flies, and blowflies, rather than larvae of the Nematocera, such as mosquitoes and Crane flies...
s, which tasted "as fine as gooseberries." Two of the voyageurs, Peltier and Samandré, died on the night of 1 November. The third, Adam, was close to death. Hepburn's limbs began to swell with protein deficiency oedema. Finally, on 7 November, help arrived with the arrival of three of Akaitcho's Indians, with whom Back (who had also lost a man to starvation) had finally managed to make contact. They brought food, caught fish for the survivors, and treated them "with the same tenderness they would have bestowed on their own infants." After building up their strength for a week, they left Fort Enterprise on 15 November, arriving at Fort Providence on 11 December.
Akaitcho explained why Fort Enterprise had not been stocked with food as promised. Part of the reason was that three of his hunters had been killed when they fell through the ice on a frozen lake, and he had not been supplied with ammunition at Fort Providence, but he admitted the main reason the fort had been abandoned; he had believed that the white men's expedition was the height of folly, and that they would not return to Fort Enterprise alive. In spite of this, Franklin refused to blame Akaitcho, who had shown him much kindness during the rescue, and due to the ongoing dispute between the fur companies, had not received the payment he had been promised.
Aftermath and legacy
Repulse Bay, Nunavut
Repulse Bay is an Inuit hamlet located on the shore of Hudson Bay, Kivalliq Region, in Nunavut, Canada.-Location and wildlife:The hamlet is located exactly on the Arctic Circle, on the north shore of Repulse Bay and on the south shore of the Rae Isthmus. Transport to the community is provided...
or to meeting up with Parry's ships. When the party arrived back at York Factory in July 1822, George Simpson
George Simpson (administrator)
Sir George Simpson was a Scots-Quebecer and employee of the Hudson's Bay Company . His title was Governor-in-Chief of Rupert's Land and administrator over the Northwest Territories and Columbia Department in British North America from 1821 to 1860.-Early years:George Simpson was born in Dingwall,...
of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had objected to Franklin's expedition from the start, wrote that "They do not feel themselves at liberty to enter into the particulars of their disastrous enterprise, and I fear they have not fully achieved the object of their mission." Simpson and other fur traders who knew the terrain were scathing in their descriptions of the expedition's poor planning and assessment of Franklin's competence. His reluctance to deviate from his original plan, even when it became obvious that supplies and game would be too scarce to complete the journey safely, were cited as evidence of his inflexibility and inability to adapt to a changing situation. Had Franklin been more experienced, he might have reconsidered his goals, or abandoned the expedition altogether. In a particularly harshly worded letter, Simpson also wrote of Franklin's physical failings; "[He] has not the physical powers required for the labor of moderate Voyaging in this country; he must have three meals per diem, Tea is indispensable, and with the utmost exertion he cannot walk above Eight miles in one day, so that it does not follow if those Gentlemen are unsuccessful that the difficulties are insurmountable." However, it should be kept in mind that many of the fur traders resented having had to assist Franklin in the first place, and Simpson in particular was angry with what he saw as Franklin's support for the rival North West Company in their trade war.
There were also dark murmurings about what exactly had happened to Robert Hood and Michel Terohaute. The only account of the incident was Richardson's, published after consultation with Franklin, and there was nothing to prove that he and Hepburn had not killed and eaten Hood and the four voyageurs themselves. Wentzel, the North West Company interpreter who was blamed for failing to ensure that Fort Enterprise was stocked, went so far as to accuse Richardson of murder, and demanded that he be brought to trial. Back subsequently wrote to him that "to tell the truth Wentzel, things have taken place which must not be known." The Admiralty
Admiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...
launched no official inquiry and the matter was quietly dropped.
Commander
Commander is a naval rank which is also sometimes used as a military title depending on the individual customs of a given military service. Commander is also used as a rank or title in some organizations outside of the armed forces, particularly in police and law enforcement.-Commander as a naval...
in his absence was promoted to captain
Captain (naval)
Captain is the name most often given in English-speaking navies to the rank corresponding to command of the largest ships. The NATO rank code is OF-5, equivalent to an army full colonel....
on 20 November 1822 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
, while Back was made a lieutenant. Franklin's account of the expedition, published in 1823, was regarded as a classic of travel literature and, when the publishing company could not keep up with demand, second hand copies sold for up to ten guinea
Guinea (British coin)
The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...
s. Ordinary people would point him out in the street, and recalling his desperate measures to avoid starvation, he became affectionately known as "the man who ate his boots".
Franklin made another expedition to the Arctic in 1825. With a party which included Richardson and Back he journeyed down the Mackenzie River to map a further section of Canada's coast. This time the expedition was better organised, with less reliance on outside help, and all the major objectives were met. After spells commanding ships outside the Arctic and an unhappy period as Governor of Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
, he led a final expedition to discover the Northwest Passage in 1845. Franklin vanished almost without trace, with all 132 of his men, and the mystery of his fate has still to be fully unravelled (see Franklin's lost expedition
Franklin's lost expedition
Franklin's lost expedition was a doomed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845. A Royal Navy officer and experienced explorer, Franklin had served on three previous Arctic expeditions, the latter two as commanding officer...
).
The story of the Coppermine Expedition was to serve as an influence on Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the first Antarctic expedition to reach the South Pole between 1910 and 1912 and he was the first person to reach both the North and South Poles. He is also known as the first to traverse the Northwest Passage....
, who would eventually become the first man to navigate the entire Northwest Passage, as well as the first to reach the South Pole
South Pole
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole...
. At the age of fifteen he read Franklin's account, and decided that he wanted to be a polar explorer. He later recalled
External links
- The Journey to the Polar Sea, John Franklin's account of the expedition, at Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...