We must now go back a few years. In May 1819, an overland expedition was despatched to ascertain the exact position of the Coppermine River, to descend it to its mouth, and to explore the coast of the Arctic Sea on either hand. The command was given to Lieutenant Franklin, who was accompanied by Dr. Richardson the naturalist, by Messrs. Hood and Back, two English midshipmen, and two picked seamen. The expedition was spread over a period of two years and a half, and the narrative of what was accomplished and endured by its members reads like a romance. They reached the mouth of the Coppermine, and then launched their little barks on the chill waters of the Polar Sea. With much perseverance, and after encountering some serious obstacles, they made their way along its shores in a westerly direction as far as Point Turnagain, in lat. 68° 30’ N. Between this headland on the east, and Cape Barrow on the west, opens a deep gulf, stretching inland as far as the Arctic Circle, Franklin named it George the Fourth’s Coronation Gulf; and describes it as studded with numerous islands, and indented with sounds affording excellent harbours, all of them supplied with small rivers of fresh water, abounding with salmon, trout, and other fish.
Passing over Franklin’s after-labours in the great cause of Arctic Discovery, labours which secured him the well-merited reward of knighthood, we come to that last voyage, which helped, as we shall see, to solve the problem of a North-West Passage, but was the cause of one of the saddest chapters in the history of Maritime Enterprise.
It was in the spring of 1845 that Sir John Franklin, in command of the Erebus and the Terror, with Captain Crozier, an experienced Arctic navigator, as his lieutenant, and at the head of one hundred and thirty-seven picked seamen, brave, resolute, and hardy, once more sailed for the Polar waters.
On the 8th of June he left the Orkneys, and a month later arrived in Baffin Bay. About the end of July some whaling-ships in Melville Bay saw the Erebus and Terror contending gallantly with the ice which impeded their progress to Lancaster Sound. On the evening of the 26th the ice opened up, and the two discovery-ships sailed away into the north-western seas.
Two years passed, and no news reached England of Franklin and his companions. As day succeeded day, and week followed week, and still no tidings came, men grew anxious, and then alarmed; “expectation darkened into anxiety, anxiety into dread.” At last, it was determined to institute a search for the missing heroes. An expedition was sent out under Sir James Ross; another under Sir John Richardson; but neither obtained any information. By many all hope was then abandoned; and the fate of Franklin was regarded as one of those mysteries which the historian in vain attempts to unravel. He and his men had perished; of that there could be no reasonable doubt. Yet a few were sanguine enough to believe that they had taken refuge among the Eskimos, or were dragging out a weary existence in some remote wilderness, in expectation of help from home. Franklin’s brave and noble wife was one of those who, whatever they feared or hoped, were, at all events, determined not to rest until some accurate information had been gained. And round her gathered the most eminent scientific men of the day, whose influence combined with the general sympathy of the people to encourage the Government in a further effort.
It was in 1850 that the first clue to the position of the Erebus and Terror was secured in Beechey Island, through the accidental detention there of the searching expeditions of Captains Austin and Penny.
They were bound for Melville Island, but on reaching the entrance of Wellington Channel (August 1850), were met by such immense fields of ice sweeping down it and out of Barrow Strait, that they were glad to seek shelter in a great bay at the eastern end of the channel,—a bay almost bisected, as it were, by Beechey Island. On the 23rd, a boat from Captain Ommaney’s ship, the Assistance, happened to land on one of the extreme points of the bay; and the crew, in the course of their wanderings, were not a little surprised to discover traces of a former visit from Europeans. Under the lofty cliff of Cape Riley they came upon the groundwork of a tent, scraps of canvas and rope, a quantity of birds’ bones and feathers, and a long-handled rake which, apparently, had been used for collecting the rich rare weeds that cover the bottom of the Arctic waters.