Honours of the most distinguished character awaited Franklin upon his return. To the map of North America he had added no less than twelve hundred miles, for which the nation rendered him enthusiastic applause. In 1829 he was knighted, Oxford conferred on him the degree of D.C.L., and the Geographical Society of Paris awarded him a gold medal.
LAST JOURNEY OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN
In his second marriage Franklin was most fortunate in winning a cultured, travelled woman of wealth, Jane Griffin, whose sympathies were entirely in harmony with his own, and whose devotion to his memory kept alive for twelve years the interest of the world in ceaseless efforts to ascertain his fate. The succeeding years until the last ill-fated voyage were most happily divided between a cruise on the Mediterranean, in which Franklin commanded the Rainbow with such pleasure to the crew and officers that the ship won the cheerful sobriquet of Celestial Rainbow and the Paradise of Franklin, and the governorship of the colony of Van Diemen’s Land, or Tasmania, a post he held for seven years with admirable success. Franklin had only been a few months in England when the Admiralty, through Sir John Barrow, for many years an enthusiastic promoter of Arctic enterprise, decided upon another expedition to effect the discovery of the Northwest Passage. It is recorded that the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Haddington, in conversing with Sir Edward Parry upon the advisability of offering Franklin the post of commanding officer, remarked:—
“I see Franklin is sixty years old. Ought we to let him go?” to which Parry answered,—
“My lord, he is the best man for the post I know, and if you don’t let him go, he will, I am certain, die of disappointment.”
In an interview with Franklin, Lord Haddington spoke again of his age being sixty, and added,—
“You might be content with your laurels, after having done so much for your country,” to which Franklin replied with all the eagerness of youth,—
“No, no! my lord, only fifty-nine!”
Lord Brougham, when told that the command had been accepted by Franklin, remarked,—