The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel / Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.

by Thomas H. Prescott

On the night of the 2d, the ice came in with great violence, and again forced the Fury on shore. The strength and number of the Hecla’s hawsers only saved her from sharing the same fate. In the meanwhile the crew of the Fury were completely exhausted by labor, and their hands had become so sore by the constant friction of the ropes that they could no longer handle them without mittens. In this situation it was determined to land the stores and provisions of the vessel, in order that she might undergo a complete repair.

Accordingly anchors were carried to the beach, by which the grounded icebergs that formed the harbor were secured in their position, thus enclosing a space just sufficient to admit both ships. In this position a great part of the Fury’s stores were landed. The injury was found to be more severe than had at first been supposed; indeed, it appeared that the compactness of her fabric had alone saved her from sinking. Nevertheless, no exertion was spared to render her seaworthy again, though the daily pressure of the ice was another, and a very great disadvantage.

In spite of every effort, it was found impossible to save the Fury, and the Hecla was greatly endangered in the attempt. She was compelled to leave the land and drift about among the ice, to avoid being forced on shore. On returning, Captain Parry found that the Fury had been driven farther on the beach than before, and nine feet of water were in her hold. Her keel and bottom were more injured than ever. The first glance satisfied Captain Parry that the vessel could never return to England. By and with the advice of a council of his officers, therefore, he decided to leave her to her fate, and as his provisions would barely suffice for another twelvemonth, to return home. In pursuance of this resolution the Hecla reached Sheerness on the 21st of October. On the eastern shore of Prince Regent’s Inlet is Cape Kater, the most southern point attained by the ships in this expedition. It is in latitude 71 deg. 53 min. 30 sec. and longitude 90 deg. 03 min. 45 sec.

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.

This intrepid navigator was born at Spilsby, in Lincolnshire, in the year 1786. In 1800, he went as a midshipman, on board the Polyphemus; and, in 1802, proceeded with Captain Flinders, to New Holland, in the Investigator, from which vessel, on its arrival at Port Jackson, in July, 1803, he was removed, as supernumerary master’s-mate, to the Porpoise storeship, and was shortly afterwards wrecked on a coral reef. He then joined the Bellerophon, in which he was engaged at the battle of Trafalgar; and, some time after, was appointed an acting lieutenant of the Bedford, in which he accompanied the royal family of Portugal from Lisbon to South America; and, returning to Europe, assisted at the blockade of Flushing, where he continued till 1814, when the Bedford was ordered out as part of the expedition against New Orleans, where he greatly distinguished himself by his skill and valor. In 1815, he was made first lieutenant of the Forth; and, in January, 1818, was appointed to the command of the Trent brig, then about to accompany Captain Buchan on a voyage to Spitzbergen; and, on his return, he offered to undertake a journey to the North Pole, from the shores of the former, by traveling in sledge-boats across the ice.

In the early part of 1819, he was selected to head an expedition, over land, from Hudson’s Bay, to the Arctic Ocean; and having embarked at Gravesend, on the 23d of May, arrived at the former place on the 30th of August; and, on the 9th of September, began to ascend the streams between York Factory and Cumberland House, a journey of six hundred and ninety miles, which he performed in about six weeks, having been nearly killed by an accident, which he thus relates:—​‘In the afternoon, whilst on my way to superintend the operations of the men, I had the misfortune to slip from the summit of a rock into the river, betwixt two of the falls. My attempts to regain the bank were, for a time, ineffectual, owing to the rocks within my reach having been worn smooth by the action of the water; but, after I had been carried a considerable distance down the stream, I caught hold of a willow, by which I held until two gentlemen came in a boat to my assistance.’ From Cumberland House he proceeded along the snow, to Fort Chepywan, where he arrived on the 26th of March, 1820, after having walked eight hundred and fifty-seven miles, with a weight on his ancles, the whole distance, of nearly three pounds; and in the course of which, he describes the cold to have been so severe, that ‘the tea froze in the tin pots before it could be raised to the mouth, and even a mixture of spirits and water became thick by congelation.’ On the 29th of July, he arrived at Fort Providence, whence he proceeded to the Yellow Knife River, and directed his course towards the Polar Sea, through a country never before visited by a European; wintering, on his way thither, at Fort Enterprise, near the head of the Copper Mine River, where he remained, in a hut built by the Canadians, till the end of June, 1821; during which time, he wrote great part of his journal, and in which year he was made a commander.

On the 7th of July, he reached the westerly part of the Copper Mine River; a few days afterwards, traversed the Copper Mountains, and pitching his tent beneath them, sent forward in advance, his two Esquimaux interpreters, to inform their countrymen of his approach, and of the object of his expedition. After reconnoitering the mouth of the Copper Mine River, and giving to one of the neighboring promontories the name of Cape Hearne, he embarked in a canoe, on the 21st of July, and ‘commenced the navigation of the Arctic Ocean, with a voyage before him of not less than one thousand two hundred geographical miles; Fort Churchill, on the western shore of Hudson’s Bay, being the nearest spot at which he could hope to meet with a civilized being.’ The tempestuous weather, however, the shortness of his provisions, and the fears of the Canadians, who were unwilling to proceed further, compelled him to land at Cape Flinders. Hence he proceeded along the coast to Point Turnagain, now called the Duke of York’s Archipelago; and having carried his researches so far as ‘to favor the opinion of those who contend for the practicability of a north-west passage,’ he, on the 25th of August, terminated his survey of the coast, at the mouth of Hood’s River, where he left, in a box, an account of his proceedings, for the information of Captain Parry, who was then exploring the Arctic Sea in an easterly direction.

On the 31st of August, Captain Franklin, having broken up his canoes to make smaller ones, commenced his return to Fort Chepywan, where he arrived in July, 1822, after one of the most appalling and disastrous journeys ever recorded. During the time it occupied, his principal food was tripe de roche, leather, and boiled bones; three of his companions died of cold and hunger, and two were murdered, and devoured unconsciously by the remainder. The nights, in addition to the danger attending them from the frequency of the wolves, were so chilly, that the tents of himself and his party were, every morning, surrounded with snow to the height of three or four feet; and the blankets that covered their bed so hardened with frost that it was with difficulty they could be folded. Several times Captain Franklin fainted from fatigue, and the ice on which he kept continually falling, prevented him from traveling at the rate of more than two or three miles per day; often had he to wade up to his waist through water, where the temperature was scarcely above the freezing point; and, on one occasion, he was upset in his canoe, and only prevented, by clinging to a rock, from being dashed to pieces in the cataracts of the rapids. The following extract from his journal, will give some idea of the sufferings he endured:—​‘A partridge being shot, the feathers were torn off, it was held to the fire a few minutes, and then divided into six portions. I and my companions ravenously devoured our shares, as it was the first morsel of flesh either of us had tasted for thirty-one days; unless, indeed, the small gristly particles which we found occasionally adhering to the pounded bones may be termed flesh.’ The delivery of Captain Franklin and his party from the death with which hunger, fatigue, and disease daily threatened them, was owing to the assistance of some Indian hunters, who came to them in their last stage of despair. ‘They treated us,’ says the captain, ‘with the utmost tenderness, gave us their snow-shoes, and walked without any themselves, keeping by our sides that they might lift us when we fell. They prepared our encampment, cooked for us, and fed us as if we had been children: evincing humanity that would have done honor to the most civilized people.’

On his arrival in England, Captain Franklin was made a post-captain; he married, in August, 1823, the daughter of William Penden, Esq., architect of the king’s stables at Brighton; and, at the end of the same year, submitted to Lord Bathurst ‘a plan for an expedition over-land to the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and thence, by sea, to the north-western extremity of America; with the combined object, also, of surveying the coast between the Mackenzie and Copper Mine Rivers;’ an expedition which he was permitted to superintend, upon his showing to government, that ‘in the proposed course, similar dangers to those of the former over-land expedition were not to be apprehended.’