LIEUT. FAIRHOLME.
On the 1st of September, 1827, Captain Franklin arrived at Liverpool, from New York, where he had received every mark of attention both public and private; and, in the same year, he was presented by the Geographical Society of Paris, with their annual gold medal, value twelve hundred francs, and also elected a corresponding member of that institution. In November, 1828, he married a second time; in the following year had the honor of knighthood conferred upon him, and also the degree of D. C. L. by the University of Oxford; and, in 1830, he was appointed commander of the Rainbow. In both expeditions to the Arctic Sea, Captain Franklin was accompanied by Dr. Richardson, a journal of whose discoveries is appended to the former’s second narrative, which, as well as that containing an account of his first voyage, combines the most intense interest with the most valuable information, and is written with great spirit, elegance, and accuracy. In the course of his perilous journey, by sea and land, Captain Franklin evinced a contempt of personal danger in the pursuit of his enterprise, and a degree of kind-heartedness to, and consideration for, those who accompanied him, that has rendered him equally the pride of his friends, and an honor to his country.
LIEUT. H. T. D. LE VESCONTE.
LIEUT. DES VŒUX. (MATE.)
On the 19th of May, 1845, Sir John sailed from England in search of the North West Passage. He had two vessels, the Erebus and Terror; the crews, officers, and men numbered one hundred and thirty-eight. On the 26th of July, sixty-eight days afterwards, they were seen by a whale ship, moored to an iceberg near the centre of Baffin’s Bay. No special anxiety was entertained respecting them until the beginning of 1848, for Franklin had intimated that the voyage would probably continue for three years, and that they might be the first to announce their own return. But as month after month passed away without any tidings, an anxious and painful sympathy sprung up in the public mind, and the British government determined that a search for the missing vessels should be made, in three different quarters, by three separate expeditions fitted out for that purpose.
S. STANLEY. (SURGEON.)
