We had been prepared by the report brought from the Esquimaux in February to find that all hopes of survivors were at an end, and that the expedition had met with some fatal and overwhelming casualty; but we were scarcely prepared to know, nor could we even have realized the manner, in which they spent their last days upon earth, so fearful a sojourn must it have been. Beset and surrounded with wastes of snow and ice, they passed two more terrible winters drifting slowly to the southward at the rate of one mile in the month, hoping each summer that the ice would open, and determined not to abandon their ships until every hope was gone. In nineteen months they had only moved some eighteen miles, their provisions daily lessening, and their strength fast failing. They had at last left their ships for the Fish River at least two months before the river could break up and allow them to proceed, and in the then imperfect knowledge of ice travelling they could not have carried with them more than forty days’ provisions. Exhausted by scurvy and starvation, “they dropped as they walked along,”[32] and those few who reached Montreal Island must all have perished there; and but for their having travelled over the frozen sea we should have found the remains of these gallant men as they fell by the way, and but for the land being covered deeply with snow, more relics of those who had struggled to the beach to die would have been seen. They all perished, and, in dying in the cause of their country, their dearest consolation must have been to feel that Englishmen would not rest until they had followed up their footsteps, and had given to the world what they could not then give—the grand result of their dreadful voyage—their Discovery of the North-West Passage. They had sailed down Peel and Victoria Straits, now appropriately named Franklin Straits, and the poor human skeletons lying upon the shores of the waters in which Dease and Simpson had sailed from the westward bore melancholy evidence of their success.
By the middle of July the dark blue stream rolled again through Bellot Straits, but yet not a drop of water could be seen in Regent Inlet. Our ship was refitted, the stores all on board, and we were quite prepared for sea. Our engineers were both lost to us, but the Captain soon got the engines into working order, and determined to drive them himself, for without steam we could reckon upon nothing.
July passed away, and during the first week in August we could still see one unbroken surface of ice in Regent Inlet; from the highest hill not a spoonful of water could be made out. We were getting rather anxious, for had we been detained another winter, we must have abandoned the ship in the following spring and trusted to our fortunes over the ice. However, a gale of wind on the 7th and 8th of August caused some disruption in the inlet, for on the morning of the 9th a report came down from the hills that a lead of water was seen under the land to the northward. Steam was immediately made, and pushing close past the islands, we were enabled to work up the coast in a narrow lane of water between it and the pack.
We reached the north side of Creswell Bay on the following day, but, the wind changing, we saw the pack setting rapidly in upon the land, and it had already closed upon Fury Beach. Our only chance was now to seek a grounded mass of ice, and to hang on to it. We were indeed glad to get a little rest, and especially for our captain, who had not left the engines for twenty-four hours. But we lay in a most exposed position on an open coast without an indentation, the pack closing in rapidly before the wind and threatening us with the same fate as befell the Fury when she was driven on the shore about seven miles from our present position. Hanging on to this piece of ice with every hawser, we saw it gradually melting and breaking away, and at spring tides it began to float. On the 15th the gale shifted to the westward, and blew off the land; we watched the ice gradually easing off, and directly that we had room, we cast off under storm-sails, and succeeded in getting out of Regent Inlet and into Lancaster Sound on the following day. We entered Godhavn, in Greenland, on the night of August 26, and not having heard from our friends for more than two years, we did not even wait for daylight for our expected letters. The authorities on shore kindly sent all they had for us at once to the ship, and I suppose that letters from home were never opened with more anxiety.
Having a few repairs to do, especially to our rudder, which, with the spare one, had been smashed by the ice, we remained a day or two to patch it up for the passage home. Then leaving Godhavn on the 1st September, although the nights were extremely dark, and the weather stormy, with many bergs drifting about, we passed down Davis Strait without incident, and, rounding Cape Farewell on the 13th, we ran across the Atlantic with strong, fair winds. Captain M‘Clintock landed at the Isle of Wight on the 20th, and on the 23rd the Fox entered the docks at Blackwall.
Our happy cruise was at an end, and by the mercy of Providence we were permitted to land again in England.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] The wanderings of the Esquimaux may be traced by the circles of stones by which they keep down their skin summer tents.