The ships left England on the 19th of May, 1845, and were last seen and spoken with on the 26th of July in Melville Bay on their way to Lancaster Sound. According to information gained during the long series of searches, they passed through the sound and went north for about a hundred and fifty miles, to 77°, up Wellington Channel into Penny Strait—the first time the passage had been made. Returning down the west side of Cornwallis Island, discovering the strait between it and Bathurst Island, they wintered at Beechey Island, where three of the men died and were buried; and where the most significant relic was about seven hundred tins of preserved meat that seemed to have been condemned as bad, just as the stock of similar stuff had in the same year been condemned and thrown overboard at Portsmouth.
Leaving Beechey Island in 1846, they went south down Peel Sound, being the first to pass through it, and Franklin Strait—another new discovery—to within twelve miles of Cape Felix in King William Land, where, on the 12th of September, they were beset about half-way between Cape Adelaide in Boothia and Pelly Point in Victoria Land. Hereabouts the second winter was passed, and on the 24th of May a party under Lieutenant Gore crossed the ice to Point Victory, probably on a journey to examine the unknown coast between there and Cape Herschel. On the 11th of June, 1847, Sir John Franklin died. The ships drifted a short distance during their imprisonment in the ice, and the third winter was passed some twenty miles further south down Victoria Strait, where, on the 22nd of April, 1848, when fifteen miles north-north-west of Point Victory, they were abandoned, and the officers and crews, a hundred and five in all, under Crozier's command, started for Back's Great Fish River, some of them completing the first North-West Passage in crossing Simpson Strait and reaching Montreal Island.
The first undoubted traces of the lost expedition were those discovered at Beechey Island, the news reaching England in the Prince Albert in the autumn of 1850. As soon as the winter was over this excellent little schooner was again sent out by Lady Franklin under the command of Captain William Kennedy, who took with him as a volunteer Lieutenant Joseph René Bellot of the French navy, and also John Hepburn, who had been with Franklin on the land journey in 1819. Kennedy wintered at Batty Bay in North Somerset, and during a remarkable sledge journey, in which he made the circuit of the island, he and Bellot reached Brentford Bay, and, on the 21st of April, 1852, discovered the strait named after the gallant Frenchman. But he found no traces of the expedition through turning to the north and crossing to Prince of Wales Island, instead of going to the south at the western mouth of the strait. He had, however, discovered the termination of Boothia, the north point of the American continent which men had been seeking for three centuries.
To the southern end of Boothia came the indefatigable Rae. That cheery hero of the north left Repulse Bay on the 31st of March, 1854, to complete the Hudson's Bay Company's survey. On the 20th of April he met a young Eskimo in Pelly Bay, who told him the fate of the Erebus and Terror, and from him and his people Rae obtained a number of small articles, forks and spoons and so forth, which had undoubtedly come from the ships, one of which had been crushed in the ice, the other sinking after drifting further south.
Rae was not the man to return until he had attacked the work he had set out to do, and he continued his surveying with his customary accuracy, despatch, and general alertness, striking across the peninsula, discovering the Murchison River, reaching Simpson's farthest at Castor and Pollux River, and thence proving the insularity of King William Land by travelling up the east coast of the strait now named after him—and he was back again in August. He had almost finished the survey of the northern coast-line; and he had ascertained how and where Franklin's voyage had ended, for which discovery the British Government gave him the reward of £10,000, letting it be understood that so far as they were concerned the Franklin searches were at an end.
But Lady Franklin thought one more effort should be made to unravel the mystery of her husband's fate, and there were many who thought the same. Helped to a certain extent by a public subscription, she organised another expedition. The steam-yacht Fox was bought from the executors of Sir Richard Sutton and altered for Arctic work by her builders, the Halls of Aberdeen clipper fame. As leader went Captain, afterwards Sir, Frederick Leopold M'Clintock, who had done such brilliant sledge-work in the north; like his second in command, Lieutenant W. R. Hobson, he gave his services gratuitously, as also did Dr. David Walker and Captain, afterwards Sir, Allen Young, then of the Mercantile Marine, who also subscribed £500 towards the fund. Carl Petersen, the Eskimo interpreter on the voyages of Penny and Kane, came to join from Copenhagen, having landed there from Greenland only six days previously. The British Government, although declining to send out an expedition, contributed liberally to the supplies, and sent on board all the arms and ammunition and ice-gear and every instrument that was asked for.
THE "FOX" ESCAPING FROM THE PACK
Lady Franklin's instructions were so characteristic of the noble-hearted woman whose name can never be forgotten in Arctic story that they must be given in full:—
"Aberdeen, June 29, 1857.