Sir John Franklin, whose Arctic expeditions and their consequences will form the subject of this chapter, was born at Spilsby, in Lincolnshire, on the 16th of April, 1786. He was the youngest son of most respectable parents and intended for the Church, but as he preferred the sea service, his father yielded, and got him appointed a middy at fourteen years of age. Young Franklin soon saw some service. He was present at Copenhagen in 1801, and was appointed to the Investigator, which, under his cousin Captain Flinders, explored the Australian coast. The Investigator went to grief, and when the crew were transferred to the Porpoise she was wrecked, the ship’s company and officers living on a sandbank for fifty days. After being taken off, Franklin was carried to Canton, and when he eventually reached England he was appointed to the Bellerophon, and was present at the battle of Trafalgar, where he was signal midshipman, and behaved splendidly.
For several years he served in the Bedford, and was engaged and wounded at New Orleans. In 1818 he was put in command of the Trent to find an Arctic passage to India, and in this Captain Buchan, in the Dorothea, took command. But the latter vessel being damaged, the expedition returned to England, though Franklin wished to proceed alone.
After this, his reputation having been well established, not only as a thorough seaman but as a man of science, he was appointed to the expedition to cross the continent from Hudson’s Bay to the Coppermine, and explore the coast eastward.
We will now, as briefly as possible, give the interesting narrative of Franklin’s Arctic expeditions.
While Sir Edward Parry, whose expedition we have already detailed, was endeavouring to cross the Polar Sea westwards, Lieutenant John Franklin was commissioned by the Admiralty to ascertain the sources of the Coppermine River. At the same time Doctor Richardson and Messrs Hood and Back were also nominated, with two English sailors, to accompany him. This small party embarked on board the Hudson Bay Company’s vessel Prince of Wales on the 23rd of May, 1819, and after some perils they arrived off York Factory, on the Hudson Bay shore, in August of the same year.
On the 9th of September the party commenced their exploration, and reached Cumberland House on the 22nd of October. Franklin, notwithstanding the advanced period of the year, determined to push on, and after a delay he set out, accompanied only by Lieutenant Back, on the 18th of January, 1820. Doctor (afterwards Sir John) Richardson and Mr Hood were to bring up the baggage and more stores in the early spring. The enterprising pair then journeyed more than eight hundred miles in the terrible Arctic winter, and reached Fort Chepeywan on the 26th of March following.
Meanwhile Doctor Richardson and Mr Hood remained at Cumberland House engaged in congenial pursuits and studying the Cree Indians, with other natural history subjects. The notes they give concerning the manners and customs of the Indians are extremely interesting, but are by this time pretty well known. Their dexterity in hunting and hawking are particularly commended, and much useful information concerning the fauna of the district was collected by Doctor Richardson and his companion.
When spring began to appear Doctor Richardson and his friend, with the Indian hunters, set out to join Franklin, and the “misery”—there is no other name for it—which the party endured, not from cold but from the mosquitoes, must be read about in detail to be even partially appreciated. This is a fearful plague of the northern regions just as Nature is beginning to clothe herself anew in green, and the white mantle of winter has disappeared in those places where snow is not perpetual.
On the 18th of July, 1820, the whole party was assembled at Fort Chepeywan, and they set out together, so as to reach the mouth of the Coppermine in time to establish winter quarters for the next cold season. But tremendous difficulties beset them—lakes and rivers had to be crossed, portages had to be made, as rapids had to be avoided, and shallows had to be circumvented. Thus it was the middle of August again ere they reached a place whence further progress was impossible that season. The signs of approaching winter could not be disregarded: a house was constructed as a winter residence, and called “Fort Enterprise.”
Their objective point was still many, many miles away, and those miles they could not traverse with their boats and stores. So, after a hurried peep at the head of the river, they made ready to winter, and with that view laid in a stock of provisions. This consisted chiefly of pemmican, which is frozen or dried reindeer-flesh kneaded with the fat into a kind of paste. Fish was added to this, but as people came along—natives and their families, who “made for” shelter as quickly as possible—the stock was not enough. Ammunition gave out, many necessary stores had not come up, and at length Mr—afterwards Admiral Sir George—Back determined to return, and bring up the required stores.