The Franklin Conspiracy Read online

  The Franklin Conspiracy

  Dedicated to my mother, my father,

  and my brother, D.K.,

  whose writing is my inspiration

  THE FRANKLIN CONSPIRACY

  Cover-up, Betrayal, and the Astonishing

  Secret Behind the Lost Arctic Expedition

  Jeffrey Blair Latta

  Foreword by John Robert Colombo

  Copyright © Jeffrey Blair Latta 2001

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

  Publisher: Anthony Hawke

  Editor: Gene Shannon

  Design: Jennifer Scott

  Printer: University of Toronto Press

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Latta, Jeffrey Blair

  The Franklin conspiracy: cover-up, betrayal, and the astonishing secret behind the lost Arctic expedition

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 0-88882-234-0

  1. Franklin, John, Sir, 1786–1847. 2. Northwest Passage – Discovery and exploration. 3. Arctic regiions – Discovery and exploration – British. I. Title.

  FC3961.3.L37 2001

  917.19’5041’092

  C2001-930645-8

  G660.L37 2001

  1 2 3 4 5 05 04 03 02 01

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program, The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on recycled paper.

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  Acknowledgements

  I would like to give special thanks to John Robert Colombo. His assistance and encouragement went far beyond anything I dreamed of. I will have to take a bullet for him someday. Thanks also to Tony Hawke. His enthusiasm and confidence saw me through a lot of nail chewing. Without their help, this book would still be languishing in the back of a drawer. Finally, thanks to my mother and my brother who patiently read over the manuscript, suggested ways to make it better, and kept telling me to quit stalling and submit it already.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Foreword by John Robert Colombo

  Prologue: The Vanishing Ships

  PART 1: THE SECRET

  Prelude to Disaster

  Victory Point Revisited

  The Fury Vanishes

  Never to Return

  A Second 1824

  The Ghost and Lady Franklin

  PART 2: BY UNWORTHY MOTIVES

  The Deception of James Clark Ross

  The Turning of Captain Forsyth

  The Deception of John Ross

  The Dead of Beechey Island

  The Cashmere Gloves

  Penny Versus Austin

  The Canadian and the French Lieutenant

  Captain Collinson and the Enterprise

  A Study in Contrasts

  How to Lose a Flotilla

  The Ghost Ship

  PART 3: INTO THE DARKNESS

  John Rae

  Cannibalism and Other Relics of the Lost

  Lady Franklin’s Decision

  The Voyage of the Fox

  The Other Shoe Drops

  Whodunit?

  Two Bodies and a Note

  A Trail of Bones

  The Victory Point Record Explained

  The Final March

  The Second Winter at Beechey Island

  The Passage from Beechey Island

  PART 4: IN WHOSE LAND YE DWELL

  Mock Suns and Other Northern Lights

  Inuit Tales and the Angikuni Connection

  The Tunnit

  The Last Resource

  Of a Sickness

  The Shaman Light

  Rehearsal for Murder

  Epilogue: Proof

  Expeditions

  Source Notes

  Bibliography

  FOREWORD

  Can Such Things Be?

  John Robert Colombo

  Strange is a good word to describe the mail and the e-mail that I receive.

  Indeed, I sometimes think that I receive more strange — even weird — letters than anyone else in the country. People who send these letters do so in response to the books that I have published and continue to write on a variety of subjects — quotations, fantastic literature, native studies, research and reference questions about obscure Canadiana, anthologies, poetry, literary translations, UFOs, ghosts, hauntings, and mysteries!

  That last word, “mysteries,” came to my mind on June 19, 2000, when the following e-mail appeared on my computer screen:

  Dear John Robert Colombo,

  I am writing to you hoping for advice and perhaps hoping you might be interested in writing the foreword for a non-fiction book I have written about the Lost Franklin Expedition called The Shaman Light: The Terrifying Truth Behind the Lost Franklin Expedition. As you know, many books have already been written on this topic, but I think I can say without fear of contradiction that this is the very first to take this peculiar route to a solution.

  The letter came out of the blue and it caught my attention. The fate of the Franklin Expedition was an interest of mine. I had read books about the ill-fated expedition which vanished in the wastes of the Arctic, but I had never written anything about it. I assumed that it was merely a matter of time before the remains of the Erebus and the Terror, Franklin’s twin vessels, would be discovered preserved in the polar permafrost. The subject was of considerable interest but hardly of compelling concern. Yet I found myself momentarily wondering, What did happen to Sir John Franklin, his men, and his vessels?

  I had read some of the best-selling books that had described the expedition — Farley Mowat’s The Polar Passion and Pierre Berton’s The Arctic Grail, not to mention Gwendolyn MacEwen’s powerful long poem Erebus and Terror and Donald C. Woodman’s study of the oral traditions of the Inuit concerning Franklin’s fate — but the only reference to Sir John Franklin that made its way into my book Mysterious Canada concerned his chance encounter at Fort Chipewyan in April 1827 with a “Manlike Woman,” an Indian shaman who professed to have supernatural powers and knowledge of the future. So I knew that Franklin was interested in the mysterious world of prophecy. But what was behind his disappearance? Perhaps it had something to do with “the Shaman Light,” whatever that was.

  To find out, I scrolled down the computer’s screen and read further:

  As you know, it is a mystery without equal. In 1845, two British Royal Navy ships, Erebus and Terror, under the command of Sir John Franklin, entered the Arctic in search of a Northwest Passage to
China. Neither ship returned. After a fifteen-year search, evidence of unparalleled disaster was uncovered on King William Island, but to this day no one knows what happened, how those 129 men met their deaths. The Inuit said only that a “year of horror” came to their land.

  I found myself becoming increasingly interested in what the author was saying. Here was a great story, and my correspondent (whoever he was) wrote well. I read on:

  So much seems inexplicable. There was evidence of cannibalism — and yet the men still had food. Inuit witnesses claimed the men died “of a sickness” — but could not identify this sickness. The body of a giant was found, by the Inuit, aboard one of the ships just before it sank — but was the “giant” a ship’s figurehead, as historians have supposed, or something stranger? How could Franklin have failed to leave even a single record to mark his progress, when he had carried 200 message cylinders for this precise purpose? Were the records found and “suppressed” by the Royal Navy searchers, as one civilian searcher claimed? How is it that, in fifteen years, the Royal Navy managed to comb every single Arctic island except the right one?

  I took a pause from scrolling. The author had done his research and was asking the right questions, questions about the “giant” and the “message cylinders.” But when he used the words “suppressed” and “claimed,” I rubbed my nose. I could detect a whiff of conspiracy theory in the air. It has the smell of sulphur.

  Stranger still, years before, explorer Thomas Simpson had visited lonely King William Island, then, on his return, applied for permission to go back. Before he could, he was murdered, according to his brother, for the “secret of the Northwest Passage” kept in his papers. What was this “secret”?

  There it was. The suggestion that there was a “secret” that had been long-suppressed.

  Was there evidence of a conspiracy? Had my correspondent stumbled onto some information that had eluded the grasp of a legion of historians and journalists? The account continued and supplied an answer to these questions:

  The Shaman Light: The Terrifying Truth Behind the Lost Franklin Expedition is a carefully researched answer to that question. It is an attempt to explain the seemingly inexplicable by following one simple rule: No answer would be rejected so long as it fit the known facts. The result is a frightening saga of conspiracy, cover-up, and an unbelievable secret which spelled the deaths of 129 men. At the heart of The Shaman Light are two completely original premises: first, that the Franklin expedition was dispatched, not to find a Northwest Passage, but to make a scientific study of a previously discovered, but secret, phenomenon; and, second, when the expedition didn’t return, the Royal Navy did everything in its power to keep the lost expedition from being found. Strangest of all is the secret itself — what the Inuit called the “shaman light.” The result is a complex and disturbing tale to rival Roswell and the JFK conspiracy theory combined.

  So there was a conspiracy, at least in the mind of my correspondent. At this point the sole conspiracy I was prepared to recognize was the conspiring of the author to get my attention. Because I was vaguely annoyed, I remained wary. The e-mail alluded to the supposed landing of flying saucers at Roswell, N.M., and to all those cabal-like theories surrounding the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Was the fate of the Franklin Expedition destined to join such tangled theories of intrigue and coverup? It seemed unlikely.

  It is my contention that the Franklin expedition could be Canada’s answer to Roswell. It is a fantastic, nightmarishly frightening story, labyrinthine in its complexity, involving duplicity and corruption, heroism and bravery, and the unknown.

  My correspondent was saying, Yes, I have found evidence of a full-fledged, polar conspiracy. Yet evidence is not proof, so I felt it would be hard to convince me or any other reader that a conspiracy and coverup existed. But my immediate question was, Why is the correspondent sending this letter to me? The answer to that question came next:

  My hope was to submit this manuscript to Hounslow Press, since they are the main market for this sort of thing in Canada. As Canada’s “Mr. Mystery,” and since you have had extensive dealings with them, I thought you might be able to help me. Might you be willing to read the complete manuscript, perhaps with an eye towards writing a foreword?

  So . . . my correspondent wanted to whet my appetite so that I would use my contacts in the world of books to help him find a publishing house for his manuscript. (The correspondent was not the first would-be writer to try this tactic.) I read further:

  I will send two follow-up e-mails: one with the Table of Contents and the Prologue; and another with the Epilogue. The manuscript is completed and has been extensively researched (and of course includes a bibliography).

  Any suggestions you might make or advice you might give would be very, very appreciated.

  Kind regards,

  Jeffrey Blair Latta

  Now I knew the name of my correspondent. It meant nothing at all to me.

  I e-mailed back that I was interested in seeing the additional material, but I withheld the fact that I was quite interested in reading it. I knew that when it arrived I would read it without delay. Jeffrey Blair Latta had whetted my appetite with the promise of the Table of Contents, the Prologue, and the Epilogue. So Mr. Latta’s e-mail strategy had worked.

  The material arrived and I scanned the Table of Contents and then turned my attention to the Prologue and the Epilogue. (These texts appear elsewhere in the present volume, which has been retitled The Franklin Conspiracy: Cover-up, Betrayal, and the Astonishing Secret Behind the Lost Arctic Expedition, so I am not reprinting them in this Foreword.) There is another reason why I am not reprinting them and that is so the reader will have the pleasure of encountering them in the proper sequence. Do not read these sections now. Read the sections and chapters in the order the author wishes you to read them. This advice applies particularly to the last chapters of the book, especially to the Epilogue, where the plot thickens! Allow the author the leisure to develop his thesis in his own good time. Permit him to take you, the reader, by surprise. He does offer a denouement to the mystery of the Franklin Expedition and a suggestion as to the fate of its 129 missing men and vessels.) But back to these words of Mr. Latta’s that also appeared on my screen:

  If you are willing to read what I have sent, I would very much appreciate any advice you might be able to give me. If you are interested in reading the complete manuscript, I would be even more pleased to send it to you as an e-mail attachment or as a printed manuscript. The Lost Franklin Expedition is more than a historical curiosity. When looked at from this new perspective, it becomes a truly epic tale, a conspiracy to rival the John F. Kennedy conspiracy, and a supernatural saga to rival Roswell or the Bermuda Triangle. Indeed, it is the great Canadian mystery, and once you read this book (if you read this book) you may never again be able to think of it as history. You will think of it as legend.

  Strong words indeed! To the list of conspiracies had now been added the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. Critics have battered and beaten the life out of this “triangle of death” in the North Atlantic Ocean, yet it continues to fascinate readers of books about the mysterious and viewers of television programs on the unexplained. But to my knowledge no one had suggested that the Arctic itself had such a sinister reputation . . . until now, that is.

  Naturally I requested that Mr. Latta send me the full text in hardcopy form because I hate trying to read a bookful of words on a computer screen. The manuscript of 336 pages arrived within a week and I devoted three enjoyable evenings to reading the text and wondering about the book’s thesis and about the background of its author.

  I did not have to wonder long about the author’s background because he appended a biographical note to the manuscript. I am reproducing it here:

  Though I started university majoring in Physics, I ended up graduating in Film Studies (the medalist for that year) at Queen’s University and I am primarily a freelance screenwriter (much to the chagrin of my
physicist uncle!) One screenplay, “Forgive Me Father,” has recently premiered in Indianapolis, co-starring Charles Napier. My popular science articles have appeared in several Canadian newspapers including the Ottawa Citizen, the Winnipeg Free Press and the Kingston Whig-Standard. My science-fiction one-act play, “Haemo,” won several awards at the Sears Drama Festival and was subsequently performed by various theatre troupes in Eastern Ontario. My science-fiction short story, “The Blood is the Life,” won Judges’ Choice in the Toronto Star Short Story Competition. My ghostship ballad, “The Legend of Murray’s Light,” won second prize in the Kingston Whig-Standard’s Great Canadian Poetry Competition and was subsequently taught in a local school. My short non-fiction film, “Martian Canals,” about the Rideau Canal, won third prize in the Canada 125 Competition. And I once had a letter printed in Nature, the prestigious science journal. On aphids, yet! Finally, I edit a “fanzine” on the Internet called Pulp and Dagger Fiction Webzine which publishes old fashion pulp-style serials. My brother is D.K. Latta, who manages “The Great Canadian Guide to the Movies (and TV),” the largest collection of reviews of Canadian films on the Internet.

  Then he added:

  The Shaman Light is the result of many years of research and a continuing obsession with the Lost Franklin Expedition. I am presently employed completing another screenplay, and am working on a rock opera about the War of 1812.

  A rock opera about the War of 1812? Wonders never cease!

  After reading the manuscript, I sent an e-mail to Blair (as he prefers to be known) expressing my enthusiasm for his work. I wrote that I found the text to be highly readable. I commented favourably on the amount of research that he had undertaken, and on the skill that had gone into setting forth his findings in their historical context. I found, as well, that the author cared about the missing men. I realized, finally, that I too cared about their fate.

  At the same time, because I am a long-time book editor, I offered a few suggestions about streamlining the work, notably anticipating the reactions of readers and addressing some of these in the Prologue. I added that he could make these and other changes if he wanted, but that in the meantime I would forward the manuscript to my friend Tony Hawke, publisher of Hounslow Press, part of the Dundurn Group. I would recommend whole-heartedly that the work be published — and soon. This, of course, is what Mr. Latta had intended right from the start. He replied: