The Franklin Conspiracy Read online

  What they found was nothing. There was no message at Cape Walker, not even a cairn to hold a message as there had been on Beechey Island. Later, after the final evidence was discovered on King William Island, it would be concluded that Franklin had sailed, not southwest past Cape Walker, but southeast, down Peel Sound. If true, it is impossible to understand how he could have failed to leave a message on Cape Walker, telling of his change in plans.

  Franklin had carried two hundred cylinders to place messages in; and yet we are to believe that he failed to leave even a single message in the one place where everyone felt certain he must?

  We have nothing more than suspicion and supposition. Those who searched Cape Walker insisted that neither note nor cairn was discovered. They may have told the truth. On the other hand, it was a naval team which made the claim, and the commander in charge was Captain Ommanney — the same captain who had overseen the discovery and search of the cairn found so prominently displayed (and so inexplicably empty) on Beechey Island; the same man Captain Penny had accused of “suppressing” a message found there.

  WRITING OFF THE SOUTH

  Still, message or no message, the searchers were finally on the right track. Having reached Cape Walker, Captain Ommanney now decided to divide his sledge party into two groups: one, under Willy Browne, to explore to the southeast of the Cape down into Peel Sound; the other, led by Ommanney himself, to explore to the southwest [see map 12]. At long last, they were doing what should have been done from the start — following the course Franklin had been instructed to take past Cape Walker.

  Very quickly, Captain Ommanney discovered that there was indeed water to the southwest, but water frozen into rugged hummocks and “pygmy ravines”, making for less than ideal sledging conditions.2 Working their way south, they came upon a deep bay, where the party divided into two: one, under Sherard Osborn, to cross directly south to the opposite side of the bay; the other, under Ommanney, to take the longer path, tracing the bay’s deep arc. Again, if Franklin had left any record of his travels, Ommanney would have found them. Osborn reached the south side of the bay, then travelled just a little further along the coast before finally turning back, having found the wind and fog too much to handle.

  Map 12

  Navy Sledges search Prince of Wales Island, 1851

  Meanwhile, to the southeast of Cape Walker, the other searchers had similarly run afoul of poor weather, and were driven back by a furious blizzard after only exploring Peel Sound for a short distance. All the searchers returned to the ships.

  What had been accomplished? No message had been found at Cape Walker, but it had finally been proven that water (albeit frozen water) was to be found to the southwest of the Cape. This meant there were no less than two possible routes Franklin might have taken in his bid to reach the southern passage, provided either waterway was ever clear of ice. But it was the contention of the Peel Sound searchers that the east passage was frozen to the bottom and so was “rarely, if ever, open to navigation.”3 Peel Sound was now officially discounted as a place to search for Franklin.

  The same went for the waterway to the southwest. In this case, Ommanney was almost certainly correct in believing no ship could possibly manage the massive, heaving pack off the west coast of Prince of Wales Island. This was a continuation of the gargantuan ice channel which Edward Parry had run up against off Melville Island so many years before and which Franklin had been advised to steer clear of. It was the southernmost extent of this river of ice which James Clark Ross had looked upon from Victory Point years before.

  It was decided that the case had been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt: Franklin could not have gotten south as his orders stipulated. From now on, the navy would consider the entire southern area over and done with. Of course, this could hardly be said to constitute a change in tactics.

  ACTING IN CONCERT?

  While Austin was sending out his sledge parties, Captain Penny had been doing some sledging of his own. He had sent several parties up Wellington Channel, and used his dog-team to explore that direction himself. He had even discovered two pieces of wood which he believed must have come from the lost ships (and which almost certainly did come from Franklin’s ships which, it would later be learned, had explored Wellington Channel before wintering at Beechey). Believing he was on the verge of discovering the lost expedition, Penny went to Captain Austin and asked to borrow one of the navy’s steamships, to push through the ice further north. Then an astonishing thing happened.

  Austin refused.

  Amazingly, he now claimed to think Wellington Channel should be abandoned; instead, he wanted to return to Baffin Bay to explore Jones Sound. This was the same water route Penny had previously been ordered to search, but which he had found frozen.

  Austin’s decision is incomprehensible. The discovery at Beechey Island proved Franklin had entered the Arctic through Lancaster Sound and had already gotten as far as Wellington Channel; Penny’s discovery of wood in the upper reaches of Wellington Channel was further evidence that Franklin had gone up there. What was the point in effectively leaving the Arctic and starting again by a different route?

  If Penny had had his suspicions regarding the empty cairn, now he was confirmed in his belief. He challenged Austin, “You say we have been acting in concert. Let us prove the sincerity of that concert.”4 But Austin wouldn’t give Penny the steamer he needed to complete the search and Penny told him, “Then I know the truth of your sincerity and will have nothing more to do with you.”

  What was Austin’s purpose in abandoning the search of Wellington Channel when it was nearly complete? Historian Noel Wright remarked, “Subsequently, Austin must have regretted rejecting Wellington Channel, virtually a ‘bird in the hand’, for the uncertainties of Jones Sound.”5 But Austin’s reasoning seems all too logical if, indeed, he had been ordered to ensure Franklin’s expedition was not found. Believing Franklin to be trapped to the south off King William Island, Austin had been happy to let Penny explore Wellington Channel to his heart’s content. But the discovery of wood pieces in Wellington Channel may have caused Austin to wonder whether perhaps Franklin hadn’t become stuck up there after all. With no way to contact his superiors in London, Austin may have panicked and decided his safest course was to abandon the entire area.

  Finding Jones Sound sealed by ice, Austin returned to England in September. All the other expeditions — Penny, Ross and the Americans — also returned as soon as the ice broke up in the summer. Penny was not content to let the matter rest, and a committee was organized to consider the question of whether or not Austin had acted properly in refusing Penny a ship and abandoning the Wellington Channel area. Not surprisingly, the committee ruled in Austin’s favour, in spite of the fact that the Admiralty would soon send yet another fleet of ships right back out to search Wellington Channel. Though displeased by the verdict, Captain Penny — originally hired by Jane Franklin — applied for command over another expedition.

  He was told his services were no longer required.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Canadian and theFrench Lieutenant

  Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,

  He travels the fastest who travels alone.

  Rudyard Kipling,

  The Winners

  JANE FRANKLIN TRIES AGAIN

  The previous October, Jane Franklin had been shattered by the inexplicable return of her private expedition under Captain Forsyth. The Prince Albert had been expected to spend at least one winter at Brentford Bay in Prince Regent Inlet; instead, in spite of Parker Snow’s strenuous objections, the naval captain had turned tail and fled back to England — the only one of the five expeditions to do so. For all her trouble and expense, nothing had been accomplished. Captain Forsyth could tell her something had been found on Beechey Island, but he couldn’t tell her what. He hadn’t waited long enough to find out.

  But Lady Franklin was not one to throw in the towel. It must have seemed as if the forces opposing her were e
normous. First James Clark Ross had betrayed her; then she had unwisely relinquished control of Penny’s expedition to the Admiralty; now Captain Forsyth — her close friend from Tasmania — had proven to be less of a friend than she had thought. The temptation to give up must have been strong, but she resisted it with an iron will. She resolved to send out the tiny Prince Albert once again. This time she was taking no chances. This time there would be no navy involvement.

  KENNEDY AND BELLOT

  For the captain, she chose a Canadian fur trader, formerly with the Hudson’s Bay Company, named William Kennedy. Kennedy was a man after Franklin’s own heart, religious to the core and a strict teetotaller. He had considerable experience in the cold north, having spent eight years on the chill Labrador coast. His mother was Cree, and Kennedy had quit the Hudson’s Bay Company because of his outrage at the damage the “Honourable Company” was causing by selling liquor to her people.

  Kennedy crossed the ocean to volunteer his services for Lady Franklin’s search for her lost husband. To her upper-crust acquaintances, choosing a “mixed-race” Canadian fur trader to command her expedition seemed odd, to say the least. But odder still was her choice for Kennedy’s chief officer.

  After some hesitation, Lady Franklin accepted the gallantly offered services of a charming sub-lieutenant on loan from the French Navy, by the name of Joseph-René Bellot. First a Canadian fur trader, now a Frenchman — it was as if she had given up on England altogether.

  KENNEDY HEARS THE GHOST STORY

  Like Kennedy, Bellot had come to England of his own accord, seeking out Lady Franklin to offer his assistance in the search. The mysterious Captain Coppin — of the ghostly vision — encouraged Lady Franklin to accept.

  But this wasn’t the end of Captain Coppin’s influence. For some time now, Jane Franklin had sought a meeting to speak with Coppin’s daughter Anne about the vision provided by his dead daughter Weasy. But Coppin had been strangely reluctant to allow such a face-to-face encounter to take place, preferring instead to speak on his daughter’s behalf. His reasons were varied: his wife was an invalid; daughter Anne was “retiring in disposition”; a visit from the famous wife of John Franklin would draw too much attention and “cause no small stir”.1 His hesitation is understandable if, indeed, he had merely invented the story of his daughter’s vision to explain his own certainty with regard to Victory Point. If so, he must have finally decided he could trust his daughter to play her part in the charade. At Lady Franklin’s request, he agreed to allow William Kennedy to visit his home in Londonderry and to personally meet with his daughter.

  Kennedy stayed at the Coppin home for three days. Was he convinced by whatever Anne had to tell him? Based on his later actions, it is fairly safe to say that all of Captain Coppin’s efforts were wasted on the Bible-reading, teetotal fur trader from Canada. He may have believed Moses parted the Red Sea, but apparently his belief in miracles stopped somewhere short of blue lights and ghostly writing on a wall.

  THE CANADIAN EXPEDITION

  Still, whether Kennedy believed or not, his sailing orders were clear: sail down into Prince Regent Inlet, seek a winter harbour, then cross and travel down the entire west side of Boothia-Somerset by sledge — in other words, what Captain Forsyth had failed to do [see map 13]. This would have placed them directly to the east of King William Island, where they might have encountered Inuit with news of the one hundred plus men lying dead in the snows just across the island.

  Map 13

  Kennedy and Bellot’s Search, 1851–1852

  For this journey, the diminutive Prince Albert had been refitted and strengthened to better withstand whatever she might encounter. Jane Franklin didn’t want to hear any more excuses about poor ice conditions.

  Apart from Kennedy and Bellot, the crew consisted of sixteen men, a mixed bag of Orkneymen and Canadians, each used to hard work in the biting cold. With a Canadian captain and several Canadian crew members, this second voyage of the Prince Albert was effectively the first and only Canadian voyage to take part in the search for Franklin.

  Provisioned for two years, they set out from Aberdeen on May 22, 1851, and reached Baffin Bay by the first of July, stopping briefly at Upernavik to pick up a team of six sledge dogs. They would not have the excuse of men wearied from hauling at the traces. Following the Greenland coast northward, they ran into the two ships of the American expedition, the Advance and the Rescue.

  The Americans had been through a truly horrendous ordeal. Having become locked in the ice in Wellington Channel, they had been inexorably carried all the way out into Baffin Bay over the course of eight months and twenty-four days, being finally released when the pack broke up in early July. Yet, in spite of their harrowing journey, the Americans had promptly crossed over to the Greenland coast and started north again, intending to re-enter Lancaster Sound and resume their search.

  It was while the Americans were waiting for a clear path through the ice that Kennedy and Bellot happened upon them. For a month, the three ships hung together, the ice thick in their path. In the end, the delay cost them dearly. By the time the Prince Albert reached Prince Regent Inlet, all the harbours were choked with ice, including Fury Beach. They barely managed to find a safe haven at Batty Bay, twenty miles south of Leopold Harbour, where they settled in for the long, dark winter.

  But, unlike James Clark Ross, Kennedy wasn’t about to wait until the sun came again in the spring before visiting that most holy of holies: Fury Beach. By the light of a January full moon, Kennedy and Bellot set off southward along the base of brooding cliffs, accompanied by four men. But, when they reached the supplies at Fury Beach, they found them untouched; there was no indication Franklin had ever been there. Frustrated, they grimly returned to the ship.

  The rest of the winter was spent exploring their immediate surroundings and positioning provisions caches for the coming search. The weather was relentlessly brutal; in Samuel Schmucker’s words, “There seemed to be but one gale during the winter around the ship; but that gale blew when she came, and continued till she departed.”2 During one such trek, Kennedy and Bellot found themselves completely blinded by the snow. In desperation, they released the sledge dogs, who promptly vanished and returned to the ship without their masters. By sheer luck, the party happened upon the ammunition dump (stored on land away from the ship, for obvious reasons) and so worked their way back to the Prince Albert, their faces “puffed and scarred as if by blows of the fist.”3

  It may have been that this near-fatal brush with the merciless forces of the north dampened Kennedy’s enthusiasm for their quest. The next day, he made a fateful decision. He no longer believed it was possible to travel all the way down the west coast of Boothia-Somerset. They were berthed too far north. Instead, he now planned only to travel as far south as James Clark Ross’ cairn left at the North Magnetic Pole.

  Thus, on February 25, Kennedy and Bellot set off with four men and a seven-man relief team. Though they did not know it, every other expedition sent by the British to the eastern Arctic had returned home with the summer thaw. Penny’s two ships, Austin’s four, even doggedly determined John Ross — all had sailed back to England, with nothing to show for their troubles but the discovery on Beechey Island and the bitter feud between Penny and Austin over Wellington Channel. In all the eastern Arctic, only the crew of the tiny Prince Albert remained to continue the search.

  AN ILLUSION?

  They reached Fury Beach on March 5, then on March 29 they were off again, leaving the relief team behind, headed south for Brentford Bay — the bay where Forsyth had been expected to spend the winter. On reaching Brentford Bay, they entered its deep bite in the east coast. Kennedy was in such a hurry he wouldn’t allow Bellot time to properly determine their positions. Before long, they found themselves looking westward across a frozen sea and they realized they had crossed fully to the west side of Somerset Island. It would not be until later that Kennedy, on looking over their measurements, would realize that they had just
passed along a waterway cutting clear through Boothia-Somerset. They had finally found a water passage connecting Prince Regent Inlet to the waters to the west. Somerset was an island after all, and the strait was named after Bellot.

  But now both Kennedy and Bellot made a strange mistake. Looking north, they thought they saw land connecting Somerset Island to Prince of Wales Island. In other words, they thought they saw solid land where in fact there lay only the open passage of Peel Sound. First James Clark Ross had rejected Peel Sound because it was frozen; then the sledge team sent under Willy Browne had made the same claim; now Kennedy and Bellot made the biggest mistake of all — Peel Sound, they said, was a dead end. Franklin could never have come south by that route.

  How could they have been so mistaken? What did they see as they gazed into the white distance? An illusion? Refraction of the light? They were neither the first nor the last to be misled by the astonishingly real vision of land where there was no land. So common is the phenomenon in the north that it has been given a name: the fata morgana. Just as John Ross apparently spotted an entire mountain range spread across Lancaster Sound, so have many other visitors to the North spotted looming peaks spread across the horizon, visible one trip, then gone the next. These ghostly ranges are only part of a wide variety of odd sightings reported over the centuries, from “mock suns” to even weirder objects sighted hovering in the Arctic skies. It is a topic to which we will return.