The Franklin Conspiracy Read online

  In a foreshadowing of things to come, the expedition seemed determined to fail even before setting out from England. Richardson planned to reach Arctic tidewater at the end of August, in spite of knowing that previous land expeditions had been forced to turn back before then. Governor Simpson felt “some degree of alarm and apprehension”2 on seeing how ill-prepared the men were, and Rae himself felt that “almost everything connected with the Expedition was a makeshift for such work—the men included.”3 At about the same time, in Baffin Bay, James Clark Ross was dispatching word to England of his intention to severely truncate his own search, so we should hardly be surprised if Richardson’s expedition was also less than advertised.

  Travelling up the Mackenzie River to its mouth, the party searched slightly eastward along the Arctic coast before turning back and retreating to Fort Confidence on Great Bear Lake to spend the winter, having accomplished exactly nothing. In the summer, Richardson returned to England, while Rae tried again. During two journeys, Rae managed to explore the east coast of Victoria Island by boat, from which position he could look across the ice-choked Victoria Strait toward King William Island. But Rae wasn’t equipped to cross the strait, so he settled for leaving a record of his trek, which Collinson happened upon two years later.

  NOT THE SLIGHTEST HOPE

  The search for Franklin, such as it was, continued without the assistance of John Rae. Ships shuttled back and forth through black leads, man-hauled sledges ground over heaving hummocks, collared foxes scampered over the snow and ice, Franklin’s winter camp was discovered on Beechey Island, and the search moved ever northward.

  His part in the drama apparently played, Rae requested permission to return to Repulse Bay once again. His goal this time was pure exploration and only marginally different from his previous expedition. Kennedy and Bellot had recently returned from the Arctic with the report of a water passage dividing Boothia from Somerset Island—Bellot Strait. Unfortunately, Kennedy had only recognized it for what it was after returning to the Prince Albert, and Bellot, ironically, wasn’t convinced they had discovered a strait at all. But if Bellot Strait existed, it might prove to be the final link in the Northwest Passage. Rae proposed to explore the west coast of Boothia starting from the farthest point reached by Dease and Simpson at the Castor and Pollux River, work his way north up to the mouth of Bellot Strait, then trace that strait to Prince Regent Inlet, thereby completing the Northwest Passage [see map 18].

  Along the way, Rae had two subsidiary goals. The first was to prove once and for all that Boothia really was a peninsula and not an island. True, Rae had thought that question was settled by his earlier expedition, but the navy would not be convinced until someone mapped the west coast as well. In addition to this, Rae wanted to explore the hitherto unexplored area between King William Island and Boothia. At that time, it was still thought that King William Island was actually King William Land, forming a sort of bulbous outcrop from Boothia, instead of being separated by a strait.

  Map 18

  John Rae’s intended route to Bellot Strait

  In August 1853, while Belcher’s flotilla prepared for a second winter far to the north, Rae returned to his little winter haven on Repulse Bay. In a letter published in The Times the year before, he had written, “I do not mention the lost navigators, as there is not the slightest hope of finding any trace of them in the quarter to which I am going.”4

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Cannibalism and Other Relics of the Lost

  “ ‘The time has come,” the Walrus said,

  “To talk of many things . . . :”

  Lewis Carroll,

  Through the Looking-glass

  THE ARTICLE IN THE TIMES

  The British public first learned of John Rae’s discovery in late October, 1854, from an article printed in The Times. The article was Rae’s report, which he had sent on ahead to the Admiralty before his arrival in England. It was a remarkably frustrating tale composed partly of solid indisputable evidence and partly (far too much, most people felt) of anecdotes gleaned from Inuit interviewees who had themselves gathered their stories from others. Indeed, Rae’s own report hardly encouraged unflinching acceptance when he wrote, “None of the Esquimaux with whom I have conversed had seen the ‘whites’, nor had they even been at the place where the bodies were found, but had their information from those who had been there and had seen the party travelling.”1

  Still, solid evidence there was, the kind that left no room for doubt. There was a gold watch engraved with the name of the Erebus’ ice master, James Reid. There were silver knives, forks, and spoons, ownership again confirmed by the initials engraved on the handles. There were eight silver watchcases, surgical instruments, coins, a silver pencil case—in all, something like forty-five separate objects. And then, as if a final gift was cast out of the north to ensure there could be not a shred of doubt remaining, Rae brought home Franklin’s own Hanoverian Order of Merit.

  THE PELLY BAY INUIT

  The lost expedition had indeed been found—but where? And what had happened to cause this disaster? Rae’s story was infuriatingly incomplete, built on second-hand evidence.

  In the spring of that year, Rae had set out with his six travelling companions and headed northwest from Repulse Bay in order to cross over to the west coast of Boothia to begin his explorations [see map 19]. But, while still on the Gulf of Boothia, Rae encountered a group of seventeen Inuit at Pelly Bay. Here a very strange thing occurred. Even if he didn’t expect to find Franklin in the area, Rae had sense enough to ask questions wherever he went; but here he found that “they would give us no information on which any reliance could be placed and none of them would consent to accompany us for a day or two, though I promised to reward them liberally. Apparently there was a great objection to our travelling across country in a westerly direction.”2 Even stranger, after speaking with these Inuit, Rae’s own interpreter suddenly attempted to run away and had to be chased down and brought back. In fact, Rae believed the interpreter had done his best to conceal whatever it was he had been told by the other Inuit.

  Map 19

  John Rae cuts short his explorations at Cape Porter

  What were the Inuit afraid of? Were they concerned that they might be blamed for the deaths of the white men scattered in a ghastly trail in the west? Or was there some other reason they tried to keep Rae from travelling into that country? Strangely, twelve years later, a searcher named Charles Francis Hall would reach Pelly Bay following the same route taken by Rae, while headed for King William Island in search of relics. Like Rae, Hall also met with stiff resistance from the Pelly Bay Inuit. The Inuit told weird stories of a fierce tribe inhabiting King William Island, and the stories so frightened Hall’s party that he was forced to turn back and return to Repulse Bay.

  Rae did not turn back, and a little farther west he encountered two Inuit dragging a sledge. He noticed that one, named In-nook-poo-zhee-jook, was wearing a gold braided cap-band from the uniform of a naval officer. Rae asked the man where he had come by the cap-band. In-nook-poo-zhee-jook told Rae that the gilt band had come from a place where nearly forty white men had died on an island in the mouth of a river in the west. The Inuk himself had never been there personally and could not show Rae on a map where the place was. Rae then bought the gold band and told the two Inuit to pass along the word that he would purchase any other relics they might have found once he returned to Repulse Bay. He then continued westward to the mouth of the Castor and Pollux River (the most eastern point reached by Dease and Simpson) and explored up the west coast of Boothia according to plan, as if nothing had happened. He successfully demonstrated that Boothia was, after all, a peninsula, and also discovered Rae Strait separating King William Island from Boothia, proving that King William Island was indeed an island. But he interrupted his explorations before reaching Bellot Strait as he had intended and instead returned to Repulse Bay. There he was met by a great many Inuit eager to trade Franklin relics and informatio
n, some of the Inuit being from the group he had found so uncooperative at Pelly Bay.

  From these Inuit, Rae purchased the vast assortment of watches, cutlery, coins, and the like, which left no doubt that Franklin’s ships had been abandoned nearby. He also learned enough to conclude that at least some of the crew had perished on Montreal Island, in the mouth of the Great Fish River just south of King William Island. Because the summer was fast approaching (and, unlike the sea-going expeditions, Rae needed frozen water to travel), Rae decided there was no time to investigate this new information. Instead, he broke camp and headed south. He quickly sent his story to the Montreal Herald, where it appeared a month before it exploded across the pages of The Times. He hurried to England, claiming his only desire was to prevent other expeditions from being sent to the wrong place.

  CANNIBALISM AND DISINFORMATION

  If Rae had expected a hero’s welcome, he was soon disillusioned. The accusations were soon flying thicker than the flakes in a blizzard. Why, people wanted to know, had he not stayed to investigate? Rae insisted he had not known where to look until his return to Repulse Bay, by which point it was too late in the season. But surely, they insisted, even without knowing the exact location, after learning of the dead white men from In-nook-poo-zhee-jook he could have scouted around? He claimed he hadn’t initially thought the story of forty dead seamen had anything to do with Franklin’s lost expedition. As Pierre Berton asked, “Who else could they be but Franklin’s crew members?”3 Chief Trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company, William Gibson, commented in 1937, “It may be a cause of speculation why Dr. Rae did not proceed to Back’s Great Fish River to investigate on the spot, before returning to his base at Repulse Bay.”4

  At the same time, Rae had other matters to contend with. Along with various other details supplied by his informers, Rae passed along an extremely unpleasant revelation, one that promptly had the effect of the proverbial bull in the china shop. He reported, “From the mutilated state of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource—cannibalism—as a means of prolonging survival.”5

  The contents of the kettles? Good God. Apparently, as far as the Tarzan of the Barren Grounds was concerned, Victorian sensibilities could be damned. As Peter Newman remarked, “This went directly against the strictly held tenet of the Royal Geographical Society that English gentlemen do not devour one another.”6

  Sensibilities or no, Rae had shown remarkably poor judgement in publicly disclosing so sensitive a suggestion—and a suggestion, after all, was all it really could be. His own Inuit informers were merely relating stories told to them by others. None of them had actually seen these kettles, and Rae certainly hadn’t. Clearly it was a judgment call; Rae could hardly have kept quiet about so important a discovery. But he was talking about, not just the cream of the Royal Navy, but men who had been elevated nearly to sainthood through the efforts of the devoted Lady Franklin. To suddenly suggest that they had calmly gone about the task of cutting up and eating (and cooking!) those of their number who had fallen by the way—Rae was either astonishingly naive or remarkably callous.

  But perhaps Charles Dickens was closer to recognizing the true state of things when he penned a furious response to Rae’s report in the pages of Household Words. Dickens argued that Rae had been perfectly correct in reporting the cannibalism story to the Admiralty, but the famous author wondered why the Admiralty had been so eager to see that story publicly displayed in The Times.

  He may have been closer to the mark than even he suspected. It was certainly a curious situation; surely a first of some sort. The Admiralty hadn’t even waited to interview Rae in person, but had rushed into print his story of mutilated bodies and kettles while the fur trader was still at sea. Not only was the Admiralty not trying to contain the damage to its reputation, it seemed positively eager to spread the word.

  It would be many years yet before the term “disinformation” would enter the English lexicon.

  THE ANDERSON EXPEDITION

  Of course, hot on the heels of Rae’s revelations came offers to do what he apparently had not thought important enough to do: travel to the mouth of the Great Fish River and search for firm evidence of the expedition’s final trek (and evidence of cannibalism, naturally). Dr. Richard King, who had previously explored the Great Fish River with George Back, made such an offer after heaping abuse on Rae and even going so far as to question the Orkneyman’s geographical discoveries. Since Dr. King had argued all along that Franklin’s crew would be found by going up the Great Fish River, he had the distinction of being the only person to be proven absolutely correct, at least who was not also basing their conclusions on the word of a blue light.

  But the Admiralty was admirably quick off the mark this time. On October 30, within four days of Dr. King’s offer and a week after the publication of Rae’s report, the Admiralty announced that it had asked the Hudson’s Bay Company to dispatch an expedition down the Great Fish River under the direction of Chief Factor James Anderson. In making this pre-emptory move, the navy once again saw to it that the ball remained comfortably in their court.

  On the other hand, the expedition was being handled by the Hudson’s Bay Company; what could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit, apparently. The Admiralty seemed to have a sort of reverse Midas Touch. Voicing that off-key refrain sung so often before, Roderic Owen observed, “The Anderson Expedition started off under one handicap.”7 While they reported they had read George Back’s narrative of his explorations of the Great Fish River, they made no mention of Dr. King’s. Given that King had been proven unquestionably right, one might have thought any information he could supply regarding the journey they were about to undertake would have been much sought after.

  But a lack of knowledge regarding the area of search wasn’t the only handicap weighing down the Anderson Expedition. A far more serious omission was the lack of an Inuit interpreter. Rae had only learned what he had because of information received from the Inuit. Yet now Anderson, like Collinson before him, cheerfully pushed up the Great Fish River in search of Franklin’s last resting place with no way to ask questions of those he might find in the area.

  On top of everything else, the boats carried along on the expedition were wholly unsuited for the icy conditions they would meet in the Arctic tidewater. Anderson explained the lack of an interpreter and the useless boats by stating that there had not been sufficient time to properly prepare, in spite of the fact that the expedition, promptly announced in October 1854, didn’t actually set out until late June 1855. Even then, the expedition departed so late in the season Anderson told Lady Franklin that he “did not expect to reach the sea at all, much less search the coast.”8

  As anticipated, almost nothing was accomplished. Anderson’s party encountered a group of Inuit near the mouth of the Great Fish River who had fashioned useful items from wood obviously taken from a ship’s boat. From these Inuit they purchased various relics: a letter-nip dated 1843, a broken saw, a chisel, a tin soup tureen. But without an interpreter, there was no way to ask where these things had been found. On Montreal Island (which was the island Rae believed his informers had referred to), Anderson’s party found only wood shavings, indicating they had discovered the place where the ship’s boat had been cut up by the Inuit. On one wood fragment, the name “Terror” was legible.

  The Inuit that Rae had spoken to had told him Franklin’s men had been seen retreating from the ice-locked ships down the coast of King William Island. But without proper boats, Anderson was unable to cross Simpson Strait to investigate the island. Having proven only that Rae was correct in placing the disaster somewhere in the area, but having failed in his primary mission to actually find the place, Anderson returned home.

  He had accomplished absolutely nothing, but on his return he presented Jane Franklin with a piece of backgammon board that was found on Montreal Island and which she herself had placed aboard one of the ships before s
ailing. It was small consolation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lady Franklin’s Decision

  Now who will stand on either hand,

  And keep the bridge with me?

  Lord Macaulay,

  Lay’s of Ancient Rome

  THE NAVY’S MISTAKE

  It would not be too unfair to say that the only thing accomplished by Anderson’s expedition was to delay other searches—private searches—for another year.

  In June of 1856, two years after Rae had returned with his relics, he was rewarded with the 10,000 pounds offered to any party able to discover the fate of Franklin’s crew. The Admiralty had waited for Anderson’s return before handing over the reward to the fur trader—a curious action in its own right. After all, if they felt Rae’s evidence was compelling enough to earn him the reward, why did they require Anderson to double check? Nor could it truly be said that Anderson had confirmed Rae’s discovery; he had merely proven that something had happened in the general area. But what?

  For the answer to that question, they had only the second-hand stories supplied by Rae’s Inuit informers. Why would the Admiralty suddenly take the word of the Inuit now, when it had doubted them before? James Clark Ross had been told Boothia was a peninsula by the Inuit; the navy refused to take that as proof. Then there were the other dubious stories which littered the years of search: Adam Beck’s tale of massacre on the Greenland coast, for instance. Now, suddenly the Admiralty considered the second-hand Inuit tales of cannibalism among the Royal Navy’s legendary officers to constitute final proof of their fate?