The Franklin Conspiracy Read online

  In 1967, Rae’s own diary describing his explorations was discovered. On perusing its contents, its readers were surprised to find that the manuscript abruptly broke off in mid-sentence and did not resume. The break occurred in April, 1854, just before Rae would have described his first encounter with In-nook-poo-zhee-jook.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Two Bodies and a Note

  A shudder in the loins engenders there

  The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

  And Agamemnon dead.

  W.B. Yeats,

  Leda and the Swan

  THE VICTORY POINT RECORD

  “It was with a deep feeling of regret,” wrote McClintock, “and much disappointment that I left this spot without finding some certain record of those martyrs to their country’s fame. Perhaps in all the wide world there will be few spots more hallowed in the recollection of English seamen than this cairn on Cape Herschel.”1 Yet, McClintock was wrong. It wasn’t Cape Herschel that was destined to become a hallowed spot in the Arctic. But, after travelling a mere twelve miles further along the coast, McClintock came upon another cairn and the revelation which would at last see that one spot on King William Island would indeed attain a hallowed status: Victory Point.

  McClintock could immediately see that this second cairn was only newly constructed, the dirt still clinging to the stones. Eagerly tearing it apart, he discovered a record inside left by Hobson, who had arrived there from the north only six days before. Hobson’s record was amazing: his party, though failing to discover the stranded ship, had found two documents left by Franklin’s expedition, one being a partial duplicate of the other.

  After separating from McClintock’s party in late April, Hobson and his men had crossed the ice to Cape Felix at the north tip of King William Island. Almost immediately, they met with success, discovering the remnants of an encampment. This encampment “had apparently been occupied for some time by a party consisting of twelve officers and men.” Three small tents were used; they were lying flat when found by Lieutenant Hobson, and beneath them lay bearskin and blankets. Boarding pikes had apparently served as tent poles. Three fireplaces were near the tents.2 A wealth of relics were found: broken pipes, tobacco, matches, broken china, needles, clothing, and a badge from a shako, but nothing with a name or initials on it.

  Facsimile of Victory Point Record

  But it was further on, at Victory Point, that the searchers discovered the prize which so many had sought for so long. Hobson found himself walking amongst a veritable junkyard of cast-away relics, amounting to something like ten tons in weight. There was a huge mountain of clothing piled four feet high. There were hollow brass curtain rods, heavy cooking stoves, button polish, four feet of lightning conductor, a medicine chest still filled with drugs, navigational equipment (a sextant and dip circle), and books, so many books! In the middle of it all was a stone cairn. At the base of the cairn, amongst some fallen stones, Hobson found a metal cylinder for protecting messages. At one time the end had been soldered closed, but Hobson found it broken open.

  There were actually two messages, written a year apart on the same piece of paper. The paper itself was a standard Admiralty form given to ships for the purpose of mapping ocean currents, with blanks for the name of the ship and the time and position, to be filled in prior to tossing the paper overboard, secured in a bottle. An area for any comments was then followed by another blank space for the commander’s signature. The lower half of the paper was then taken up with messages in six languages requesting the finder of the paper to forward it to the Admiralty in London. Whoever had drawn up the original form letter could never have imagined the important message it was now asked to convey.

  The Victory Point record was badly stained with rust from its cylinder and one corner had disintegrated, destroying a small part of the message: the date of the second note. However, historians have had no hesitation quoting this second message, date intact, by basing their conclusion on the message’s contents, usually without making note of their inference. The first message had been written in the blank space for further comments provided on the form, with the date, the ships’ names and the latitude and longitude marked in the appropriate spots at the top. Between the ships’ names and the position, the author had written “Wintered in the Ice in”, with a long bracket connecting the three lines. The message thus read:

  H.M. Ships Erebus and Terror

  Wintered in the Ice in

  Lat. 70 . 5’ N Long. 98 . 23’ W

  28 of May 1847

  Having wintered in 1846-7 at Beechey Island

  in Lat 74 . 43’ . 28” N. Long 91 . 39’ . 15” W after having

  ascended Wellington Channel to Lat 77 — and returning

  by the West side of Cornwallis Island.

  Sir John Franklin commanding the Expedition. [Commander crossed out.]

  All well.

  At the bottom of the paper, beneath the multilingual messages, there was an addition.

  Party consisting of 2 officers and 6 men

  left the ships on Monday 24th, May 1847.

  Gm. Gore, Lieut.

  Chas. F. Les Voeux, Mate

  This was how things had stood in 1847 after two winters in the Arctic. Unable to fulfil their orders to seek a passage to the southwest of Cape Walker, the ships had indeed gone up Wellington Channel, but then, presumably encountering more ice, they had returned to take up a winter berth at Beechey Island.

  Immediately, though, the searchers noticed a strange error in this first message. The graves found at Beechey proved the expedition had wintered there in 1845-1846, not the next year as the message read. Still, the mistake was put down to simple inattention, even though the author had so obviously put so much care into recording all the latitudes and longitudes. The next summer, Franklin must have found Peel Sound open and happily sailed down to King William Island, only to find himself trapped in the implacable ice to the west. Still, as the message said, “All well.”

  But then there was a second message written a year later (the three last numerals of the year had just missed being torn away with the corner). This message was in the same handwriting as the first (Fitzjames’, as it turned out), and it ran first up the left side of the page, then up the right eventually spilling upside down along the top. It was written using a slightly different coloured ink from the ink used the previous year.

  [April 25th 1]848 H M Ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22nd April 5 leagues NNW of this [hav]ing been beset since 12th Sept. 1846. The Officers & Crews consisting of 105 souls under the command [of Cap]tain F.R.M. Crozier landed here – in Lat. 69 . 37’. 42” Long. 98 . 41’ [This] paper was found by Lt. Irving under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831 – where it had been deposited (four miles to the northward) by the late Commander Gore in [May crossed out] June 1847. Sir James Ross’ pillar has not however been found and the paper has been transferred to this position which is that in which Sir J Ross pillar was erected — Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June 1847 and the total loss by deaths in the Expedition has been to this date 9 officers & 15 men.

  F.R.M. Crozier

  Captain & Senior Offr James Fitzjames HMS

  and start on tomorrow 26th Erebus

  for Back’s Fish River.

  Such a tantalizing record. On the one hand, it answered quite a few questions. On the other hand, it just raised more. It was now known that Sir John Franklin had died a year before the expedition itself was forced to desert the ships. In fact, Franklin had died only two weeks after the first note had been written. Graham Gore had also died some time after the first message that he had signed, since he was referred to as the “late” Commander Gore in the second note.

  A total of nine officers and fifteen seamen had perished even before the decision to abandon the ships was made in 1848. Franklin and Gore made two, while the three bodies on Beechey accounted for three more. That left a staggering total of nineteen deaths stil
l unknown. More importantly, there was an astonishingly disproportionate number of officers killed. How to explain this? No one knew. On Arctic voyages the officers were expected to command, not work. It was the men who hauled in the traces and the men who suffered and died from this backbreaking labour. The officers even ate better and so were the last to come down with scurvy. How had they died? The note, infuriatingly, didn’t say.

  Nor did it tell the searchers the reason the ships had been abandoned. The ships were said to have been beset since September, 1846, indicating the expedition had been trapped in the ice off King William Island for two full winters. At the very least, Franklin had carried provisions enough for three winters in the Arctic. But this was a minimum. In an emergency, he could have stretched that for a fourth year. Still, after three winters in the Arctic, and with Franklin dead, Crozier — who had now assumed command — would have surely begun to make plans for escape. The problem was, why desert the ships in April? Crozier would have been better to have waited a month or two until the warmer weather arrived, thawing the waterways and allowing his men to travel by ship’s boat. Everything seemed to point to a strangely hurried escape, which might have been explained if there was any indication the ships had sunk; but the record specifically stated the ships had been “deserted”, proving that both were still afloat when the abandonment took place. More and more, the record served only to compound the mystery.

  One thing at least seemed clear. Having deserted the ships, Crozier had led his doomed party of 105 men down the west coast of King William Island, headed for “Back’s Fish River”. Apparently, Crozier had initially almost left the record without that additional information. Only after he had signed his name had Crozier (at least, it was presumed to be his writing since it wasn’t in Fitzjames’ hand) remembered to add the final crucial report: “and start on tomorrow 26th for Back’s Fish River.”

  Yet, even here was a mystery. What had Crozier thought he was doing? The Great Fish River? It is true that Dr. King had urged that a search party be sent to the mouth of that river to look for signs of Franklin’s lost expedition, but not even Dr. King had believed the explorers might try to use that river to escape the Arctic. It was sheer madness. Pierre Berton commented, “The Great Fish River was trial enough for strong, healthy, well-fed voyageurs, as George Back had discovered. For Crozier’s men, it would have been an impossibility to navigate, even if they had reached it.”3 All along, everyone had believed that if Franklin’s crewmen found themselves trapped in the ice southwest of Cape Walker (as they had), they would travel, not south, but northeast to the cache at Fury Beach, where they stood at least some chance of being picked up by whalers. Here was yet one more mystery to be explained.

  AN ATTACK THAT NEVER CAME

  McClintock, having read the copy of the Victory Point record deposited by Hobson, had no time to ponder the many questions it raised. He set out immediately, travelling north up the coast of King William Island, and worked his way over ground already searched by Hobson. He wished to see for himself the relics left at Victory Point by the retreating expedition. But then he came upon another discovery, as amazing in some ways as the Victory Point record itself.

  It was a ship’s boat mounted on a sledge. A record left at the site told McClintock that Hobson had been over the place already. The boat was large, weighing about 800 pounds, but the keel had been partially trimmed to lighten the load. The sledge upon which the boat sat was a huge ponderous device which added a further 650 pounds to the mass which the seamen had been forced to haul; a total of 1400 pounds, which McClintock called, “a heavy load for seven strong healthy men.”4

  More amazing still was the profusion of relics found inside the boat. Just as Hobson had discovered so many useless items piled around the cairn at Victory Point, here McClintock found piles of clothing, an assortment of winter boots, towels, soap, a sponge, a toothbrush, combs, bayonet scabbards shortened to hold knives, two rolls of sheet-lead, five watches, needles and thread-cases, saws, files, and even five books, including a copy of the “Vicar of Wakefield”. And, once again, there were those omnipresent silver forks, spoons, and teaspoons engraved with the initials and crests of the officers of the Erebus and Terror. Though no meat was found, there was an empty pemmican-can which had held twenty-two pounds, and the searchers found forty pounds of chocolate.

  And then there were the bodies. Only two skeletons were found in the boat and, when a search for graves failed to turn any up, it became evident that the two men had been left behind by whoever had helped haul the boat this far. The youngest man was in the bow of the boat, in a “disturbed state” which McClintock attributed to “large and powerful animals, probably wolves.”5 The older man, in a better condition, lay under the after-thwart, his body surrounded by clothes and furs. Leaning upright against the side of the boat were two shotguns, one barrel in each carefully loaded and cocked, in Owen Beattie’s words, “as if ready to fend off an attack that never came.”6

  But as strange as all this was, McClintock was even more astonished to find the sledge-mounted boat was pointed toward the north instead of the south. For some reason, this sledge party had been headed back toward Victory Point and the abandoned ships, rather than toward the Great Fish River. The only explanation he could come up with to solve this puzzle was to assume that some of the crewmen, finding the journey south more than they had bargained for, had turned back, finally abandoning even their boat (and two comrades) when their strength was nearly gone. It was an unlikely scenario, but the only one imaginable. If the crewmen hoped to find the ships still beset in the ice on their return, why did they attempt to drag the ship’s boat with them? If they thought they would have to cross water, the ships themselves would have either sunk or floated away.

  Yet, the evidence was irrefutable. At least some of the crewmen had turned back. Why?

  The pieces of the puzzle lay scattered like ice floes in Lancaster Sound, jostling and meeting, then just as suddenly breaking apart again. A picture is hinted at, but never fully resolved. McClintock based his conclusions according to certain seemingly self-evident assumptions. He assumed the ships were abandoned because the expedition was faced with starvation. He assumed they trekked down the west coast of King William Island weakened and racked with scurvy. He assumed their greatest enemy was their own fading strength and gnawing hunger. Thus, he assumed they turned back because they couldn’t go any further. It never occurred to the searcher that the crewmen might have turned back because escape had been cut off, that they had been forced to retreat back to the north for the reason that they were trapped, with nowhere else to run but north.

  And yet, the evidence was there, though mute and circumstantial. Two bodies lay in the boat, one badly mauled. Two shotguns stood by, loaded and cocked. If they perished of starvation, why did they leave forty pounds of chocolate behind? If their strength was failing, why didn’t they jettison all the extra weight? McClintock was amazed to find that the ponderous boat had been partially knocked off its sledge. He proposed the deed had been done by “a violent north-west gale”7 It was a powerful gale indeed which could lift an 800-pound boat.

  And finally, the eeriest clue of all: of the two bodies discovered, McClintock wrote: “No part of the skull of either skeleton was found, with the exception of the lower jaw of each.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A Trail of Bones

  Still round and round the ghosts of beauty glide,

  And haunt the places where their honour died.

  Alexander Pope,

  Epistles to Several Persons

  PUZZLES

  Few historical documents have been studied and pondered, dissected and analyzed, as has been the record found at Victory Point. From McClintock to the present, historical scholars and armchair explorers have tried to make sense of the two short messages left by the doomed expedition, striving to read between the lines, to answer the questions left infuriatingly unanswered, while seeking to resolve the further puzz
les raised by elements of the record itself. Here we propose, not only to answer those questions, but to do so with a simple solution.

  First though, we shall comment on another puzzle, one which only became evident over many years after later searchers had visited King William Island.

  FROM THE TODD ISLETS TO STARVATION COVE

  John Rae’s informers told him that five bodies had been seen on Montreal Island in the mouth of the Great Fish River [see map 24]. In the spring of 1869, Charles Francis Hall explored the south shore of King William Island over a period of four days, while searching for Franklin relics. Near the mouth of the Peffer River he discovered a skeleton that was later identified as Lieutenant Le Vescont of the Erebus, based on a gold tooth crown. Several other skeletons were found, including one discovered on the Todd Islets, just off the south coast, where Hall had been told by the Inuit that five skeletons had previously been seen. Hall learned from the Inuit that the largest concentrations of bodies had been located at Terror Bay on the west coast of King William Island, and at Starvation Cove on the mainland just to the west of the Great Fish River, but he didn’t visit either of these places.

  Map 24

  Crozier’s path to the Great Fish River?

  In 1879, Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka of the 3rd United States Cavalry led an expedition to King William Island. After so many years, little remained of the lost expedition’s last march, but Schwatka discovered six graves scattered along the island’s west coast. He also learned from the Inuit of the many bodies which had been seen at Terror Bay and of the (possibly) forty corpses which had lain at Starvation Cove on the mainland. One Inuk informant told Schwatka he had seen an upright boat at Starvation Cove — “Outside the boat he saw a number of skulls. He forgot how many but he said there were more than four.”1 It was also said that there had been a box filled with books at Starvation Cove. “Some of the books were taken home for the children to play with, and finally torn and lost, and others lay among the rocks until carried away by the wind and lost or buried beneath the sand.” Though Schwatka visited Starvation Cove, he could only find a single skull, for which he gave the place its grim name.