The Franklin Conspiracy Read online

  Most definitely I would be more than pleased and honoured for you to foreword my “The Shaman Light” manuscript to Hounslow Press. I would also like to thank you for your quick response, and for your kind and encouraging words about my manuscript. I tried hard to prepare it as fully as possible — although my maps may have left something to be desired!). I would be pleased to hear your criticisms, particularly regarding the Prologue. Could you please let me know when you have forwarded it? Incidentally, I use my middle name, Blair. Again, thanks very much.

  Tony Hawke loves reading books about mysteries and he enjoys adding them to the Hounslow list. So within a week or two of sending him the manuscript, I was quite pleased — but not really surprised — to hear from Tony on the phone (he does not yet use e-mail on a regular basis) that he was really enjoying reading the manuscript and that all things being equal he would show it to the other editors at Dundurn and to the publisher J. Kirk Howard. It took some months for everyone to be heard from, but they agreed with Tony’s assessment of the work’s interest (and saleability). Tony carried the ball from there. Both Tony and Blair (whom I have yet to meet) wanted me to add a Foreword to the book. At first I demurred; then I agreed.

  I must state that I miss the old title, The Shaman Light, but I have to admit that the present title, The Franklin Conspiracy, is much more commercial than the author’s working one. As I read the work in proof, I found myself recalling the question asked by Professor Van Helsing in the stage version of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. After the curtain falls on the third act, the old vampire-slayer steps between the curtains and faces the audience and asks, “Can such things be?”

  Indeed, can there be such things as are described in this book? Blair has asked such intriguing questions and provided such stupendous answers about the fate of the Franklin Expedition that I have the feeling that when the ruins of the Erebus and the Terror are discovered in the Arctic wastes, people will remember this book . . . and begin to worry!

  John Robert Colombo is nationally known as “the Master Gatherer” and “Canada’s Mr. Mystery” for his books about Canada. Among them are Ghost Stories of Canada (Hounslow) and Colombo’s Famous Lasting Words (Douglas & McIntyre).

  And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

  And Horror the soul of the plot.

  Edgar Allan Poe,

  The Conqueror Worm

  PROLOGUE

  The Vanishing Ships

  Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you,

  Will you join the dance?

  Lewis Carroll,

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  It always begins the same way.

  No matter who tells the tale, no matter the reason for the telling, it always begins the same. It begins with four ships meeting amongst the towering, sapphire-and-ivory icebergs of Baffin Bay, west of Greenland, east of Canada. The smaller two of the four were whaling vessels, the Prince of Wales and the Enterprise. They had come upon the two larger vessels purely by chance, stopping out of courtesy and because, in the lonely icy wastes of the Arctic whaling grounds, human contact was treasured above all else. To Captain Dannett, master of the Prince of Wales, the initial sight of the larger ships must have made him wonder if his eyes were playing tricks on him, as was so common in those waters where ghost ships were frequently seen hanging in the air and mysterious mountains might be sighted one trip, but be gone the next.

  Both of the great ships were black as coal, but with yellow along the weather works above the water line. Each sported three masts, barquerigged and painted white. The shape of their hulls was like no other craft, their sides thick and fortified with wood and their prows strengthened by solid bulwarks of sheet iron, giving them the look of two black bricks with their forward edges rounded just enough to suit their purpose. Clearly they were not built for speed. They were built for ice. They were built to take all that Nature could deliver. They were built to succeed.

  If their black hulls and iron-shod prows were not reason enough to give Captain Dannett pause, the names painted on their sterns must surely have been. The one was named Erebus; in Greek mythology, this was the darkest part of Hades, the underworld. Those who had named her could never have imagined how appropriate that name would come to be in later years, though never so appropriate as her sister’s. This one, the smaller of the two, was christened Terror.

  Captain Dannett found the Erebus and Terror secured to an iceberg, atop which their crews had constructed a temporary observatory. Having successfully managed the one month voyage from England, they were merely waiting for favourable weather before commencing their journey of discovery into the unknown waters of Arctic Canada, in search of the final link in the chain which would complete the fabled Northwest Passage. In the meantime, Captain Dannett invited their expedition’s commanding officer, Sir John Franklin, along with some of his officers, to join him aboard the Prince of Wales.

  Dannett must surely have known who Franklin was. Franklin was a living legend. Honours had been bestowed upon him countless times for his exploratory expeditions into the North. He had attempted to reach the Orient by ship, travelling east over the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen (as opposed to westward over Canada as he now intended). He had trekked overland to the northern rim of mainland Canada, not once but twice, suffering from cold and starvation, and returning with tales of unspeakable hardship. Now, in his twilight years, he had become a giant among explorers. Others of his calling had honoured him by bestowing his name on innumerable land features as they pushed further and further into the chill, forbidding reaches of the Arctic.

  To the people of the time it must have seemed that they were seeing history in the making, as if the great voyages of exploration into the North would carry the names of their explorers down through the ages, just as, in a later time, people would speak of a “Space Age” and imagine that their astronaut heroes would live on in legend forever. Such names as John Ross and Edward Parry, James Clark Ross and George Back, Peter Dease and Thomas Simpson seemed imperishable and eternal. Thus, when Captain Dannett invited Franklin aboard his whaler in July of 1845, he could not have known that it was Franklin alone, of all his contemporaries, who would pass into legend. And that it would not be for what the great explorer had already accomplished, but rather for what was yet to come.

  As the changing winds forced the Prince of Wales and the Enterprise too soon to part company with the naval expedition, Captain Dannett would have caught one last glimpse of the two black-and-yellow vessels secured to their iceberg before losing sight of them in the bluewhite haze. He had no way of knowing that no one would ever see either the Erebus or the Terror again.

  This is how it always begins . . .

  There are many details to the Franklin tale that have attained the status of myth. They are the little things that, whether true or not, serve to add that extra touch of mystery to a story that is mysterious enough in its own right. There is the story of how Franklin’s wife, Jane Franklin, embroidered him a flag to take on his final voyage into the North, as was traditional. Ill with influenza, Franklin fell asleep on the couch. His wife placed the Union Jack across his legs, thinking he might be cold. When Franklin awoke to discover what she had done, he grew pale with horror. The Union Jack, after all, was what they draped over a corpse.

  Then there was the story told of a dove seen to alight on the mast of one of the ships as they cast off from a dock near Gravesend. A good omen. A sign of success.

  Such details are recounted because they serve to add a dash of the supernatural. They add to the magic, chillingly prophetic and darkly ironic.

  In the final analysis, details are all we have. For all the books written on the subject, for all the reconstructions of the Franklin tragedy offered by the many experts, there are no witnesses to tell us what happened. There were Inuit who saw something, but what exactly, we cannot be sure. Often their testimony was second-hand and distorted by imperfect translation, overly zealous interrogators, and the pass
age of time itself. Still, we are left with details, but no overview. No big picture.

  In another context, we would call these details “clues”. Clues that present tantalizing, infuriatingly tantalizing, hints of a larger truth. Clues that, if only we could look at them in just the right manner and under just the right light, might combine and coalesce to reveal the final answer to the Franklin tragedy. I say “the final answer”, but in truth there can be no final answer in the way that a murder mystery climaxes with the revelation of the true identity of the murderer. In this case, the final answer is a final story that explains all the facts, answers all the questions, and incorporates all the details into a satisfying whole. In science it would be called a “model”. For our purposes, we shall call it a “story”.

  Over the years, this story has been presented in many different guises — tragedy, disaster, black comedy, mystery, morality tale. Here, I propose to enter into a far stranger, far darker realm, a country hitherto unexplored. In writing this book, I began with one simple purpose — to seek answers to questions that have proven unanswerable for a century-and-a-half. To do this, I made myself a promise at the outset. I promised myself that no solution, no matter how bizarre, would be rejected, so long as it fit the known facts. As we shall see, at times this was a difficult promise to keep. When those facts led me into a maze of deception and conspiracy, I hesitated. Like some Arctic explorer suddenly faced with dangerously thin ice, I nearly turned back. But, remembering my promise, I trudged grimly on, determined to follow the trail of clues, no matter where it might lead. Then, as the terrain grew steadily darker, the landscape alien and unexpected, as it became clear that the conspiracy was only the beginning, was positively mundane compared to what came after — I nearly faltered again. But still I kept on, step by step, detail by detail, until the terrifying end . . .

  PART I

  The Secret

  ‘Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,

  And coming events cast their shadows before.

  Thomas Campbell,

  Lockiel’s Warning

  CHAPTER ONE

  Prelude to Disaster

  The Pobble who has no toes

  Had once as many as we;

  When they said, “Some day you may lose them all”; –

  He replied, – “Fish fiddle de-dee!”

  Edward Lear,

  The Pobble Who Has No Toes

  THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE

  We will begin with a hypothesis. It is a very strange hypothesis but a fundamental one to our story. Therefore, we must lead into it gradually.

  Ostensibly, the purpose of the Franklin expedition was to discover the Northwest Passage. This passage had been sought for hundreds of years dating back to Columbus’ famed voyage in 1492. Contrary to myth, no one in Columbus’ day thought the world was flat. They did, however, think it was about three times larger than Columbus believed it to be. And they were right. Both he and his crew would have perished at sea, their fate unknown, had they not run up against an unexpected land barrier and “discovered” the New World.

  While Columbus was pleased with his discovery, to those who came after him North and South America meant only one thing — a very large obstacle on the way to the Spice lands of the East. For a time, ships probed every inlet and bay along the east coasts of both continents, confident that anything so large had to be bisected somewhere. But the search was in vain and gradually the searchers were forced to increasingly move their attentions south and north. Although a passage at the southern tip of South America was found by Magellan and often used, it was hardly convenient to seagoing nations situated in the northern hemisphere. Thus the “Quest for the Northwest Passage” began in earnest.

  In 1610, when Henry Hudson sailed through the Hudson Strait and down into Hudson Bay, he thought he had reached the Pacific Ocean. As things turned out, the fact that he was wrong was really the least of his problems. His crew mutinied, setting him adrift and leaving him to die; then, through an incredible feat of navigation by Hudson’s former mate Robert Bylot, they made it back to England, where they were tried for murder and acquitted. More importantly, they returned with the news that a titanic bay had been discovered in the north. Columbus wasn’t the only one confused by distances, and the theory quickly developed that there must be a strait connecting the west shore of Hudson Bay with the Pacific Ocean, most likely at the Gulf of California. They called this the Strait of Anian and it was to occupy searchers fruitlessly for many years to come.

  Six years later, William Baffin (acting as pilot for the same Robert Bylot who had set Hudson adrift) took a stab at the Northwest Passage further north and discovered Baffin Bay. Furthermore, by following the coast of the bay, Baffin discovered three possible straits, any one of which had the potential to serve as the fabled Passage to the Orient. After a time, however, interest in the search for the Passage waned. Decades passed, then a century, then two, and even Baffin’s discovery gradually faded from memory until people began to wonder whether Baffin Bay really existed at all.

  WHAT DID JOHN ROSS SEE?

  Finally, two hundred years later, in another age, England took up the cudgel once again. Following the end of the war with Napoleon, the English Navy found itself burdened by too many soldiers and ships and nothing to do with them. In essence, the resumption of the quest for the Northwest Passage was a gargantuan makework project.

  The first to take up the challenge was John Ross, a fairly standoffish member of His Majesty’s Royal Navy who believed it was not befitting for officers to mingle with the crew even when trapped for years in the frozen wastes of the high Arctic. In 1818, he sailed from England with two ships, the Isabella and the Alexander. Ross had two goals in mind: the foremost being the traversing of the fabled Northwest Passage, the secondary being to either prove or disprove the existence of Baffin Bay [see map 1].

  Map 1

  John Ross’ First Expedition, 1818

  Since Baffin Bay did exist, Ross quickly found it. He sailed to the northern shores of the bay, then down the western coast where he rediscovered one of the straits which Baffin had reported two centuries earlier and which Ross now named Lancaster Sound. This strait was clearly headed in the right direction, so Ross decided to follow it in hopes it would lead him to the Pacific. With the slower Alexander trailing far behind, Ross had only followed Lancaster Sound a mere thirty miles when a thick fog closed in forcing him to stop. What happened next remains a tantalizing mystery to the present day.

  After a short time, the officer on duty called Ross from his cabin with news that the fog was beginning to lift. On deck, Ross scrutinized the drifting veils to the west, seeking to determine what might lie ahead. Then, for just a matter of minutes, the fog parted and allowed him a glimpse of . . . something. Something that caused him to abruptly break off his journey, turn around and rush back out of Lancaster Sound “as if some mischief was behind him”.1 The amazed Edward Parry, commander of the Alexander, could only turn around reluctantly and follow his fast departing leader back to England.

  Ross’ explanation for his sudden loss of heart was that he had spotted a mountain range blocking Lancaster Sound, a range that he named the Croker Mountains after the First Secretary of the Admiralty. No one else apparently saw this mysterious mountain range, and many doubted it even existed — Parry among them. And, as events would later prove, it did not exist. Ross later described the scene this way: “At three I went on deck; it completely cleared for ten minutes, when I distinctly saw the land round the bottom of the bay, forming a chain of mountains connected with those which extended along the north and south side.”2 To further explain his inexplicable flight, Ross claimed to have also spotted ice blocking their path — ice that was also not seen by anyone else.

  But even if Ross believed he had sighted a mountain range blocking Lancaster Sound (or ice), that does not explain why he returned to England. The expedition had planned to winter in the Arctic. They were not pressed for time. There were c
ertainly other bays to explore; after all, no European had visited this place since Baffin’s time. Every inlet discovered, every cove charted, would be theirs to name, their contribution to the maps of the future.

  As the excellent Canadian historian Pierre Berton wondered in The Arctic Grail, “But why the haste? Why this sudden scramble to get home?” Ross’ actions placed him in the Admiralty’s black books for life, and alienated him from the explorers who would follow in his footsteps. Eventually he would return to the Arctic, but not under the aegis of the Royal Navy.

  What did Ross see for those few minutes as the fog thinned to the west? What did he think he saw? A mountain range? What could have caused him to return home, destroying his career and separating him from his peers? Thus, twenty-six years before Franklin’s fateful voyage, we encounter the first question in the mystery.

  What did Ross see?

  EDWARD PARRY’S MIRACLE VOYAGE

  After Ross, Edward Parry, having been forced to retreat once, set out to prove he was made of sterner stuff than his former leader. Parry, devoutly religious, was far less standoffish than Ross, making life for his crews in the Arctic much more bearable than under Ross. He was to command no less than three separate expeditions into the Arctic, the first being the most successful, the last the most disastrous.