The Franklin Conspiracy Page 21

  Clearly, even though it was added later, it was supposed to be read as the completion of a previous sentence. And yet, it does not fit at the end of the last sentence, which would then read “. . . the total loss by deaths in the Expedition has been to this date 9 officers & 15 men . . . and start on tomorrow, 26th, for Back’s Fish River.” Indeed, in the entire Victory Point record there is only one sentence that this addendum could be intended to complete. That sentence had been written the year before and, linking the two together, the complete sentence would then read: “Party consisting of 2 officers and 6 men left the ships on Monday 24th, 1847, and start on tomorrow 26th for Back’s Fish River.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Final March

  Into the jaws of Death,

  Into the mouth of Hell.

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson,

  The Charge of the Light Brigade

  ALTERED DATES

  It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of this slight alteration in the reading of the Victory Point record. We now see that “tomorrow 26th” means the 26th of May, 1847, not the 26th of April, 1848. Therefore, we no longer know on what date the second message was written, since the April 25th date quoted in most history books was inferred solely from the belief that “tomorrow” was the 26th. We know only that the message was written some time after the ships were abandoned on April 22nd.

  As well, we now see that Crozier’s last message gives no clue as to where he was headed or what his intentions were. Perhaps more significantly, the earlier message now tells us that the party dispatched so hurriedly from the ships in 1847 was in fact headed, not for Cape Herschel to complete the Northwest Passage, but for the Great Fish River. This in itself is a strange revelation. Why should a party have been sent there?

  THREE INKS

  But before continuing, we must consider a possible objection to this reconstruction of the Victory Point record.

  The ink used to write the 1847 message had a slightly different colour from the ink used to write the 1848 message — including the postscript about the Great Fish River. This would seem to be a fatal flaw in our reconstruction. On the other hand, in our reconstruction we are still assuming the postscript was added sometime after the first message had been written. It is not hard to imagine Gore thawing a new bottle of ink to add the final note about the destination of his party.

  But would it match the ink used by Fitzjames one year later?

  Certainly the differences in colour were slight; if Gore’s ink used to make the addition was closer in colour to the 1848 ink than it was to the 1847 ink, it is easy to see how the document’s readers assumed there were only two shades of ink, instead of three. But what we require is final proof that ink was used in the 1847 message that closely matched the ink used one year later.

  That proof is to be found in the date.

  There were two records found on King William Island, both identical copies of the 1847 message. But the record found at Gore Point lacked the “28” for the May date at the top. The record at Victory Point had the “28” filled in, but the number was written in an ink matching the ink used one year later. Because of this, it was concluded that when Fitzjames recovered the document the next year he remembered the precise date upon which Gore had placed the record at Victory Point and so filled in the space. This seems doubtful. As we have seen, Fitzjames clearly didn’t know when Gore had placed the record in its cairn since he initially wrote “May”, then crossed that out and wrote, “June”. It makes more sense to assume it was Gore who added the 28, shortly before setting out in 1847. This then serves as proof that a third ink had been used which closely matched the ink used one year later.

  RECONSTRUCTION

  This then is what might have happened.

  In 1847, Fitzjames filled out two Admiralty forms while stationed at the camp near Cape Felix. Then, before he could sign his name, Gore arrived leading a party dispatched from the ships. Gore had set out from the ships on the 24th of May, reaching Cape Felix one day later on the 25th. This party was under orders to travel immediately for the Great Fish River. At the same time, Gore also carried orders from Franklin instructing Fitzjames to abandon the camp at Cape Felix and return promptly to the ships. Fitzjames departed immediately, leaving Gore and his party at Cape Felix with the two records. Gore’s mission was important and he was in a hurry. He and Des Voeux placed their signatures on the two records, and had lead-sealed one in its metal cylinder before realizing they should include their own destination on the records. Rather than break the seal on the closed cylinder, they decided to append the “and start on tomorrow 26th for Back’s Fish River” to the record which had not yet been sealed. To make this addition, they used different ink than Fitzjames had used for the rest of the message. Then Gore noticed that Fitzjames had left the date blank at the top of the form, so Gore filled it in based on a rough guess of when he suspected he would deposit the record somewhere to the south. He gave himself two days, the 28th of May. Then Gore sealed the record in its cylinder and set off on his journey the next day, depositing the more complete record at Victory Point and the other record at Gore Point.

  After that, Gore’s party continued southward, headed for the Great Fish River. Sometime later, Gore barely made it back to the ships, perhaps able only to reveal that the others were dead. He died himself soon afterward, but not before Franklin promoted him as a reward for his bravery. Franklin himself must have died only days after that. For the next eleven months, the crew remained trapped aboard the ships, frozen in Victoria Strait and unwilling or unable to risk venturing back to the shore so near at hand.

  There may have been more deaths. The 1848 message reported nine officers and fifteen men dead. If we subtract Franklin, Gore, the three men at Beechey Island, and the seven other men of Gore’s party, we are left with the staggering total of twelve deaths unaccounted for. We also notice the disproportionate number of dead officers. In every way they should have lived a healthier life than the rest of the crew — better food, better living conditions, less work (and work contributed to the onset of scurvy). In fact, we might say the officers had only two functions on this expedition: one was to command the men; the other was to carry out the scientific experiments for which they had been so carefully chosen.

  Then, abruptly, the ships were abandoned on April 22nd, 1848. The remaining men trudged across the ice to shore carrying with them a staggering profusion of useless junk. Fitzjames added the new information to the record recovered by Lieutenant Irving, not realizing that the little “and start on tomorrow” addition made by Gore the year before would eventually be the cause of so much confusion.

  THE PASSAGE THAT DIDN’T EXIST

  But why did they desert the ships so early in the year? Why couldn’t Fitzjames take the time to write out a proper record? Why did the belongings salvaged from the ships seem to be chosen without proper thought, almost as if the men had caught up whatever they could and then run for their lives? Four feet of lightning conductor? No less than four cooking stoves? Brass curtain rods? And then there was the four-foot mountain of clothes, and the medicine chest filled with drugs, and the sextant, the shovels, the iron hoops, old canvas, all of it simply left behind. On the one hand, the men clearly had carried more than they needed to sustain them during their march; on the other hand, they had brought so many unimportant items and left so much behind on the ships. Everything seemed to point to a frantic flight, without plan or order. This was not a long-anticipated desertion brought about by the prospect of slow starvation; this was a sudden, unexpected retreat, a desperate rush where every man grabbed what he could, and it must have been provoked by an equally sudden threat. And yet the ships were not sinking.

  Now we can at last return to our earlier question.

  What was Crozier thinking?

  The Victory Point record no longer tells us that he was headed for the Great Fish River. Without that seemingly irrefutable evidence, we have only the physical evidenc
e left behind, and that tells an entirely different story. True, Crozier headed south. True, he was headed in the direction of the Great Fish River (just as the Inuit all assumed, when they discovered the bodies the next year). We have seen that evidence discovered to the west of Starvation Cove shows that men crossed over to the mainland at the narrowest part of Simpson Strait near Eta Island, just as we would expect, still headed for the Great Fish River. But what about the long line of other bodies extending along the south shore of King William Island to the Todd Islets far to the east of Eta Island? If Crozier crossed to the mainland at the narrowing of Simpson Strait, why would he also cross over forty miles farther on at the Todd Islets?

  Obviously he wouldn’t.

  To make sense of the evidence, we must first consider Gore’s party dispatched the previous year. Gore had been ordered — quite suddenly, it seemed — to take his seven men to the Great Fish River. Eight men were easily enough to drag a boat. The Inuit reported five bodies and a boat on Montreal Island. They reported more bodies at Starvation Cove. The Inuit also reported a box filled with books at the same place. Slowly a clear picture emerges.

  Fitzjames wrote: “All well”. Yet, the hasty departure of Gore’s party and Fitzjames’ sudden recall to the ships suggest that all was not well. Fitzjames left a record of Gore’s departure because there was a danger the main expedition might not survive; if that happened, he wanted a relief expedition to know Gore’s party was still out there. In other words, Fitzjames’ “All well” did not mean the expedition was all well; it meant only that the expedition had been a success. It was a message to the Admiralty reporting that the mission had been accomplished.

  And Gore’s party? They had been dispatched on the same journey which historians had thought Crozier had chosen in his final doomed march: Gore was to ascend the Great Fish River to Fort Reliance on Great Slave Lake. For an army of 105, it would have been unthinkable, but not for eight well-chosen men — George Back had proven that.

  Why was this small party dispatched up the Great Fish River? All was well. The mission had been accomplished. But there was a danger the expedition would not escape to deliver their findings to the Admiralty. Franklin made the only decision he could. He ordered a small party to escape while there was still time, carrying copies of the journals, the precious reports, to those who awaited them in London.

  Gore’s party never made it up the Great Fish River. They got as far as Montreal Island and there their journey ended. Gore (and perhaps two others) were forced to retreat, leaving five others behind. They tried to carry the records with them, but were forced to abandon them at Starvation Cove. Somehow Gore made it back to the ships with the news that he had failed.

  One year later, as Crozier led his crewmen past Eta Island with the mainland only two miles away, he dispatched a splinter party to recover the records left at Starvation Cove [see map 25]. Those men reached the cove but never escaped alive. The Inuit found the bodies and the records still there. Crozier continued eastward along the south shore of King William Island. It was a nightmare trek. Men died all along the way, limbs “dissevered”. Whatever they were fleeing was with them still. They kept going because they had no choice. But where was Crozier headed? Not the Great Fish River, surely? That would have been madness and he knew it. And so he was headed east, due east, to the strait that Thomas Simpson had claimed cut through Boothia to the waters of Prince Regent Inlet. Just as Jane Franklin had predicted, the lost expedition had tried to reach the famous cache at Fury Beach by travelling, not northeast, but south, searching in vain for a water passage that didn’t even exist.

  Map 25

  Was Crozier searching for a strait that didn’t exist?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Second Winter at Beechey Island

  Come you back to Mandalay,

  Where the old Flotilla lay:

  Can’t you ‘ear their paddles chunkin’ from

  Rangoon to Mandalay?

  Rudyard Kipling,

  Mandalay

  A SECOND WINTER?

  So far we have only been concerned with discovering what happened to the Franklin expedition after it became beset to the northwest of King William Island. But, the very first problem raised by the Victory Point record involved events prior to this. The record read:

  H.M.Ships Erebus and Terror

  Wintered in the Ice in

  28 of May 1847 Lat. 70 . 5’ N Long. 98 . 23’ W 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.

  Yet, the graves on Beechey Island were from the winter of 1845-6, Franklin’s first in the Arctic, not 1846-7 as the record claimed. Stranger still, Fitzjames had made the same mistake on the duplicate left at Gore Point. Then in 1848 he had failed to correct the mistake, even when noting that the ships had been beset since September 12, 1846.

  Could Fitzjames really have made such an elementary mistake and, more, could he have made the mistake twice?

  Obviously, the first question we should ask ourselves is: could the dates be right?

  Clearly, Franklin had spent his first winter at Beechey Island; the graves leave no doubt about that. But that doesn’t preclude the possibility of a second winter at Beechey Island, spent after ascending Wellington Channel.

  Certainly, historians have long been amazed at how much was apparently accomplished in Franklin’s first summer in the Arctic. David Woodman commented that, “[The Victory Point record] would tell of a surprisingly successful first year of effort.”1 McClintock remarked, “Seldom has such an amount of success been accorded to an Arctic navigator in a single season.”2 Success indeed. Franklin entered the Arctic in August. Freeze-up usually came in early September. His orders were to seek a passage to the southwest of Cape Walker, therefore he must have travelled down Lancaster Sound, through Barrow Strait, and then tried to get past Cape Walker only to be stopped by ice. After that, he would have certainly tried Peel Sound — even though it was believed to be a bay, there was still the possibility it formed a water passage pointing south. Foiled again, only then would he have tried Wellington Channel. Amazingly, he had travelled up the channel all the way to a latitude of 77 degrees, before finally turning back and returning down the west side of Cornwallis Island.

  All this added up to an epic voyage for so short a time. It would be more reasonable to imagine Franklin sailing up Wellington Channel after spending a first winter at Beechey Island.

  On the other hand, there are two very obvious objections to placing Franklin at Beechey Island during the second winter of 1846-7. The first Victory Point message was written at the end of May, 1847, at which time the ships were clearly stuck in the ice off King William Island. Still, although Fitzjames wrote “H.M.Ships Erebus and Terror Wintered in the Ice in.”, this may not mean they had spent the winter there; he may simply have been stating the condition of the ships — meaning “at present wintered in the ice” off King William Island.

  But this is of little help. Even if we imagine, by some miracle, the ships had spent the winter at Beechey Island, then been freed from the ice (before May!) and sailed down to King William Island only to become stuck again, we must contend with the second objection. In the 1848 message, Fitzjames helpfully noted that the ships had been deserted after having been “beset since 12th Sept. 1846.”

  Had Fitzjames made a mistake with the Beechey Island dates, after all? Are there any other reasons, apart from Franklin’s remarkably successful first year, to suggest Franklin had visited Beechey Island twice?

  Certainly such an assumption clears up the mystery of the cairn made out of 700 Goldner meat cans that searchers discovered on Beechey Island. There seemed to be far too many cans for a single winter at Beechey Island. It was for this reason that the cairn of cans was seen by some people as evidence that the expedition’s meat had gone bad, forcing Franklin to discard much of it at Beechey I
sland; this led to a shortage of provisions which in turn led to starvation and cannibalism two years later. The 700 cans are not a mystery, though, if Franklin spent, not one winter, but two on the island.

  ADAM BECK’S OTHER TALE

  But the most intriguing proof of all may have come from the most controversial source of all: Adam Beck. Beck, an Inuit, had been John Ross’ interpreter during Ross’ search for Franklin aboard the Felix in 1850. It was Beck who interviewed the Greenland Inuit and claimed to have gleaned from them a story of two ships that were attacked and burned by natives, their crews massacred. Though Beck insisted he was telling the truth, no one believed him except John Ross. Only a single day was spent checking out Beck’s story, before rejecting it as either a fabrication or a mistake based on the North Star, which had spent the winter on the Greenland coast. Beck was branded a liar, and when Charles Francis Hall encountered him years later, Beck had become a ruined man.

  Later that same summer, while the searchers combed Beechey Island after uncovering their first evidence of Franklin’s voyage, Adam Beck made another discovery. He claimed to have found an elmwood post in the snow, with a slot cut in one end by a saw. Wedged in the slot, there had been a tin plate on which something was written in white on a black background. But Beck claimed (in his deposition) to have accidentally lost the tin plate when he slipped down a snowy hill, “not soft snow, by which it might be buried, but hard ice which, he said, he could not climb to recover it.”3 Thus he was able to produce the post, but not the plate. John Ross again stood by his interpreter, insisting that he had been watching Beck through a telescope when Beck made the find, and that Ross too had seen the tin plate, though not the writing.