The Franklin Conspiracy Read online

  Yet the situation may not have been so simple. As Barry Lopez commented, “Expeditions sent out later to verify these new lands sometimes saw the same fata morgana, further confusing the issue.”3 Of course, some might say a mirage seen years later by another expedition somewhat violated the meaning of the term.

  The elusive Isle of Buss, for example, appeared on maps for more than two centuries. It was first reported by the seamen of the Emmanuel, during Martin Frobisher’s third expedition to Baffin Island in 1578. The Hudson’s Bay Company laid claim to Buss Island in 1673, even though Henry Hudson had been unable to locate the place during his voyage to Hudson Bay in 1609. On the other hand, Zachariah Gilliam, captain of the Nonsuch, had spotted the mysterious island five years before the Hudson’s Bay Company laid their claim, so the Honourable Company’s application to ownership wasn’t entirely without foundation. But finally, in 1791, Charles Duncan, working for the Hudson’s Bay Company, determinedly searched the area where Buss Island was supposed to lie and concluded, “it is my firm opinion that no such island is now above water if ever it was.”4 And yet, two different expeditions had verified its existence.

  AERIAL PHENOMENA

  The second category of things seen in the Arctic might be titled: “Aerial phenomena”. This in turn could be subdivided into luminous and non-luminous. The non-luminous variety could take on bizarre shapes, frequently altering form before the eyes of the clinical observer. For example, Dr. Kane, with the American Franklin search in 1850, made a remarkable observation while sailing off the Greenland coast. He wrote, “There is a black globe floating in the air about 3 degrees north of the sun . . . Is it a bird or a balloon? . . . on a sudden, it changes shape . . . It is a grand piano . . . you had hardly named it before it was an anvil . . . it made itself duplicate (a pair of colossal dumbbells. A moment! and it is a black globe again.”5

  Charles Francis Hall made a curious observation while sailing in Baffin Bay en route to search for Franklin relics: “Looking to wind-ward I saw the top of a distant berg; then all at once I saw a snow-white spot, not larger than a pin’s head, appeared in the clouds hanging directly over the berg. In a few seconds it enlarged to the size of an Egyptian pyramid inverted. . . . this resplendently white pyramid seemed to descend and kiss the sea, then as often ascended again to its celestial throne.”6

  Sometimes, the descriptions returned by the Arctic explorers were so weird as to appear positively otherworldly. For example, Hall observed (on the same voyage), “Strange sights tonight. Looking through my marine glass to the north-east, . . . I was astonished at the view before me. Mountains, islands, icebergs, and the sea were in one vast confusion. From the sun northerly to the south-west, wherever I turned my glass, confusion worse than things confounded met my sight. A little reflection, however, brought me to a realization of the fact. The extraordinary appearance of everything at and beyond the horizon was from ‘refraction’, so called.”7

  Similarly, Thomas Simpson, during the overland journey that discovered Simpson Strait below King William Island, encountered a weird phenomenon at Methye Lake. “While crossing the lake,” wrote Simpson, “I witnessed an extraordinary effect of the mirage caused by the rays of the evening sun. It covered the land to the west with a mist-like veil and the ice even close around us appeared to dance with a strange undulating motion.” Simpson’s experience is oddly reminiscent of an observation made by Edward Parry during his miracle voyage back in 1819. Parry was puzzled to note, “a strong rippling on the surface of the water, and as we could discover nothing like shoal water, or unevenness in the bottom, we concluded that it must have been occasioned by some particular set, or meeting, of the tides in this place.”8 The two ships were passing in the vicinity of Beechey Island at the time.

  NORTHERN LIGHTS?

  But of far more interest than undulating ice and hovering black globes were the observations of luminous phenomena reported by those who first ventured into the land of the midnight sun. Yet, here too, the explorers were unfazed by whatever they chanced to see. This was hardly surprising, for, while refraction took care of explaining away bobbing pyramids and floating ships, every traveller entering the north was told to expect to see strange lights in the sky; this was the land of the Aurora Borealis, after all — the Northern Lights.

  The Northern Lights often appear as an undulating screen of light, pale green and pink, with some crimson sometimes seen along the bottom edge. If seen from directly below, the lights can appear thin and snake-like. The effect rarely occurs lower in the atmosphere than one hundred miles up. Like refraction, there is no doubt that the Northern Lights are a reality; even Canadians in more southern climes can witness the rippling curtains of light on the northern horizon. The difficulty arises from the fact that these lights can manifest in such varied forms and colours that they too could easily have served as a convenient explanation for sightings that were something else.

  Adding to the possible confusion between the Northern Lights and other stranger phenomena is the fact that these lights (or, more specifically, the sunspot activity which causes them) are known to cause radio interference, cause problems for electronic navigation equipment and even induce currents in power lines. Even compasses have been reported to swing erratically during the appearance of the Lights. For example, Captain G.F. Lyon, during his failed attempt to reach Repulse Bay in the Griper in 1824, recorded: “At this hour [9:00], Mr. Kendall observed, that during the prevalence of an unusually brilliant Aurora, the larboard binnacle compass would remain stationary at no particular point.”9

  It does not take much to see that attempting to distinguish between the Aurora Borealis and any other lights seen in the night skies would have been a difficult task when it came to interviewing the nineteenth century Inuit, who frequently spoke in a dialect foreign to the interpreter or, when no interpreter was available, used pantomime. This becomes important because the Inuit’s “Lights” had some remarkable differences from the Northern Lights we know of. The Inuit, for example, claimed the lights they saw in the sky made a distinctive hissing sound, like a sheet flapping in the breeze. The Aurora Borealis, on the other hand, makes no sound whatsoever. Even stranger, the Inuit claimed the lights they saw would approach closer if whistled to. Needless to say, the Aurora Borealis does not.

  The description of a hissing sound takes on an added interest in conjunction with an observation made by a member of Thomas Simpson’s expedition while at Cape Alexander in March, 1839. He observed “a semi-elliptical figure apparently very near the earth, in rapid motion, and tinged with red, purple and green. The half-ellipse seemed to descend and ascend accompanied by an audible sound resembling the rustling of silk. This lasted about ten minutes when the whole phenomenon suddenly rose upwards and its splendour was gone.”11 As Roderic Owen humorously commented, “It was a pity that no one yet had invented the term ‘flying saucer’.”

  During the Fox’s enforced winter in the ice of Baffin Bay in 1857, McClintock related how his quartermaster, William Harvey (formerly one of Bellot’s four companions on his final journey), was “a regular magnet” to the younger seamen serving on the voyage. Harvey would spend hours recounting stories about his experiences in the Arctic, “its bears, its icebergs, and still more terrific ‘auroras, roaring and flashing about the ship enough to frighten a fellow’!”11

  George Back, too, had a strange story told to him. At Fort Chipewyan, during the winter of 1821, Back made friends with the local Northwest Company fur traders. One man told this story.

  He was travelling in a canoe in the English River, and had landed near the Kettle Fall, when the coruscations of the Aurora Borealis were so vivid and low that the voyageurs fell on their faces, and began praying and crying, fearing they should be killed; he himself threw away his gun and knife that they might not attract the flashes, for they were within two feet of the earth, flitting along with incredible swiftness, and moving parallel to its surface. They continued for upwards of five minutes, as near as
he could judge, and made a loud rustling noise, like the waving of a flag in a strong breeze. After they had ceased, the sky became clear, with little wind.12

  JOHN BROWN’S BODY

  Apart from the question of what was and what was not the Aurora, the Arctic explorers saw many other unusual lights for which they again invoked that catch-all explanation: refraction. During McClintock’s winter spent frozen in the pack of Baffin Bay, one of the men fell down a hatch-way and died of internal injuries two days later. The man’s body was placed on a sledge and dragged out to where a hole had been cut in the ice. After a solemn funeral, the body was dropped down through the hole, burying him at sea. McClintock wrote: “What a scene it was! I shall never forget it. The lonely ‘Fox’ almost buried in snow, completely isolated from the habitable world, her colours half-mast high, and bell tolling mournfully; our little procession slowly marching over the rough surface of the frozen sea, guided by lanterns and direction posts, amid the dark and dreary depth of Arctic winter; the deathlike stillness, the intense cold, and the threatening aspect of a murky, overcast sky.”13 And then overhead, “one of those strange lunar phenomena which are but seldom seen even here.” McClintock observed “mock moons or paraselenae to the number of six.” He noted that “The misty atmosphere lent a very ghastly hue to this singular display, which lasted for rather more than an hour.”

  On May 29, 1860, Charles Francis Hall set out from New London, Connecticut aboard the barque, George Henry (coincidentally, the same ship which had salvaged the Resolute). His intention was to seek Franklin relics on King William Island. Though he would eventually manage to spend four days searching the island, that year he only got as far as the entrance to Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island, where he spent the winter in Cyrus W. Field Bay, named for one of the promoters of his venture.

  In March, two of the seamen, John Brown and James Bruce, began showing signs of scurvy, so they were sent to spend some time at the nearby Inuit settlement in Frobisher Bay, in the hopes the fresh meat would cure them. On March 15, two Inuit men were dispatched from the ship to the settlement with dogs and a sledge, to trade for meat. Brown and Bruce felt better enough to decide to return to Field Bay with the Inuit and, after a day’s delay, the party set out. On the way back, the group ran into hummocky ice, making it difficult to pull the fully laden sledge. The Inuit decided to unload some of the weight, to be left as a cache for retrieval later. But Brown was impatient to get back to the ships. Insisting he knew the way, he decided to go on ahead. The Inuit tried to dissuade him, but he was adamant. A dog was unleashed from the sledge to accompany him on his journey.

  Having cached the provisions, the three men continued on to the ship. Because the party had seen Brown’s tracks out on the ice of Field Bay, they assumed their concerns had been unfounded. In the morning, they casually asked one of the other men what time Brown had reached the ship. To their horror, they were told he hadn’t arrived at all. Hall was immediately informed and he told the captain what had happened. A search was organized and twenty men set out onto the ice of Field Bay.

  But Hall noticed something odd. He wrote, “By reference to my journal . . . of last night, I see that I there noted the following phenomenon, viz., ‘Showers of snow while the heavens are clear. Stars shining brightly.’ At midnight, the time of my last visit to the deck, I wrote this, though a previous record had been made of the same phenomenon taking place as early as 9 P.M. ‘Twelve, midnight, stars still shining; all clear over the whole expanse, yet snowing!’”14 He was puzzled. It had been snowing in the night and yet he had been able to see stars shining brightly in the sky.

  Throughout the day and into the next evening the search continued. Gradually the twenty searchers dwindled, as more and more returned to the ship. Hall pushed on, determined to save Brown if he could. Brown’s tracks were visible in the snow, but, though initially heading straight for the ship, they had unaccountably veered away. Now they led directly out to sea, then back toward the shore, then this way and that. Hall thought Brown must have surely seen the mountains along the shore, by which he could have oriented himself, but no. Brown was going in circles. “They come in rapid succession. Round and round the bewildered, terror-stricken, and almost frozen one makes his way.”

  Though Hall did not yet know it, the sledge dog, which Brown had taken with him, had returned to the Inuit settlement — alone. Inexplicably, the dog’s trace or leash had been cut away close to the harness with a knife.

  Finally, in the night, Hall came upon Brown’s body, frozen in the snow. Hall noted that, “The place where we found him also exhibited unmistakable signs of a terrible struggle.” But there was only one set of tracks leading to the body. Hall concluded the struggle had been made by Brown as he died, fighting to rise again. Wrote Hall, “He died facing the heavens, the left hand by his side, the right extended, and his eyes directed upwards, as if the last objects mirrored by them were the stars looking down upon him in his death struggles.”15

  Four days before, Hall had casually observed, “Parhelia, or mock suns, seen at Field Bay, March 14, 1861.”16

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Inuit Tales and the

  Angikuni Connection

  But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day

  If your Snark be a Boojun! For then

  You will softly and suddenly vanish away,

  And never be met with again!

  Lewis Carroll,

  The Hunting of the Snark

  CHARLES FRANCIS HALL

  It might be assumed that the story of the Franklin search reached its belated climax with McClintock’s discovery of the bodies on King William Island and the recovery of the Victory Point record. But, in fact, the most astonishing clues in the puzzle were yet to be found. Those clues would not be unearthed for several more years and, when they were, it was through the dogged determination of the most unlikely of searchers: Charles Francis Hall.

  Unlike the majority of searchers, Hall was an American. A former blacksmith, now the owner of a small newspaper in Cincinnati, Ohio, Hall had absolutely no experience in the Arctic, nor of exploration. But what he lacked in experience, he more than made up for with a truly staggering bull-headed persistence. When he first set out on his adventure to recover Franklin relics and, if possible, to find survivors, one observer wrote, “In New York his expedition has been characterized as hare-brained.”1 But hare-brained or not, experienced or not, Hall not only followed through with his Quixotic quest, but proved himself to be second only to John Rae when it came to survival in the Arctic lands.

  Unlike Rae, Hall wasn’t quite able to look after himself, but he spent considerably longer periods of time cut off from civilization than Rae ever had, living like the Inuit and, more importantly, living with the Inuit.

  Hall began his mad quest in 1860, only one year after McClintock’s visit to King William Island, yet it would not be until 1869 that Hall would finally set foot on the famous island. During the intervening years he was doomed to meet setback after setback. Yet, when Hall finally reached King William Island after a nine-year delay, his search was limited to only four days and the few bones he found served little more than to confirm what was already known. It was the irony of his quest that Hall’s major contributions to the Franklin puzzle were obtained, not from the island, but from the Inuit with whom he spent those many frustrating years.

  From the Inuit, Hall heard amazing stories, some of which merely embellished upon what others had learned, but most adding entirely new aspects to the mystery. Like McClintock, Hall heard about the stranded ship pillaged by the Inuit, and learned details about the strange body found aboard her. He now concluded that McClintock had been mistaken: the ship had been stranded on the west coast of the Adelaide Peninsula south of King William Island, rather than on the west coast of the island itself. Hall was told about a tent at Terror Bay on King William Island where many bodies had been seen, the tent littered with bones. He learned about the other bodies found at Starvation Cove
and the box with books seen with them. The Inuit plied him with grisly details of bodies apparently cut up with a saw, many with their hands missing, some with holes in their heads. Of all these tales though, two assumed greater importance than the rest. One was the story of a brief meeting between four Inuit families and Crozier’s doomed crewmen while in the midst of their final march. This was to be the only eyewitness account ever obtained of that last desperate trek. The second story was even more remarkable.

  Hall learned there had been survivors.

  THE GIANT CORPSE

  It was during one attempt to reach King William Island in 1866 that Hall encountered the Inuit of Pelly Bay. Unlike John Rae before him, Hall found the local Inuit were willing to tell their stories about the two ships seen off the King William Island coast and the many men who had perished on the island. He purchased various relics found in their possession: Crozier’s spoon, a barometer case, a pair of scissors. But then, the Inuit began spinning tales of a frightening tribe said to live on King William Island. Hall thought it was just superstition, but his Inuit companions took the matter seriously enough that they refused to travel any farther. In disgust, Hall was forced to turn back.