The Franklin Conspiracy Page 24
Finally, in March 1869, Hall began his long delayed journey to King William Island. On the west coast of Boothia Peninsula across from King William Island, Hall entered an Inuit village, where he purchased more Franklin relics and heard yet more stories. The Inuit told him about the ship stranded near Adelaide Peninsula, obviously the same ship that McClintock had heard about but had been unable to find. There had been a body found aboard the ship, Hall heard, again confirming what McClintock had already been told. But now the Inuit gave further details.
McClintock had merely heard that the dead body was of a “very large” man. Hall was told that the corpse had been large indeed, requiring five men to lift it. Stranger still, the corpse was said to have had very long teeth, as long as an Inuk’s fingers. The Inuit had left the body on the ship. Unfortunately, they had accidentally knocked a hole in the hull, causing the ship to sink. The Inuit also spoke about a tent found at Terror Bay on the island’s west shore. The tent had been filled with bodies and bones. An Inuk named Teeketa said he had seen “A great many skulls — the flesh all off, nothing except sinews attached to them, the appearance as though foxes and wolves had gnawed the flesh off the bones.” Even stranger, “Some bones had been severed with a saw. Some skulls had holes in them.”2
Though Hall had planned to spend the entire summer searching King William Island, his Inuit companions inexplicably refused to remain on the island for more than four days. During that time, Hall discovered the skeletal remains of a few bodies along the south shore, but little else. And yet, for all the lack of physical evidence, Hall had amassed an impressive collection of Inuit accounts, some of them eyewitness and some of them second-hand. The details of the stories gleaned from the Inuit over the course of those many years may, in some ways, be more important in terms of solving the Franklin mystery than were the countless spoons and watches obtained by other searchers. More important, that is, if they were true.
ENCOUNTER AT WASHINGTON BAY
Historians have shown little hesitation in outright rejecting many of the stories told to Hall. Pierre Berton wrote, “The natives had a habit of telling white men what they wanted to hear. Hall, in his turn, was prepared to believe what he wanted to believe.”3 Roderic Owen, in referring to the story about survivors, commented, “The Kabloonas [white men] of course, were at liberty to believe what they chose of any of this nonsense.”4 Somewhat more charitably, William Gibson warned, “The accounts he [Hall] reported to have obtained from the Hudson Bay Eskimos . . . must be approached with the greatest caution, for many of them would seem to be purely imaginative and without any actual basis whatsoever.”5 Gibson added, “Surely many of the incongruous accounts Hall attributed to the Eskimos of Hudson Bay were not the sober narrations for which the race is noteworthy, but rather the manifestations of a shaman’s seance.”
On the other hand, David C. Woodman devoted an entire book, Unravelling the Franklin Mystery, to an analysis of the Inuit stories, both those told to Hall and to others. Woodman stated, “In researching the Franklin saga, I proceeded from the assumption that all Inuit stories concerning white men should have a discoverable factual basis.”6
The story of the encounter between the lost expedition and the Inuit on King William Island is one that historians have accepted as a true accounting of events. Hall heard the story first in 1869 from two Inuit named Teeketa and Ow-wer, who claimed to be actual eyewitnesses to the meeting.
The Inuit told Hall that several families had been sealing on the west shore of King William Island, near Washington Bay and slightly north of Cape Herschel. They spotted a white object in the distance, which gradually resolved itself into a sail mounted on a boat atop a sledge and a large party of white men. The Inuit went to meet the white men where a crack in the ice separated them. Two white men walked up to the crack and tried to communicate with the Inuit using only pantomime. Hall wrote, “The 1st man [thought to be Crozier] then showed that he had an oo-loo when he stooped down beside the ice crack which divided the white men from the Innuits & began cutting the ice with a peculiar kind of circling motion with the oo-loo (Civilization mincing-knife or Innuit women’s knife) . . . At the same time, or rather right after this man had made these ‘chippings’ or ‘scratchings’ . . . on the ice, he put his hand to his mouth and lowered it all the way down to his neck and breast, as if to say he wanted something to eat.”7
Much has been made of this scene. Pierre Berton stated, “The starving men had pleaded for seal meat, and the natives had given them some.”8 But the description hardly proves that Crozier was “pleading” for seal meat. He would have been remiss in failing to garner fresh meat when the opportunity presented itself, as it did now. Clearly the Inuit did not think Crozier was in a desperate situation for want of food; Teeketa and Ow-wer told Hall the Inuit left Crozier because “the Innuits were in a hurry — did not know the men were starving.”9
After crossing over at a narrowing in the crack, Crozier — called “Aglooka” by the Inuit who knew him from his earlier expedition to Repulse Bay — continued with the pantomime. “Aglooka pointed with his hand to the southward & eastward & at the same time repeating the word I-wil-ik [Repulse Bay]. The Innuits could not understand whether he wanted them to show him the way there or that he was going there.”10
This comment was something of a problem in light of the Victory Point record which seemed to say that Crozier was headed to the Great Fish River. But with our new reading of the Victory Point record, we can see that Crozier was indeed headed toward the southeast and the strait he thought led through Boothia to Prince Regent Inlet. It is possible Crozier did not know the Inuit word for Fury Beach, but did know I-wil-ik, having been there with Edward Parry, and so used the name to indicate his direction of travel — toward Repulse Bay, rather than to Repulse Bay.
Now Crozier pointed to the north, back the way he had come. He “spoke the word oo-me-en, making them understand there were 2 ships in that direction; which had, as they supposed, been crushed in the ice.”11 Or had they? We have already seen that the ships were still afloat when they were abandoned; the Victory Point record says they were “deserted” without any mention of their sinking; nor is it reasonable to believe that both ships might have sunk at the same time. Finally, there was the ample evidence that one of the ships had remained afloat for months before finally stranding farther south on the coast of the Adelaide Peninsula. But, if Crozier was not telling the Inuit that his ships had sunk, what was he trying to describe?
His pantomime was remembered by the Inuit and recorded by Hall. “As Aglooka pointed to the north, drawing in his hand & arm from that direction he slowly moved his body in a falling direction and all at once dropped his head sideways into his hand, at the same time making a kind of combination of whirring, buzzing & wind blowing noise.”12
The Inuit interpreted this as the sound of a ship being crushed by the ice. On the other hand, if we were to speculate, we might alternately interpret Crozier’s head dropping into his hand as symbolizing something falling or crashing onto the ice. As for the odd noise, we might notice the similarity between Crozier’s “whirring, buzzing & wind blowing” and the strange sound which Thomas Simpson’s companion had heard accompanying the flying light seen near Cape Anderson (and which George Back’s Northwest Company storyteller also described).
A point which should be made: Washington Bay was south of Terror Bay. At Terror Bay the Inuit told Hall they later discovered a tent filled with bodies and evidence of cannibalism in the form of severed limbs and skulls with holes in them. Thus, whatever happened at Terror Bay had already transpired by the time the Inuit met the white men at Washington Bay. And yet, the Inuit saw no indication that Crozier’s men were starving to the point of cannibalism. Though Crozier asked for and accepted seal meat from the Inuit, the transaction was carried out more as an orderly re-provisioning than a desperate grab for food. Crozier himself, after first indicating his desire for seal meat, showed no signs of starvation. Hall was told, “Aglooka [ate] a very sm
all piece” of seal meat given to him by the Inuit.13
On the other hand, the Inuit at first felt that something was upsetting the white men. They told Hall, “trouble thought to be among the men; but not so. They were putting up the tent and stopped, staring at the Innuits. When [Aglooka] spoke to them then, they all resumed their work.”14 The next morning, the Inuit resumed their journey leaving the white men behind.
Ten years later, the U.S. Army Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka learned still more details of this encounter from an old Inuit woman named Ahlangyah, Too-shoo-art-thariu’s wife, who had also been a witness. Instead of the one-day meeting described to Hall, she recalled the encounter taking place over five days. Her description of the men was especially unusual. She told Schwatka that “Some of the white men were very thin, and their mouths were dry and hard and black.”15
The Washington Bay encounter is important in affording a glimpse, however brief, of Crozier’s doomed party while in the very middle of their last trek. Several details stand out. First, Crozier clearly indicated he was headed in the direction of Repulse Bay, further supporting our new reading of the Victory Point record. Second, though the Inuit later believed the white men perished of starvation — a view which historians have accepted — during the Washington Bay encounter, the Inuit saw nothing to make them think the men were starving even though the meeting itself took place after the men had already left Terror Bay and its grisly tent behind. The Inuit were no strangers to starvation and they would surely have recognized its signs if those signs had been in evidence. Third, with so much to indicate that the ships did not sink until long after they had been abandoned, Crozier’s strange pantomime becomes mysterious indeed. If he wasn’t trying to imitate the sinking ships, what was he trying to imitate? And finally, there is Ahlangyah’s description of “some of the white men”, thin with dry, hard, and black lips. One symptom of scurvy is black gums, but the victim’s gums become quite soft, not hard, the teeth becoming extremely loose. So, what was Ahlangyah describing?
SURVIVORS
It was Too-shoo-art-thariu who first met Crozier across the crack in the ice. Back in 1864, Hall had been told another story about this same Inuk. This story had come from Too-shoo-art-thariu’s cousins, and was later confirmed by information gleaned in 1869. Hall was told that Too-shoo-art-thariu had met with Crozier and three other men while on the ice off the west coast of Boothia Peninsula. The cousins explained that “Crozier’s face looked bad — his eyes all sunk in — looked so bad that their cousin could not bear to look at his face.” Too-shoo-art-thariu quickly gave Crozier a piece of seal meat. But, strangely, “Did not give any to the other three, for they were fat and had been eating the flesh of their companions.”16 More elaborately, Hall was told, “The cousin soon learned that the three fat men had been living on human flesh, on the flesh of their companions who all deserted the two ships that were fast in mountains of ice; while Crozier was the only man that would not eat human flesh, and for this reason he was almost dead of starvation.”17
This part of the story seems odd indeed. Even if the other three men had survived through cannibalism, would they really have been “fat”? More to the point, how did Too-shoo-art-thariu know they had eaten their dead crewmates? Are we to imagine that Crozier, considering himself a member of a race in every way superior to the Inuit, would have calmly told the Inuk (using pantomime yet!) that his men had been devouring their bunkmates? But, if Crozier had not said so, why did Too-shoo-art-thariu think they had been?
The cousins continued their story: “The cousin took Crozier and his men along with him, and fed them and took good care of them all winter.”18 One of Crozier’s three men died but not from starvation — the cousins were specific on this point(“from a sickness”. During the summer, Crozier used his gun to hunt birds. Then, after the winter, Crozier and his two remaining men set out in the company of another Inuk headed for the Great Fish River. But before leaving, Crozier gave Too-shoo-art-thariu a sword as a gift.
Unlike the encounter on Washington Bay, this story of survivors has been fiercely rejected by most historians (except Woodman). Hall was bothered because he suspected it was just an altered version of the Washington Bay meeting. Certainly the principle players — Crozier and Too-shoo-art-thariu — were the same. Another similarity was the piece of seal meat given to Crozier. But in 1869, Hall heard the same story. He was told “the cousin had not heard whether Crozier and the two men and Neitchille Inuit had ever come back or not. The Inuits never think they are dead — do not believe they are.”19 Hall wrote, “Tookoolitoo had just made the sympathetic remark(‘What a pity it is that Aglooka [Crozier] and the two men who started together from Neitchille [Boothia Peninsula] for the purpose of getting to the Koblun-as [white man’s] country had never arrived.’ . . . Seegar sprang from his seat, quick as a flash, and looking staringly at Tookoolitoo, exclaimed with great force and surprise, ‘What! Ag-loo-ka not get back! Why the Kin-na-pa-toos (Innuits who belong to Chesterfield Inlet), told me several years ago that Ag-loo-ka and one man with him arrived among their people.’”
To add further credibility to the story, in 1881 Captain Adams in command of the whaler Arctic was searching for whales in Prince Regent Inlet when he encountered an Inuk with a remarkably similar story. Captain Adams reported, “The native stated that when he was a young man in his father’s hut three men came over the land towards Repulse Bay and that one of them was a great captain. The other two lived some little time in his father’s hut, and he showed Captain Adams the spot on the chart where they were buried. The Esquimaux, continuing his narrative, said that seventeen persons started from two vessels which had been lost far to the westward but only three were able to survive the journey to his father’s hut.”
Too-shoo-art-thariu’s cousins spoke of four men (including Crozier) one of whom died. Captain Adams’ informer only apparently remembered three men. On the other hand, it could be the confusion arose because of the one death; thus, “only three were able to survive the journey” because one did not survive, but died soon after of “a sickness”. Certainly Adams’ Inuk informer obviously felt there had been a death or deaths involved, since he indicated “where they were buried.”
Captain Adams himself was quite convinced that the story concerned the lost expedition. “From all the information furnished by the Esquimaux Captain Adams has no doubt that the vessels referred to were those of the Franklin expedition and that the great captain mentioned was no other than Lieutenant Crozier.” Based on the age of his informer, Captain Adams guessed that the incident had occurred thirty-five years before. Following up on this lead, Captain Adams claimed to have recovered papers found at Repulse Bay, which he promptly forwarded to the Admiralty. What happened to these papers is not known. Woodman noted, “As nothing further was heard of these ‘few papers’, it must be assumed they held little of interest.”20
Apart from corroborating testimony, there is another reason for believing the Inuit tale of survivors. Hall was told that the party of white men carried with them a strange air-filled boat. Hall immediately recognized the description as that of the Halkett’s “air-boat”, an early form of dingy. Though he did not know, Hall was certain Franklin’s expedition must have carried a Halkett boat, else how could the Inuit have described it so certainly? As it turned out, the Franklin expedition had indeed taken along a Halkett boat; theirs was the first Arctic expedition to do so. (As with so much else, the Admiralty had spared no expense.)
But, while this went a long way toward validating the story, it wasn’t definitive proof. Unfortunately, John Rae had carried along a Halkett boat during his visit to Repulse Bay only the year after Franklin set sail. Anderson had also brought a Halkett boat during his trip to the mouth of the Great Fish River to verify Rae’s claims in 1855. Neither Rae nor Anderson had made much use of their inflatable boats, but the fact that they had brought them into the area at all served to muddy the water. On the other hand, Hall was told the white men gave Too-sho
o-art-thariu a sword as a parting gift. As a naval officer, Crozier might very well have carried along a sword. But Rae and Anderson worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company and so would not have had a sword to give. In 1857, Chief Factor Roderick MacFarlane was given a naval sword and scabbard by an elderly Inuk who claimed it was a Franklin relic. Was this the sword which Crozier gave to Too-shoo-art-thariu?
Woodman considered the possibility that the story was merely a compilation of remembrances of several different expeditions into the Arctic: George Back’s, John Rae’s in 1846 and 1854, Anderson’s, and even John Ross/James Clark Ross’ voyage of the Victory. He concluded that, “By picking and choosing among the various expeditions and accepting slight discrepancies, we can explain how the story might have come about. But, as always, there is another explanation. The story, although wrongly attributed to Too-shoo-art-thariu, may have been strictly and literally true, and it might be a remembrance of the survivors of the Erebus and Terror.”21
The important question should be: is there any reason for doubting the story? In fact, there is not. The story itself is perfectly plausible. We know the lost expedition met with disaster in the area and we now know Crozier was indeed headed for Boothia Peninsula instead of the Great Fish River. Crozier had access to a Halkett boat and he would have carried a dress sword. Because of his former visit to Repulse Bay, the Inuit knew who he was. While we could concoct a complicated scenario by which the Inuit somehow muddled together every expedition to happen through the area since the Victory’s visit in 1829, it seems simpler to assume that the Inuit knew what they were talking about.
In that case, we have in our possession an astonishing picture. Out of the death and horror of King William Island staggered Crozier and three other survivors. They alone of the 129 crew members had lived through the ordeal. Though one of the men perished of a sickness, the other three spent the winter in an Inuit home. During the long, dark winter months, Crozier tried to tell his host what had happened but was not entirely successful. But, as we have seen, Too-shoo-art-thariu thought the men had “all deserted the two ships that were fast in mountains of ice.”22 Again, this serves to confirm that the ships had not yet sunk when they were deserted in Victoria Strait. Crozier’s strange pantomime at Washington Bay remains as mysterious as ever. If not the sinking ships, what was he trying to mimic by dropping his head into his hand and making that strange “whirring” noise?