21.

The Lady Won’t Be Denied

By 1856, Lady Franklin had spent £35,000 searching for her husband—the equivalent today, by conservative estimate, of US$3.7 million. Some came from her own accounts and some she raised through public subscription. She inspired Americans to contribute as well—more than US$13 million in contemporary terms, two-fifths of that from shipping magnate Henry Grinnell.

Of three dozen expeditions that had sailed in search of Franklin since 1848, Lady Franklin had organized, inspired and financed ten. As well, using both public opinion and influential friends, she had exerted relentless pressure on the Lords of the British Admiralty, compelling them to spend between £600,000 and £675,000.

Meanwhile, during the two years ending in March 1856, the British government had spent massively on the Crimean War, battling Russia—in alliance with France and the Ottoman Empire—to reduce that country’s influence around the Black Sea. Faced with increasing pressure to reduce expenditures, and as one expedition after another returned from the Arctic with nothing to report, the Lords of the Admiralty yearned to forget the long-lost Sir John. Jane Franklin was not going to let that happen.

The North-West Passage Region as Known in 1859, after the Return of Sir Leopold McClintock. From R. J. Cyriax’s Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition.

In spring 1856, she organized yet another petition. She solicited signatures from dozens of prominent figures, among them scientists, naval officers, presidents and past presidents of the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society. The signatories challenged the notion that Franklin’s fate had been ascertained. They appealed for yet another search expedition “to satisfy the honour of our country, and clear up a mystery which has excited the sympathy of the civilized world.”

In June, Lady Franklin sought support from the House of Commons. The president of the Royal Society informed her that she would receive assistance if she provided a ship and a commanding officer. She still owned the schooner Isabel, and thought she might return that ship to Arctic service. To command the vessel, and solidify her alliance with the Americans, she looked to Elisha Kent Kane.

During his recent expedition, Kane had displayed courage, wisdom and resourcefulness. A protegé of New Yorker Henry Grinnell, Kane was a gifted writer and artist. Jane had admired his published journal of the first Grinnell expedition. She had exchanged letters with him. Since re-emerging from the Arctic, Kane had been working sixteen hours a day, turning his detailed journal and vivid sketches into a two-volume classic: Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin.

As Kane put the finishing touches on this work, Lady Franklin wrote to him requesting his services in the Arctic. If he would consent to take the Isabel in search of Franklin, she would travel to New York City to discuss her hopes for this final expedition. Kane accepted with alacrity but gallantly insisted that he would come to England to discuss the undertaking.

Despite ominous indications that his chronic heart condition was worsening—weight loss, emaciation, physical weakness, lack of energy—the explorer convinced himself that he needed only rest. By mid-July, however, he realized that he would not be able to undertake a proposed lecture tour. To Jane Franklin, Henry Grinnell wrote from New York that Kane had visited him for an hour: “I never saw him look so bad; he is but a skeleton or the shadow of one; he has worked too hard.” Kane wrote of travelling to France and Switzerland, and regaining his health among the glaciers before proceeding to England. But Grinnell noted: “He is every day attacked with the remittent fever, better known here as fever and ague.”

Kane reached England in October 1856, soon after he published Arctic Explorations. Jane Franklin admired the work enormously, though it told so grim a tale that she feared it might discourage further searches for her husband. When Kane called at her home, she realized, with shock and dismay, that the heroic explorer had not recovered from his last Arctic voyage. She hoped that “the air of the old country” would restore his health and, over the next couple of weeks, plied him with cod-liver oil. Doctors advised Kane to make for more salubrious climes. Lady Franklin recommended Madeira, just off northern Africa.

With his health failing, the explorer opted instead for Cuba, nearer to home. He got that far and no farther. On February 16, 1857, Elisha Kent Kane died in Havana. Such was his fame throughout the United States that he was given an unprecedented state funeral. Possibly the detour to England had made no difference. Either way, Kane was dead. And Lady Franklin had to look elsewhere for a ship’s captain.

By now, she was embroiled in a battle to acquire a British ship called the Resolute. In 1854, to his everlasting disgrace, expedition leader Edward Belcher had abandoned that ship and three others in the Arctic ice. The following September, an American whaler, James Buddington, had chanced upon the Resolute, by then floating freely off Baffin Island, some 1,900 kilometres east of where she started. With a skeleton crew of thirteen men, Buddington sailed the ship home to Connecticut, arriving on Christmas Eve. The American navy, encouraged by Henry Grinnell, bought and refurbished the salvaged vessel, and proposed to return it to Britain as a goodwill gesture. In conjunction with Grinnell, and having learned that her Isabel was in dubious condition, Lady Franklin launched a vigorous campaign to acquire the Resolute for yet another “final” search expedition.

Over the years, however, she had made enemies. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Charles Wood, and the First Sea Lord, Sir Maurice Berkeley—tired of being bullied and browbeaten, sick unto death of communications from Jane, Lady Franklin—argued that the expense of another expedition could not be justified and that the Royal Navy had lost quite enough men searching for Franklin. In the end, they succeeded in denying her the Resolute.

By the time she heard the official response, Lady Franklin had devised a contingency plan. Within one week of the Admiralty rejection, she had arranged to purchase—for a special low price of £2,000—a newly available sailing ship of 177 tons. The vessel had belonged to Sir Richard Hutton, who had died after using it for a single cruise. Considerably smaller than the Resolute, the Fox was 124 feet long, 24 feet wide and 13 feet deep. Refitted for Arctic service, it would suit perfectly.

The former question remained: Who would command this search expedition?