THE LAST POST
While James Ross had been hurdling the Antarctic Circle, John Franklin had suffered grievously. His situation in Van Diemen's Land had deteriorated thanks to the machinations of John Montagu, his Colonial Secretary.
Montagu was a slithery character. After an inauspicious childhood, marked by ‘a disregard for truthfulness which had for some time rendered his mother extremely anxious on his behalf’,1 he had joined the army, fought at Waterloo and then had made his way to Van Diemen's Land where he had found a job with the Colonial Office. By the time of Franklin's appointment he had acquired land, money and a great deal of influence.
Montagu disliked Franklin's liberal approach to life, and distrusted his interfering wife. When Franklin reinstated on the urging of others -his wife, mostly – an official whom Montagu had previously dismissed, matters came to a head. Montagu wrote a note to Franklin in which he all but called him a deceitful weakling. Franklin sacked him and wrote a report on Montagu's behaviour which he despatched on the next ship home. With it went Montagu, spitting and cursing. ‘I'll sweat him,’ swore the offended man. ‘I'll persecute him as long as I live.’2
Behind him he left a vociferous body of supporters whose opinions coloured the Tasmanian press. ‘The Imbecile Reign of the Polar Hero’,3 sneered the Cornwall Chronicle. The Colonial Times blamed Lady Jane. ‘If ladies will mix in politics they throw from themselves the mantle of protection which as females they are fully entitled to.’4 The knives were out and Franklin, quavering with the best will in the world from indecision to review, received them all.
The final stab came when Montagu caught the ear of Lord Stanley, the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Stanley not only supported Montagu but sent a ringing rebuke to Franklin and, in a terrible breach of etiquette, gave a copy to Montagu. Hardly able to believe his good fortune, Montagu sent it to Tasmania with a package of other material which would further his cause. The copy arrived in Tasmania before Stanley had even posted the original. Included in the package was a 300-page letter in Montagu's defence, which described Franklin among other things as ‘a perfect imbecile’.5 The evidence was stored in a Hobart bank where a select few were permitted to read it. Franklin, of course, was not among those few. But gossip ensured that he had no need to be. Before long anyone who mattered in Tasmania knew what Montagu's papers contained.
Franklin was doomed. On 18 June 1843 a ship arrived with an English newspaper. Tucked away in columns of print was the announcement that Franklin was to be replaced as governor. ‘GLORIOUS NEWS!’6 yelled a Hobart headline. It was another two months before Franklin received official confirmation of his dismissal. But by then he no longer needed confirmation. His replacement had landed three days before. When, on 12 January 1844, Sir John and Lady Franklin left Tasmania for ever, 2,000 people cheered them off. One would like to think some of them did so with regret.
During the journey home Franklin had time to review his prospects. They were bleak. Unlike Parry, who had sailed from Australia with his menagerie of parrots and kangaroos ten years previously, Franklin had no influential family to greet him, no guaranteed employment to which he could look forward. He had failed in his task and all that awaited him on his return was the half-pay of a naval captain. Franklin was desperate for work. First, however, he had to clear his name. Whatever the merits of his dismissal, it had been handled in an outrageously insulting fashion and the entire naval establishment, including Barrow, backed him in his desire for justice. He demanded an apology from Lord Stanley. It was not forthcoming. He demanded an interview. It yielded nothing. He threatened to publish his account of events. Stanley remained silent. Franklin went ahead. Had he been a Ross we would probably still be reading about it today. But instead of a thunderous barrage of pamphlets, books and affidavits Franklin released a dry, reticent little balloon that floated away almost unnoticed.
Possibly Franklin might have dented Stanley's armour had he pressed his case. But he was not that kind of man. And besides, within four days of completing the preface he was once again on his way to the Arctic.
When Franklin returned from Tasmania, Barrow's reign was drawing to a close. He was now eighty, and although in excellent health he was beginning to feel the strain. It was time to retire. But before he did he wanted to finish the job he had started more than twenty-five years ago.
The North-West Passage was tantalizingly within reach. There remained a mere 200 or so miles of uncharted sea between Barrow Strait and the open water which Dease and Simpson had covered to the south. To give up now would not only be faint-hearted but embarrassing. ‘If the completion of the passage be left to be performed by some other power,’ Barrow wrote, ‘England, by her neglect of it, after having opened the East and West doors, would be laughed at by all the world for having hesitated to cross the threshold.’7
The public were for it, Barrow claimed. There were officers who would kill for the privilege of leading it. There were seasoned Arctic sailors aplenty. And, above all, there were two ships, the Erebus and Terror, fully kitted out for the ice, so further expense in that department would be limited.
As before, Barrow's proposal was conduited through the Royal Geographical Society back to the Admiralty, and professional opinions were sought from experienced Arctic officers. But this time, to avoid interference from Ross and his ilk, the opinions were openly solicited rather than appearing under the cloak of a correspondence. Back, Beaufort, Beechey, Franklin, Parry and James Ross were all in favour of a renewed attempt. And to avoid the slightest dissent from the Admiralty, Barrow submitted their written statements to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel.
The response was predictable. The mission having been approved, the next matter was finding a man to lead it. James Ross was the obvious choice, but he turned the offer down. At forty-four he felt he was too old; moreover, he had promised his wife he would never go on another expedition. Neither of these excuses quite stood up to examination, and he would discard them very happily a few years later, when the opportunity for Arctic sailing once again presented itself. The likely truth, as shown by the limited documentation available (Ross burned his papers before his death), was that he had a slight drink problem. It had first surfaced in South Africa with the shaking hands that he explained away as stress, and as time passed his condition became increasingly apparent.
John Murray, for one, noticed Ross's state. As the delivery of his Antarctic journal was delayed and delayed, Murray reminded him that it could only be published on sale or return and that the sale depended on the book coming out soon. James Ross cursed him roundly, and demanded proper royalties, whereupon Murray asked him to explain a letter, ominously dated ‘Saturday Night’,8 in which Ross had not only agreed to sale or return but had also offered to buy fifty copies of his own journal plus other books from Murray's list to the value of £100. No more was heard on the subject.
With James Ross out of the running, who was left? Crozier was a possibility, having years of Arctic experience, but he turned it down -'in truth I fear I am not equal to the hardship’,9 he told Ross self-deprecatingly. Rumour had it that the mighty Parry would come out of retirement. He had hinted as much to Beaufort. But as Sabine wrote to Ross, ‘one can scarcely believe him serious – or that he can seriously meditate such a step … but I need scarcely say that that is the only case in which I would unreservedly rejoice in a N.W. expedition of which you are not the leader’.10
In the end Parry never did make a bid. So with him out, and with James Ross and Crozier out, that left Sir John Franklin as the most senior of Barrow's men – if one discounted Sir John Ross, as everybody did. Quivering with anticipation and desperate to restore his prestige, Franklin waited for the call. Lady Franklin pressed his cause. ‘After being so unworthily treated by the Colonial Office,’ she wrote to James Ross, ‘I think he will be deeply sensitive if his own department should neglect him, and that such an appointment would do more perhaps to counteract the effect which Lord Stanley's injustice and tyranny have produced. I dread exceedingly the effect on his mind of being without honourable and immediate employment, and it is this which enables me to support the idea of parting with him on a service of difficulty and danger better than I otherwise should.’11
James Ross's arguments rolled back on him. Franklin was older than him; and although his wife put a good face on it, she was reluctant to let him go. On the other hand, Franklin was a popular man; he was also Ross's friend. Ross therefore suggested him as the best man for the job.
A shudder ran through the Admiralty. They did sincerely admire Franklin. They respected him and sympathized with him over his recent debacle with Stanley. But he was plainly too old and too unfit for the job. Barrow was particularly shaken. The man he had in mind if Ross refused the job was an unknown thirty-three-year-old commander called James Fitzjames.
Back, inveigling maybe for his own appointment, asked Ross to reconsider. Ross sent him away with a flea in his ear. Later, Sabine arrived with the news that Beaufort too suggested a rethink. He was despatched forcibly with the message that if Beaufort had anything to say he could say it in person. When Beaufort did so, Ross stuck tetchily to his guns. Franklin was the fellow.
Frantic temptations were dangled in front of Ross. He was offered a baronetcy, a pension and a year's postponement of the mission to give him time to get over his problem. It was all in vain. Nothing could stop Franklin's progress. When Back pressed again, stating that Franklin could not withstand the cold, Dr Richardson came to his friend's defence. ‘I shall have no hesitation in signing a certificate stating that I believe your constitution to be perfectly sound,’ he told Franklin, ‘and your bodily strength sufficient for all the calls that can be made upon it in conducting a squadron even through an icy sea.’12 Parry, too, supported Franklin. ‘If you don't let him go,’ he told Lord Haddington, the current First Lord of the Admiralty, ‘the man will die of disappointment.’13 Finally, Franklin was called before Haddington for an interview.
Haddington, mustering all his tact, hinted that Franklin might not be fit enough. Franklin demanded a physical examination at once. The embarrassed First Lord waved his hands and said that he was thinking of mental fitness; Franklin might be too stressed by his recent experiences to go to the North-West Passage. Franklin told him that the stress of the North-West Passage would be nothing compared to life in Tasmania. In desperation, Haddington told him he was too old.
‘You are sixty,’ he said.
‘No, my Lord,’ Franklin replied, ‘I am only fifty-nine.’
What could Haddington do? On 7 February 1845, Franklin was given command of the expedition.
His instructions were straightforward. He was to sail as far west as was possible, about 95° west. Then, ‘from that point we desire that every effort be used to penetrate to the southward and westward in a course as direct towards Bering Strait, as the position and extent of the ice or the existence of land at present unknown, may permit’.14 And if that didn't work, he was authorized to follow Richardson's hunch and go north up Wellington Channel.
The hammer and din was loud at Deptford when Sir John Ross came over from Stockholm to see what was going on. In a development that must have pleased him he noted that the Erebus and Terror were being fitted for steam. Although Barrow still distrusted steam power he could not deny its apparent usefulness in the Arctic, and therefore the two ships were kitted out in as up-to-date a fashion as possible. Instead of John Ross's gimcrack apparatus the Erebus and its consort were given tried and tested machinery that had already proved its worth – the Erebus’s engine was purchased second-hand from the Greenwich Railway – and were fitted not with cumbersome paddles but with innovative screw propellers that could be hoisted out of harm's way when they were in the ice. As well as powering the ships the engines also heated them via a network of twelve-inch-wide pipes that pumped hot air to every corner.
It looked to be a thorough, professional job. Nevertheless, Ross was dismayed by the whole thing. The ships were too large, he told Franklin: their nineteen-foot draught was too great; they carried too many men; and the massive steam machinery, with its coal, weighed them still lower in the water and took up space that could better be filled with food. Ross had struggled with the Victory’s nine-foot draught. What could Franklin's ships accomplish with a draught more than twice that?
Ross was so convinced that the expedition would be a failure that he made arrangements with Franklin for its salvage. He instructed him to leave cairns at regular intervals containing notes as to his progress and destination, and advised him to drop caches of food en route should he have to walk home as he himself had done. Finally, he offered to lead a rescue party should nothing be heard of the expedition by February 1847. ‘Well, Ross,’ said Franklin, amused at the older man's fears but not wanting to seem rude, ‘you are the only person who has volunteered to search for me and I shall depend upon you.’15 In private, he laughed it off as an absurdity.
Ross was not alone in slating the mission's odds. Barrow was attacked by at least two magazines, and was rounded upon viciously by Dr Richard King, who was still obsessed by overland travel. ‘Had you advocated in favour of Polar Land Journeys with a tithe of the zeal you have the Polar Sea Expeditions the North-West Passage would have long since ceased to be a problem, and, instead of a Baronetcy you would deserve a Peerage, for the country would have been saved at least two hundred thousand pounds,’16 King stormed. ‘If you are really in earnest upon this subject, you have but one course to pursue; search for the truth, and value it when you find it. Another fruitless Polar Sea Expedition, and fruitless it will assuredly be … will be a lasting blot in the annals of our voyages of discovery.’17
King was absolutely right. And, as before when he had made similar proposals for a land expedition, he was ignored because the Hudson's Bay Company had launched its own. John Rae, a straightforward, practical Orkneyman whose forte was surviving long periods in the wilderness with no provisions at all, was charged with mapping the western coast of Melville Peninsula. Reading between the lines, this harmless task was to lead him, hopefully, to Boothia Felix. The men and women of the Hudson's Bay Company cheered Rae while scoffing at Barrow's laborious, heavyweight sea mission. ‘[Franklin] expects to meet him,’ the Governor's wife wrote to her brother, ‘but I believe no one expects such a thing but himself. The people here laugh at the Government part of the matter & think the officers & crew must have been “too hot at home”.’18
Had King heard this he would have agreed wholeheartedly. But he did not hear it, and having been turned down by Barrow he appealed to Franklin's arch enemy, Lord Stanley, for help. ‘Sir John,’ he pleaded, ‘will have to push through an ice-blocked sea in utter ignorance of the extent of his labours, and in case of difficulty with certainly no better prospects before him than that which befell Sir John Ross, whose escape from a perilous position of four years is admitted by all to have been almost miraculous.’19 Stanley was as unforthcoming as Barrow. In despair, King published the correspondence, hoping to find support – any support – for his point of view. Franklin was ‘being sent to form the nucleus of an iceberg’,20 he told the world.
The world was uninterested. People did not want to hear of their hero departing to inevitable failure. Let him be nipped, pinched, crushed, lifted, lowered, or whatever else went on in the ice. Let him face death, too – the vicarious tingle that had excited society after Franklin's boot-eating odyssey was never far from the surface. All these things could happen – but only when Franklin reached the Arctic. Until then, King was spoiling things. People were much happier to hear Barrow's statement that ‘There can be no objection with regard to any apprehension of loss of ships or men’21 – or, better still, the rolling words of Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society: ‘I have the fullest confidence that everything will be done for the promotion of science, and for the honour of the British name and Navy, that human efforts can accomplish. The name of Franklin alone is, indeed, a national guarantee.’22 Little did they imagine how gratifyingly Franklin would reward their insouciance.
Franklin's expedition was the last that Barrow would ever send out. He retired from the Admiralty in January 1845, in full confidence that his greatest dream would be realized. (In fact, according to Scoresby, his last act while in office had been to delay Franklin's expedition sufficiently to ruin its chances in the first year.) For almost thirty years he had played the Arctic like a game of patience, turning over chunks of geography, arranging them in orderly lines, and discarding discoveries that did not fit his plan. Now there was only one blank card on the table. When Franklin lifted it all would be revealed and the North-West Passage would fall neatly into place.
Barrow had set it all in motion and there was nothing more he need do. Unfortunately he had miscounted his pack.