THE ARCTIC COUNCIL
While Barrow was still alive, a semblance of order hung over the Franklin rescue expeditions. A tripartite thrust swung into action in the spring of 1848, involving a sea mission from the east under James Ross and Edward Bird in the Enterprise and Investigator respectively; another sea mission from the west under a Captain Henry Kellett; and an overland stab down the Mackenzie River led by Richardson and Rae.
They went, failed, and came back again, having made no progress towards the discovery of Franklin. This was deeply humiliating for James Ross, who had dragged himself out as the saviour angel, had been ill for most of the time he had been at sea and had gone no further than the head of Prince Regent Inlet before being driven back by adverse weather. Never again would he go to the Arctic.
With Barrow's death, however, everything changed. As far as the Admiralty was concerned, Franklin was a lost cause. Captain Baillie Hamilton, who had succeeded Barrow as Second Secretary on 24 January 1845, did his best to drum up interest but he was blocked by his superiors. Lord Dundas, the current First Lord, believed that Franklin had sunk in Baffin Bay and that the whole business was a waste of time. The Lords wanted to ‘give themselves no further trouble about it than public opinion and the pressure from without compelled them’,1 McCormick, James Ross's old shipmate from the Antarctic, was told. The Lords were distant, arrogant fools. When McCormick offered to lead an overland attempt to rescue Franklin, and made the mistake of asking for a promotion at the same time – his last having been in 1827 following Parry's try for the North Pole – he was rejected out of hand. ‘I never before had an interview with a more reserved, colder or more repulsive official,’2 he steamed.
But for all their Lordships’ stonewalling, they could not ignore a growing public demand that something be done. If Franklin had been a hero before, he was now a superhero. Papers and magazines were full of him, and interest in his expedition was so intense that Dr King could fill lecture halls on an almost daily basis, delivering his opinions to audiences several hundred strong. Even in America people were advocating a rescue mission.
The Admiralty dithered and prevaricated. For forty years or so it had been used to doing what Barrow told it. Now that its guiding light had gone, it had no idea what to do. It was, after all, a mainly administrative body whose purpose was to facilitate the smooth running of the world's largest navy. Had there been a war it would have known, or would have been told, what to do. But in matters of exploration it was lost without Barrow. It therefore offered a magnificent panoply of prizes – £20,000 for anybody who rescued Franklin, £10,000 for anybody who simply found his ships, and another £10,000 for the first to cross the North-West Passage – and turned the practicalities of Franklin's rescue over to the Arctic Council.
The Arctic Council – or Committee – had been born in the mid-18308 as an advisory group to filter proposals for attempts on the North-West Passage. An influential but nebulous body, it comprised all the big names in Barrow's arsenal. Members came and went, according to circumstances, but its core remained solid: Parry, James Ross, Beaufort, Back, Beechey, Bird, Sabine and Richardson. Franklin had once sat on the panel, and Barrow had naturally been its leader. Baillie Hamilton now took Franklin's place, and Barrow's son, John Barrow Jnr., stepped into his father's shoes as coordinator.
John Barrow Jnr. was an excellent man. He had been seconded into the Admiralty at an early age, had travelled reasonably widely, and was a phenomenal archivist. He had inherited all his father's skills but not his preconceptions. Everybody, without exception, liked him and although he lacked any real power he was an ideal facilitator, capable of handling both the Admiralty and the discordant personalities of his father's team. Under his direction, with Beaufort acting as general foreman, the Arctic Council became a body to be reckoned with. As McCormick was told, ‘Could you point out the very spot where you could put your hand on Franklin they would not listen to it at the Admiralty, everything being left to the Arctic Council.’3
In 1851 the artist Samuel Pearce painted a picture of the Arctic Council. There they all are, gathered around a table, Back with his black mutton-chop whiskers, Bird with his receding hairline, Parry, Ross and Sabine showing various degrees of grey, with Franklin, Fitzjames and Sir John Barrow joining deliberations from portraits on the wall behind. (Crozier, the untutored Irishman, was obviously considered unworthy of inclusion.) Pearce, however, omitted one of the most influential figures on the Council: Lady Franklin.
If Lady Jane had been considered interfering by the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land she was considered even more so by the inmates of Whitehall. For the next ten years she lobbied remorselessly for her husband's rescue, spending all her money and time in unceasing efforts to find him – or at least his remains. She had even tried to get a place on Richardson's land expedition of 1848. When funds were low she extorted them without mercy. McCormick recorded a cab ride with her when she suddenly ordered the driver to pull up outside Dollond's in St Paul's. Dollond, she explained, had been Franklin's optician. She came back a few minutes later, eyes gleaming, and with another £100 in the kitty. Late at night, the Arctic Council gathered at her home, working out new and propitious routes for Franklin's salvation.
Given its head, the Arctic Council moved with astonishing speed. By 1850 the Arctic was crawling with rescue missions. The Enterprise and the Investigator approached from the west under Captain Richard Collinson and Captain Robert McClure. Meanwhile, from the east no fewer than thirteen ships surged into Lancaster Sound, among them two separate Admiralty fleets under Captains Horatio Austin and William Penny, two American vessels, a ship financed by Lady Franklin and a tiny venture of one small schooner and a yacht, commanded and paid for by Sir John Ross, now seventy-three.
They were searching blind, their only clue being Franklin's instructions. Franklin had been told to go south-west from Melville Island and if that proved impossible to go north via Wellington Channel. They looked into the Peel Sound, the next opening along from Prince Regent Inlet which led down the west coast of Boothia Felix to King William's Land, saw that it was frozen over, and therefore devoted their attentions to Wellington Channel. It occurred to no one, despite repeated advice from all quarters concerning the volatility of Arctic ice, that Peel Sound might have been clear when Franklin saw it.
In late August they found the first signs of the expedition. On Beechey Island, at the mouth of Wellington Channel, they stumbled across the remains of Franklin's 1845 winter quarters. Signs of occupation were everywhere: fire sites, sledge tracks in the earth, rubbish heaps, a massive pyramid of 600 empty cans, and even a pair of gloves folded neatly on a rock. They also found three graves, their headstones helpfully inscribed with names and dates, and facing west in what had become an Arctic tradition.
Here, to the rescuers, was proof that they were looking in the right direction. Franklin had obviously found his way blocked to the south, as they had, and had turned north to fulfil the second part of his orders. The sledge tracks could be followed for forty miles up the east coast of Wellington Channel, suggesting that Franklin had scouted ahead for his next season's sailing. It was too late now for them to go after him, so they settled cosily into harbours on Cornwallis Island and prepared to follow the trail next year. In their enthusiasm they ignored the main clue Beechey Island had to offer – the graves. In their relief that there were only three instead of 133 they did not comment on the fact that this was a very high casualty rate indeed. Most expeditions lost that many after several years, not in their first winter. Something had gone seriously wrong with the health of Franklin and his men.
There was another thing about Beechey Island – it lacked a cairn. Normally, at any stop, Arctic officers would leave a message under a pile of stones describing their current situation and their next intended move. But Franklin had not done so. Was this an oversight? Or was it because Franklin had nothing new to report and intended following his orders to go south? They all agreed it must be an oversight.
The rescuers spent that winter in more-or-less cheerful companionship at a spot that Austin named Union Harbour, visiting each other's ships and passing the time with the customary round of plays and entertainments. There were the usual personality clashes, occasioned mainly by John Ross, who bumbled merrily about reminding people of his past glories and bringing up yet again the business of Lancaster Sound. They, for their part, noted that Ross had come underprovisioned and was a drag on both their progress and food supplies. Ross blithely ignored any animosity. ‘I found Penny an excellent and kind neighbour,’ he wrote, ‘he had luxuries which I could not afford and was liberal in sharing them out.’4 Privately, Penny condemned Ross as ‘an utterly selfish man’.5
Penny was a humourless, over-eager and slightly insecure forty-one-year-old whaler who was a favourite of Lady Franklin and had been given his command solely by virtue of her quick-footedness. He liked to exaggerate his past achievements and to expound on his future greatness. Ross and the others quickly picked up on this – ‘a discovery which to us was very amusing’6 – and promptly threw some pieces of plank onto the ice. Sure enough, when Penny discovered them, he was certain he had found the remains of Franklin's ships. Only when he caught his officers grinning behind his back did he realize he had been made a fool of. Hurrying back to his cabin he added to the accusation of selfishness that Ross was also ‘proverbial for false statements’.7
‘Dear old Sir John Ross!’8 wrote one of Austin's midshipmen, Clements Markham.
The only absentees from this happy group were the crew of Lady Jane's ship, the Prince Albert, which had seen the way blocked by ice and had turned for home even before the discoveries at Beechey Island, and the two American ships that had become stuck in the ice fifty miles up Wellington Channel. Unlike the British, who were accustomed to the Arctic – and if not accustomed were too stiff-upper-lipped to mention it – the Americans were aghast at conditions. Coffee froze in their mugs. Butter had to be cut with a hammer and chisel. Cold metal burned their hands through two layers of mittens. They seared the skin off their lips by sucking icicles. When they put out their tongues they froze to their beards. Scurvy took hold, causing men to faint at the slightest exertion. And from all around came the sound of the ice, creaking, groaning and on occasion gristling against their bows like ground sugar. In the long gloom of the polar winter they turned white as cut potatoes. ‘I long for the light,’ wrote an appalled medical officer, Elisha Kane. ‘Dear, dear sun, no wonder you are worshipped!’9
While the Americans were shivering in their icy anchorage, the British fanned out on sledges to find Franklin. Leading the onslaught was one of Austin's men, Lt. Leopold McClintock, a short-spoken but good-humoured Irishman who had travelled with James Ross aboard the Enterprise and had learned from him the rudiments of sledging. Off they went on cumbersome wooden barges that carried chivalric, medieval names – Resolute, Hotspur, Perseverance and the like – and bore fluttering pennants at their bows. The sledges were all man-hauled – James Ross had apparently not passed down the skills of dog-sledging – and covered little more than ten miles per day unless the teams ran, which then pushed the distance to almost twenty miles per day.
McClintock's sledges lumbered over the ice. They went west to Melville Island, where they found the block of sandstone on which Parry's men had carved their ships’ names a quarter of a century ago and the red-painted wheels of the cart he had abandoned on his overland trip. They went south across the ice to Peel Sound and saw only an endless frozen sea. Of Franklin, nothing.
The rescuers returned to London in 1851, carrying a nasty rumour picked up by John Ross's interpreter to the effect that Franklin's men had been killed by Eskimos. It was quite untrue, and was disbelieved by all except Ross who stuck loyally by his man. However, it roused Lady Jane to anger, and she greeted it ‘with a deep sense of gratitude to Sir John Ross for murdering her husband’.10 It was an ungenerous comment, given Ross's unrivalled feat in leading an Arctic expedition at the age of seventy-three, and given the fact that he had gained nothing from it save a debt of £530. Ross probably did not mind – he had been called a lot worse in his lifetime. He was appointed a rear-admiral (retired) shortly after his return and never went to sea again, thus closing one of the most controversial careers in the history of Arctic exploration.
The Admiralty was by now even more unwilling to continue the Franklin search after the huge and profitless expenditure they had just incurred. However, Lady Jane and the Arctic Council had the public on their side.
Nobody cared a jot about the North-West Passage – ‘we do not think the geographical importance of these expeditions commensurate with the cost or exposure of a single sloop's crew,’ The Times stated frankly, ‘but it does impinge most emphatically on our national honour that we should ascertain the fate of our missing countrymen and redeem them, if living, from the dangers to which they had been consigned’.11 A hero in distress took on almost Christlike proportions: to ignore the call to rescue was an unforgivable sin, particularly when that hero's reputation had been inflated to such titanic proportions as had Franklin's. ‘The blooming child lisps Franklin's name, as with glittering eye and greedy ear it hears of the wonders of the North, and the brave deeds done there,’ wrote Captain Sherard Osborn, who had accompanied the last expedition. ‘Youth's bosom glows with generous emotion to emulate the fame of him who has gone where none as yet have followed. And who amongst us does not feel his heart throb faster in recalling to recollection the calm heroism of the veteran leader, who …’12 And so on and so on. Osborn's words may seem purple by today's standards, but they faded to a delicate mauve compared to the overblown language being used by others. People even went so far as to write poems about Franklin's birthplace.
Feeling ran so high that a parliamentary committee was formed to coordinate action and to investigate the merits of claims – if any – to the prize money. Advice promptly flooded in from all quarters, some of it ridiculous, some less so. Look for the ‘Open Polar Sea’, said one man, for Franklin was obviously trapped within it, sailing from point to point in search of a way out. Send only criminals in search of him, said another, for no other men were so resourceful. Use spotter balloons, said a third. A fourth recommended that the rescuers should release barrages of rockets so that Franklin's men would know where they were. A fifth advised the release of Arctic foxes with details of food caches tied around their necks. A sixth said that medals should be distributed to the Eskimos carrying information as to the searchers’ whereabouts.
The last two ideas were, eventually, employed. And balloons were used too, although not for spotting but as wind-blown versions of the foxes and Eskimos. What was really needed, however, was a levelheaded look at where the search should be directed. In this respect the Arctic Council seemed to have taken leave of its senses.
The main thrust of Franklin's orders had been that he go south-west from Barrow Strait, therefore that should have been the logical place to look for him. Yet almost everybody preferred to ignore this avenue in favour of Franklin's secondary option via Wellington Channel. Beechey murmured that it might be an idea to send a sledge party down Peel Sound to the mouth of the Great Fish River – ‘nothing should be neglected [in that quarter]’,13 he advised. And of course there was Dr King, battering at the doors with his infuriating insistence that Franklin would be found off the west coast of Boothia, and that they were insane not to send him on a land journey to find him. Timidly, Parliament agreed that such an idea was not unreasonable. But the Arctic Council was having none of it.
‘I wholly reject all and every idea of any attempts … to send boats or detachments over the ice to any point of the mainland eastward of the Mackenzie River,’ Back said, ‘because I can say from experience that no toil-worn and exhausted party could have the least chance of existence by going there.’14 James Ross was more outspoken, damning without a shred of evidence any suggestion that Franklin might have travelled so far south. McCormick, an erstwhile overland man but now, with promotion beckoning, a believer in the open polar sea, announced that an examination not only of Wellington Channel but of Smith Sound and Jones Sound was essential. Even Parry conceded that, although Franklin would certainly have prosecuted his primary instructions as far as was possible, he might have been forced north by default.
Thus another expedition, of five ships, was sent to Wellington Channel in 1852. It was commanded by the unsavoury figure of Captain – now Sir Edward – Belcher. Why Belcher was chosen is a mystery. He had a limited experience of the Arctic, having sailed as a lieutenant in the Blossom on Beechey's abortive link with Franklin's first overland venture. And he had taken part in the great magnetic survey of 1838–42. But he was generally known as a bad-tempered, dictatorial martinet, renowned for his intransigency and for his willingness to bring people to court martial for the most trivial offences. Even James Ross, himself a stern man, advised officers to make allowance for events (unnamed) in Belcher's past which had brought him to this state of temper. Belcher's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography sums him up very accurately: ‘Perhaps no officer of equal ability has ever succeeded in inspiring so much personal dislike, and the customary exercise of his authority did not make Arctic service less trying.’15
In the long history of Arctic exploration, Belcher's expedition, the last all-out push by the Admiralty, stands proud as the most futile and ill-managed on record.
Belcher chose as his flagship the Assistance. Kellett was given the Resolute, McClintock the Intrepid, and Osborn the Pioneer. The North Star supply ship was given to a Commander Inglefield. Also, clinging like a limpet to the North Star, was McCormick who, having pestered everyone in sight, had been given permission to take whatever boat was available, manned by whatever six volunteers he could find, on a short voyage up Wellington Channel. Something, Beaufort reasoned, should be done to keep the man happy.
The fleet crept into Lancaster Sound and promptly became beset off Cornwallis Island. Belcher's worst side came out. Every minor detail, such as failing to report the sighting of a hare, or submitting a report on the wrong-sized paper, became an arrestable offence. Before long the crews were in a state of semi-mutiny and their officers gathered in the long nights to discuss ways of dealing with their commander. Should they roast him or strangle him?
Belcher was, actually, not that bad a leader. True, he was stupid and arrogant and bloody-minded and deserved all the opprobrium which was later heaped upon him. But he was trapped by a sense of his own importance, and the futility of following instructions in which he had no confidence. Belcher believed that Franklin would be found to the south – if he was still alive. But the rescue mission had been ordered north. What could he do? ‘If I had commanded in 1848 I should have been there now,’ Belcher wrote. ‘It requires no Prophet to understand how inveterate some of their High Mightinesses feel towards me – because they were told “sans ceremonie”, “If you had sent Belcher you would have had your work done in his own way. He would have acted upon his own judgement and considered instructions not binding.” … In plain English, “They knew I would not have thought as they wished.”’16
What exactly did they wish? In his letters Belcher referred darkly to ‘Private Instructions‘ to which his predecessors had ‘promised obedience upon starting17 He spoke, too, of murky goings-on involving Austin, Penny and, of all people, John Ross. ‘We are in expectation of a very warm discussion or possibly a Court of Enquiry,’18 he said, regarding their activities of the previous year.
Here was something very odd. Why would an official naval court be interested in the actions of John Ross, whose expedition was not directly under the Admiralty's control? What had he done, or not done, to merit an inquiry? And what were the private instructions? Why the masonic secrecy? Belcher supplied no answers to these questions – or, if he did, they have since been destroyed – dropping only hints. ‘I came here purely on public grounds – and urged to do something to satisfy the disappointed world,’ he wrote, ‘but I have been sadly deceived.’19
It seems likely that the Arctic Council was using the Franklin search as an excuse for a covert attempt on the North Pole. They urged, for example, the investigation not only of Wellington Channel but of Jones Sound and Smith Sound. Neither of the two last was remotely within Franklin's ambit, but they did represent potential avenues to the Polar Sea where, if conditions were as balmy and ice-free as Barrow had believed, the Pole would be within a few days’ sailing. The Arctic Council started a global trend that would last for half a century. In later years, when a man said he was going to look for Franklin – whose legend was perpetuated for the purpose – it was understood that he was trying for the North Pole.
Belcher threw up his hands in despair: ‘It is my firm belief that this is only the beginning of disaster … Another expedition is to start in the Spring – who will command it I know not but I will never again volunteer.’20 Those words were written in October 1851, Belcher's first year out. Little wonder, then, that as time passed he lost interest in the search and reverted to the safety of the rule book. If he had to be fettered by instructions in which he did not believe, where else could he turn?
He freely acknowledged his faults. ‘I never was a Nelson and never will be,’ he wrote to his wife. ‘To return before my duty is completed would subject me to scorn, derision and contempt. Better wait until ordered home …’21 And so he did, shuttling nervously from ship to ship atop a supply-laden boat, to avoid the nip he was sure would come at any moment. Meanwhile, those of his officers not confined to quarters rushed out to find the missing vessels.
McCormick was the first to go, being slipped from his leash on 19 August 1852, just late enough to prevent him getting anywhere. He took his boat, the aptly named Forlorn Hope, some eighty miles up the east side of Wellington Channel and discovered nothing during three weeks of uninterrupted gales. He lingered aboard the North Star for another year, cursing Belcher's ‘generally uncourteous line of conduct’,22 and caught the first available supply ship home.
He departed with two memories uppermost in his mind. The first was of a night during which he had wandered from the ship and had been forced to sleep in a shallow scrape while the thermometer stood at 64 °F below freezing – an event from which he emerged fresh as a daisy, so he said. The second was a more mundane occurrence in which he shot a polar bear. The animal was seven and a half feet long and weighed 1,000 pounds. McCormick was sixty yards away and armed only with a smooth-bore, double-barrelled gun. He fired as the bear was turning to run. The ball went through the bear's hip and travelled the length of its body, emerging with such force that it shattered its jawbone. A gruesome little vignette but interesting in its own way.
Behind him McCormick left an expedition that was rapidly disintegrating. Almost everybody who could had volunteered for sledging expeditions, preferring the discomfort of man-hauling to the prospect of life under Belcher. In fact, when McCormick departed on 24 August 1853 there were only five hands on board the North Star. ’This of itself indeed speaks volumes,’23 he wrote.