“…we had the alarming view of a barren rugged shore within a few yards, towering over the mast-head. Almost instantly afterwards the ship struck violently on a point of rocks…On the outward bow was perceived a rugged and precipitous cliff, whose summit was hid in the fog…There now seemed to be no probability of escaping shipwreck…”
Franklin’s Narrative, August 7, 1819
After hurried preparations, Franklin’s small flotilla of three ships sailed for the unknown Canadian north on May 28, 1819. His first port of call was Yarmouth on the south coast of England. A sudden change of the wind caused them to sail at short notice, leaving behind one of the explorers, midshipman George Back. Upset at being left behind, Back made an extraordinary overland journey of nine days to rejoin the ships at Stromness in the Orkney Islands. It would not be his last remarkable journey on this expedition.
Fifty-three strenuous days later, on August 7, the explorers arrived at the entrance to Hudson Bay. Franklin’s ship, The Prince of Wales, was promptly caught in a gale and driven onto the rocks of Resolution Island. The impact knocked the rudder out of position and the vessel was blown helplessly along the shore. Everyone assumed they were doomed. Miraculously, when The Prince of Wales grounded again, the rudder was knocked back into position and the crew gratefully managed to maneuvere the ship into deeper water. After two days of frantic work on the pumps, the ship’s leaks were repaired and the voyage continued.
The next day, in Hudson Strait, Franklin met his first Canadian Inuit, or Esquimaux as they were called in those days. Only the previous year, in nearby Davis Strait, John Ross had described an encounter with Inuit who believed his ship to be alive because they had mistaken the sails for wings flapping in the wind. However, the members of the band Franklin encountered were used to fur trading ships passing that way. Around 150 men and women came out in a variety of boats to barter. Franklin was impressed with the quality of the walrus tusk carvings offered, the odd practice of licking trade goods to seal a deal, and by the orderly manner in which exchanges were made.
At last, on August 30, fourteen weeks after leaving London, the eventful journey was completed, and the Prince of Wales arrived at York Factory on the western shores of Hudson Bay. Franklin’s luck was holding, but he was still more than four thousand kilometres from the beginning of his explorations.
The goal of Franklin’s expedition was to map the Arctic coast of Canada, east from the mouth of the Coppermine River, which had been reached by Samuel Hearne in 1771. That point and the mouth of the Mackenzie River to the west were the only two locations on the coast ever previously visited by Europeans. Franklin was also charged with the important tasks of studying the natural history, examining the aurora, and taking detailed readings of all aspects of magnetic force.
Franklin was accompanied by a naturalist, Dr. John Richardson; two midshipmen, (the resourceful George Back and Robert Hood) to record the scientific data, conduct much of the navigation work, and draw and paint the landscape; and able seaman John Hepburn, who was assigned to be Franklin’s personal servant. The British party was to be transported and supported by voyageurs of the Hudson’s Bay and North West Companies and the Aboriginal Peoples living in the areas they were to explore.
Nineteen days before Franklin set off, Parry had sailed for Lancaster Sound to check whether Ross’s assessment had been correct. The failure of the two 1818 adventures had not dulled all the optimism about Arctic travel, and the British Admiralty hoped that Franklin and Parry would meet somewhere in the wilderness. They never came within seven hundred kilometres of each other, but Parry was successful in exploring Prince Regent Inlet and reaching farther west than anyone else along the south shore of Melville Island. His became the first modern expedition to winter in the High Arctic.
Eager to be under way, Franklin and his party left York Factory on September 9, 1819. Their boat was too large and cumbersome for river travel and proved much slower than the lighter canoes of the voyageurs. Doggedly, Franklin pushed on, with Back and Hood mapping the route and sketching whenever they could, and Richardson collecting all manner of plant and animal life.
After crossing an opaque, clay-rich body of water, Franklin recorded a tale of how the lake had been given its name. A mischievous deity, Weesakootchaht, was once tricked and captured by an old woman. She called all the women of the First Nations band to come and punish Weesakootchaht for his tricks, and when he managed to escape he was so dirty that it took all the waters of the lake to clean him. Ever since, the lake had been called Winnipeg, or Muddy Water.
As they progressed laboriously up the Saskatchewan River, the weather became increasingly colder. Ice formed on the oars, making them difficult to handle; snow fell, and the oarsmen, who had to frequently immerse themselves in the river to manhandle the boat over rocks, suffered horribly in permanently wet and frozen clothes. At last, on October 23, 1819, 1110 kilometres and forty-four days from York Factory, they reached Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan River.
Richardson saw the local Cree as liars and boasters who tended to be “vain, fickle, improvident, and indolent,” although he admitted that “they strictly regard the rights of property, are susceptible of the kinder affections, capable of friendship, very hospitable, tolerably kind to their women, and withal inclined to peace.” Despite this patronizing attitude, Richardson was fascinated by the local culture. On one occasion, dressed in his naval uniform, he crouched in a smoke-filled tent and watched a tattooing ceremony. Both men and women endured the agony of having willow-charcoal rubbed into complex puncture wounds and charcoal-laden cord drawn through holes in their skin to produce dark patterns and lines. The tent was crowded and loud singing filled the air, as much, Richardson thought, to hide the groans of the victims as for religious reasons.
In mid-January of 1820, Franklin, Back, and Hepburn set off for the North West Company’s post at Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca to prepare for the following summer’s work. They travelled with light sleds and on snowshoes, which they found difficult to master. After a harsh and exhausting journey, in temperatures that were sometimes cold enough to freeze the Englishmen’s tea before they could drink it, the party arrived at Fort Chipewyan on March 26th. They had covered 1379 kilometres, almost all on foot.
At the fort, Franklin wasted no time arranging for supplies and men for the coming season. It was not easy; voyageurs did not want to travel north to where the Esquimaux, who had recently attacked and murdered the occupants of two trading canoes, lived, and food was scarce because many of the Cree hunters had been stricken with measles and whooping cough. The situation was made worse by the outright hostility exhibited between members of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company. Both had agreed to help Franklin, but they were often so absorbed in their own trading war that they could not do much. These problems concerned Franklin, but in the noble imperial spirit of the time, he decided to press on regardless and do what he had been asked to do.
Franklin had a canoe made for the summer travel. It was ten metres long, almost 1.5 metres wide, and was composed of seventy-three hoops of cedar. The canoe was flimsy, but it could carry five or six men and provisions totalling 1497 kilograms. The canoe itself weighed 136 kilograms, but two voyageurs could carry it at a run over most portages.
Eventually Franklin collected enough men and supplies, and on July 13, Richardson and Hood rejoined the group. Five days later, they headed north for Great Slave Lake.
Summer travel turned out to be no easier than winter: camps were flooded, rapids damaged the canoes and made long portages necessary, and mosquitoes nearly drove the men insane. The voyageurs entertained Franklin’s men by telling them graphic stories of previous disasters at places with such picturesque names as the Portage of the Drowned.
After ten days’ travel, Franklin’s party reached Fort Providence on the shores of Great Slave Lake. There, with flags flying and bedecked in their finest dress uniforms, the British officers strode forward to formally meet Akaitcho, or Big-foot, a local chief of the Copper (Yellowknife) First Nation who had agreed to help the explorers, and Frederick Wentzel, who had lived in the area for many years and was to act as a go-between. Akaitcho agreed to supply hunters and guides for Franklin and suggested a site for their winter base. Fort Providence was the most northerly trading outpost, so when the party set off on August 2, they were venturing into land previously visited by only one European, Samuel Hearne.
The party now consisted of twenty-eight persons, including the wives of three of the voyageurs and their three children. Amongst their bulky provisions, they carried gunpowder and shot, muskets, nails, cloth, blankets, and fishing nets. Their food included dried soup, flour, two cases of chocolate, tea, and two hundred dried reindeer tongues. Akaitcho’s band went on ahead to hunt.
The cumbersome group travelled slowly and the shortage of provisions created some worrying moments early on. The voyageurs, who were doing all the hard work and consequently required vast amounts of food to maintain their energy levels (the fur industry standard was 3.5 kilograms of fresh meat per man per day), rebelled and refused to continue unless they were fed more. Franklin took a firm stand and threatened to blow out the brains of the first man to show any insubordination. This was treatment more usually offered to the pressed men on navy warships, and it must have come as something of a shock to the contract employees of the Canadian fur trade. Nonetheless, in the face of such a threat, the voyageurs continued, albeit with obvious bad grace.
Fortunately, some Yellowknife hunters arrived in the nick of time with some recently killed deer. After this, things settled down and the hunting improved. However, next fall the same problems – slow travel, inadequate supplies, and internal dissension – would resurface. Then there would be no happy ending.
On Sunday, August 20, 890 kilometres from Fort Chipewyan, the explorers arrived at their wintering site. Franklin named the place Fort Enterprise and immediately set to work building winter quarters. While his men worked, Franklin made plans to venture down the Coppermine River and prepare the way for the next season’s travel. With an early winter looming, Akaitcho was reluctant to help. He told Franklin that he would supply men, but that he regarded the journey as a suicide mission and would begin mourning rituals as soon as the party left. Franklin was forced to compromise and settle for a much shorter trip, but the argument created a climate of distrust between the two men.
The party spent September hunting, fishing, preparing skins for blankets, making snowshoes, and building the two log houses in which they would live for nine months. Caribou were plentiful as they migrated south, and the men often saw as many as two thousand in a single day. They slaughtered and stored almost two hundred of the beasts. The fishing too was successful, supplying twelve hundred whitefish to the store. The Europeans were surprised to see the fish freeze as they were taken from the lake, but come back to life when they thawed, sometimes as much as thirty-six hours after they had been caught.
On October 18, Back, Wentzel and several Yellowknife warriors set off for Forts Providence and Chipewyan to hurry along the supplies which were supposed to be following the group. Most importantly, they needed to replenish their ammunition, which had been used up in the hunting, and their tobacco, without which the voyageurs would not work. Back was gone for five months. He travelled an extraordinary 1770 kilometres in deep winter, with insufficient food and in temperatures of -40 degrees. Despite the conditions, he set a winter travel record of ten days from Moose Deer Island to Fort Chipewyan. It was a remarkable achievement, but it did not help the party much. Supplies were either unavailable or in much smaller quantities than had been promised. Back returned empty-handed.
The search for supplies may not have been the only reason for sending midshipman Back to Fort Chipewyan. That fall Back and Hood both fell in love with the daughter of one of the Yellowknife guides. Called “Greenstockings” because of her dress, she so captivated the two young Englishmen that they developed a strong rivalry. They became so jealous of each other that they agreed to a duel to settle the matter, and Hepburn, fearing the worst, surreptitiously removed the charges from the two men’s pistols. To defuse the situation, Franklin sent Back off to chase up the supplies.
With Back out of the way, Hood continued to court Greenstockings. He painted her picture and spent much time in her company. Hood died the following year, but a census taken at Fort Resolution in 1823 records the existence of, “the orphaned daughter of Lieutenant Hood.”
Through the winter, occasional small quantities of supplies reached Fort Enterprise, the most popular being casks of rum. Life settled into a routine, with the officers working on their journals and maps, taking scientific readings, and collecting and describing specimens of the local flora and fauna, and the men cutting wood for the fires. Even with fires burning constantly in the living quarters, the temperature dropped to -15 degrees inside and a low of -57 degrees outside.
By early spring of 1821, the fall kill of meat was all gone and Franklin was forced to break into the supplies of preserved meat he had been saving for the summer’s exploration. Despite rationing, this food too was almost gone by April, and the party was forced to subsist on irregular hunting successes. Akaitcho and his band returned, but the chief’s attitude to Franklin had been soured by their disagreements. Franklin had to work hard to assert what he saw as his authority and force Akaitcho to supply the promised hunters and guides.
By mid-June, despite a shortage of supplies and caches of meat destroyed by wolverines, Franklin was ready to go. Through June and July, he led his party down the Coppermine River, retracing Samuel Hearne’s route. Some game was killed, but it was not enough. The voyageurs’ legs swelled, a sure sign that they were not getting enough calories for their gruelling work.
Near the site where Hearne had described a bloody massacre of the Inuit by the Yellowknives, Franklin also encountered Inuit. Despite repeated attempts at contact, and the presence of interpreters, they proved elusive and rapidly withdrew when Franklin’s men approached. However, this contact with the Inuit scared the Yellowknife guides and hunters, and they decided to return home, seriously reducing Franklin’s ability to secure sufficient food through hunting.
Finally, on the evening of July 18, 1821, Franklin caught a glimpse of dark rolling waves dotted with white patches of ice. At last, after two years and two months of arduous travel, he was standing where Samuel Hearne had stood fifty years before – on the shore of the Arctic Ocean. The North had pulled Franklin back to the very limit of the known world, but his journey was not over yet. Hearne had taken a quick look and returned up the river. Franklin would go on, along the coast and into the real unknown.
The following day Wentzel and four voyageurs returned to Fort Enterprise with strict instructions to make sure adequate supplies of food were left there for the returning party. The group of twenty men who remained were tired, underfed, short of supplies, short of skilled hunters, and unsure that their line of retreat was secure. But even though Franklin was adrift in the wilderness, he felt a great sense of relief. He was on his own now, free from arguing fur traders, recalcitrant natives, or petty squabbles over love affairs – there was simply the Arctic coast, stretching ahead and waiting for John Franklin to make his mark. It was a heady moment, but the explorers had not escaped their past difficulties, which would soon resurface to claim the lives of eleven men.