“I should rejoice to see with you the same things for the first time, to help or be helped by you in every little difficulty, to become acquainted together with the same people, to be objects of the same hospitality and kindness.”
Jane Griffin to John Franklin, summer 1828
Franklin’s return from his second expedition cemented his reputation. As in the first case, he was showered with recognition: a gold medal from the French Geographical Society, a knighthood, and an honorary degree from Oxford. He also found a new wife.
In November 1828, when he had been back for fourteen months, Franklin married Jane Griffin. He had met her through Eleanor and had spent a considerable time in her company before the second expedition. As his first wife sickened, Franklin was not above socializing on his own. He dined at the Griffin home on a Sunday, a day he usually reserved for religion and family. He escorted Jane and her sister Fanny to dances and parties, and the sisters took a carriage down to Woolwich docks where Franklin was preparing boats for the expedition. None of this indicates that Franklin was being unfaithful, for Eleanor too was very fond of the Griffins. On one occasion when she felt up to entertaining, she invited them round to dine and meet Franklin’s fellow explorer Captain Parry. However, when Franklin was with the Griffins he appears to have monopolized Jane’s company. After a dinner party she recorded in her diary that Franklin had kept her in “continual conversation.”
Franklin was obviously attracted to Jane. She was on his mind during his two-and-a-half-year-long second expedition, and he seems to have wasted no time in paying her court upon his return.
Jane Griffin and John Franklin were as well matched as John and Eleanor were not. Jane had a much more practical intelligence than her predecessor. She was witty, but not in Eleanor’s somewhat strained, self-conscious way, and she was not averse to teasing her John. “Oh, what a coaxing smooth-tongued rogue you are,” she wrote in reference to his description of a diplomatic incident he was involved in, “Who would think, my dear, that you had lived amongst the Polar bears?”
Jane had an independent mind and held strong opinions, some wrong, on a wide variety of topics. Some contemporaries felt this strength spilled over into arrogance, but Jane was fiercely loyal to Franklin, and it is mainly due to her strength of character and independence of mind that we know as much as we do about her husbands ultimate fate.
In the summer of 1828, John and Jane travelled to Russia. John wanted them to travel together but, since they were not yet married, convention demanded that they travel separately.
Since Franklin, on his second expedition, had mapped part of the coast of Alaska, which was then Russian territory, the visit was something of a diplomatic mission. Franklin met the Empress and the ten-year-old heir, the future Czar Alexander II. Through the boys tutor, Franklin carefully described his journeys. It must have been a thrilling moment for the young prince, who already had an interest in geography and looked to the west as a model for the reforms he would introduce into his backward country before he was assassinated in 1881.
John and Jane spent their honeymoon in Paris, where Franklin was treated as a celebrity. People clamoured to meet him. One woman found the meeting a disappointing experience when she was eventually faced with an obviously healthy, ninety-five kilogram man. Her reading about Franklin’s first expedition had led her to expect an emaciated skeleton.
Although he remained religious throughout his life, Franklin’s puritan streak appears to have mellowed from the days of his arguments with Eleanor. While in Paris he visited all fifteen of the theatres. Given the reputation some Paris theatres had as places of ill-repute, this would have required a fairly broad mind.
Back in Britain, Franklin proposed further Arctic adventures to complete his mapping of the Canadian coastline. He was supported in this by Jane, who was extremely ambitious for her husband. She appears to have actively encouraged him to seek positions in the far-flung corners of the world. It seems odd that she should encourage him to desert her, but she explained it in a letter to him, “Your credit and reputation are dearer to me than the selfish enjoyment of your society. Nor indeed can I properly enjoy your society if you are living in inactivity when you might be in active employ.”
Franklin, who had spent his whole life in active pursuits, was not the sort of person who takes kindly to inactivity. He had no literary or cultural pretensions and found living at home with nothing to do very hard. Jane recognized this need in her husband, and having a practical turn of mind, she realized that he, and consequently they, would only be happy if Franklin were actively employed.
Jane had confidence in Franklin’s abilities and tended to underrate, as most people in the early nineteenth century did, the harshness of the Arctic climate and the inadequacy of the technology of the time to protect explorers from it in the event that something went wrong. In a hideously ironic contrast to the horrors of Franklin’s final expedition, she wrote to him in late 1833, “a freezing climate seems to have a wonderful power in bracing your nerves and making you stronger.”
In 1830, Franklin and his new wife had had two years of “vanity, trifling and idleness.” For whatever reason, the Admiralty was ignoring Franklin’s proposal to complete his Arctic mapping. However, they did eventually realize that they had an able officer wasting his talents and appointed him the command of the twenty-six gun frigate Rainbow. Two years and six days after his wedding, Franklin sailed for the Mediterranean.
Greece was newly independent from Turkey, and Britain, France, and Russia were in unusual agreement that this independence should be preserved. Unfortunately, rival factions were struggling for power, and the political instability this produced, combined with the scheming undertaken by the three major powers, required some very diplomatic maneuvering.
For two years, Franklin and the Rainbow cruised the Mediterranean, stopping in Malta, Nauplia, and Corfu, where Jane – Lady Jane Franklin since her husband’s knighthood – came to spend some time with him. In 1832, Franklin sailed to Patras in southern Greece at the request of the local governor, who was anticipating an attack by a local rival.
The attack did not materialize, and the governor may have regretted asking for help when Franklin took the side of some Ionian merchants, British subjects at that time, who felt they were being unfairly taxed. Soldiers had been billeted with the merchants until their taxes were paid. Franklin’s problem in this confrontation was that any action he took might spark a diplomatic incident. His only strength was the visible presence of the Rainbow’s twenty-six guns and her crew of trained sailors and marines. He probably could not have used them, but the governor could not be sure of that. Franklin insisted that the merchants be allowed to board the Rainbow for protection if they wished and arranged a meeting with the governor.
Franklin took a conciliatory tone, begging the governor to consider the consequences of not treating the merchants fairly and placing the heavy responsibility for what might happen on the governor’s shoulders. Franklin did not state what the consequences might be – he left that to the governor’s imagination – but the threat, veiled and dubious though it was, was there. By ignoring the governor’s protests and consistently repeating his theme, Franklin won. The governor allowed the merchants to board the ship, and although he never withdrew his demands, the taxes were never collected.
Only a week later, Franklin faced a second delicate crisis. Easter in Patras was traditionally a time of wild celebration and it was often accompanied by much violence. In 1834, a General named Zavellas was suspected of planning to bring his troops in and plunder the city during the celebrations. The governor, his previous argument with Franklin apparently forgotten, requested troops to keep the peace.
Franklin’s problem here was that he could not be seen to take sides in a local conflict in an independent country. Nevertheless, the situation appeared serious enough to intervene. A party of 140 British and French seamen went ashore. Franklin issued a proclamation that they had no political purpose and were there only to prevent disorder, and he requested the help of local soldiers and civilians. His ploy worked and Patras had one of its quietest Easters in a long time.
Franklin also had to deal with the intrigues of his allies. The Russians took to circling the British and French ships in rowboats in the dead of night. They carried no lights and refused to answer when hailed. Franklin suspected they were spying. He and the French captain wrote a note to the Russian commander. “We beg to be acquainted with the meaning of this unusual proceeding.… It is not our wish, Sir, to prevent your boats rowing about at night if you think it advisable, but we desire that they should not…present the appearance of watching our ships.” Franklin also pointed out that the Russian boats, by not answering a hail, were putting themselves in danger of being fired upon.
The Russian commander replied that his boats were out in order to “protect” the allied vessels. However, he took the hint and after Franklin’s note, his unorthodox protection was withdrawn.
In February 1833, the new king of Greece arrived and the Rainbow was sent home. Franklin had shown himself to be flexible and diplomatic in a very complex and tense situation. He seemed to be able to judge exactly how far he could go without committing himself to an action he might regret.
Franklin’s time in the Mediterranean was also marked by his popularity amongst the sailors who served with him. His ship was called the “Celestial Rainbow” and “Franklin’s Paradise” because of the relaxed atmosphere on board and the happy spirit. In an age when brutality was commonly regarded as necessary to control the criminal elements that were often on board Navy ships, Franklin was seen to tremble with emotion when he witnessed a man flogged. His gentle nature and subtle diplomacy are well recorded from this time in his career. On his return home he was commended on his “calm and steady conduct” and his “judgment and forbearance…exhibited under circumstances of repeated opposition and provocation.”
Franklin left the Rainbow on January 8, 1834. He was forty-seven years old with over thirty years experience in almost all aspects of naval life. He was interviewed by the King, who thanked him and expressed great interest in tales of his exploits. Oddly, although Franklin’s talents were widely recognized, he did not immediately receive a new posting. When Franklin went to see the First Lord of the Admiralty to ask for a posting, he was brushed off with the old, empty promise that he would be kept in mind should anything turn up.
Perhaps Franklin suffered from a lack of influential friends in high places, or perhaps he did not put himself forward forcefully enough. Certainly he admitted to being shy and timid and stated that he only tried as hard as he did because Jane wished him to do so.
It was not that there was no Arctic exploration going on. James and John Ross had been rescued in 1833 after spending four winters in the Arctic. During that time, James had discovered the North Magnetic Pole and visited the north shore of King William Island, a place Franklin’s crew would become horribly familiar with fifteen years later. Franklin’s old companion, George Back, had travelled overland down the river that was to be named after him and visited the Arctic coast, although he had failed to map the area east of Point Turnagain.
In 1834, the government was considering another expedition to the Northwest Passage. The three great Arctic explorers of their day, Edward Parry, James Ross, and John Franklin were all available to lead it, but the choice fell again to Back. In June 1836 he sailed north in HMS Terror. The expedition was nearly a disaster and no new ground was discovered. Meanwhile, Franklin’s career was taking a different turn on the other side of the world.
Franklin, possibly at the prompting of Jane, was, in 1836, considering a position in the colonies. He submitted his name and qualifications to the Colonial Office and was offered the post of governor of the tiny West Indian island of Antigua. This remote posting was a powerless one under the governor-in-chief of the Leeward Islands. Jane thought it unworthy of her husband and encouraged him to turn it down. Franklin did so, and his stand appears to have impressed the Colonial Office. Less that two weeks after his refusal, Franklin was offered the much larger and more prestigious Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) at a salary of £2,500 per annum. He accepted and sailed for his new posting later that year. There would follow six years which would sorely test all the qualities of perseverance and discretion he had shown in the Mediterranean.
To escape, you first had to pass the line of vicious dogs. Eagle Hawk Neck, Van Diemen’s Land.