CHAPTER
2
WHILE FRANKLIN FRETTED OVER HIS lack of employment at home in Lincolnshire, John Barrow—friend to the eminent Sir Joseph Banks—was gradually making his mark at the Admiralty in London. Since 1804 he had been a lowly yet ambitious second secretary with a passion for geography and exploration. In Barrow’s time the Second Secretary to the Admiralty was a civil servant. His superior, the First Secretary, was a member of the British government.
John Barrow was born on farmland in Lancashire in 1764. By his 10th birthday it was obvious to anyone who cared to notice that the boy possessed a quick and agile mind. At 13 he was fluent enough in Latin and Greek to read and write the languages. By the time he reached the age of 20, he had added mathematics and astronomy to his skills and had spent one summer on a whaling voyage in the icy waters around Spitsbergen, giving him valuable experience for the future.
Barrow’s remarkable intelligence gave him occasional introductions to influential people. While tutoring a child prodigy, the son of a baronet, he learned Chinese—from the boy. That accomplishment, added to the baronet’s contacts, landed Barrow a job as interpreter to a British diplomatic mission to China under Lord Macartney in 1795. The mission was not a success, but Macartney took note of Barrow’s abilities. When Macartney was sent to South Africa as governor of the Cape Colony a few months later, he took Barrow with him. During the next few years in Africa, Barrow explored and mapped much of the territory as far north as the Orange River. He married the daughter of a Cape Colony judge, and his work earned him the respect of additional potential patrons. He and his family returned to England in 1803, and his carefully collected contacts placed him in the Admiralty in 1804. By then he had had two books published, one on China and the other on Africa, and was recognized by his peers as a geographer and a cartographer.
By 1816, Barrow had developed enough political clout in the Admiralty and with the Royal Society to make decisions as to where his country should send expeditions. As a result, British expeditions went to West Africa to determine the direction of the Niger River and to try to reach the fabled city of Timbuktu. They also went to the Congo. In 1817, Barrow began planning an Arctic expedition to search for the Northwest Passage. Thanks to John Barrow’s effective arguments, the Royal Navy had been persuaded to use its ships and crews, in peacetime, to further England’s knowledge of the world. Early in 1818, he received permission to mount his Arctic expedition.
That spring, after two and a half tedious years cooling his heels on land waiting for orders to join a ship, Lieutenant Franklin’s friendship with notable people, such as the eminent naturalist Robert Brown, paid off. Like John Barrow, Brown was a friend of Sir Joseph Banks, a powerful figure in exploration politics. Brown’s influence extended to the Admiralty, where Barrow spent his working days, and as a result, Franklin received welcome news. In spite of stiff competition from other officers, also stumbling along on limited pay, he had been selected to take command of the 250-ton brig HMS Trent as part of a four-ship expedition into the Arctic.
Two naval ships would set course for Baffin Bay; the other two—Franklin’s half of the venture—would sail straight north in an attempt to conquer the ice and reach the North Pole. For this mission, Trent would sail in convoy with the 370-ton HMS Dorothea, commanded by Captain David Buchan, the leader of this part of the expedition.
The ambitious orders for Buchan and Franklin were written by John Barrow in his Admiralty capacity and read in part: “Although it is highly desirable in the interest of science and the extension of natural knowledge that you should reach the Pole, yet that passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific is the main object of your mission.” At the same time, Captain John Ross and Lieutenant William Edward Parry were ordered to explore Baffin Bay in the chartered whaler Isabella and the specially strengthened Alexander. In fact, Franklin and his three fellow navy officers were being sent on a two-pronged mission to search for a Northwest Passage. The Baffin Bay expedition had far more chance of success, while a navigable route over the North Pole had to be an unlikely possibility; even so, Franklin was elated at this opportunity. His long Arctic career, which would be interrupted a few times, was about to begin.
Trent and Dorothea sailed out of the Thames estuary on April 25. A few hours into the voyage, Trent was already showing signs of leaking—not a good omen for a rough sea journey to the Far North. After a stop to enlist additional crew at Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands, the two ships set course almost due north to Spitsbergen and the edge of the polar ice pack. En route, Trent’s leak became worse and threatened the safety of the ship. The cause was eventually found to be a hole in the hull, below the waterline, where a large iron bolt should have been. The hole had been filled in and disguised with tar and pitch. The jet of icy water that blasted in was said to be all of 4 feet (1.2 metres) high.
Close to the pack ice off Spitsbergen’s west coast, officers and crews of both ships delighted in the sights of seals, sea lions, walrus and occasional whales, plus the aggressive antics of polar bears patrolling the ice and the surrounding sea. The marine creatures were fascinating, but the Arctic weather gave much cause for concern. Furious gales coated the ships with ice, from the hulls to their topmasts. Crews had to be employed for hours at a time hacking ice away from the decks and bows, and beating thick ice off the rigging. Without that regular effort, the ships would have become top-heavy and capsized.
When the weather cleared enough to see long distances to the north, the officers and crews of both ships saw ice “in one vast unbroken plain,” stretching all the way to the horizon. They were looking at brash ice (large fragments of broken ice drifting together), about 5 feet (1.5 metres) thick, spreading out from the heavier pack ice. It looked impenetrable, but upon close inspection by Franklin in Trent, it proved to have a few narrow leads, or avenues of open water. Franklin forced Trent into the ice by ramming his reinforced bow against the floes and soon found himself frozen in for a night. With daylight came a slight thaw, enough for Trent to be worked free again and force her way back to the open sea, where her sister ship waited.
Off the northwest extremity of the archipelago on June 12, both ships became trapped in thick ice and suffered damage. They remained there, incapable of moving in any direction, until a lead opened on July 6 and they were able to steer clear of the pack for a while. They were soon surrounded again, and when all else failed, Buchan managed to keep his ships moving north into the pack ice by warping them forward. That entailed running out an anchor, embedding it in ice and then winching the ship up to it. It was a slow process that endangered the ships and tired the crews. Even worse, sometimes the crews had to drag the ships themselves. Conditions became so bad by July 19 that Buchan was considering aborting the northern route to the pole in favour of an attempt to the west.
The ice began to freeze behind them, closing off their escape route. Buchan recognized the peril of being held fast in the ice pack and set about getting both ships warped to safety. It took nearly 10 days to cover the 30 miles (48 kilometres) to open water. After enormous physical effort by the crews, they worked free, but they had lost a lot of ground. As the two ships fought clear of the frozen dangers, the wind made up Buchan’s mind about the direction they would travel.
By this time the two ships were in drift ice off the east coast of Greenland. A violent gale drove them hard toward the polar pack again. A report written by Lieutenant Frederick Beechey, Franklin’s first officer, described the danger to Trent: “The vessel staggered under the shock and for a moment seemed to recoil; but the next wave, curling up under her counter, drove her about her own length within the margin of the ice, where she gave one roll, and was immediately thrown broadside to the wind by the succeeding wave.”
Beechey continued his story with a blatant compliment aimed at his captain, John Franklin: “I will not conceal the pride I felt in witnessing the bold and decisive tone in which the orders were issued by the commander of our little vessel and the promptitude and steadiness with which they were executed by the crew.” In the years to come, Lieutenant Beechey would go on to build his own claim to Arctic fame.
By the end of August, once the two ships had been worked clear of the polar pack and found a modicum of safety at Fairhaven on Spitsbergen’s north coast, it was obvious that Dorothea was too badly damaged to continue the Arctic voyage. As the expedition’s commander, Captain Buchan ordered his charges turned for home, despite Franklin’s request for Trent to be allowed to continue alone. They limped south together and arrived on the Thames on October 22.
Franklin was disappointed at the early termination of the expedition, but he had learned valuable lessons about Arctic navigation and how to work ships through drifting ice. Although Franklin and Buchan had not realized any of their objectives, their half of the Arctic expedition was looked upon with approval because of a series of scientific discoveries they had made, albeit inadvertently. While checking depth soundings in 300 fathoms (548 metres) of water, the lead brought up a section of coral, as well as living starfish (Ophiocoma echinata) and rare sea worms (Glycera unicornis), one of which was “caught between the ship’s [HMS Trent’s] side and the edge of a large flow of ice.” They also brought up lobsters. The coral find was significant because it only thrives in warm water. Its presence in the icy waters of the Far North immediately prompted a series of questions: How did it get to the Arctic? Was the Arctic once warm enough for coral to grow in its vastness? What other mysteries might scientists uncover in the Arctic waters? Buchan and Franklin left such intellectual musings to the scientists in their warm laboratories. Their own interests were in further exploring the North.
Ross and Parry returned to England from Baffin Bay in December after failing to find an entrance to the Northwest Passage. In their defence, however, they had been more successful than Buchan and Franklin. They had charted previously unmapped coastlines on Baffin Bay and had had useful discourse with the indigenous Inuit people—the Eskimos, as they were known at the time.
Among those who served on the four ships of this expedition was an impressive lineup of naval officers who would make their names in Arctic exploration over the next three decades. They included Captain John Ross and his nephew, Midshipman James Clark Ross, plus Lieutenant William Parry, Captain David Buchan, Lieutenant Frederick W. Beechey, Midshipman George Back, and of course, the determined Lieutenant John Franklin.