“Captain Franklin, R.N.,” a portrait painted soon after the 1819–22 overland expedition.
PETER WINKWORTH COLLECTION. LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA R9266-3036
CHAPTER
4
TRAVELLING THE WILD RIVERS TO the north had proved challenging. Foraging for sufficient fresh food to feed the expedition had also proved difficult. The voyage along the coast would be no less demanding. Birchbark canoes were excellent craft for river journeys, but they were not built for travelling through ice.
From July 20 until August 18, the expedition worked its way along the coast. En route they battled high winds, local fog, ice and powerful thunderstorms. Due to the large size of the party—20 men—obtaining fresh food was a constant problem that dominated Franklin’s personal record of the journey. On August 18, they reached a prominence on the Kent Peninsula that Franklin named Point Turnagain; they had now covered and charted 555 miles (893 kilometres) of coastline, including a full survey of Bathurst Inlet and Melville Sound—a detour that took them nine days. En route, Franklin honoured his friends and a handful of superiors by naming geographical features for them.
Franklin didn’t know it, but he was close to solving the riddle of the Northwest Passage. At Point Turnagain, he was only a few hundred miles from the Gulf of Boothia, the gateway via Lancaster Sound and Davis Strait to the Atlantic. On that day also, his friend William Parry was in Repulse Bay aboard HMS Fury, only 539 miles (867 kilometres) to the east in the northwest corner of Hudson Bay. He too was looking for a route that might become the Northwest Passage. Like his brother officer exploring the coast to the west, he was disappointed when he failed. Franklin, however, had come to the correct conclusion that the coast to the west would reach the open sea. He also expressed his belief that there was indeed a sea route from Point Turnagain to Hudson Bay. He was right, but the truth of those observations would not be known until after his death.
For Franklin and his men, ill-equipped as they were, going on was not an option. The only way for them to survive the coming winter was to quit the coast and get back to Fort Enterprise as soon as possible. Even that was a tall order. The journey would become a race against time and weather.
The Coppermine River route was discarded due to the scarcity of sufficient game along its course. Instead, Franklin chose a rather more direct route back to base at Fort Enterprise. They would cross a wide stretch of open water to reach Arctic Sound, at the western shore of Bathurst Inlet. From there they would ascend the Hood River until it became too shallow. After that, they had no choice but to cross the Barrens, using any waterways possible and travelling on land when they had to.
Early in the return journey, on the shores of Arctic Sound, they were fortunate in shooting a few skinny female deer. Those sad creatures gave them enough food to rebuild their strength for a few days, and full bellies gave them hope for the future. On the Hood River they became the first white men to visit Wilberforce Falls. Named by Franklin for a renowned British philanthropist, the two sets of falls have a combined drop of 160 feet (49 metres).
When they eventually left the Hood River, they were looking at a cross-country hike of 149 miles (240 kilometres) to reach a former camp. To reduce the burden each would have to carry, all stores unnecessary for survival—and that included books—were packed in boxes and cached, perhaps to be retrieved sometime in the future.
Now the weather turned worse. Heavy rains were followed by snow drifting in places to a depth of three feet (one metre). With only draughty canvas tents for shelter and old, well-worn blankets for bedding, everyone suffered from the extreme cold and consequent lack of sleep each night. To add to their misery, the food was almost gone and all were hungry. Franklin became so weak that he passed out and had to be revived with a small amount of soup. He wrote of the conditions as they set off once more:
The ground was covered a foot deep with snow, the margins of the lakes were encrusted with ice, and the swamps over which we had to pass were entirely frozen; but the ice not being sufficiently strong to bear us, we frequently plunged knee-deep in water. Those who carried the canoes were repeatedly blown down by the violence of the wind, and they often fell, from making an insecure step on a slippery stone; on one of these occasions, the largest canoe was so much broken as to be rendered utterly unserviceable.
The loss of the large canoe was, as Franklin put it, “a serious disaster.” However, as they had not eaten properly for three days, they put the wreckage to good use. Franklin wrote, “As the accident could not be remedied, we turned it to the best account, by making a fire of the bark and timbers . . . and cooked the remainder of our portable soup and arrowroot.” It wasn’t much of a meal for half-starved men, but it helped.
Because of the snow, the men marched in single file, one behind the other, each treading in footprints made by the leader. Robert Hood walked directly behind the first man, constantly checking compass bearings to keep them on the right track. They were fortunate in flushing out a flock of partridges and were able to bring down 10 of them. With a substantial supply of lichen (called tripe de roche by the Canadian voyageurs) scraped from rocks, they had the makings of a meal. A few slim willow branches dug out of the snow made a fire to cook the food.
Without the large canoe, wide river crossings became a regular trial. Most of them were fast-running and littered with rapids. Paddlers and passengers often overbalanced the small canoe in the turbulent waters; as a consequence, the men were soaked from at least the waist down, and this in temperatures varying between 17 and 24°F (-8 and -4°C).
On September 22, the remaining canoe was dropped and damaged beyond repair. Now the party was in real trouble. River crossings would prove dangerous, if not fatal. Lakes would be impassable. By this time, the voyageurs were convinced they were going to die, and Franklin found it impossible to control them. Some threw away their burdens; others scavenged food and failed to share it. With so little game available, they were all reduced to eating their old shoes, including the once-finicky John Franklin.
Approximately 40 miles (64 kilometres) from Fort Enterprise, they again found the upper reaches of the Coppermine River, which they had to cross. The width at this point, just above a series of rapids, was an estimated 130 yards (119 metres). The water temperature would have been only slightly above freezing point, and the river was fast. Falling in would prove fatal. First, they made an unsuccessful attempt to build a raft out of willows. When that failed, one of the voyageurs fashioned a canoe from tent canvas covering a willow frame. It worked well enough for the party to cross one at a time; a rope pulled the canoe back across the river after each sortie. The date was October 4.
Franklin now sent Midshipman Back and three voyageurs to travel ahead to Fort Enterprise to enlist help from local Natives, if they could be found. Two of the voyageurs remaining with Franklin’s party were too weak by this time to continue and fell by the wayside to die in the snow. At this point, from the advantage of hindsight, Franklin made a significant error of judgment. He allowed his fellow officers to talk him into further separating the party. As a result, Dr. Richardson, Robert Hood and John Hepburn volunteered to stay behind and wait for help. Hood was much too weak to have gone any farther anyway. Franklin invited any voyageurs who felt physically weak to stay with the officers. None did.
Franklin started out with serious misgivings about leaving his fellow officers, but he felt he had little choice. Starvation or death from cold were now real possibilities. The following day, two voyageurs, Belanger and Michel Teroahauté, complained of weakness and begged to be allowed to return to Richardson, Hood and Hepburn. When Franklin finally agreed to release them, Teroahauté asked about the direction and distance to Fort Enterprise—knowledge, perhaps, he felt he would need in the future.
Only a mile or so farther along the trail, Perrault, another voyageur, asked to be allowed to return with his two companions. Franklin agreed and Perrault turned back. Soon another, Fontano, refused to go on, and he too followed their tracks back to the camp. Franklin’s group now comprised only five people, including himself.
Travelling as hard as they could, the small group reached Fort Enterprise without delay, only to find it deserted and devoid of food. There was a note from Midshipman Back. He had arrived two days earlier and had gone in search of Natives to help them. Franklin’s disappointment was acute. He wrote, “It would be impossible to describe our sensations after entering this miserable abode, and discovering how we had been neglected: the whole party shed tears, not so much for our own fate, as for that of our friends in the rear, whose lives depended entirely on our sending immediate relief from this place.”
Before long it became obvious that Franklin was the strongest of his small party, if not physically, then certainly mentally. He now took on the additional role of collecting tripe de roche for food and willows for a fire. Unknown to Franklin, it is almost certain that by this time Teroahauté had murdered Belanger and Perrault and eaten parts of their flesh. More horrors were to follow.
On October 29, Dr. Richardson and Hepburn arrived at Fort Enterprise to join Franklin and his men. Hood was not with the new arrivals. Richardson explained that Hood was dead, and so was Michel Teroahauté. Belanger, Perrault and Fontano had never reached the camp. Only later, after an insignificant meal, did Richardson tell the full story.
Teroahauté had shot Robert Hood in the back of the head on October 20. It was obviously a deliberate act. Hepburn was close by at the time, and although he did not see the action, he did see Teroahauté behind Hood immediately after the shot. Teroahauté insisted that Hood had shot himself, either by accident or by design. Richardson and Hepburn were not convinced. The shot that killed Hood had entered the back of his skull and exited from the front. In fear for their lives, Hepburn volunteered to shoot Teroahauté. Richardson made his own decision. He wrote, “I determined, however, as I was thoroughly convinced of the necessity of such a dreadful act, to take the whole responsibility on myself; and immediately upon Michel’s coming up, I put an end to his life by shooting him through the head with a pistol.”
At the beginning of November, two more of the voyageurs died of starvation and exposure—perhaps also of despair. A few days later, on November 7, relief arrived. Three Natives sent by Back had enough food with them to revive the three emaciated Englishmen and the last of the voyageurs. They also brought word that Back and his companions were now strong enough to continue on to Fort Providence and would meet them there eventually.
“Captain Franklin, R.N.,” a portrait painted soon after the 1819–22 overland expedition.
PETER WINKWORTH COLLECTION. LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA R9266-3036
Franklin, Richardson, Hepburn and their two remaining voyageurs left Fort Enterprise with the Natives on December 1. Ahead of them lay more wilderness terrain, but this time they had skilled help and regular food. Three days later, two Canadian voyageurs coming up from Fort Providence met them on the trail. They had letters for them and a change of clothes. Among the letters was the news from England that Franklin had been promoted to captain and the two midshipmen to lieutenants. Hood, of course, would never know of his promotion. On arriving at Fort Providence, the long ordeal was over. There they were reunited with George Back and spent the rest of the winter at the fort, slowly regaining strength for the long journey back to York Factory by way of Fort Chipewyan and Cumberland House.
Franklin’s depleted party left Fort Providence on May 26 and arrived back at York Factory on July 14, 1822. He calculated that they had travelled 5,550 miles (8,932 kilometres) since they left the HBC post in 1819, all of that distance on foot and in small boats. They still had to cross Hudson Bay and the North Atlantic to get home, but the hard travelling was finally over, for the moment.