What happened to the Franklin expedition? All 129 crew members and officers died when their ships were trapped in ice just off King William Island, which is north of Canada.
The Franklin expedition was commanded by Sir John Franklin. He was a British naval officer, an explorer, and a colonial administrator. He had led several expeditions to the Arctic and was an experienced officer. He was tasked with leading two ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror to find the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. The Northwest Passage is frozen for a large part of the year, but people thought that it might be a passable route that would go over the top of Canada and allow ships to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This would save a lot of time and money. Franklin’s job was to find it.
The two ships set off on 19 My 1845. There were 134 men and they had provisions to last through several winters. They carried a lot of tinned food, which had only been invented a short while before. They reached Greenland in July 1845 and five men were sent home, leaving the fabled 129. Those five men were probably offloaded because they were sick and they probably thought it was a bitter disappointment, but it would end up saving their lives.
They sailed from Greenland towards Canada and whaling ships saw them in late July. This was the last time the ships and men would be seen by Europeans. They spent the winter of 1845 to 46 in Beechey Island, which is to the north of Canada. Three men died and were buried there. It was not uncommon to have a certain percentage of a ship’s crew die during a voyage. When other expeditions were sent to find the Franklin crew, this grave was one of the first hints of the route they had taken.
They sailed south towards King William Island through the short summer, but they could not get out before the sea started to freeze again. They were trapped by ship ice and their trips were immobile. They spent the winter of 1846 to 47 trapped on their ships in the bay. They had enough supplies to last that winter as well. Then, in the spring of 1847, a small party left the ship and built a cairn at Victory Point. They placed a not there explaining the situation and saying “all is well”. That summer, Sir John Franklin died. He was 61, which might explain it, and he doesn’t look very healthy in photographs, but there is no cause of death known. By the summer, the ice still hadn’t melted and they couldn’t get out of the bay; The crew were forced to spend their second winter trapped off King William Island and their third winter on the ships.
On 22 April 1848, possibly because they were running out of supplies, or possibly because they didn’t think the sea ice would ever melt, the crew abandoned the ships. They took boats, supplies, and headed across land. Their goal was to reach the Back River on the Canadian mainland. From there, they could row down to civilization. When they reached the Victory Point cairn, they added a new note around the edges of the previous note. It said that 9 officers and 15 sailors had died, leaving 105 survivors. They wrote that they were heading for the Back River. And then they all disappeared.
In 1850, another expedition was sent to find them. They discovered the camp and grave at Beechey Island. A third expedition in 1854 encountered Inuit who told him they had seen groups of starving white men several years earlier. They had also found bodies further south. They possessed objects from the Franklin expedition, such as silverware and a medal of Franklin’s. They also said that the starving men resorted to cannibalism. This was strongly denied by people in England, but when archaeologists finally found the bones of the crew, some of them showed signs of having been butchered.
The note at Victory Point was finally found in 1854, then, in 2014 and 2016, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror were both found. They were in remarkably good condition.
So, what happened to the crew? Nobody knows. There are several theories. The most likely is that they all died from pneumonia or tuberculosis. One of the bodies that was found was infected with TB. They could have been affected by lead poisoning. The cheap tinned food they bought could have been sealed with lead and their water might have been kept in a lead container. They may just have been weakened by starvation. Their food was badly sealed and had started to rot. Plus they had no access to fresh food. Or maybe it was the cold that got them. It could very well have been a mix of all of these factors. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/franklin-expedition-canadian-artic-1845
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_lost_expedition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Franklin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage
https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/nu/epaveswrecks/culture/histoire-history