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Forty years ago I edited a collection of letters written by a man who in 1858 was sent ‘Out East’ to work. He was related to, and bore one of the names of, Sir John Franklin, the explorer whose 1847 expedition to find the Northwest Passage, linking the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic archipelago, disappeared without trace. The lost expedition was the subject of dozens of search attempts for many years afterwards and for a while achieved much publicity in the newspapers. Franklin and the searches that followed his disappearance, as well as the clues that came to light years afterwards, have interested me ever since. In 1845 Sir John Franklin was given command of HMS Terror which was accompanied by HMS Erebus commanded by Captain James Fitzroy. Provided with plenty of equipment and three years’ worth of food supplies (some of which was preserved in tins, sloppily soldered, allowing lead to leach into the crew’s food), the expedition set off on 19 May with a total complement of 24 officers and 110 men, reduced to 115 men after five were discharged during a stop in Greenland. On 26 July the two ships were seen by a whaler in Lancaster Sound, after which they were never seen again. It is believed that the ships became trapped in ice off King William Sound in September 1846 and sank. According to a note found there, Franklin died on 11 June 1847, though his grave has never been discovered. After two years without word from the expedition, Lady Franklin pressured the Admiralty to send out a search party and a £20,000 reward was eventually offered to anyone finding the expedition. It is said that at one point ten British and two American ships were looking for it, and some were lost in the attempt. In 1850 three British ships and one American ship converged off Beechy Island where the first relics of Franklin's expedition were found, including the graves of three of its seamen. In 1854 Inuit hunters told a Scottish explorer, Dr. John Rae, that both ships had become icebound. The men had tried to walk to safety but succumbed to cold, and some had even resorted to cannibalism. In the 1980s toxicological tests on the Beechy Island bodies showed that they had most probably died of pneumonia and perhaps also tuberculosis. Lead poisoning may well have been a factor. Blade-cut marks on the bones of some of the crew found on King William Island confirmed that some had indeed resorted to cannibalism. In 1850 the Admiralty commissioned another attempt and gave the command to Captain Robert John Le Mesurier McClure who had been involved in the first search expedition. He was given HMS Investigator which, with a crew of 66, sailed south in the Atlantic, rounded Cape Horn and then north through the Pacific by way of the Bering Strait to join another British expedition from the northwest, thus becoming the first to circumnavigate the Americas and to transit the Northwest Passage. After two winters in which his ship was icebound, McClure and his men abandoned the ship and, after a journey over the ice by sledge, were rescued by HMS Resolute. Now, 150 years after it was abandoned, HMS Investigator has been found sitting upright on the sea bottom in 36 feet of freezing water off Bank’s Island in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Canadian archaeologists have taken sonar images of the ship and hope to take more this week. They hope also to use a robot, equipped with cameras, to learn more about the ship and its condition. One of the archaeologists has said that the discovery of the ship and some artefacts found on shore are an ‘incredibly rich treasure trove.” Yet another exciting maritime discovery, and further details will interest many people around the world. It would be even more spectacular if marine archaeologists could locate the wreck of Sir John Franklin’s ship, HMS Terror.
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Sir John Franklin, HMS Investigator, Northwest Passage, maritime expeditions, Captain Robert John Le Mesurier McClure, Bank’s Island, Lady Franklin, H,
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