Odd this day

23 May — yes, of course: the 204th anniversary of John Franklin setting out from Gravesend on his expedition to cross the snowy wastes of northern Canada in search of the Northwest Passage, during which he would nearly die and be forced to eat lichen and his boots to survive.

Things did not start well. Midshipman George Back had them stop off Norfolk “upon some business at a house two or three miles from Yarmouth”, according to Franklin’s Narrative of a Journey to the shores of the Polar Sea in the years 1819–22.

Fergus Fleming, in his book Barrow’s Boys, is rather more specific about the nature of the ‘business’

Then, while Back was tucking his shirt in, a favourable wind arose and Franklin had to sail off, leaving Back to find his way to their next stop in the Orkneys. Thrashing his way north by coach and finishing with a thirty-mile boat crossing, Back arrived at Stromness nine days later, only a few hours behind Franklin, to find a celebratory dance already underway in the local hall. Unfazed, he threw himself into proceedings with vigour and ‘could not be prevailed to withdraw from the agreeable scene until a late hour’.

When they got to the Orkneys to recruit ten more men, they found a sudden increase in herring fishing that year meant they could only get four. They managed one more when they got to Canada — and all five refused to do even half the rest of the journey.

So, they set out on the 1,700 mile trek to the ominously named Great Slave Lake anyway. To succeed, of course, they would need supplies from the Hudson Bay Company and/or the North West Company.

The bitter rivalry between the two companies “reduced the capacity of either to give the help so desperately required”, according to the introduction to To the Arctic by canoe, 1819–1821 the journal of midshipman Robert Hood.

The only boat Franklin could get was too small to carry all his supplies, but he was promised they’d be sent on, and apparently believed this. They set out for their first staging post: Cumberland House. If it had been anywhere else, that would have been an auspicious name.

This was the Arctic. It was a log cabin, where they spent the winter of 1819–20, which was so harsh that the indigenous people they met said game was scarce — and Barrow’s Boys says

some families had started eating each other

Franklin et al had had to abandon more of their supplies on the way, just to make it that far. Did they allow this to put them off, though, these upstanding English gentlemen? They did not.

Franklin left on 8 January for Fort Chipewyan, taking Back and Hepburn with him, to arrange voyageurs and supplies for the next leg of their journey. He was quite unprepared for the long march overland through Canada’s pine forests. The weather was abominably cold: their thermometers froze, their scientific instruments froze, their tea froze seconds after it had been poured. At night they too froze, in the absence of any tents. They counted it a stroke of fortune if an insulating layer of snow fell on their blankets.

You might ask why they were doing this, and the answer is that naval chaps in this era, with Napoleon out of the way, found themselves under-employed and on half pay, and needed to be kept busy. John Barrow, Second Secretary at the Admiralty, thought exploration was just the ticket.

That’s from geology professor Walter Kupsch’s introduction to Robert Hood’s To the Arctic by canoe book, which also mentions the “glory, curiosity, and folly” of “the narratives of arctic explorers”.

Another factor was that an earlier maritime mission to find the Northwest Passage had failed so ignominiously, it had severely damaged the reputation of its leader, John Ross — so Franklin had to anticipate Samuel Beckett and fail better.

Still, they made it to Fort Chipewyan, where they met their colleague John Richardson, who had gone a different way to get supplies. He had acquired some pemmican — a mixture of fat and dried meat — but most of it had gone off, so he only had enough for one day.

Obviously, they kept going anyway, and at the trading post Fort Providence met Akaitcho, leader of the Yellowknives First Nation who was to be their guide. When Franklin told him the Northwest Passage would bring wealth

Their aim was to travel down the Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean, map as much coastline as they could, and meet up with William Edward Parry who was exploring by ship. They reached Fort Enterprise, seen at the top of this map, at the end of summer 1820.

That ‘end of summer’ meant a second winter in Canada, and another period of near starvation. George Back was sent on a 1,200 mile solo trek, in snowshoes, for supplies, and not only did he miraculously not die, he brought enough food back to keep them going.

They finally set out for the mouth of the Coppermine river in June 1821, saw the ocean on 14 July, and their Yellowknife guides left. Franklin asked them to stock the route back and Fort Enterprise with food.

The men succeeded in mapping 500 miles of coast (in canoes), but rough seas stopped them getting back, so they headed up a different river, disembarked and headed across the uncharted and not very invitingly named Barren Lands.

If things hadn’t exactly been going swimmingly so far, this was where they took a turn for the properly disastrous. The ground cut their feet, the canoes were too heavy to carry, winter set in early, and by September they’d run out of food again

They started eating the lichen they managed to scrape off rocks. There are four local types, only one of which doesn’t give you the shits. They could only find the other three. Apart from old wolf kills, the only other food, according to surgeon-naturalist John Richardson, was…

Still, they managed to get back to the Coppermine, and eventually across it, and back to Fort Enterprise. Which was not stocked with food. They ate old deerskins and the fly grubs they were infested with. Richardson said they were “as fine as gooseberries”.

The clearly intrepid George Back went out in search of Akaitcho, found him, and he — amazingly — came through with enough food to save their lives. When asked why it hadn’t been there waiting for them, he was admirably honest:

Mind you, they’d had to leave Richardson and Hood behind with an Iroquois guide called Michel Terohaute, and that hadn’t gone all that well for them.

Previously a valued companion, he had become unco-operative, dictatorial, and threatening and Richardson and Hepburn became convinced that meat he brought in, saying it was wolf, was human. On 20 October 1821 they heard a shot and found Hood dead. Terohaute, standing by, claimed he had killed him accidentally. On 23 October the three men set out for Fort Enterprise. Michel, stronger and better armed, became increasingly menacing. Richardson, the senior officer, executed him with a shot through the head, ‘a dreadful act’, he said, but necessary.

Still, they made it back to Blighty — or, at least, some of them did — and were fêted for their achievements. They had failed utterly in their mission to meet up with Parry and find the Northwest Passage. However, they had eaten their shoes and come extremely close to death. They had failed heroically. So, they weren’t put off exploring, although it might have been better if they had. Franklin went back to the Arctic in 1823. And 1845, when he didn’t come back.

Mind you, no one came back from that expedition. Find out more in two days’ time: the first of their remains were found on 25 May 1859…