The Arctic Search For Franklin

"I told the crew of the boat yesterday that I'm sure some day they'll come around the bend and there's going to be the ship and there's going to be the body of Franklin over there, right on the wheel waiting there all this time."  Prime Minister Stephen Harper

So Canada is set to embark on yet another search for Franklin's lost ships, his remains and those of his men.  Not expecting to spend too much in the effort, but hoping that the mystery of his disappearance will at long last be solved.  Of course, just after his disappearance on the third and final of his expeditions looking for the Northwest Passage, there were many search parties launched for the purpose of 'rescuing' Franklin and his men.

His wife was determined that he should be found and brought back directly to her.  Her prodigious lobbying efforts to prod Parliament and the Royal Navy to expend funds and have Royal Navy ships embark on one search after another all came to nothing.  She never gave up hope that her husband would be returned to her, and Britain was persuaded by her public pleading and her connections in high places that it would redound to its reputation to bring him and his crew back.

"The eleven-year search for the lost ships elevated Sir John Franklin to the pantheon of Arctic sainthood.  To the New York Times, he was "one of the ablest, oldest and bravest men who had trodden that perilous path" (the Passage).  The newspaper praised the Franklin expedition and the search that followed as being "as noble an epic as that which has immortalized the fall of Troy or the conquest of Jerusalem.

"There is hardly a man of this generation whom the noble story of Arctic exploration has not moved to the depths of his soul. "  Pierre Berton, The Arctic Grail

The purple prose of the day quite matched the era of the "age of chivalry" that 19th Century exploration exemplified.  As for Jane Franklin herself, her personality became beloved of the British and the Americans; they thought of her as "indomitable".  The very force of her public argument, its heart-rending pleas to the public to subscribe to her determination to ensure that authorities would agree time and again to yet another search for her lost husband, was seen to be inspirational.

"Because of her persistence, seven ships were frozen into the ice of the Arctic archipelago: McClure at Mercy Bay on Banks Island, Collinson at Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island, and Belcher's five vessels in the Wellington Channel, at Beechey Island, and in Melville Sound.

"That was not enough for the resolute and persevering widow.  She had now passed her sixtieth year but had lost none of her energy of commitment.  She clung stubbornly to the belief that her long-dead spouse or some of his men might still be alive."  Pierre Berton, The Arctic Grail, The quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole 1818-1909

And so, it now appears that the Government of Canada has picked up where others shortly after Sir John Franklins's ships, the Erebus and the Terror disappeared, left the issue, unsolved and mysterious.  Parks Canada has been commissioned to pick up where they left off.  Their earlier search that came up with nothing will serve to at least eliminate some of the area for that part of the Arctic Ocean seabed where those sunken ships had sunk.

"The wreckage of the Franklin expedition is a national historic site.  It is the only undiscovered national historic site.  We feel an obligation to discover it.  It is an historic and iconic moment in our country's history, that's why people still write songs about it and essays about it," explained the Prime Minister, in his bid to enthuse the public about the romantic potential of discovery in solving a mysterious disappearance whose answer eluded detection by those in Franklin's Victorian era of exploration.

It is Franklin's name and his alone that is referred to with reference.  The plight of the 130 sailors whose safety and endurance was his responsibility remains an afterthought.  King William Island and the surrounding frozen Arctic have been loathe to surrender the mystery that they have clasped so tightly, for so long, away from human detection.  It remains to be seen whether this man, somewhat past his prime, somewhat incompetent, will yet enjoy another bout of acclaim.

Erebus:
Hecla-class bomb ship / 3 masts / L,B,D 105' x 28.5' x 13.8' - 32m x 8.7m x 4.2m / 372 tons / Hull: wooden / Complement 67 / Arms: 1 x 13" mortar, 1 x 10" mortar, 2 x 6pdr, 8 x 24 pdr / Designed Sir Henry Peake / Built: Pembroke dockyard, Wales 1826.