Or
It’s Four AM and I Feel the Need to Share Dark and Morbid Thoughts
The astute reader of my posts will probably realize, by now, that I’ve long had a fascination with the sea, and in particular polar exploration. It’s a fascination I’ve long held. The focus on polar exploration began in my early teens when I first heard the story of the race for the South Pole between Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen. I’ve read many of the primary documents of those expeditions, and also of Shackleton’s last expedition. And of the three leaders I have the most respect for Shackleton. A position I doubt that many will dispute.
So, how is it that I never, ever, heard of Sir John Franklin’s doomed attempt to find the Northwest Passage? According to the linked Wikipedia article there was a great deal of renewed interest during the years of 1982-86, while I was in high school, as various expeditions exhumed the known remains of the doomed effort, and began to understand some of the many things that had gone wrong for those explorers. (mutter mutter) I should have known about this sooner, curse it!
Looking over things, I see that I’ve now got an excuse to put off my scheduled readings about Attaturk. After all, Doomed Polar Expeditions are even more important to read about, and understand, than some minor, national figure of recent history.
More seriously, the sole communication left by the expedition is hugely confusing and disturbing, and the more I think about it the more I find it so. Link
First off, by the latter note’s testimony, the two ships - HMS Erebus and Terror had been locked in the ice for over eight months. And still the OIC of the expedition that left the earlier (28 May 1847) note was confident enough to include, “All Well,” in his note. Which seems to be in contradiction of the fact of the three graves from the first winter’s site found at Beechey Island. Yet, by the testimony of the second note, Sir John Franklin died on the 11th of June, 1847. Not two weeks after the date on the first note.
The two details that I find most chilling, however are not related to the evidence pointing towards cannibalism among the last survivors, nor the finding of the lost boat with the skeletal remains. They are there, in the note, again.
First, the man who set down that first, positive, note signed it: Gm. Gore, Lieut. The second note refers to having retrieved this note, of “the late Commander Gore,” and then mentions that, so far the expedition had lost 9 officers and 15 men.
If we deduct the three men who were buried that first year, as I think we ought, that means that between the date of the first and second notes, officers were dying almost as often as the enlisted men: 9 officers to 12 men. And the promotions were flying fast and furious, too.
I wonder a number of dark things.
First, I’m going to assume that the ratio of officers to enlisted men was on the general order of one officer per ten men. This is only meant to be a rough guesstimate, but one that is extremely heavy in officers from what I recall of the Age of Sail or early steam. I cannot find a detailed personnel list for the expedition online, though this article (warning, pdf) makes it clear that the total aboard the ships was 129 officers and men, including four cabin boys. But it still serves to make the point: At the time that the second note was left, it is certainly possible that the only surviving officers were the two who signed the note. Given that officer’s mess would usually be better food, higher quality, I find it hard to believe that the cause of this disproportionate mortality would have been simple ill health. Mutiny comes to mind as a possibility.
The second, and even darker thought, is that aside from those first three bodies, none of the remains found were without evidence that could be indicative of cannibalism. Which might be an explanation for why there were no further graves found associated with the expedition. The cannibalism assumed to have been a last resort of dying men may well have begun before they ever left the ships.
I am not trying to paint the British seaman as a ravening beast kept in check only by the unstinting effort of the better classes in the officer corps. But, by the same token, ignoring the class fissures in British society of the time seems remarkably Pollyannaish. If military discipline were frayed by a feeling of betrayal by the officers who equipped and lead this expedition, I could easily see the ordinary seamen taking steps to make their displeasure known. Including forerunners to the Vietnam practice of fragging.
Instead of Crozier and FitzJames leaving the ships in a desperate attempt to save what they could of their crews, it may have been that leaving the ships was a desperate attempt to be seen to be doing something, so that the crew wouldn’t take out its frustration and fear on them, as it had on the rest of the officer corps.
It also offers a further potential explanation for why the expedition left so few records. Scott’s last expedition left notes at every supply cache, and even at the last, Scott was still making notes. Even taking comfort from having maintained the proper relationship between the quarterdeck and the men. If the officers of the expedition had lost control to the degree I’m suggesting as a possibility, I’m not sure I’d expect them to want to ensure a record of their failures survived.