The Romance of Polar Exploration. G. Firth Scott
ships they saw men standing in groups, but instead of answering cheers, the men only looked in their direction. Unable to understand why so much indifference was displayed, Lieutenant Gore and his companions hurried forward, and, as they came nearer, some of the men separated themselves from the groups and came to meet them with slow steps.
Soon the cause of their depression was made known to the returned explorers. The leader of the expedition lay dying in his cabin on board the Erebus.
Lieutenant Gore, his enthusiasm at his success sadly damped, went on board the flagship at once, hoping that the news of victory might still be given to Sir John before he died. He was led into the cabin and briefly told the story of his journey, and how, from Point Victory, he had looked out over to the coast of the mainland. The news, the last which Sir John Franklin was to hear on earth, was perhaps the sweetest he had ever known, for it meant that he had triumphed and had won a lasting name and memory for his services to Sovereign and State. On June 11, 1847, his life ended at the moment of his brightest achievement.
Captain Crozier, of the Terror, assumed command of the expedition, and as summer was at hand, everything was made ready against the time when the ice would break up. Ice-saws were fixed ready to cut passages through the floes when they began to separate, and ice-anchors were run out so that the vessels could be warped along whenever an opening occurred. Daily the crews mustered on board and looked over the ice for some sign of the breaking of their imprisonment, for some loosening of the iron grip of the ice round their vessel's sides, but all in vain. The two ships were wedged in a vast mass of ice, through which it was impossible to cut their way. Instead of breaking up in lesser fields and floes of ice, the mass remained packed, creaking, crashing, and straining by night and day as it slowly made its way nearer the coast of the mainland, carrying the ships with it until they were within 15 miles of Point Victory, and 60 miles of the mainland coast.
Soon the short summer months had passed and the dark period of winter was upon them again, with the provisions daily growing scarcer, and the hope of getting their ships out of the ice fainter. Another evil came upon them when among the members of the crew scurvy, the dreaded enemy of the early Polar explorers, broke out. By the following April twenty of their number had succumbed to it, nine being officers, one of whom was Lieutenant Gore.
On April 22, 1848, the remaining 105 officers and men gathered on the ice around the two ships. They had with them sledges laden with what provisions were left, and two whale-boats. Slowly and sorrowfully they bade farewell to the vessels which had been their homes for nearly three years, and set out to march over the ice to the mainland. Their plan was to push on until they reached the Great Fish River, where they might obtain succour either from travelling bands of Indians or at some outlying station of the Hudson Bay Company. Travelling at the rate of five miles a day, so rough and difficult was the route, they arrived on April 25 at the cairn where Lieutenant Gore had left the record of his journey over a year before. The canister in which it was enclosed was opened, and round the margin was written this brief, pathetic story:—
"April 25, 1848. H.M.S. Terror and Erebus were deserted on April 22, five leagues N.N.W. of this point, having been beset since September 12, 1846. The officers and men, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F. R. M. Crozier, landed here in lat. 69° 37' 42" N., long. 98° 41' W. The paper was found by Lieutenant Irving in a cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831, four miles to the north, where it had been deposited by the late Commander Gore in June 1847. Sir James Ross's pillar has not, however, been found, and the paper has been transferred to this position, which, it is thought, is where Sir James Ross's pillar was erected. Sir John Franklin died on June 11, 1847, and the total loss of life by death in the expedition has been to this date nine officers and fifteen men. Start to-morrow, April 26, for Back's Fish River."
The record, left as a sign, should it ever be found, of the direction they had taken, the party resumed their dreary march over the frozen shores of King William's Land. The men formed themselves into teams for the purpose of dragging the sledges and whale-boats, and the officers marched beside them, helping them and encouraging them. Even the snail's pace of five miles a day became too severe a strain for many of the men, weakened as they were by attacks of scurvy and reduced rations. Soon it became evident that if a place were to be reached where help and food could be obtained before the provisions were absolutely exhausted, it would be necessary for the stronger to push forward at a more rapid rate.
A council was held, and it was decided that the strongest should take enough supplies to last them for a time and push forward as rapidly as possible, while the remainder should follow at a slower rate and by shorter stages. The majority were in the latter division, and only a few days elapsed after the smaller band, numbering about thirty, had left, before the ravages of scurvy and semi-starvation made it impossible for even less than five miles a day to be covered. So debilitated were all the members that further advance was abandoned until they had, by another long rest, tried to recuperate their energies. But the terrible bleakness of the place where they were wrought havoc among them, and every day men fell down never to rise again, until the only hope for the survivors lay in returning to the ships, where, at least, they would have shelter. Wearily they staggered over the rugged ice ridges, each man expending his remaining energies in striving to carry the provisions, without which only death awaited them. Men fell as they walked, unnoticed by their companions, whose only aim was to get back to the ships, and whose faculties were too dimmed to understand anything else. Blindly, but doggedly, they stumbled onward, silent in their agony, brave to the last when worn-out nature gave way and they sank down, one after the other, till none was left alive, and only the still figures, lying face downwards on the frozen snow, bore mute witness of how they had neither faltered nor wavered in their duty, but had died, as Britons always should die, true to the end.
Their comrades who had left them to push forward for help were equally stolid in their struggle against overwhelming odds. As they were crossing the ice between King William's Land and the mainland, a great cracking of the floes startled them with the fear that the ice was breaking up. Hastily placing their stores in the whale-boat, which they had been dragging in addition to the hand-sledges, they abandoned everything else, fearful lest the sudden opening of the floes might cut them off from a further advance. Harnessing themselves to ropes, they toiled and struggled onward with the boat. They reached the mainland, but at a terrible sacrifice, for in their haste they had left much of their scanty supplies behind. Their food ran out and hope was almost dead, when they espied a small camp of Eskimo.
Fresh life came to them as they learned that they were nearly up to the Great Fish River, and they bartered away some spoons and forks, Sir John Franklin's star, part of a watch and some other metal articles to the Eskimo for a recently killed seal. Had they waited longer with the natives, they might have obtained more food and have recovered somewhat from their fatigue, but in the mind of each was the memory of their stricken comrades toiling on behind, and hoping from day to day for the arrival of relief. Personal feelings were forgotten before that memory, and the gallant little party resumed its way, fighting with all the dauntless bravery of heroes to win help for their weaker friends—fighting till their limbs refused to move, till their starving bodies were numbed and frozen. Then, falling in their own footsteps, they passed away, one by one, silent and uncomplaining, to the list of Britain's honoured dead.
CHAPTER III THE SEARCH FOR FRANKLIN
Captain Parker's Report—Government offers a Reward—Dr. Rae's Expedition—Captain McClure's Voyage in the Investigator—Hardships and Perils—The Meeting with the Herald—Lady Franklin still Hopeful—Sir F. L. McClintock's Expedition in the Fox with Lieutenant Hobson—Their Sad and Fatal Discoveries—Lieutenant Schwatka recovers the Body of Lieutenant Irving.
The enthusiasm which was aroused over the departure of Sir John Franklin's expedition gave place to a deep national anxiety as the years passed without any word being received of its whereabouts. On October 4, 1849, the Truelove arrived at Hull from Davis Straits, and her commander, Captain Parker, reported that he had heard from some Eskimo