Originally appearing at: Endicott Studio

I first learned about Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin in a college course named "Polar Exploration and its Literature." I was struck then by how much of polar history was affected by this rather ordinary couple who seemed destined to largely unremarkable lives but found themselves, one dead and one alive, as the center of arctic exploration for decades. How this came to be, and how so much of it was due to the inability of the British government and people to relinquish faith in myths they needed to be true reveals much about the conflict between nature and myth in the mid–nineteenth century. Over 150 years later, the Franklin expedition still elicits endless mystery and sparks stories where the questions of why and how are asked again and again.

When John Franklin departed England in 1845 with 123 men and two ships he was just another in a line of British naval officers seeking the Northwest Passage. This was not his first journey to the north, but he had been out of the region for 16 years in a variety of bureaucratic jobs and was 59 years old. He was not the first choice for the mission but he was the only politically acceptable one. It didn't hurt that Lady Jane successfully petitioned everyone involved in the decision, as she was determined to obtain this assignment for her husband as a way to capture glory she felt he had long been denied. The expedition was sold to the British public as the greatest and most technologically modern effort to find the passage; it could not fail. The President of the Geographical Society, Roderick Murchison, spoke for many at the time when he said, "I have the fullest confidence that everything will be done for the promotion of science, and for the honor of the British name and navy, that human efforts can accomplish. The name Franklin alone is, indeed, a national guarantee."

Two years later the Erebus and Terror were long overdue and, for all intents and purposes, had simply vanished.

The north was seen as far more than a geographic destination long before the Franklin expedition. The Northwest Passage was always about being first, just as the North Pole itself would be in the following century. While everyone wanted to find an open water route for strictly commercial purposes, they wanted to be first for far more significant ones. "It would be somewhat mortifying," said John Barrow, when considering other countries, "if a naval power but of yesterday should complete a discovery in the nineteenth century, which so happily commenced by Englishmen in the sixteenth." Barrow was Second Secretary of the Admiralty and from that perch he directed Arctic exploration. The passage had to exist because he believed it did (he also believed in the Open Polar Sea), and it would be found by the British navy because there was no one better to find it. This firm conviction the British navy had in its own superiority was awesome to behold and contributed a great deal to its almost complete lack of knowledge about the north. When accomplished British whaler William Scoresby first broached the subject of the passage with the Admiralty in 1810, he cautioned that conditions in the Arctic changed from one year to the next, thus making discovery of the passage difficult at best. He was rebuffed in his offers to lead an expedition, however, as he did not carry the appropriate upper class credentials and also because he refused to endorse the myth of the Open Polar Sea, something that was critical to British planning but that Scoresby knew from firsthand experience in the north could not possibly exist. Thus, valuable firsthand knowledge of the region was ignored for the dreams of those who relied upon the open sea story to make the passage more possible.

(Scoresby's reputation did not suffer from his antagonistic relationship with Barrow and indeed found literary immortality when fan Philip Pullman gave his name to the explorer Lee Scoresby in the His Dark Materials trilogy.)

The ironclad belief in the power of the British navy against all odds and in defiance of all reason died hard, on the rare occasion when it was allowed to die at all. As the years went by and the Franklin expedition did not return, Lady Jane galvanized public response and threw all of her collective power as dedicated wife and loyal British subject into spearheading a massive rescue effort to find him and his men, whom all were convinced must be alive. In this endeavor she was aided not only by Franklin's fellow explorers (many of whom had personal friends among his crew), but by the media as well. As Martin Sandler recounts in his comprehensive and highly readable history of the expedition, Resolute, "Newspapers became filled with accounts of past expeditions, of northern discoveries already made, of the ways in which the passage–seekers were bringing greater glory to the nation than even the most honored military heroes, all wrapped around the burning question — where was Franklin?"

Over the next several years one of the greatest search efforts in maritime history unfolded. By modern calculations, the British government spent over 40 million dollars trying to find Franklin and ten ships and at least a dozen searchers were lost in the process. The Americans also launched numerous expeditions, one of which produced its own legendary explorer, Elisha Kent Kane, and another that spawned a tale both bizarre and tragic. Over the years, as explorers continued to crisscross the Arctic in search of clues to the mystery, Franklin was easily elevated to legendary status. John Franklin became the quintessential lost explorer and, as the years went by, his story became less that of a career bureaucrat who was grossly unprepared for his journey and more the story of the British navy itself. He was not a memorable man in real life and yet somehow, in failing so spectacularly, Franklin became greater than all the successful explorers who traveled before (and after) him. As Roald Amundsen later wrote, "What appealed to me most were the sufferings that John Franklin and his men had to endure. A strange ambition burned within me, to endure the same privations. . . .I decided to be an explorer." In death Franklin became a hero to thousands, as long as everyone ignored how preventable his tragedy was, and how many other men had to die in pursuit of his expedition's sad and ignoble truth.

Dan Simmons used the Franklin expedition for the collision of multiple northern myths in his recent thriller, The Terror. Opening in October 1847, after Franklin is now known to have already died, the book explores not only the complete breakdown of civility among the survivors, but throws in both a Yeti–like killer picking them off one by one and a mysterious mute Inuit woman who not only seems to be possibly controlling the monster, but is a virgin who still manages to be sexually aggressive. Lest readers miss any of the allusions, in the text Simmons retells the story of Sedna, the Inuit Goddess of the Sea whose origin myth explains the creation of fish, seals, whales and other sea creatures and whose appeasement was necessary to ensure fair weather and good hunting. Sedna, a beautiful woman who suffered great pain and disfigurement through the callous treatment of her father, demanded that her subjects travel through great peril to pay homage to her. This was a lesson that seems to illustrate the entire search for the Northwest Passage and explains the suffering inherent in all such heroic journeys — but particularly those in the north.

There are two key points in the Franklin myth that Simmons specifically addresses in his book, however: the reliance on cannibalism to stay alive and the lingering questions surrounding the death of Francis Crozier, the captain of the Erebus and the officer who was known to assume overall command upon Franklin's death. The Inuit swore for years that a white stranger was seen near many of their villages, and British explorer Frederick Schwatka was convinced when he was told the stories that it was Crozier who apparently survived but chose not to be rescued. While no one could explain why he would do this — other than the inherent trauma from seeing so many men under his command die in horrible conditions — Simmons uses fiction to suggest that it is not the possibility of shame ("He will always be the captain who let all his men die") that prevents him from seeking civilization, it is for love. "He has to believe that his dreams — mere dreams — and that his love for this woman should make him surrender a lifetime of rationality to become…Become what? Someone and something else."

For Simmons, Crozier was the one given the chance to love the human incarnation of Sedna, and, because she offered him a combination of wildness (especially when it came to sex) and domesticity (a long held myth about native women), he chose to stay. This is what trumped Crozier's commitment to God and country, and even more significantly, his promise to the British navy.

It has long been believed by travelers to the north that a man can be reborn there with a greater sense of clarity and vision; he can see himself and the world in a way that embraces the wild as the true home for personal transformation. This belief is not so different from what many of the explorers actually acknowledged; American Elisha Kent Kane recorded in his journal while searching for Franklin that "An iceberg is one of God's own buildings, preaching its lessons of humility to the miniature structures of man." But could a man like Francis Crozier, who so carefully recorded his location and intentions and assumption of command in a cairn left for rescuers, be expected to abandon his sense of duty out of a personal need for freedom? Could any officer in the British navy do this unless suffering from severe psychological trauma? Simmons cannot say but he does slyly offer up the possibility for why Crozier would want to abandon all aspects of his Englishness; he suggests that members of the crew were hunting and eating each other to stay alive.

Evidence of cannibalism in the expedition was first brought forward by John Rae, an explorer with the Hudson's Bay Company who was widely acknowledged to have a more intimate understanding of Inuit ways and language than any other British explorer. When he arrived in England in 1854 after a long march across much of northwestern Canada, he presented a report to the Admiralty that included numerous recent interactions with the Inuit, many of whom had in their possessions items from the Terror and Erebus. The Inuit told Rae of trading with a group of white men who were traveling south and pulling sledges and communicated that their ship had been lost. The Inuit also revealed the discovery of various graves and bodies found in tents. The further north Rae and his companions traveled in the region Franklin's men were suspected to frequent, the more artifacts he found, including a teaspoon with Crozier's initials, silver forks bearing the initials of the assistant surgeon from the Terror and a round silver plate inscribed "Sir John Franklin, K.C.B." among many other objects. While this news was sad and the relics only cemented his conclusions that there were no survivors, Rae's casual statements about cannibalism blew apart everything else in his report. In recounting the story from one Inuit hunter, Rae recorded:

From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last dread alternative resource — cannibalism — as means of prolonging existence.

To say that Lady Jane was furious or the Admiralty shocked by this statement does not begin to describe their reactions. To protect her husband's reputation, Lady Jane immediately set about doing everything she could to discredit Rae and ruin his career. In this respect she enlisted none other than author Charles Dickens to make her case for a more acceptable explanation of what happened. As Sandler recounts, Dickens chose to write an article on the matter in the weekly journal Household Words:

Lastly, no man can, with any show of reason undertake to affirm that this sad remnant of Franklin's gallant band were not set upon and slain by the Esquimaux themselves. . . .We believe every savage to be in his heart covetous, treacherous, and cruel; and we have yet to learn what knowledge the white man — lost, houseless, shipless, apparently forgotten by his race, plainly famine–stricken, weak, frozen, helpless and dying — has of the gentleness of Esquimaux nature."

So Englishmen = good, Inuit = bad

Although some in the Admiralty agreed with Rae, acknowledging that in severe circumstances no one could know what men would do to survive, in the end, even though he surveyed close to ten thousand miles of Arctic coastline and did it all for English honor, he was, as Sandler records, ". . .the only major nineteenth–century British explorer never to receive a knighthood." Some truths are evidently best left unspoken.

Dan Simmons did not have a backlash to worry about, however, and planned acts of cannibalism serve as a major subplot in The Terror. In his scenario for what took place as the survivors tried to make their way south to the Great Fish River (which Crozier stated as their destination in his final note placed in that cairn on April 25, 1848), the group quickly degenerated into factions, one behind Crozier and the surviving officers and the other behind a group of seaman who were determined to survive whatever the cost. It is clear as the single group splits apart that one is hoping to take some weaker shipmates along, for food. This results in the following insanity:

He had shot Strickland to feed Seeley.
He had shot Dunn to feed Brown.
He had shot Gibson to feed Jerry.
He had shot Best to feed Smith.
He had shot Morfin to feed Orren. . .or perhaps it had been the other way
around.

Simmons weaves a new history for the doomed expedition in his novel, showing that many men, even Dickens' "flower of the trained adventurous spirit of the English Navy," will fall to unimaginable levels of horror to survive. In his story it is not just cannibalism to survive though, but cannibalism as a way of life; it is murder first and meal afterwards.

One can almost certainly hear Lady Jane screaming with outrage from beyond the grave.

Simmons of course is writing a novel and his goal is to both entertain and occasionally terrify; something he does accomplish with aplomb. It is hard to read The Terror however if you recognize the officers and crew more as historic figures than characters for an author's vision of polar fright. The monsters Simmons portrays in his book were real men who died in agony and were mourned by family and friends who thought they were leaving simply for adventure, not catastrophe. Now in this 21st century novel they exist as caricatures of themselves; beasts who carved each other up in an insane gamble to just win more time even after giving up on any chance of rescue or escape. As to why the real survivors were never able to befriend the Inuit, who might have saved them, there is no clear answer (although Simmons has some thoughts on that score as well). The irony that men like John Rae or William Scoresby, men long deemed less deserving for exploration's glory by the Admiralty, could have saved them was likely not lost on at least the officers. They would have known by the end all that they should have learned before leaving England, and how vital so much of the knowledge was that their superiors had so casually dismissed.

Ultimately, the expedition likely failed for multiple reasons. After an extended period trapped on the ice, scurvy was most certainly a factor, as was lead poisoning caused by the tinned foods that were bought in bulk from the lowest contract bidder — a company that did not use the proven methods of sealing and protecting the food. (This was verified by modern testing of the bodies of three crew members who died and were carefully buried early on when Franklin was still alive and the expedition still viable.)

More significantly than those factors, however was Barrow's insistence that if their primary path south through Barrow Strait was closed due to ice, Franklin was to turn north for the Open Polar Sea. These instructions, based on finding safe waters that did not exist, confounded the rescue parties for years. The southern route was apparently not blocked when Franklin arrived, but in years after it was — and so the British consistently turned north, neglecting the wisdom of Scoresby yet again who knew that just because a route was blocked one season did not mean it was blocked the year before. His practical knowledge could not stand up against the infallibility of the Royal Navy or its officers, who were convinced that what they believed was always right. The public supported this belief until the end, always desperate for their military to be right; always determined for their government not to let them down.

Such habits die hard, even in modern times.

The brutal and senseless reality though is that somewhere on the ice, the officers and men of the Erebus and Terror died slowly and painfully for all that they were expected to know but were never taught. Truly, they never had a chance.

There is still the possibility that somewhere in the Arctic a cairn will be found with a last message from Crozier or a last diary from Franklin or one of the other officers that will explain how the situation degraded so badly. Even now this would not be unheard of; in 1871 a legible letter by William Barents was found — it had been written in 1595. Hope springs eternal among polar historians that someday Sir John Franklin will speak from the grave and explain what went wrong. It will likely not be nearly as sexy and exciting as Dan Simmons' interpretation, but riveting nonetheless. Franklin's story, as Sandler shows so well in Resolute, is that of the birth of legends and the death of myths; the final undeniable proof that in the Arctic it is those who live there that will always and only understand it.

Would that it didn't take so many dead Englishmen to learn that truth.