Dead Reckoning by Ken McGoogan

Author:Ken McGoogan [McGoogan, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2017-09-25T22:00:00+00:00

17.

Robert McClure Narrowly Escapes Disaster

On April 18, 1851, while John Rae was organizing his epic two-part expedition at Great Bear Lake, roughly five hundred kilometres to the north, with his ship Investigator locked in the ice of Prince of Wales Strait, Captain Robert John Le Mesurier McClure was dispatching three exploratory sledge parties. On May 14, 1851, when Rae was trekking westward along the south coast of Victoria Island, one of McClure’s sledge parties—led by William Haswell—reached the north side of Prince Albert Sound. Ten days later, when Rae reached the south side of that same sound, McClure was compiling the data from his sledging team and waiting impatiently for the ice to clear so he could resume his voyage, complete the Northwest Passage and revel in the ensuing fame and fortune.

Robert McClure had been born in 1807 into an Irish family with military connections. He tried the army but at seventeen, seeing where the excitement was, moved to the Royal Navy. He served on anti-slavery patrols in the Caribbean and rose quickly through the ranks. In 1836–37, he ventured to the Arctic as mate on the Terror under George Back, an expedition that narrowly survived a sustained battle with Arctic ice. In 1848, after serving in North America and the Caribbean, he joined the Franklin search as first lieutenant on the Enterprise under captain James Clark Ross—an expedition that, impeded by heavy ice, spent one winter at Port Leopold, on the northeast coast of Somerset Island, and managed only to investigate 250 kilometres of coastline.

Two years later, the Admiralty decided to send two ships into the Arctic from the Pacific. Under the overall command of Richard Collinson in the Enterprise, McClure took charge of the Investigator. The ships ended up sailing separately, and failed to rendezvous in Honolulu, missing each other by a single day. McClure took a dangerous shortcut through the Aleutian Islands and, on July 31, 1850, arrived in Bering Strait ahead of Collinson. Instead of waiting, as a senior naval officer in another ship recommended, the ambitious McClure kept sailing. On August 7, the Investigator became the first exploring ship to round Point Barrow and enter the Beaufort Sea.

With the help of Moravian missionary Johann Miertsching, who had learned Inuktitut during five years in Labrador, McClure interviewed local Inuit, none of whom had any news of Franklin. The expedition’s primary objective—though not McClure’s—was to obtain intelligence about the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin. To that end, the men hoped to capture foxes alive in traps. They would fit them with special copper collars stamped with the positions of ships and supplies and then release them, hoping that one might be caught by Franklin’s men.

Like other expeditions, this one carried gilt metal “rescue buttons” with words pointing to key locations. These the men would give to any Inuit they encountered, hoping they might wear them and attract the notice of any Franklin survivors. As well, McClure periodically released hydrogen-filled balloons that carried messages on pieces of brightly coloured paper.

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