Prisoners of the North by Pierre Berton

Author:Pierre Berton [Berton, Pierre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-67358-7
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2004-05-24T07:00:00+00:00

Leopold M’Clintock, whose successful discovery of Franklin relics on King William Island brought an end to the great search. He is shown here as a rear admiral.

In July 1858, M’Clintock at last reached Beechey Island where the graves of three of Franklin’s men had been found. He erected a suitable stone tablet in their memory and set out to manoeuvre his little yacht down Peel Sound in the direction he was sure Franklin had taken. When a dike of ice barred his way, he headed instead down Prince Regent Inlet, hoping to make his way into the sound through the narrow channel of Bellot Strait. Six times he tried to force his way through; six times the ice pushed him back. In September he got through as far as the western mouth of the strait when another belt of ice blocked his way. He spent the winter of 1858–59 in a sheltering inlet at the eastern end.

That winter he laid out depots for three sledging expeditions. One would explore Prince of Wales Island. Another would scour the delta of the Great Fish River and the western shore of Boothia. The third would search the north coast of King William Island. Somewhere in that chill and treeless region M’Clintock was certain they would find evidence of the lost expedition.

He was right. Tantalizing clues began to turn up—first an Inuk wearing a naval button, then an entire village where the inhabitants had buttons, a gold chain, silver cutlery, and knives fashioned of wood and iron from the wrecked ships. One native had seen the bones of a white man who had died on an island in the delta of the Great Fish River; others recalled a ship caught in the ice to the west of King William Island. M’Clintock and his deputy, Lieutenant William Hobson, were told of two ships the Inuit had seen, one sunk and one badly broken. White men had been seen, too, hauling boats south to a large river on the mainland.

Soon on their sledging forays they came upon further evidence: silver plates bearing the crests of some of the officers and tales of white men who had dropped in their tracks as they headed for the Great Fish River. In late May, M’Clintock came upon a human skeleton, the body face down, as if its owner had stumbled and dropped forward where his bones lay. And finally, there was a note from Hobson, who had discovered the only written record ever found of the lost Franklin expedition.

In a cairn at Victory Point, Hobson had found a message written on a naval form dated May 28, 1847. It showed that the lost ships had indeed gone up the Wellington Channel, circled around, and wintered at Beechey Island. They had been beset in the ice stream just northwest of King William Island. Lieutenant Graham Gore had taken a party ashore and left the message, certain that their ships would shortly be freed to make their way through the Passage.

Scrawled

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