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55-980: Sir John Franklin KCH FRS FLS FRGS (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer and colonial administrator. After serving in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 , he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and through the islands of the Arctic Archipelago , during the Coppermine expedition of 1819 and the Mackenzie River expedition of 1825, and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1837 to 1843. During his third and final expedition , an attempt to traverse

110-798: A cairn on Arthurs Seat , a small mountain just inside Port Phillip Bay in Victoria , Australia, that he had visited as a midshipman with Captain Matthew Flinders in April 1802. On this trip he was accompanied by Captain Reid of The Briars and Andrew Murison McCrae of Arthurs Seat Station, now known as McCrae Homestead . Exploration of the Arctic coastal mainland after Franklin's second Arctic expedition had left less than 500 km (311 mi) of unexplored Arctic coastline. The British decided to send

165-631: A career at sea, so in March 1800, Franklin's father secured him a Royal Navy appointment on HMS  Polyphemus . Commanded by Captain Lawford, the Polyphemus carried 64 guns and, at the time of Franklin's appointment, was still at sea. He did not join the vessel until the autumn of 1800. Initially serving as a first-class volunteer, Franklin soon saw action in the Battle of Copenhagen in which

220-523: A cove. The ship, probably the Terror , was very neat and orderly, but the Inuit descended into the darkness of the hull with their seal-oil lamps, where they found a tall dead man in an inner cabin. Grenier believes it was there they recovered the copper, which was more valuable than gold to them, and tools, including shears from the ship's workshop with which to work it. Hauntingly, they also reported that one of

275-531: A crew of 24 officers and 110 men. The ships travelled north to Aberdeen and the Orkney Isles for supplies. From Scotland, the ships sailed to Greenland with HMS  Rattler and a transport ship, Barretto Junior . After misjudging the location of Whitefish Bay on Disko Island , the expedition backtracked and finally harboured in that far north outpost to prepare for the rest of their voyage. Five crew members were discharged and sent home on

330-496: A note later found on that island, Franklin died there on 11 June 1847 , but the exact location of his grave is unknown. After two years and no word from the expedition, Lady Franklin urged the Admiralty to send a search party. Because the crew carried supplies for three years, the Admiralty waited another year before launching a search and offering a £20,000 reward (equivalent to £2,308,624 in 2023) for finding

385-483: A small number were Irishmen and Scotsmen. Erebus and Terror were sturdily built and were outfitted with recent inventions. These included steam engines from the London and Greenwich Railway that enabled the ships to make 4 knots (7.4 km/h; 4.6 mph) on their own power, a unique combined steam-based heating and distillation system for the comfort of the crew and to provide large quantities of fresh water for

440-488: A storm which threatened to drive them onto the ice. The storm died down but Dorothea was too damaged to continue in the Arctic. Franklin wanted to continue with Trent but Buchan overruled him. They reached home on 30 September. Buchan returned to Newfoundland in 1819. Although he intended to return the Beothuk woman Demasduit to her people, she died of tuberculosis before he was able to make any additional contact with

495-473: A well-equipped Arctic expedition to complete the charting of the Northwest Passage. After Sir James Clark Ross declined an offer to command the expedition, an invitation was extended to Franklin, who, despite being 59 years old, accepted what was to become Franklin's lost expedition . A younger man, Commander James Fitzjames , was given command of HMS  Erebus , and Franklin was named

550-452: A wide variety of careers. Educated at King Edward VI Grammar School in Louth , he soon became interested in a career at sea. His father, who intended for Franklin to enter the church or become a businessman, was initially opposed but was reluctantly convinced to allow him to go on a trial voyage on a merchant ship when he was aged 12. His experience of seafaring only confirmed his interest in

605-693: The Franklin River and the town of Franklin in Tasmania, as well as many streets and schools, including Sir John Franklin School, Calgary, AB. The Australian oceanographic research vessel RV  Franklin and the Canadian Coast Guard vessel CCGS  Sir John Franklin both bear his name. The wintering site of Franklin's second Canadian expedition, in Délı̨nę , Northwest Territories ,

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660-610: The Northwest Passage in 1845, Franklin's ships became icebound off King William Island in what is now Nunavut , where he died in June 1847. The icebound ships were abandoned ten months later, and the entire crew died from causes such as starvation, hypothermia , and scurvy . Franklin was born in Spilsby , Lincolnshire, on 16 April 1786 , the ninth of twelve children born to Hannah Weekes and Willingham Franklin. His father

715-614: The Polyphemus participated as part of Horatio Nelson 's squadron. An expedition around the coast of Australia aboard HMS  Investigator , commanded by Captain Matthew Flinders , followed, with Franklin now a midshipman . He accompanied Captain Nathaniel Dance on the Earl Camden , frightening off Admiral Charles de Durand-Linois at the Battle of Pulo Aura in the South China Sea on 14 February 1804 . He

770-687: The Rattler and Barretto Junior , reducing the ships' final crew size to 129. The expedition was last seen by Europeans on 26 July 1845 , when Captain Dannett of the whaler Prince of Wales encountered Terror and Erebus moored to an iceberg in Lancaster Sound . It is now believed that the expedition wintered on Beechey Island in 1845–46. Terror and Erebus became trapped in ice off King William Island in September 1846. According to

825-713: The Société de Géographie of France. On 25 January 1836 , he was made Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order and a Knight of the Greek Order of the Redeemer . Franklin was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land in 1837 but was removed from office in 1843. He is remembered by a significant landmark in the centre of Hobart —a statue of him dominates the park known as Franklin Square , which

880-500: The Beothuk. Buchan later ordered additional efforts to return Demasduit's niece, Beothuk woman Shanawdithit , to her family but she refused to go with any European expedition. As far as she knew, all her people had died. David Buchan was promoted to captain in the Royal Navy on 12 June 1823, but was removed from the active list the same year. He was appointed High Sheriff of Newfoundland from 1825 to 1835. In December 1838, he

935-665: The British throne. When Hanover was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1866, the order continued as a house order to be awarded by the Royal House of Hanover. Today, its current Sovereign is the Hanoverian head of the house, Ernst August, Prince of Hanover . The insignia was based on the white horse on Hanover's arms. The Order includes two divisions, Civil and Military, the latter indicated by crossed swords on both

990-582: The Franklin party. In October 2009, marine archaeologist Robert Grenier outlined recent discoveries of sheet metal and copper which have been recovered from 19th-century Inuit hunting sites. Grenier firmly believes these pieces of metal once belonged to the Terror and formed the protective plating of the ship's hull. A quote from the British newspaper The Guardian states: After studying 19th-century Inuit oral testimony – which included eyewitness descriptions of starving, exhausted men staggering through

1045-606: The Scilly Islands they encountered a French fleet. Adonis was too small meaningfully to defend the convoy and in fact only escaped by jettisoning all her guns. The 1818 Spitzbergen expedition was nearly the first the many Arctic expeditions that followed the Napoleonic Wars. It set out at the same time as that of John Ross into Baffin Bay. Both were prompted by the interest of John Barrow in Arctic exploration and

1100-627: The Scottish explorer John Rae , while surveying the Boothia Peninsula for the Hudson's Bay Company, discovered the true fate of the Franklin party from talking to Inuit hunters. He was told both ships had become icebound, and the men had tried to reach safety on foot but had succumbed to cold, and some had resorted to cannibalism. Forensic evidence of cut marks on the skeletal remains of crew members found on King William Island during

1155-1243: The Victorian era portrayed Franklin as a hero who led his men in the quest for the Northwest Passage . A statue of Franklin in his home town bears the inscription: "Discoverer of the North West Passage". Statues of Franklin outside the Athenaeum Club in London and in Tasmania bear similar inscriptions. There is also a memorial to him in the Chapel of St Michael at Westminster Abbey . Many geographic locales are named after Franklin, among them Franklin Island in Antarctica , Franklin Island in Greenland , Franklin Strait in northern Canada, Franklin, Quebec , Franklin Sound north of Tasmania, and

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1210-516: The badge and star. It originally had three classes, but with several reorganisations since 1841, as house order today it has four classes and an additional Cross of Merit. In descending order of seniority the classes are: Holders of the respective degrees of the order in Britain were entitled to be post-nominally addressed with the initials, which stand for Knight Grand Cross of Hanover, Knight Commander of Hanover and Knight of Hanover. The initial GCG

1265-667: The dwindling native Beothuk population, one of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas in the region. The expedition resulted in the death and decapitation of two marines at their hands. In 1813, Adonis and the frigate Rosamond escorted the Newfoundland fishing fleet back to Britain. The voyage was stormy and the vessels separated near the English Channel. Adonis regained the convoy but as they approached

1320-730: The east. At this time, the only known points on the north coast were a hundred or so miles east from the Bering Strait, the mouth of the Mackenzie, Franklin's stretch east of the Coppermine, and a bit of the Gulf of Boothia which had been seen briefly from the land.) Supplies were better organised this time, in part because they were managed by Peter Warren Dease of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). After reaching Great Slave Lake using

1375-419: The engine's boilers, a mechanism that enabled the iron rudder and propeller to be drawn into iron wells to protect them from damage, ships' libraries of more than 1,000 books, and three years' worth of conventionally preserved or tinned preserved food supplies. The tinned preserved food was supplied by a cut-rate provisioner who was awarded the contract a few months before the ships were to sail. Though

1430-650: The expedition commander. Captain Francis Crozier , who had commanded HMS  Terror during the Ross expedition of 1841–1844 to the Antarctic , was appointed executive officer and commander of Terror . Franklin was given command on 7 February 1845 , and received official instructions on 5 May 1845 . The crew was chosen by the Admiralty . Most of them were Englishmen, many were from northern England, and

1485-415: The expedition. The money and Franklin's fame led to many searches. At one point, ten British and two American ships, USS  Advance and USS  Rescue , headed for the Arctic. Eventually, more ships and men were lost looking for Franklin than in the expedition itself. Ballads such as " Lady Franklin's Lament ", commemorating Lady Franklin's search for her lost husband, became popular. In

1540-468: The fact that in 1817 whalers reported that the normal ice between Greenland and Spitzbergen had disappeared. The ships were HMS Dorothea (Captain Buchan, first lieutenant Arthur Fleming Morrell , astronomer George Fisher ) and HM brig Trent under John Franklin who was later famous for his disappearance in the Arctic. They left London on 4 April 1818 and reached Spitzbergen in June. They found that

1595-567: The haste with which the provisioner had prepared thousands of cans of food led to sloppily-applied beads of solder on the cans' interior edges, allowing lead to leach into the food. The water distillation system too may have used lead piping and lead-soldered joints, which would have produced drinking water with a high lead content. And some blame lead poisoning for poor leadership decisions and crew ill-discipline. The Franklin Expedition set sail from Greenhithe , England, on 19 May 1845 , with

1650-543: The ice had returned to normal. They entered Magdalena Bay on the west coast where they were frozen in for a few weeks. Escaping the bay they worked their way north through leads in the ice, often dragging the ships with ropes. By early July they were about 30 miles into the ice and could go no further. They were a little north of 80°, about the same latitude as northernmost Spitzbergen. No European had sailed this far north except William Scoresby . It took only nine days to return to open water, but almost immediately they were hit by

1705-475: The ice of the Great Bear Lake; Délı̨nę, built on the site of Fort Franklin, thus considers itself to be one of the birthplaces of the sport. On 5 November 1828 , he married Jane Griffin , a friend of his first wife and a seasoned traveller who proved indomitable in the course of their life together. On 29 April 1829 , he was knighted by George IV and the same year awarded the first Gold Medal of

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1760-659: The late 20th century somewhat supported the Inuit accounts of reported cannibalism . Rae's report to the Admiralty was leaked to the press, which led to widespread revulsion in Victorian society , enraged Franklin's widow, and condemned Rae to ignominy. Lady Franklin's efforts to eulogise her husband, with support from the British Establishment , led to a further 25 searches over the next four decades, none of which would add much further information of note regarding Franklin and his men, but contributed hugely to

1815-476: The leadership of her husband. Lady Franklin may have worked to have the Lieutenant-Governor's private botanical gardens, established in 1818, managed as a public resource. Lady Franklin also established a glyptotheque and surrounding lands to support it near Hobart. Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin adopted the daughter of the chief of an indigenous Australian tribe. She was renamed Mathinna and

1870-483: The mapping of the Arctic. In the mid-1980s, Owen Beattie, a University of Alberta professor of anthropology , began a 10-year series of scientific studies that showed that the Beechey Island crew had most likely died of pneumonia and perhaps tuberculosis . Toxicological reports indicated that lead poisoning was also a possible factor. In 1997, more than 140 years after his report, Dr. Rae's account

1925-471: The masts was on fire. Grenier wonders if what they saw was the funnel from the galley still smoking from a meal cooked that morning before the last of Franklin's men disappeared from history. A memorial to Franklin was set up almost immediately on the assumption of his death. This is in Westminster Abbey to a design of Matthew Noble . For years after the loss of the Franklin party, the media of

1980-489: The national monument to Sir John Franklin. It was a celebration of the contributions made by the United Kingdom in the charting of northern Canada , and honoured the loss of life in the pursuit of geographical discovery. The service also marked the 150th anniversary of Francis McClintock 's voyage aboard the yacht Fox , and that expedition's return to London with news of the tragedy. Franklin's time in Tasmania

2035-439: The nickname of "the man who ate his boots". In 1823, after returning to England, Franklin married the poet Eleanor Anne Porden . Their daughter, Eleanor Isabella, was born the following year. His wife died of tuberculosis in 1825. Eleanor Isabella married Reverend John Philip Gell in 1849. She died in 1860. In 1825, he left for his second Canadian and third Arctic expedition, the Mackenzie River expedition . The goal this time

2090-568: The northwest coast of King William Island; archaeologists believe the Terror must have been crewed and sailed to its new location, as the anchor was used and it was sailed through a maze of islands and channels. The wrecks are designated as the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site , with the precise locations of the discoveries undisclosed. Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order Until 1837

2145-498: The order was frequently awarded to officers in the British Navy and Army , although it was still classed as a foreign order, with British members of the order not entitled to style themselves as "Sir" unless they were also created Knights Bachelor , as many were. The British link ended in 1837 when Hanover 's royal union with Great Britain ended, with Ernest Augustus becoming King of Hanover and Queen Victoria ascending

2200-505: The provisioner's "patent process" was sound, many tins of meat provided to the Navy at about the time of Franklin's expedition were found to contain putrid meat, and a spiritualist at that time channeled a dead member of the expedition stating that putrid meat was part of the cause of disaster, as crew members were sent off hunting when the ship could have made some distance through the ice and perhaps won through to its goal. [1] [2] As well,

2255-490: The snow without condescending to ask local people how they survived in such a wilderness – [Grenier] believes the 19th-century official accounts that all the surviving expedition members abandoned their ice-locked ships are wrong. He believes both ships drifted southwards, with at least two crew remaining until the final destruction of their vessels. One broke up, but Inuit hunters arriving at their summer hunting grounds reported discovering another ship floating in fresh ice in

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2310-488: The standard HBC route, Franklin took a reconnaissance trip 1,000 mi (1,600 km) down the Mackenzie and on 16 August 1825 , became the second European to reach its mouth. He erected a flagpole with buried letters for Parry. He returned to winter at Fort Franklin (modern-day Délı̨nę ) on Great Bear Lake . The following summer he went downriver and found the ocean frozen. He worked his way west for several hundred miles and gave up on 16 August 1826 at Return Reef when he

2365-644: The summer of 1850, several expeditions, including three from England as well as one from the United States, joined in the search. They converged off the east coast of Beechey Island, where the first relics of the Franklin expedition were found, including the gravesites of three of Franklin's crewmen. Many presumed Franklin was still alive, and he was promoted to Rear-Admiral of the Blue in October 1852, an example of an unintentional posthumous promotion . In 1854,

2420-511: Was a Scottish naval officer and Arctic explorer . In 1802 or 1803, he married Maria Adye. They had at least three children. In 1806, Buchan was appointed as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and from about 1808 to 1817 he operated in and around Newfoundland. In 1810 he was captain of HMS Adonis . In autumn 1810 he conducted an expedition to the River of Exploits . From there he and his men marched inland for 130 miles to establish contact with

2475-669: Was a merchant descended from a line of country gentlemen, while his mother was the daughter of a farmer. One of his brothers later entered the legal profession and eventually became a judge in Madras ; another joined the East India Company ; while a sister, Sarah, was the mother of Emily Tennyson , wife of Alfred, Lord Tennyson . John Franklin must have been affected by an obvious desire to better his social and economic position, given that his elder brothers struggled, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, to establish themselves in

2530-403: Was about 150 mi (240 km) east of Beechey's Point Barrow. Reaching safety at Fort Franklin on 21 September 1826 , he left on 20 February 1827 and spent the rest of the winter and spring at Fort Chipewyan . He reached Liverpool on the first of September 1827. Richardson's eastward journey was more successful. Franklin's diary from this expedition describes his men playing hockey on

2585-489: Was also used, and was cited in the original statutes of the order. Gold and silver medals were attached to the order, for award to those not eligible for the order itself, including non commissioned officers and royal servants. The Order has six officers: the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, the Registrar, the King of Arms , the Genealogist, and the Secretary. The first six officers were: David Buchan David Buchan (c. 1780 – after 8 December 1838)

2640-622: Was chosen to lead the Coppermine expedition overland from Hudson Bay to chart the north coast of Canada eastwards from the mouth of the Coppermine River . On his 1819 expedition, Franklin fell into the Hayes River at Robinson Falls and was rescued by a member of his expedition about 90 m (98 yd) downstream. Between 1819 and 1822, he lost 11 of the 20 men in his party. Most died of starvation or exhaustion, but there were also at least one murder and suggestions of cannibalism . The survivors were forced to eat lichen and even attempted to eat their own leather boots. This gained Franklin

2695-403: Was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996. The explorer was also memorialised when one of Canada's Northwest Territories subdivisions was named the District of Franklin . Franklin's gull (Leucophaeus pipixcan) of North America was also named after him. In 2009, a special service of Thanksgiving was held in the chapel at the Royal Naval College to accompany the rededication of

2750-463: Was dramatised in the play Jane, My Love and its radio adaptation The Franklins of Hobart Town . In September 2014, the wreck of HMS  Erebus was rediscovered in Wilmot and Crampton Bay near the Adelaide Peninsula , and, in September 2016, the wreck of HMS  Terror was discovered, in Terror Bay on the south coast of King William Island , in "pristine" condition. The wrecks were found many miles south of their last known location off

2805-540: Was finally vindicated; cut marks caused by blades were discovered on the bones of some of the crew found on King William Island, strongly suggesting that conditions had become so dire that some crew members resorted to cannibalism. Evidence suggestive of breakage and boiling of bones, characteristic of efforts to extract marrow, was subsequently identified. It appeared from these studies that a combination of bad weather, years locked in ice, poisoned food, botulism , starvation, and disease, including scurvy, had killed everyone in

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2860-466: Was present at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 aboard HMS  Bellerophon . During the War of 1812 against the United States, Franklin, now a lieutenant, served aboard HMS  Bedford and was wounded during the Battle of Lake Borgne on 14 December 1814. Franklin commanded HMS Trent in 1818 on a journey from London to Spitzbergen , now Svalbard. The overall expedition was commanded by Captain David Buchan on HMS Dorothea . In 1819, Franklin

2915-438: Was raised with their own daughter Eleanor, but she was abandoned in Tasmania when the Franklins returned to England in 1843. The village of Franklin , on the Huon River , is named in his honour, as is the Franklin River on the West Coast of Tasmania, one of the better known Tasmanian rivers due to the Franklin Dam controversy . Shortly after leaving his post as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land, Franklin revisited

2970-488: Was the mouth of the Mackenzie River from which he would follow the coast westward and possibly meet Frederick William Beechey who would try to sail northeast from the Bering Strait . With him was John Richardson who would follow the coast east from the Mackenzie to the mouth of the Coppermine River. At the same time, William Edward Parry would try to sail west from the Atlantic. (Beechey reached Point Barrow and Parry became frozen-in 900 mi [1,400 km] to

3025-403: Was the site of the original Government House. On the plinth below the statue appears Tennyson 's epitaph: Not here! The white north hath thy bones and thou Heroic sailor soul Art passing on thine happier voyage now Toward no earthly pole His wife worked to set up a university, which was eventually established in 1890, and a museum, credited to the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1843 under

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