It’s months since I have posted thoughts on the Franklin
Expedition and, strangely, it is Christmas which has triggered this latest
essay. Why? Because ever since the first
Christmas of 1845, when apparently 'all was well', Christmas has always been a
time when minds cast back to the lost ships and men with a poignancy undimmed
by time.
The Expedition sailed on 19th May 1845 and, though it seems
absurd to us knowing the impossibility of taking sailing ships through the
North West Passage under the then prevailing climatological conditions, optimists
at the time thought the ships might be ‘through’ and in the Pacific by
Christmas 1845. James Fitzjames had
heard this opinion and even expressed the hope that they would spend at least
one winter in the ice. How bitterly he
must have come to regret that wish! Incidentally, Fitzjames knew that his promotion to Captain would be made on 31st December 1845, and a note of this is indeed the very last entry in the Erebus' contemporary records at the Admiralty.
So although no news of a rapid transit of the Passage had
been received by the end of 1845, waiting friends and relatives of Expedition
members would have felt no qualms. And
this is particularly poignant since the 1840’s and 1850’s were a time when the celebration
of Christmas in Britain became recognizably ‘modern’. Dickens’ ‘Christmas Carol’ had recently been
published, in December 1843, while the 1840’s saw the acceptance by British families
of such modern practices as putting up Christmas trees and exchanging Christmas
cards. Christmas for the waiting
families must have been very much a time when they would come together to
remember their absent menfolk. And with
each passing Christmas they must have looked back on this first as a happy time.
But how was that first Christmas of 1845 at Beechey Island
for the Expedition itself? Some pointers
suggest that even this first Christmas in the ice would have been an unsettling
time. Why?
A first, comparatively minor, point is that the Expedition
probably did not have their expected full Christmas treat. We can surmise this from the eyewitness
account of Lt. Griffiths, the Admiralty’s agent on the Expedition’s transport
Barretto Junior. Lt. Griffiths’ ship had transported live oxen for the
Expedition from Orkney to Disko Bay in Greenland. The oxen that survived the voyage across the
stormy Atlantic were slaughtered there and the beef hung in the rigging to
air-dry. Franklin himself told Griffiths
that he intended some of this at least to provide his men’s Christmas dinner.
But before Griffiths left the beef had started to deteriorate in the unseasonally mild summer of 1845 in Baffin Bay and Grffiths witnessed the beef being
consumed then before it became unfit to eat.
So in all probability Franklin’s plan for a morale-boosting dinner of
old English (in fact Orkney) beef was thwarted.
Perhaps this doesn't matter, but we know from earlier and subsequent
Expeditions that special occasions like this were important and happy events and the loss of
the promised beef might have put a dampener on celebrations.
Much more sinister is that by Christmas 1845 at
least one man in each ships’ company was very sick and close to death. John Torrington
of HMS Terror passed away on New Years’ Day 1846 with John Hartnell of HMS Erebus
dying three days later. We know this from
their graves, still at Beechey Island today. Owen Beattie’s autopsies of their
bodies a century and a half later revealed that both men died a lingering
death. So their unhappy existences must
have cast a pall over both ships. And
all the medical evidence that we have suggests that both ships companies were
also suffering at least to some extent from lead poisoning. One of the symptoms of lead poisoning is
depression. Unless or until records from the Expedition are found, we cannot
know what the atmosphere was like on the Terror and Erebus that first
Christmas. But we do know what it was
like on the Terror when she wintered in the ice just nine years earlier in 1836
- on George Back’s Expedition. Back’s Terror then was the same ship on which John Torrington lay dying at Christmas 1845.
Back has left us an account of that Christmas, describing how
on January 13th 1837 “a sailor, named Graham Walker, had been for
some time under the care of the medical gentlemen who, at first, had good
grounds for supposing that little was the matter with him. However, he was treated
as a sick man; and for want of exercise, or by some means or other, he soon
contrived to render himself so in earnest. Unhappily the symptoms shortly after
became scorbutic, and the man being of melancholic temperament, and utterly
incapable of being roused or cheered, grew daily worse. Yet his appetite continued
good until within the last few days, and even on these he always ate some
nourishing diet. This day, however, at 9 p m. he died without suffering, and
indeed so calmly, that those in attendance were unconscious of the moment of his
departure. Such visitations are always melancholy, and it was natural that in
our case a more than ordinary impression should be made. Isolated as we were
from our fellow-creatures, and at the mercy of a power over which we had no
control, who could help feeling that his hour also might shortly come? At 10 am
on the 14th, the officers and crew of H.M.S. performed the last mournful duties
towards their shipmate. The body was conveyed on a sledge to the extremity of
the floe, where a grave had been dug through the ice; and the solemn and affecting
service for the dead having been read, the remains were committed to the deep.”
It is interesting that Back described the melancholic nature
of the unfortunate Graham Walker in this rather unsympathetic account. Back describes his symptoms as 'scorbutic', but was this scurvy? He does not mention the word, and his account makes it clear that the men were receiving fresh food. Perhaps he was suffering from the
lead-poisoning which we know afflicted his counterparts in the Franklin
Expedition on this same ship nine years later? And sadly this was not the only symptom
of melancholy on Back’s Expedition. Back
was clearly deeply troubled by the very low morale on HMS Terror that year and
unable to explain it. His complete
passage describing Christmas 1836 on HMS Terror reads as follows:
“Sailors, it is
proverbial, are naturally light hearted, and have in general a great flow of animal
spirits; but in this respect ours most assuredly differed from their brother
tars. Whether this arose from the services in which they had been brought up,
or from their never having been subject to the salutary influence of naval discipline,
I know not, but certainly their want of cheerfulness was not attributable to
any lack of example or encouragement on the part of the officers. For about six
hours every day except Sundays, they were kept at some easy work on the ice, as
was absolutely requisite for their health ; but it was in vain that we
endeavoured to lead them into the wholesome habit of amusing themselves with
games or dancing, to cheer their spirits, and while away the long hours of our winter
evenings. The most trivial cold or other complaint induced despondency, and an
attack in the joints of the legs and limbs attended with extravasation of
blood, for which it may be remarked there was some difficulty in accounting, excited
the most discouraging apprehensions. Under these circumstances, I was not a
little delighted when informed that they had contrived, in imitation of the
officers, to get up a play, and had appointed Christmas Eve for its
performance. In due time two farces were announced for representation, the
"First Floor" and the “Benevolent Tar”; and these went off with
unbounded applause in a stifling atmosphere between decks, though outside the
thermometer stood at -30°. Christmas Day which succeeded, was duly and religiously
observed; neither were the personal comforts, more majorum, neglected, for, as
we were on two thirds' allowance, I directed a double portion to be served of
all but spirits, and thus gave the men a treat without intoxication. The
officers also dined together; and, among other luxuries which the providence
of the caterer had furnished, was a haunch of the reindeer, shot by Mr. Gore.”
Here we see an absolute proxy for all Royal Naval Arctic or
Antarctic Christmas celebrations, from Parry via Nares to Scott: the feast, the
theatricals, the involvement of both officers and the ‘lower deck’. Although the
gloomy and depressive atmosphere of the ship’s company on HMS Terror in 1836,
and the alarming symptoms of ‘lassitude', 'despondency’ and the ‘attack in the joints of the legs and limbs
attended with extravasation of blood’ sound different and seem to represent
something alarming for which, as Back said, ‘there was some difficulty in accounting’.
Back’s description of Christmas on HMS Terror in 1836 does perhaps
give us an accurate feel for what that first Christmas at Beechey Island was like
for the Franklin Expedition in 1845.
Even down to ‘Mr. Gore’ - the same Lt. Graham Gore of the Franklin Expedition whose hunting prowess seems to have been high. Perhaps he also brought the
Christmas fare in for Franklin’s men as he had for Back in 1836? Sadly, however ‘despondent’
the men felt at the time, this was most likely the best Christmas they had –
things most likely can only have got worse.
At home their families do not seem to have expected them for
several years – ‘up to five years’ seems to have been thought of as the length of
time the Expedition could last unsupported.
So Christmas in 1850 for their families must have been a sad affair.
Graham Gore’s family in Australia later erected a monument to him on which they
gave his date of death as circa 1850 – obviously before news of McClintock’s
recovery of the ‘Victory Point’ note reached them. And we find that a ‘James Fitzjames’ made a
donation to the fund to build a monument to commemorate Sir John Barrow at
Ulverston as late as 1851. Presumably
his friend John Barrow junior had not entirely given up hope that Fitzjames might
yet emerge from the Arctic?
In 1850 Charles Dickens, in many ways the populariser of the
Victorian tradition of Christmas, evoked the possibility that the Franklin
Expedition might still be celebrating Christmas aboard their ships somewhere, as
a way to link them with the experiences of his readers. In Household Words Volume 5, published in 1851
(page 179) he expressed the hope that ‘some commemoration of Christmas may perhaps
take place in the Frozen Regions’.
Perhaps, he ended this canter of optimistic fantasy, ‘we may yet hope to
see the crews of the ‘Erebus’ and the ‘Terror’ once more ready with a yarn about
Christmas at the Pole, to help out a Christmas in England’. This fascinating passage illustrates how strong
the links between the lost Expedition, their loved ones and the general
public became at Christmas. Ironically
Dickens is now mostly linked to the Franklin Expedition because of his disgraceful
and racist propagandising against the Inuit peoples among whom the Expedition
foundered, some of whom were possibly at the very time he was writing
doing their best to help save the last members of the Expedition. But that is another story.
So while we all celebrate our different Christmas’ in 2012,
let’s spare a thought and a prayer for Franklin’s lost souls and hope, as
generations have done over the last 165 years, that more may still be uncovered
to help us understand their fate.
