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John Rae: The Unsung Hero

10/25/2015

John Rae painted by Stephen Pearce 1862. Wikimedia Commons

Roger M McCoy

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  After serving my readers a heavy dose of Sir John Franklin’s disastrous first and third expeditions, we should have a look at an explorer who was thoroughly adept at surviving in the Arctic. Dr. John Rae became well-known for his remarkable feats of overland travel in the Arctic using skills learned from the local Inuit people. Chronologically this story of John Rae fits better between parts 2 and 3 of the Franklin account, so keep in mind that M’Clintock had not yet found their actual remains at the time of this account.
   Rae was born in 1813 on the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland—a chilly, wet environment that favors hardy souls. He graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Edinburgh and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He soon went to Canada to work as a company doctor for the Hudson’s Bay Company at Moose Factory at the south end of Hudson Bay. During his ten year stay in Canada he traveled to various HBC trading posts treating ailments of company employees. In this time he became adept at travel under harsh Arctic conditions, a skill he learned from the indigenous people employed by the HBC.
   The Hudson’s Bay Company wisely developed a practice of exploring and mapping the vast region extending roughly from Hudson Bay to the Rocky Mountains. They had a Royal Charter granted in 1670 by King Charles II giving them a monopoly on the fur and other resources. They could easily see their advantage in mapping coasts, rivers, and resources within their realm. To this purpose the HBC decided to send a surveyor well-suited to travel, map, and find resources in remote areas in the harshest conditions, and John Rae was the man.
   First Rae had to learn how to survey, so he was directed in 1844 to go to the Red River Colony, about 700 miles to the west of Moose Factory. There he found the surveyor gravely ill and unable to teach. Rae then trekked east along the north shore of Lake Superior to Sault Saint Marie for instruction and and then on to Toronto for additional training. Most of this 2000 miles of travel was done by dog sled in winter. Then in 1846 he began his first surveying expedition on the north coast. By this time Rae was a well-seasoned and tested traveler and survivor in harsh conditions. Rae could build an igloo in an hour, eliminating the need for heavy canvas tents. He used clothing and bedding made of animal skins with the fur on the inside. The fundamentals were simple: keep clothing dry, learn to build snow houses, learn to hunt seals, wear clothing made of animal skins. Rae provided his Arctic survival knowledge to the Admiralty but it was ignored.
   In 1853 while search parties were still looking for Sir John Franklin in other locations, John Rae went to explore and map the south end of the Gulf of Boothia. He approached from Repulse Bay at the north end of Hudson Bay and the following spring of 1854 crossed the isthmus of land now named for him. He continued across Boothia Peninsula, showing it to be a peninsula, and then crossed to King William Island, proving it was not connected to Boothia. By then Rae was somewhat east of the dead remains of the Franklin expedition. He met Eskimos who told him of thirty to forty white men who had starved to death several years earlier at a location farther west. Rae remarked that his knowledgeable informant wore a band around his head that came from the place of the dead men. Rae bought the Eskimo’s headband and told him he would also buy any other relics from the site of the dead men. Rae could not determine where the items came from or if the starved men had been part of the Franklin expedition. However he did not doubt that he had found the first clue to the Franklin party’s fate. Who else could it have been? Rae believed in the Eskimo’s truthfulness, having no reason to think the man would make up such a tale. He did not go to investigate the site himself because his first interest on this expedition was to continue mapping the Arctic coastline before winter began. He had made several important discoveries distinguishing between islands and peninsulas in the Boothia region, and was intent on finishing that job. He was, after all, a Hudson Bay Company employee and had been instructed to map rather than find Franklin.
   In the autumn of 1854 he heard additional details about the Franklin party. Eskimos there told him that bodies had been found near the estuary of the Great Fish River. Given this information Rae was certain that the bodies were part of Franklin’s party. Furthermore the Inuits showed Rae more items found from the scene, including silver forks and spoons with crests of officers on Franklin’s ships. Other items included a plate with Franklin’s name, a gold watch, a vest, and numerous other items. The Eskimos could not say what happened to the ships, but their most surprising information was that the corpses’ bones had knife marks—definite signs of cannibalism. This was the first real information about the fate of the Franklin expedition, and Rae decided to travel to England immediately with the news.
   In England his news was met with shock and disbelief. The relics he brought definitely proved that he had found news of Franklin, but no one believed that an Englishman would eat another Englishman. Everyone doubted Rae and thought he had been too gullible. Since they did not accept his story, the public made up an explanation that involved massacre by the Inuits. The alternative was simply too horrible to accept. Rae was further criticized for returning to England without first going to the site where the bodies were found. This criticism led to the accusation that he had been too eager to claim the £10,000 reward for finding evidence of Franklin. Public opinion ran high against Rae as the bearer of bad news and against the Inuits as murderous and barbaric people not to be believed.
   Lady Jane Franklin held Rae in great contempt for his unbelievable story. She, like most of the public, disliked this “unrefined, coarse man” for standing by the Inuits’ story. Rae maintained they were telling the truth, but Lady Jane retorted that he had believed lies told by “savages.” In her outrage Lady Jane recruited important people for support, including none other than Charles Dickens who wrote several pamphlets condemning Rae for daring to say that British sailors could have resorted to cannibalism. She urged the Admiralty to delay the reward until further investigation by others. The Admiralty had doubts of their own about Rae’s credibility, and he was forced to appeal many times for the prize money, which he eventually received and distributed a fifth of it to members of his party. Other Arctic explorers were knighted for their work, some of whom made less significant contributions to the knowledge of the Arctic. Rae received the money, but no knighthood. It was Rae’s discoveries that convinced Lady Jane that further search should be made in the King William Island area, leading her to send M’Clintock to investigate (see, Sir John Franklin: The failed hero, Part 3, 10/1/15).
   John Rae's accomplishments, surpassing all nineteenth-century Arctic explorers, were certainly worthy of honors and international fame. No explorer ever approached Rae's prolific record: 1,776 miles surveyed of uncharted territory; 6,555 miles hiked on snowshoes; and 6,700 miles navigated in small boats. Yet he was denied fair recognition for his discoveries because he dared to utter the truth about the fate of Sir John Franklin and his crew. A bitter smear campaign by Franklin's supporters denied Rae a knighthood and left him in ignominy for over 150 years. Finally some recognition came in 2014 when the British Parliament, urged by representatives from Orkney, announced that a plaque dedicated to John Rae would be installed in Westminster Abbey.

Sources
Berton, Pierre. The Arctic Grail: the Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909, New York:Viking Penguin, 1988.

McCoy, Roger M. On the Edge: Mapping North America’s Coasts. New York: Oxford University Press. 2012.

McGoogan, Ken. Fatal Passage: the True Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time Forgot. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers. 2002.

Sir John Franklin: The failed hero. Part 3

10/1/2015

Sir John Franklin

Lady Jane Franklin

Recap: In 1857, twelve years after the expedition left England, the relentless Lady Jane Franklin sent M’Clintock to search for her husband, Sir John Franklin, near King William Island.

   M’Clintock’s expedition split into two parties taking different routes toward King William Island. Each party consisted of teams of six to eight men harnessed to heavy sledges, each loaded with eight hundred pounds of cargo. They could average ten or twelve miles per day over the relatively smooth surface of the frozen sea and go where no ship could sail.
   Eventually M’Clintock’s party came upon a rock cairn containing this ominous message:

April 25, 1848 — H. M. ships, Terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22nd April 5 leagues N.N.W. of this, having been beset since 12th September, 1846. The officers and crews consisting of 105 souls, under the command of F. R. M. Crozier, landed here. Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1847; and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men.
F. R. M. Crozier                   James Fitzjames
Captain and Senior Officer               Captain H. M. S. Erebus.
start tomorrow, 26th, for Back’s Fish River.

Apparently Captain Crozier, who took command when Franklin died, had abandoned the expedition and tried to take his 105 starving men to a place of refuge. The nearest such destination was a Hudson Bay Company post on the Great Slave Lake, more than 1,000 miles away. The company of the Erebus and Terror must have been on reduced rations for much of the winter of 1847-48, and the men already wasted enough to be in weakened condition before they left the ships.
   Traveling along the west coast of King William Island, M’Clintock found relics of the expedition, including a twenty-eight foot boat mounted on a sledge that the escaping men had brought only a short distance. A large quantity of tattered clothing lay in the boat, and portions of two human skeletons. The boat weighed about eight hundred pounds and when mounted on the heavy sledge made a 1,400 pound dead weight for the weakened men to pull. Sledging with such an incredible weight went against all that had been learned up to that time about travel in the Arctic where survival depended upon traveling light. Besides the provisions they could muster, the survivors had carried almost anything of value, including silver table service and an “amazing quantity of clothing”—of no use to their survival.
   Other items found in the boat included five watches, two double-barreled guns— one barrel in each of them was loaded and cocked. Several small books were found, including The Vicar of Wakefield, and scriptural or devotional readings. A brief listing of the items M’Clintock found serves to illustrate their seeming lack of awareness of the dire situation they faced. He saw different types of boots, such as sea boots, cloth winter boots, heavy ankle boots, shoes, silk handkerchiefs, towels, soap, toothbrushes, and combs. Other items included twine, nails, saws, files, bristles, wax ends, sailmakers’ palms, powder, bullets, shot, cartridges, knives (including dinner knives), needle and thread cases, and two rolls of sheet lead. The guns, bullets, powder, and hunting knives would have been essential if they found game. M’Clintock found a bit of tea and forty pounds of chocolate but no biscuits or meat. Also in the boat were eleven large silver spoons, four silver teaspoons, and eleven silver forks, all bearing crests of Franklin or one of the other officers, but no iron spoons of the type issued to seamen. Apparently desperation forced the men to abandon the heavily loaded sledge and continue only with what they could carry.
   The emerging story from M’Clintock and various later accounts remains hazy, but certain elements are firm. One hundred five men from the two ships had set off for the Great Slave Lake via Back River. As they reached Terror Bay, only twenty-five miles from their abandoned ships, the crewmen, weak from hunger and scurvy, had already begun to falter under their heavy loads. They apparently camped for several days to recuperate. Later searchers found several skeletons and two boats in addition to the one found by M’Clintock. Physical evidence suggests that Captain Crozier and any men strong enough to move continued south toward the Back River. As the group slowly moved along the south coast of King William Island, fallen men and abandoned equipment marked their route. At some point the group split and took different directions, probably hoping that at least one would reach help. Crozier’s group of about forty men continued toward the Back River. A second group headed east toward Boothia Peninsula, perhaps hoping to reach open water and intercept a rescue ship. Whatever their expectation, they failed and died.
   Meanwhile, Crozier’s dwindling party crossed Simpson Strait on the ice and reached the mainland. Sometime, possibly as much as three years later, Eskimos found bodies of thirty men at a small bay on the north coast of Adelaide, now called Starvation Cove. They had traveled nearly one hundred fifty miles from the ships, almost reaching the estuary of the Back River. The Eskimos’ account revealed that the corpses had been eaten by humans. They said that bones had been cut through by saws, and skulls had been broken open to remove the brains. Also, the Eskimos found many papers, probably records of the expedition. Having no value to the Eskimos, the papers were discarded and lost forever.
   Franklin’s starving men purposely had avoided contact with Eskimos who could have helped the stranded mariners survive. The crewmen had persisted in living as Europeans who saw no reason to learn from an uncivilized people about living in the Arctic environment. Most British naval explorers of the nineteenth century refused to learn from the experience of other explorers or the Eskimos. Author James Morris attributes this hubris to the success of the British empire in the nineteenth century. He wrote, “...an assumption of superiority was ingrained in most Britons abroad. ...the ancient social orders of the subject nations were all too often ignored or mocked.”
   Applying that outlook to the nineteenth century exploration experience in the Arctic shows that the British naval officers failed to recognize an environment in which they could not follow their usual practice of simply transplanting their culture. Few of them ever realized that the indigenous culture held the essential keys to survival in the Arctic.
   Vilhjalmur Stefansson described this attitude as part of the culture of the British gentry when he wrote, “Just as with fox hunting for the British gentleman, in which the prime objective is not killing the fox, but the proper observance of form during the pursuit and kill, also, explorations should be done properly and not evade the hazards of the wilderness by the vulgarity of going native. They must face the dangers of the Arctic or other wilderness in the proper manner.” He wrote further “...that the crews of the Erebus and Terror perished as victims of the manners, customs, social outlook, and medical views of their time.”
   It should be noted that the attitude of exploring the Arctic as “gentlemen,” existed primarily in the Admiralty and among officers of the Royal Navy. The Hudson Bay Company employees, who were also primarily British, survived very well on Arctic expeditions by depending heavily on fundamentals earlier described to the Admiralty by John Rae. Norwegian, Canadian, American explorers, and the voyageurs all coped with the Arctic by following the Eskimo ways. Some Hudson Bay Company employees ridiculed the English naval explorers because of their unwillingness to give up comforts while in the wilderness. The widely known nineteenth century Chief Factor of the HBC, George Simpson, is quoted as saying, “Lieutenant Franklin, the officer who commands the party [referring to Franklin’s first expedition], must have three meals per day, tea is indispensable, and with the utmost exertion he cannot walk above eight miles in one day. It does not follow if these gentlemen are unsuccessful that the difficulties are insurmountable.” Despite these criticisms, the British naval officers’ devotion to duty and acts of heroism were a source of pride to the nation.
   The central figure in this saga, Sir John Franklin, is a bit of a paradox. Although his expedition failed, the mystery of his whereabouts elevated him from an ordinary explorer to a revered public idol. This is strange considering that his actual lifetime achievements were of small consequence and his expeditions lost far more lives than all the other Arctic expeditions. Furthermore, a king’s ransom was spent searching for him. Between 1848 and 1859 more than fifty expeditions searched for some sign of Franklin’s ships and men. Other lives and ships were lost during the search. Years were wasted through searching in places not on Franklin’s proposed route and avoiding his planned route because it was filled with ice when the searchers arrived. Search ships were sent to every corner of the Arctic except the one where Franklin went.
   A primary force pushing the Admiralty was the intrepid Lady Jane Franklin. She was relentless in her determination to learn what happened to her husband and eventually raised funds herself to send an expedition. In the end it was Lady Jane’s private effort in sending M’Clintock, not the navy, that found remains of Franklin’s expedition and pieced together what had happened. Lady Jane's determination was not to be denied: she refused to accept the Eskimo’s report of cannibalism, contested the Admiralty’s award of the prize money to Commander Robert McClure, and continued to insist that Sir John Franklin had succeeded in finding the Northwest Passage. McClure, however, had entered the passage from the west and had absolutely discovered one of the routes through the passage.
   In the summer of 2014 Parks Canada discovered the HMS Erebus sitting upright with masts shorn off in thirty-five feet of water near King William Island. The location was determined with sonar, and divers explored the ship to make positive identification. Underwater investigations continued in the summer of 2015. The HMS Terror is still missing.
Pictures can be seen on the Parks Canada website:www.pc.gc.ca/eng/culture/franklin/index.aspx
   The PBS science program NOVA has produced several presentations of the Franklin Expedition., The most recent, Arctic Ghost Ship, was aired on September 23, 2015 and may be viewed on the NOVA website at www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/arctic-ghost-ship.html.

Sources
Berton, Pierre. The Arctic Grail: the Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909, New York:Viking Penguin, 1988.

McCoy. Roger M. On The Edge: Mapping North America’s Coasts. New York: Oxford University Press. 2012.

Morris, James. Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973.

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. Unsolved Mysteries of the Arctic. New York: Collier Books, 1962.

John Rae: The Unsung Hero

Sir John Franklin: The failed hero. Part 3

"Explorers' Tales"A blog article is only a starting point in learning about explorers. References with each article provide further reading. Explorer's original journals are especially interesting and are quoted in the blog when possible.

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"Explorers' Tales"
A blog article is only a starting point in learning about explorers. References with each article provide further reading. Explorer's original journals are especially interesting and are quoted in the blog when possible.