35. Speculation on the death of Commander Graham Gore.

It is now some years since the wrecks of Erebus and Terror were found, but  to date no written records have been found. For followers of the Franklin saga there remains little information on the actions of individual expedition members.  Without more paper records there remain only speculations on some of the fragments and hints that exist to ponder on further insights into what might have happened.  Such is the case for the fourth senior officer of the expedition – Lieutenant Graham Gore.

     There are six puzzling facts surrounding the events of 1847.  These have been used to create a speculative chain of possible events leading to the premature death of the popular Commander Gore.

1) The 1848 Record refers to ‘the late Commander Gore’.  Lieutenant Gore was selected by Sir John Franklin to lead the expedition that mapped the last unknown section of the North-West Passage. His promotion would have followed his return from mapping the last section of the North-West Passage.  With the death of Sir John Franklin, Captain Crozier became the expedition leader (confirmed in the 1848 Record).  Commander Fitzjames became captain of Erebus (he signed himself such on the 1848 Record) and Lieutenant Gore was promoted to Commander Fitzjames’s former position. 

2) There is the high number of deaths reported in the expedition in the 25th April 1848 Record- 9 men and 15 officers.  This is a disproportionately high percentage of officers. Why should so many officers die? 

3)  There is the well-made officer’s grave found at Croziers Landing – the start point where Gore led the mapping party to complete the passage. The grave has been built with care using large stones moved to the area.  It was evidently built at a time when the crews were strong and fit and there was plenty of time for the work.  This suggests it as built before the 1848 retreat.  

4) The old blind Inut Kok-lee-arng-nun reported to Charles Francis Hall that a ship had been thrown over and sunk, and that ‘several men at work on her could not get out in time, and were carried down with her and drowned.’

5) The 1848 Record shows that James Fitzjames remained as captain of HMS Erebus after the death of Sir John up until the retreat started.  Yet there is a written Admiralty instruction -Article 21 – that states that in the event of the death of Sir John, Captain Crozier would take over Erebus and Fitzjames would move to Terror. Why did this not occur in 1847?

6) A large camp was built on King William Island at Crozier’s Landing with 13 tent circles. Far more equipment was present than was required for the 1848 retreat.  This included a pile of heavy clothing four feet tall. Also in 1982 the Beattie expedition found coils of rope including one of 5 cm diameter, in the mud at the camp site. Why was so much material, not needed for the retreat, transported across the ice to this camp?

     These puzzles have been woven below into a plausible but entirely speculative scenario. The story starts with the two very brief written records of the Franklin Expedition. Both are written on a single sheet of naval message form. The first message dated May 1847, states that a North-West Passage party led by Erebus Lieutenant Graham Gore and Mate Charles Frederick des Voeux with six seamen set out probably on May 28th 1847 on route to complete mapping the last unknown 100 mile stretch of the North-West Passage. The second message is written around the margins of the first and is dated 25th April 1848.  It states that the 105 survivors of the expedition will start retreating to the south on the next day. It also refers to ‘the late Commander Gore’. So within a year of mapping the last section of the North-West Passage, Commander Gore was dead. 

     It was a year when the two ships remained trapped in the ice stream in close proximity, lying off the north-west coast of King William Island. There are two scenarios possible to account for his death. In the first it is possible that he died of the mysterious illness that ravaged the crews over the winter of 1847-48. The 1848 message states that up to that time, the total number of deaths to the expedition had been nine officers and fifteen men. Allowing for the three men who died and were buried on Beechey Island and the death of Sir John Franklin, this means that another eight officers and twelve men died before the 1848 retreat began with 105 men on 26th April 1848. This is a surprisingly high number of deaths and the number of officers is disproportionately high. 

   However there is a second possible scenario. The testimony of Kok-lee-arng-nun tells of a ship thrown over onto her side killing several of the men who were working in her hold salvaging stores. This ship is believed to be Terror found in Terror Bay with her three masts broken off and lying along her starboard side. It is possible that Commander Gore was killed in her hold. But why would he have been there, as his position was aboard the flagship Erebus?

      Sir John Franklin died on 11th June 1847. It was calculated by Roobol (2019) that Gore and his party probably returned to Erebus between June 13th and 18th. This was in the week after the death of Sir John Franklin. The wreck of Terror reveals that she was rigged for winter quarters when she was sealed up and abandoned. This suggests that she was thrown over onto her starboard side very early in the year before summer arrived and she could be rerigged for the journey home.  Roobol (2019) cites as evidence, the coils of rope including a  heavy line (diameter 5 cm) found by the Beattie expedition in the mud adjacent to the camp at Crozier’s Landing.  This was interpreted as resulting from emptying Erebus’s rope store to make additional winter accommodation for the two crews over winter 1847-48. In other words Terror was thrown over onto her beam ends before the 1848 retreat, so that both crews had to winter aboard Erebus.

     Gore and his party probably arrived back at the flagship in the week after the death of Sir John Franklin. During that week a party, probably of men from both ships had been sent ashore to prepare the grave for Sir John Franklin. To dig through the winter snow into the permafrost was a slow job and would have taken several days hard labour. It is possible is that Sir John Franklin’s grave is the elaborate stone lined grave found by Supunger and his uncle in 1862. The grave shows the high regard held for the dead officer as time had been spent collecting slabs of stone to line it with dry walling and big slabs had been gathered to make a close fitting roof. The grave was also marked by a spare top gallant mast from one of the ships. It would be reasonable to take a week for this work, so that Sir John’s funeral would have occurred at the earliest on June 18th 1847. 

     Presumably both Captains Crozier and Fitzjames went ashore for the funeral to conduct the service and supervise the burial of Sir John Franklin. This would have required a march across about twelve miles of ice each way.  So they were probably away from the ships for two or three days around the 18th June 1847. During this time Commander Gore would have been left in charge of the two ships. If ice movements occurred at this time and Terror was thrown over onto her starboard side, then Commander Gore would have been the senior officer present at the time. Here we have a reason as to why he might leave the flagship and lead a team of men into the hold of Terror to salvage as many stores as possible.  He may have been killed in the hold when the ship finally went over onto her side breaking the three masts.

     There is a possibility also that Gore’s friend and coleader the North-West Passage party, Mate Charles des Voeux, also died in the accident. There is an implication in the 1848 message that des Voeux was not available at the time of the 1848 retreat. The message states that Lieutenant Irving was sent four miles north to collect the 1848 message deposited there by Gore and des Voeux in 1847.  Irving brought the message cylinder to Crozier’s Landing, when the 1848 message was added around the margins of the message form. With Gore dead, it would have been much easier to have des Voeux go to find the cylinder as he was familiar with its location. Instead Lieutenant Irving was given the task.    

     In this speculative account, Captains Crozier and Fitzjames return to the ships to find only Erebus habitable and Commander Gore killed in the accident. Rather than take over Sir John Franklin’s great cabin aboard Erebus, Crozier may have chosen to move his men and as much equipment as could be salvaged from Terror ashore.  It was suggested by Roobol (2019) that he formed a land camp at what is today known as Crozier’s Landing but was known to him incorrectly as ‘Victory Point’ and probably ‘Terror Camp’. He would do this as he was presumably very concerned that Erebus might suffer a similar fate in the moving ice stream (See later discussion as to why Captain Crozier did not follow the instructions of Article 21).  Later in 1847 the rerigged Erebus was not released in the summer thaw as it proved to be an abnormally cold summer.

   Gore was very popular with the expedition.  His unexpected death would have been a milestone in the history of the expedition.  His colleagues would have wanted to honor the life of the man who had successfully led the team that completed the prime mapping objective of the expedition. With this in mind there is one officers grave of special significance. This is the cyst-type officer’s grave found by the Schwatka expedition at what is now Crozier’s Landing. The grave is unique because it is built with large stones and includes a ‘pillow stone’ for the deceased’s head. Nearby is the camp where the expedition landed and started the 1848 retreat. Much equipment was stored and discarded here and a silver medal awarded to Lieutenant John Irving was found at the disturbed grave. This led the Schwatka party to identify the grave as that of Lieutenant John Irving, which is unlikely as the latter is mentioned in the 1848 record as being alive and well at the start of the 1848 retreat. The grave marks the start of the key section of the North-West Passage mapped by Gore and his party. What better place to honor the officer – ‘the discoverer of the North-West Passage’ by burying him at the ‘Gates of the North-West Passage’ that he and his team mapped. 

      According to the above speculative scenario, around June 20th 1848, the two captains returned to the ships with Captain Crozier planning to move aboard Erebus in accord with Article 21.  He probably found instead that he was facing the greatest challenge of his life. He no longer had two ships available to him.  He did not move aboard Erebus to live in the spacious great cabin formerly occupied by Sir John Franklin. Instead he rose to the occasion and showed independent leadership that put new heart into his men. He turned his back on the great cabin of Erebus and moved ashore with his men, to set up a base camp on King William Island. Evidently he feared that the ice stream in which the ships were trapped might also damage Erebus or fail to release her. He probably ordered Terror stripped of stores, men, camping equipment, tools and boats so that there was a safe base ashore from which an overland retreat might take place, as it did on 25th April 1848.

     That Terror was thrown over before the winter of 1847-48 was suggested by Roobol (2019) because coils of rope including a heavy hawser were found by Owen Beattie and his group in 1982 embedded in mud below the high water mark at Crozier’s Landing.  This gear was not needed in the camp at Crozier’s Landing, nor on the 1848 retreat.  However it may have been the contents of Erebus’s rope store, emptied to make extra accommodation for both crews over winter 1847-48. 

     Crozier’s siting of a shore camp speaks volumes about his thinking. He did not order the camp to be built on the nearest point of land to the ships. That was probably where Sir John had just been buried. Instead he ordered the camp to be built at what he believed was James Clark Ross’s Victory Point (some 17 miles away). Graham Gore had not found Ross’s Victory Point pillar and Crozier decided that the position given by the estimated coordinates of Ross was the correct position (Roobol, 2019). Much of the 1848 brief record dealt with this point. It committed the 1848 retreat to traveling south towards the good summer hunting grounds of southern King William Island and Chantrey Inlet, rather than going north via Fury Beach.

      Today Ross’s Victory Point is accepted as being two and a half miles north of the camp site selected by Crozier and named ‘Crozier’s Landing’ by Captain David Woodman to avoid confusion. However to the Franklin Expedition the campsite would have been known as ‘Victory Point’ or ‘Ross’s Pillar’. It may also have been regarded as ‘The Gateway to the North-West Passage’ and its mapping was the major objective of the expedition.  With a southward retreat in mind, Captain Crozier may have given heart to his men by telling them that they would retreat south and go home through the North-West Passage that Gore had mapped. The distance to Crozier’s Landing was a little further than that to Franklin’s Grave, but the extra work would take the men’s minds off their predicament. 

     In June 1847 the summer thaw failed to release the ships from the ice trap. In the above scenario summer 1847 would have been a busy time. Aboard Erebus Acting Captain Fitzjames would have been supervising the preparations for departure and the voyage home, should the ships be released. His crew would have been busy rerigging the topmasts, spars and sails after dismantling the snow walls around the ship and taking down the canvas deck awnings used for ‘winter quarters’.  Ashore Captain Crozier with the crew of Terror would have been busy with the vast task of preparing to retreat overland with the expedition, should Erebus not be released in the summer thaw.  The expedition had carried only enough Arctic clothing and camping supplies for a few small parties to leave the ships for scientific trips. Now it was necessary to build sledges to haul four boats, lighten the boats, make tents out of canvas, make Arctic clothing.  For example stockings made from cut up blankets were found.  Snow goggles were needed in quantity. Small portable cooking stoves had to be made for use by small parties of men on the retreat.    

    When Erebus was not released, it meant that both crews had to spend winter 1847 – 48 crowded aboard Erebus.  Some stores and the contents of the Erebus rope store appear to have been moved ashore to Crozier’s Landing to make extra space aboard Erebus for two crews.  It proved a disastrous winter, for the men were ravaged by a mysterious illness and many died. Later Inuit testimony of a ship with many bodies in the bunks suggests that through the winter Crozier placed his dead in the abandoned overthrown Terror. By the time of the April 1848 retreat, the total number of deaths on the expedition had reached 9 officers and 15 men (1848 record).