21. Did any of Franklin’s men reach Fury Beach?

During the winter of 1858-59 Captain Leopold McClintock who was ice bound in Bellot Strait in the Fox sent Captain Allen Young with a sledge party to Fury Beach on Somerset Island. There the stores of H.M.S. Fury had been landed in 1825 when the ship ran aground and could not be freed. McClintock required sugar. Captain Young returned to the Fox with the sugar and reported finding an immense stack of preserved vegetables and soups. Showing through the snow were thirty-four casks of flour, five of split peas, five of tobacco, and four of sugar. Probably there were more supplies hidden beneath the snow cover. There were also two of Fury’s boats surviving. One was a four-oared gig that required only caulking to make it serviceable. The other was a large cutter. A large portion the bow and one side of the cutter had been cut out and removed. This was likely done to build sledges.

Captain John Ross had abandoned his ship Victory in Prince Regent’s Inlet in 1832 and set out for Fury Beach with his men. There they had built a house and had taken three of the Fury boats and gone north to seek rescue from whaling ships. They failed that year and returned to Clarence House and wintered here. They set out again in 1833 and this time were successful. Of the four officers and nineteen men of the expedition only three were lost. Captain Ross made no mention of cutting up the cutter at Fury Beach. He made sledges from food boxes for his trip back to Clarence House.

So who removed the side of the cutter? Who had got to Fury Beach in need of a sledge or sledges? It could not have been the Inuit for they did not inhabit North Somerset Island and the food depot remained intact apart from its use by John Ross and his party.

There is a possibility that a party set out from the trapped Franklin ship Erebus in summer 1849 to back track the route followed by the expedition to get help from whaling ships in Baffin Bay. A boat of the Franklin era was found in 1993 by a private expedition on Prince of Wales Island. It was visited and described by Ernest Coleman (2020). The boat lies on the shore of Back’s Bay – a small sheltered bay on the north-eastern shore of Prince of Wales Island near the north end of Peel Strait. The boat has disintegrated, with only the keel, bow and stem posts remaining intact. It was once a 27 foot double bowed whale boat. Nearby are the remains of an ancient sod house built by the Thule people who lived in the area before the Inuit arrived there. They hunted whales and whale bones are associated with their hut. Nearby is a stone tent ring about fifteen feet in diameter. Inside is a stone hearth where wood has been burned. The tent was likely built by the crew of the whaler. A search for metal by Coleman’s colleagues was not successful. Coleman believes the boat to be from the Franklin expedition that was stopped there by ice blocking Peel Sound.

The Franklin ships are believed to have sailed south down Peel Sound and the boat lies on their return route. If abandoned in summer 1849, the men would then have had to continue on foot, crossing to Somerset Island and then on to Fury Beach to follow the route of Captain John Ross to Fury Beach northwards. There they might have built a sledge and perhaps even taken a boat north with them. However such a party never emerged from the Arctic.

QUESTION. If Sir John Ross and his men did not cut out the large pieces from the cutter, who else could have done this?
QUESTION. Is the boat on Prince of Wales Island from the Franklin Expedition?