25. The 1853 march of HMS Investigator’s crew.

Some idea of the condition of the Franklin men and their difficulty in marching in a weakened state during the 1850 retreat can be obtained by reading an account of a similar march, but a much shorter and successful march, carried out by the crew of HMS Investigator in 1853.

On 20th January 1850, HMS Enterprise, Captain Richard Collinson, and HMS Investigator, Commander Robert McClure, departed in search of the lost Franklin expedition. The ships had recently returned from an unsuccessful search led by Sir James Clark Ross. Ross had approached from the east but had been blocked by heavy ice. The re-equipped ships were this time sent around the world via the Magellan straits to approach from the west via the Bering Strait. The orders were that the ships were never to separate. In fact after leaving England they never met again. Commander McClure did not wait for the Enterprise and entered the Arctic a year ahead of her and his commanding officer. It seems he was more interesting in being the first through the North-West Passage, rather than looking for the lost Franklin expedition. His decision resulted in the expedition’s translator being ‘kidnapped’.

Johann August Miertsching was a German evangelist and a missionary to the Inuit of Labrador. He was born in Saxony in 1817 and spent his early years at Ogkak on the Labrador coast where he learned with great proficiency the language of the Inuit.  He was appointed translator by the Admiralty, but as there was no cabin available aboard Collinson’s Enterprise, he was given a temporary berth aboard Investigator. The plan was for him to move aboard Enterprise at Valparaiso.  However McClure’s ambition to go it alone and find a North-West Passage resulted in the two ships never meeting and Meirtsching never getting aboard Enterprise.  This had the disastrous result when after five years of searching Collinson reached a place on the west side of the Victoria Channel, only 30 miles from where the Franklin remains lay on western King William Island. Here they met an Inut with knowledge of the lost ships who drew a map apparently showing a ship according to one of the ice mates G. Arbuthnot. Wreckage from the Franklin ships was found nearby but not recognised for what it was. Without an interpreter, Collinson was unable to question the Inut and his information was disregarded so the whole point of the expedition was missed.

Commander McClure aboard Investigator discovered Prince of Wales Strait between Banks and Victoria Islands. From there he saw Viscount Melville Sound choked by the ice stream that flows along the coast of Victoria Island to King William Island (the same ice stream that trapped the Franklin ships).  McClure knew that if he could cross this ice stream he would complete the North-West Passage. The following year he took his ship up the west coast of Banks Island to its north coast where he again encountered the ice stream. He wintered in a bay he called Mercy Bay that was only 60 miles from where William Edward Parry, approaching from the east, had wintered in 1819-20 at Melville Island. The following spring McClure visited Parry’s old camp and left a message there.

The ice did not release Investigator that year, so the ship spent a second winter at Mercy Bay with the crew on very short rations. Happily the following spring another Franklin search expedition under Captain Kellet (ships Intrepid and Resolute) approached from the east through Lancaster Sound. McClure’s note was found and a relief party reached Investigator on 6th April 1853. The party comprised Second Lieutenant Bedford Pim of the Resolute and two seamen Bidgood and Hoyle who reached Investigator after she had been in the ice for three years. They had travelled early in the year when temperatures were around minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit

Dr. Armstrong of Investigator wrote of Lieutenant Pim:

‘But when he saw us sitting down with starved aspect on the morning after his arrival, to what was denominated breakfast (a cup of weak cocoa without sugar, and a moiety of bread) his feelings overcame him; he rushed to his sledge, then out on the ice, brought a large piece of bacon, placed it before us, and gave us the only breakfast we had known for many a long day’.

The two seamen Bidgood and Hoile were also moved to tears.

The immediate response was that on 9th April 1853, Captain McClure and Lieutenant Pim set out for Dealy Island to meet with Captain Kellett. Orders were left that on 15th April, Translator Miertschin, an officer and two men would bring twenty four men who were sick with scurvy to Dealy Island. The entire journey was over ice of the North-West Passage. Everything was to be left behind and each man was to carry only a spare pair of socks. Miertsching was upset to leave three years of collections behind. He had packed up four leather valaises, a chest of stones, a chest of Eskimo weapons, a chest of dried plants and a leather bandbox. He left his most important possession – his journals for three years. The journey lasted eighteen days, sleeping shifts of five hours alternating with seven hours of travel day and night.

It was decided that Captain McClure would return to Investigator taking two doctors with him.  If he could find twenty men who were fit and willing to spend a fourth winter in the ice, should the ship not be released that year. Captain McClure if he did not return was to send Miertsching’s journal back. with a doctor.  He had had it in his possession since 4th April.  Only three men volunteered to remain aboard Investigator with Captain McClure, so the ship was abandoned and the remaining men set out for Dealy Island.  It turned out that Captain McClure did not bring Miertsching’s journal back and argued that if he had, he would have to bring those of all his officers.  However, a year later when Investigator was visited no journals could be found. It seems that McClure did not want records of the crews sufferings to be publicised.

Captain McClure and the strongest of his crew who had remained aboard Investigator were seen approaching some five miles away. Only Captain Kellet and Miertsching were fit enough to go out to meet them. What they saw was something like the 1850 retreat of the Franklin expedition. Miertsching wrote (Miertsching, 1967, p. 200):

‘Two sick men were lashed onto each of the four sledges; others, utterly without strength, were supported by comrades who still preserved a little vigour; others again held onto and leaned on the sledges, and these were drawn by men so unsteady on their feet that every five minutes they would fall and be unable to rise without the help of their comrades, the captain, or one of the officers.’

After the court martial to investigate the loss of Investigator held in October 1854, a deputation of seamen approached Lieutenant Pim and stated:

‘If it had not been for you, Sir, many of us now present would never have seen Old England again. All of us look upon you as a deliverer, and we shall never forget the joy we felt when you reached us.’

Lieutenant Pim replied:

‘Thank you my lads.  I shall never forget our meeting. I congratulate you on your having escaped a similar fate to that of Sir John Franklin, I hope you will now enjoy yourselves to your hearts content…. And next spring I dare say we shall meet again under the walls of Cronstadt, perhaps in St. Peterburg itself’.

For Commander McClure came fame and reward. He and his crew had crossed a North-West Passage but had abandoned their ship and completed it on foot. McClure claimed to be the first to make a North-West Passage and was knighted as well as receiving the Admiralty award of £10,000.

Lady Jane Franklin contested this claim and proposed that her husband was the first to discover the passage. The last unknown section of the passage was almost certainly mapped by a Franklin team led by Lieutenant Graham Gore in May-June 1847.  The party returned a few days after Sir John had died but would have been the first European men through a North-West Passage.  In 2014 the sunken wreck of Erebus was discovered in Wilmot and Crampton Bay off the Adelaide Peninsula. The ship had reached the summer open water channel that runs along the northern margin of the North American continent. The position of the wreck indicates that after five years in the ice a small crew, long after the death of Sir John Franklin, worked HMS Erebus through a North-West Passage probably in 1850.  HMS Terror sank in Terror Bay on the west coast of King William Island and did not make the passage.