29. The fireplace trail, western campsites and the last hunters.

The last written message from the expedition is dated 25th April 1848 – the day before the retreat of the 105 survivors began to the south.  However there is a second part to the history of the expedition that was first realised by Captain David Woodman in his 1990 and 1995 books.  Previously the retreat had been thought to have taken place only in 1848.  But Captain Woodman realised that the 1853 testimony collected by John Rae stated that the retreat had been seen in Washington Bay only some four years previously and that this was not the 1848 retreat. The 1850 retreat involved only about 40 men.  In order to get from the point where the ships were abandoned in 1848 off the NW coast of King William Island to the position of the wreck of Erebus in Wilmot and Crampton Bay, the ship had to remanned and worked along the coast of King William Island.  This involved first travelling for 90 km to the southwest as far as Cape Crozier – the westernmost point on King William Island.  There the ship had to be turned to the south for about 40 km to pass through the 20 km wide Alexandra Strait that separates the Royal Geographical Society Islands from King William Island. From there it is about 100 km to the SSE to the final resting place of Erebus. There is much Inuit testimony for this later activity.

A manned ship in Terror Bay.

There is testimony collected by Charles Francis Hall of an occupied ship with ‘black men’ located within sight of a camp in Terror Bay, which places the ship inside Terror Bay probably in 1850. There is also post-19th century testimony collected by Rasmussen and Amundsen of the later arrival of a deserted ship being found off Cape Crozier that was boarded by the Inuit to find bodies inside in bunks. They entered her hold and cut a window causing the ship to sink in deep water.

Captain David Woodman (pers com. Sept. 2019) considers the possibility that Terror was remanned and sailed into Terror Bay, where she was crushed by the ice taking some of her crew down with her. This interpretation is not favoured here because the moving ice stream passes south through Alexandra Strait.  Both Terror Bay and the south side of Imnguyaaluk Island are both sheltered anchorages for ships outside the moving ice steam, where they are less likely to be thrown over or crushed by moving ice. This difference of interpretation might be resolved by any papers found in Captain Crozier’s desk filmed by Parks Canada in August 2019.

A ship winters at Imnguyaaluk Island.

There is post-19th century testimony of a ship wintering off the south coast of Imnguyaaluk Island – one of the Royal Geographical Society Islands off the west cost of King William Island. This modern testimony was collected from Inuit residents of Gjoa Haven by Dorothy Harley Eber 2008) between 1996 and 2008. It is therefore around a century and a half later than the 1848 retreat and should be treated with caution.   Captain David Woodman (pers comm., July 2019) has reviewed Eber’s book at:

http://www.polarworld.co.uk/arctic book review eber.htm.

Eber describes (2008, p.85) how Frank Analok identified south Imnguyaaluk Island as the place where testimony records that a ship wintered:

‘Our ancestors told is that an expedition ship wintered on this island. One of the first ships that came around wintered here. The Inuit who have long passed on before us knew about the white men being there, but our generation has only heard the stories.

I heard from Patsy (the late elder Patsy Topilikton) where the place was where they actually wintered.  According to Patsy they were iced in and had no choice.  During their time at Imnguyaaluk, they made use of seal oil and blubber – there are large traces of seal oil on the ground.  They must have heated things right on the surface of the land. When there is a concentration of oil, it leaves a slick.

One time, many years later, some Inuit were there on this island – next to the bigger one – waiting for the ice to melt. And when the ice melted, they found the seal-oil slick.

According to our ancestors there had been quite a few white men.  I don’t know how many but there was a man called Meetic – duck – and a person who was talked about a lot, who was superior. Inuit called him in Inuktitut ‘Qoitoyok’ – ‘the one who goes to the bathroom a lot’, an older man called Qoitoyok – ‘he who goes to the bathroom a lot’.  Even though this person was an adult, he was known to pee in his bed at night. That’s just the way he was.’

Franklin Seal hunters on the islands on the north coast of the Adelaide Peninsula.

Eber (2008) records how today the population of Gjoa Haven are very well aware of the loss of the Franklin expedition and with their sharp eyes have since the 1980s been identifying the sites of blubber fires. Eber (2008, p. 87) has named it ‘The Fireplace Trail’. The Inuit do not waste blubber in fires and believe them to have been made by the Franklin expedition. At the end of July and early August when the ground is snow free the sites of blubber fires are distinct because of the presence of ‘oil slicks’ in the sand. This is a place where the sand has been impregnated by hot oil from a blubber fire. The oil congeals in the ground to form a patch about two feet in diameter with the form of an inverted cone.  (Note the author has seen similar structures in the Rub Al Khali Desert of Arabia, where Bedouin have carried out oil changes on their Toyotas.  The waste oil sinks into the sand and then wind erosion exhumes oil-bound sand ‘sculptures’). Eber (2008, p.87) shows a map of the locations of the presently known structures. They are well developed on the Royal Geographical Society Island where the ship is believed to have wintered.

However others have been found much further south on the small islands off the northern coast of the Adelaide Peninsula in the area where the Erebus wreck has been found. Michael Angottitauru (different spelling to his brother Tommy) located the oil soaks on two small islands on the north-west margin of the Adelaide Peninsula (Aveomavik and Enogeiaqtuq) to the east of Wilmot and Crampton Bay where the wreck of Erebus was found in 2014.  A third location is on the sand spit at Ogle Point at the entrance to Chantry Inlet – the estuary of Back’s Great Fish River. The remains on Aveomavik were associated with the skeletal remains of three men (Eber, 2008, p.87). The area of the blubber fires is also the best Inuit hunting area for the bearded seal in spring time.

In the reconstruction of Roobol (2019), in late 1848, the remanned Erebus was released by the ice before everything necessary had been loaded back aboard ship from the land camp (in particular the store of heavy winter clothing).  She was sailed 155 km around the west coast of King William Island, through Alexandra Strait to the area of Terror Bay and Imnguyaaluk Island – one of the Royal Geographical Society Islands. There is testimony of a manned ship in both places – possibly a winter in each place – and evidently many things happened in this area. The ship was visited by Inuit and there is testimony that a successful joint summer hunt for caribou took place. This hunt could not have taken place in the barren north of King William Island in the very cold summers of 1847 and 1848.  It occurred because the ship had reached the south-western part of King William Island where there was good hunting.

A shore camp associated with the ship was visited by the Inuit, but its location is today uncertain. It was either in Terror Bay or on the south side of Imnguyaaluk Island or both. It is of particular interest because of the testimony of the burial of paper records in cement vaults. Inuit testimony collected by Captain Peter Bayne as young man working for Charles Francis Hall in 1867 and 1868 also describes the camp and its activities (Burwash (1931, p.122):

‘Many of the white men came ashore and camped there during the summer; that the camp had one big tent and several smaller ones; that Crozier (Aglooka) came here some times, and he had seen and talked with him; that seal were plentiful the first year, and sometimes the white men went with the natives and shot seal with their guns; that ducks and geese were also plentiful, and the white men shot many;’

‘that some of the white men were sick in the big tent; and died there, and were buried on the hill back of the camp;’

In 1850, a senior office, probably Captain Crozier, died. His military burial ashore was witnessed by the Inuit.  It was accompanied by the burial of paper records in a vault nearby.  The grave and the vault were both sealed with cement carried for use around the ships steam engine. The burial testimony was described by Captain Peter Bayne who collected it as a young man.  It became known as the Jamme Report and is much cited by Burwash (1931, p. 112):

‘ that one man died on the ships and was brought ashore and buried on the hill near where the others were buried; that this man was not buried in the ground like the others, but in an opening in the rock, and his body covered over with something that, ‘after a while was all same stone’; that he was out hunting seal when this man was buried, but other natives were there, and saw, and told him about it, and the other natives said that ‘many guns were fired’’

The location of this camp is either at Terror Bay or on south part of Imnguyaaluk Island. Captain Bayne figured the camp to have been about a fourth of a mile back from the beach, and about the same distance south of where the ship’s boats usually landed; that it was situated on a flat-topped mound near the base of a low ridge; that the crest of the ridge was not very wide and was formed of projecting rocks; and that the slope on the other side faced south-east. The Jamme Report continued (Burwash, 1831, p.115):

‘….there were several cemented vaults – one large one, and a number of small ones; that the natives thought that these latter contained only papers, for many papers were brought ashore – some blew away in the wind, but others were buried.’

A manned ship is looted.

The fireplace trail, if it exists, appears to add another chapter to the story of the voyage of the remanned Erebus. After the 1850 retreat from the Imnguyaaluk – Terror Bay area, she was sailed by a small crew to her final resting place in Wilmot and Crampton Bay and anchored there. A camp was built on a small adjacent island. At some time a boat may have left for the Mackenzie River leaving only four hunters aboard.  Perhaps it was at this final site that Erebus was found and first looted by the Inuit. With only four men left using her as a base for hunting trips, the ship had no future and it was better to be friendly with the Inuit than to start hostilities. Soon afterwards the hunters would leave the ship and march to the Melville Peninsula.

The testimony of the looting of a manned ship was given by Tommy Anguttitauruq who got it from the late elder Simon Qirut (Eber, 2008, p.90).  Again it was collected about a century and a half after the 1848 retreat and should be treated with caution.

‘In the later winter when the days were getting longer, the Inuit were seal hunting and they found people on a ship.  This was way before Inuit in this region knew anything about white people. They didn’t know who these people were, what race they were – they only knew they were human. These Inuit people started taking stuff out of the ship – taking out metal and wood, anything they could put their hands on – while the ship was unable to leave. The white people didn’t do anything, just watched. Maybe there were too many of these Inuit people – or maybe they were aggressive.’

In the sequence of events for the progressive abandonment of Erebus, there is the final stage where the anchored ship was occupied by only four hunters and the ships dog Neptune (Roobol, 2019).  At this stage the last officer had died and his body had been placed in the great cabin. With only four crew left there was no hope of sailing the ship anywhere.  The four crew live by making hunting trips away from the ship. So if the Inuit boarded her at this time, the last four crewmen knew that the fate of the ship was sealed.  So they could permit the looting of the ship as she was going nowhere. It would have been better to have friendly relations with the Inuit and pointless to be in dispute.  So they may well have stood silent and permitted the Inuit to loot metal and wood from the ship without interference.

The fireplace trail again.

Captain David Woodman (pers. comm. August 2019) has reported that the Royal Geographical Society Islands were searched by the crew of the Sir Wilfred Laurier in 2013. A small party was led by archaeologist Dr. Doug. Stenton.  The search was carried out in summer without a snow cover.  But nothing of Franklin vintage was found.  Nor was any sign of a ‘greasy camp’ found. However the search area was large and the party small and no special attention was paid to south Imnguyaaluk Island.

Captain David Woodman is very cautious about the ‘greasy spots’, suggesting instead that the grease might arise from the decomposition of the remains of a whale or seals washed ashore. Yet he concedes that the Inuit should be able to tell the difference between the two types of greasy ground.

At present none of the ‘greasy spots’ have received any archaeological attention, so that doubt exists as to their origin and Franklin vintage. However their distribution would be compatible with the activities of a crew engaged in winter seal hunting from the reoccupied Erebus located first at Imnguyaaluk Island and later near O’Reilly Island in Wilmot and Crampton Bay on the east side of the Adelaide Peninsula. Associated human skulls may belong to Inuit or suggest that the hunting life was precarious and not everyone survived.

<em>QUESTION: Will Captain Crozier’s desk in the sunken wreck of HMS Terror reveal that the ship was abandoned in 1847, or alternatively that she was reoccupied until she sank in Terror Bay in 1850?

QUESTION: Are the ‘greasy spots’ caused by cooking fires of Franklin’s men or are they caused by the decomposition of animal bodies washed ashore?

QUESTION: Is the ‘greasy camp site’ described by modern Inuit on Imnguyaaluk Island a Franklin campsite?

QUESTION:  Was Captain Crozier and also the paper records buried in Terror Bay or perhaps on weaker testimony, on south Imnguyaaluk Island? </em>