12. What happened in 1847?

The events affecting the expedition during 1847 present a great puzzle.  Both ships had gone into the ice and were beset on 12th September 1846. This placed them in an exposed area in an ice stream without the protection of a winter harbour, where the ships would have been subjected to ice pressures. The ships had entered the ice in an attempt to force their way through the North-West Passage and sail home in triumph via the Pacific Ocean.  For this they were equipped for three years, which with food rationing could be stretched longer.

There is abundant reliable Inuit testimony that one of the ships was thrown over onto her side by ice movements.  The only possibility is that it was HMS Terror, as there is also abundant testimony that Erebus was remanned and worked south to where her wreck was found in Wilmot and Crampton Bay.  Parks Canada divers have described HMS Terror as sitting upright on the sea floor with her three masts broken off and lying along her starboard side still attached to the hull by rigging. Clearly it was Terror that was thrown over by the ice.

There are two reliable primary eyewitness accounts of Terror being thrown over onto her side. The first of these was collected by Hall in 1866 when on route to King William Island. He met a group of Inuit and their headman – Kok-lee-arng-nun gave an account (Nourse 1879, p. 255):

‘The old man and his wife agreed in saying that the ship on board of which they had often seen Too-loo-ark was overwhelmed with heavy ice in the spring of the year. While the ice was slowly crushing it, the men all worked for their lives in getting out provisions, but before they could save much, the ice turned the vessel down on its side, crushing the masts and breaking a hole in her bottom and so overwhelming her that she sank at once, and had never been seen again. Several men at work on her could not get out in time, and were carried down with her and drowned.  ‘On this account Ag-loo-ka’s company had died of starvation, for they had not time to get the provisions out of her.’

The second account was collected by Hall in May 1869 from two eyewitnesses Tee-kee-ta and Ow-wer. It describes the famous meeting in Washington Bay on 1850. At first only the two Inuit hunters, Ow-wer and Too-shoo-art-thariu, met with a Franklin officer (‘Aglooka’ – possibly Marine Sergeant Solomon Tozer) who was accompanied by an armed marine (‘Ill-kern’ – possibly Marine private Pilkington) who was told to put down his weapon. Neither of the Franklin men spoke Inutitusk, so Aglooka made a pantomime explaining what had happened to their ships which they had abandoned (Woodman, 1995, p.126):

‘Aglooka pointed with his hand to the southward & and eastward & at the same time repeating the word I-wil-ik. The Innuits could not understand whether he wanted them to show him the way there or that he was going there.  He then made a motion to the northward & spoke the word oo-me-en, making them to understand there were 2 ships in that direction; which had, as they supposed, been crushed by the ice. As Aglooka pointed to the N., drawing his hand & arm from that direction he slowly moved his body in a falling direction and all at once dropped his head sideways into his hand, at the same time making a kind of combination or whirring, buzzing & wind blowing noise.  This the pantomimic representation of ships being crushed in the ice. While Aglooka was talking and making motions, the other men Innuits came to where they were.’

Presumably the officer dropping his head into his hand was intended to describe the great crash when a three-masted sailing ship fell onto her side.

There is a third single-source description of one of two ships lying on her side. This is in the Chieftain report that appears to have the two Franklin ships together in spring 1849 (Woodman, (1991, p. 211):

‘In the late summer of 1849 the Master of the whaler Chieftain, then lying in Pond’s Bay, was visited by a strange Eskimo, who of his own volition and without previous questioning, handed him a remarkable drawing. It depicted a long narrow strip of land. On the right were shown two three-masted ships, on the left two more three-masted ships, one of which was on her beam ends. The Eskimo then explained, mainly by signs, for no interpreter was present, that two of the ships had been frozen up for four years on the west side of Prince Regents Inlet, and the other two on the eastern side for one year. That second pair was probably the Enterprise and the Investigator, then on their first relief expedition under the command of Sir James Ross; they had been ice-bound for nearly a year at Leopold Island off the western entrance to Prince Regent Inlet…….The Inuit and some companions had been aboard all four ships the previous spring and they were safe’.

When Sir James Clark Ross returned home, he reported that he had not met any Inuit, so the Chieftain report was discarded. The drawing is reproduced in Woodman (1991) who reanalysed it. The whalers thought the drawing showed a pair of ships on either side of Prince Regent Inlet. However Captain David Woodman points out the narrow Isthmus of Boothia can be seen down the middle of the drawing.   This account today suggests that the two ships on the west of Boothia were Erebus and Terror, with Terror lying on her side. The drawing dates the ships to spring 1849. This is after the 1848 retreat and supports the idea that some returned to the ships and were seen if not visited by Inuit.

There is a fourth testimony of a ship lying with her side and much broken. This was given to Hall by the old Inut lady Ook-bar-loo (Nourse, 1897, p. 592-3; Woodman,1992, p.221):

She noted that ‘nearly the whole of one side of the vessel had been crushed in by the heavy ice that was about it’, and she thought that this was why ‘the Kob-lu-nas had left it and gone to the land and lived in tents’.

The wreck of HMS Terror shows that her sides are unbroken. The masts are broken off. With the ship lying on her side, damage to the side could not be seen by the Inuit, only the broken masts. However the Inuit testimony presents a very strong case for Terror being thrown over by ice movements and rendered uninhabitable.  The Parks Canada divers description of the wreck is consistent with the ship being thrown over onto her starboard side.

There remains the big question of when and where was Terror overthrown? There appear to be two possibilities:

a)  In Spring 1847, before the ships were abandoned for the 1848 retreat.  The ships were then ice bound off the north-west coast of King William Island, not far from where they were beset in August 1846.

b)  Alternatively Captain Woodman (pers comm., August 2019 ) has suggested that Terror was remanned and sailed into Terror Bay, where she was overthrown and sank probably in 1850.

These two views provide the main difference today in the interpretations of Woodman and Roobol. To try to resolve this problem requires skills similar to those written about by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his famous series of Sherlock Holmes. There is no direct evidence but a number of puzzling facts suggesting something calamitous happened to the expedition in 1847 before the 1848 retreat.  For the arm-chair detective these are listed next.

1). Captain David Woodman has argued (pers. comm. 2019) that as there is no mention of the accident in the 1848 record, so it did not happen before the 1848 retreat. Roobol (2019) does not accept this as almost all of the paperwork of the expedition remains lost.  The key record is only a single printed naval message form with the 1848 entry crowded in small writing in the margins.

2) A key indicator that something calamitous happened in summer 1847 is indicated by the expedition, instead of waiting to be freed from the ice in the summer thaw, suddenly switched to moving tons of equipment to a camp on King William Island.  Why did they do this if their plan was to sail through the North-West Passage?  Some of the equipment moved had nothing to do with the planned 1848 retreat and would have taken a great deal of time and effort to get to the island – more than was probably available in spring 1848 before the  retreat departed on April 26th.

The camp was mapped by Major Burwash in 1930 who found the stores formed a depot along a ten-foot raised beach behind the campsite. The equipment was probably in stacks over a 400 foot length being rope, a tent, barrel stave, iron and coal, scattered canvas and small rope and naval broadcloth. Beattie and Geiger (1987) identified 13 stone circles for tents as distinct from other stone circles by later visitors. The tent rings were enough to house the entire crew of HMS Terror. The question is raised as to why go to the trouble of building a large land depot with a need for 13 tents?  If the ships were to be abandoned in April 1848, then preparation work could have been carried out on a large ice floe nearby, as shown by Shackleton in 1915 when his ship ‘Endurance’ was crushed by the ice in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica.

3) Another puzzle is that the 1848 record states that up to the time of the retreat the number of deaths had been 9 officers and 15 men.  Three men had died and were buried on Beechey Island and Sir John had also died.  This means that 8 officers and 12 men died in the 10 months after Sir John’s death on 11th June 1847 and the retreat started on 26th April 1848.  The number of officers is disproportionally high.  Here there is a suggestion of a calamity.  Could the officers have been leading men in trying to save stores in the ships hold when she as thrown over?

4)   Another hint of evidence for an 1847 overthrow is that Captain Crozier did not carry out Admiralty order Article 21. This states that if Sir John died, Captain Crozier was to take over command of the expedition (which he did) but that he was to transfer to HMS Erebus and place Captain Fitzjames aboard and in command of HMS Terror. It is known from the 1848 record that this was not done. Captain Crozier is unlikely to have disobeyed a direct Admiralty instruction. The explanation might be that he could not carry out the order at the time of Sir John’s death, because HMS Terror had been thrown over onto her starboard side and rendered uninhabitable. Instead of leaving his men and moving aboard Erebus, he led his men ashore to build the emergency camp on King William Island before the winter set in. Presumably both crews participated in the long hard haul across the ice to the chosen campsite.

5)   Both Hobson and McClintock reported a four foot high heap of clothing that may have been left inside a tent that had blown away.  Hobson added that it was of heavy type. McClintock and Hobson were of the opinion that the vast amount of surplus clothing and equipment left at Crozier’s Landing was discarded by the overloaded retreating crews in 1848. However Crozier and his officers were not stupid men and a better interpretation is that there never was any intention in taking this mass of equipment on the retreat.  Rather, the ships were found to be in great danger and so all sorts of portable equipment and stores were moved ashore, so in the event of a disaster the crews would have a land base with equipment.  Later in Spring 1848 only the more essential items were taken on the retreat.  Also after the failure of the retreat some of the stores and equipment were transferred back aboard the surviving ship.

6)  Beattie and Geiger found coils of rope in the mud on the shore at the camp site.  It had evidently been dumped on the ice. The coils included one rope about 5 cm in diameter. These were likely to have been the contents of a ships rope locker.  They were not at all needed for the 1848 retreat. Roobol (2019) suggested they were the contents of the rope locker of Erebus emptied to make extra accommodation for the two crews over winter 1847-48. Rope would be essential to any attempts to escape by boat.

7) Another clue is provided by the initials of Terror crewmen found scratched on two silver table spoons with the crest of Sir John Franklin aboard the Utjulik wreck by the Inuit (described later). This wreck was found in 2014 and is Erebus.  The spoons indicate that some of the men who remanned Erebus after the failure of the 1848 retreat were Terror men.

The above lines of evidence suggested to Roobol (1991) that Terror was thrown over onto her beam ends with her masts broken in 1847 and rendered uninhabitable. This would have been a major catastrophe.  Perhaps Erebus was also in danger from the same ice movements. If the entire expedition was at risk then it is understandable why the camp was built on King William Island in 1847.  It was in case both ships were rendered unsailable by ice action. If Terror was not thrown over in 1847, we are left with the problem of why so much excess equipment was brought ashore by the crews and that Captain Crozier disobeyed a direct Admiralty instruction.

There was a Camp Terror.   Its existence is known from one of the poorly preserved letters on the steward’s skeleton found by McClintock near the Peffer River known as ‘The Peglar Papers’. They contain a certificate of service for Harry Peglar – Captain of the Foretop of H.M.S. Terror. The document is described by Battersby (2010, p. 187) and Potter (2016, p.49) and may read:

‘H.M.S. Erebus

tell the Captain

you and Peglar

on bord onn hay

The Terror Camp

is clear’

Battersby thought the document might be a note to the Captain of Erebus.   It may be reporting that the camp on King William Island was finally empty of men who had now all moved aboard Erebus for the winter of 1847-48.

Captain David Woodman believes that Terror was remanned and sailed to Terror Bay. The critical testimony of Kok-lee-arng-nun is referring to the years 1849 and 1850, when the ship or ships had been remanned and worked to the west of King William Island. At this time Sir John Franklin is dead and Captain Crozier is in command. Captain Woodman also believes that the camp in Terror Bay dates to 1850 after Terror sank in the bay. Presumably the men who died in the camp were the immobile sick left behind after the 1850 retreat.

A case can be made against Terror being thrown over by ice inside the shelter of Terror Bay, as it would have provided a sheltered harbour from the ice movements in Alexandra Strait.  Wind records for the Gjoa Haven airfield show that winds blow from the south for 25% of the time and also from the west for 25% of the time. Such winds could drive a drifting ship into Terror Bay.  HMS Terror is not anchored and Inuit testimony reports that she sank when the Inuit entered her hold and cut a widow in the side to let in light.

Today Parks Canada has made available excellent video footage showing the interior of the cabins of HMS Terror.  Inside the cabins some of the walls are lined with shelves of willow pattern plates or glass bottles.  All are held in place by wooden battens to stop them falling out in rough waters.  Some of the shelves are empty, but others remain full. If Terror was thrown onto her beam ends on her starboard side, then the shelves that are still full will be on the starboard or down side, while those that are empty will be on the port or upper side. A map of the cabins showing walls with and without shelf contents would be most instructive, The ship evidently settled on the bottom in an upright position. In Captain Crozier’s cabin his chair and desk remain upright, presumably because they are attached to the deck to prevent then being thrown about in rough weather. Other chairs are overturned or broken.

QUESTION:  Why did Captain Crozier order a camp built at Crozier’s Landing on King William Island?

QUESTION:  Why were there 13 tent circles?

QUESTION:  Was Terror thrown over onto her beam ends in 1847?

QUESTION: Why was the spare clothing and coils of rope placed ashore?

QUESTION? Why did Captain Crozier not move aboard Erebus after the death of Sir John as ordered by the Admiralty.