23. What precipitated the 1850 retreat?

There are two possibilities for events that trigged the 1850 retreat.  In the first case a remanned ship that could be Erebus (Roobol, 2019) or Terror (Woodman, 1995) was located on the west side of King William Island in either Terror Bay or Imnguyaaluk Island.  There a senior officer dies.  Captain David Woodman has suggested this was Captain Crozier. He was buried with full military honors. Also papers were buried in a vault nearby.  Both were sealed with cement.  The events were witnessed by the Inuit.

The death of Captain Crozier, their second expedition leader, would have been a particularly hard blow for the crew of HMS Terror.  They would have realised that their chances of a rescue arriving in response perhaps to some of the men from previous escape attempts to get home, was very low indeed.  Although very weak from a starvation diet, they must have realised that it was their last chance to escape from the ice. The retreat proved to be a death march and is marked by a trail of shallow graves.  The weakness of the men is demonstrated by the graves, where a body was laid on the ground and covered by small stones. Larger stones nearby were not used.

The second possibility depends on the different interpretation of Woodman (1995) that the remanned Terror was crushed by the ice and sank in Terror Bay probably in 1850. The loss of their ship in Terror Bay could have trigged the 1850 retreat. The Roobol (2019) believes that Terror was thrown over onto her starboard side in 1847 and abandoned. She was ice rafted through Alexandra Strait and found by the Inuit. They entered her hold and cut a window causing her to sink in deep water in Terror Bay.

The 1850 retreat is famous for a meeting between the retreating men and four Inuit families in Washington Bay.    The leader of the retreating party tried to explain to the Inuut what they we doing by means of a pantomime (Woodman, 1995, p. 126):

‘Aglooka pointed with his hand to the southward & 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 in the ice.  As Aglooka pointed to the N., drawing his hand and 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 of 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.’

The 1850 retreat comprised a party of about 40 men who were man hauling one boat and a sledge with camping equipment. The party was heading for Repulse Bay (I-wil-ik) some 450 miles away. The party may have been led by Ice Master Thomas Blanky (Toolooah) and Marine Sergeant Solomon Tozer (Aglooka).  In the party were probably Assistant Surgeon Alexander Macdonald (Doktook) and from H.M.S. Erebus marine William Pilkington (Ill-kern).  This party later split up into three smaller parts probably to increase the chances of both hunting and meeting Inuit with whom to trade for food.

Another interesting conclusion is possible from the detailed account given by Woodman (1991, p. 124) of the classic meeting near Washington Bay. The retreating crews spoke almost no Inuit language and communication was mainly by pantomime.  This is surprising as it is known from the Fitzjames Journal (Fitzjames, 1852) that Assistant Surgeon Goodsir of Erebus, had started to compile a dictionary of Inuit words immediately on arrival in Greenland.   Clearly this operation had ceased and the vocabulary was obviously not available to the retreating crews. This would suggest that Goodsir was probably amongst the nine officers who died before the retreat began, although a facial reconstruction on a skull found at Tulloch Point has been tentatively identified as that of Goodsir. Similarly Captain Crozier, who spoke Inuktitut, was also much missed for his communication skills.

QUESTION. Is Captain Crozier’s grave and also the buried papers on Imnguyaaluk Island or in Terror Bay?