18. When was Erebus released?

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    John Roobol
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    A major gap in the history of the Franklin expedition is what happened after the 105 survivors began their retreat on 26th April 1848 and a remanned Erebus arrived off the area of Terror Bay – Imnguyaaluk (Royal Geographical Society Islands) area. Two of the four boats of the retreat were stopped in Erebus Bay and the others may have reached Terror Bay, perhaps with one of them going on to Douglas Bay. But the retreat failed dismally with barely 100 miles achieved. The objective had been either to reach southern King William Island where the hunting was good and perhaps go on to the nearest Hudson’s Bay Company post 1200 miles away. A big factor was the unsuitability of the men’s clothing and footwear. In April-May the weather is poor with snowstorms and strong winds that whip up drifting snow. Lieutenant Hobson of the ‘Fox’ in May 1859 traversed King William Island and scarcely saw the sun. He experienced bad weather for the whole time including almost incessant snow fall. The wind was continuous from the north-west varying from a strong breeze to a hard gale that whipped up the fallen snow. The Lieutenant developed scurvy and was hauled back to the ‘Fox’ on the sledge pulled by his men. It seems probable that the 1848 retreat experienced similar difficulties.
    Roobol (2019) has suggested that about 58 men returned to reoccupy HMS Erebus after the failed 1848 retreat. They had left about 47 men who were too weak or sick to move in three camps. Men had been left to care for them and to hunt for food. However their survival depended on the remanned ship being freed and returning to both Erebus and Terror Bays to pick up the immobile sick. Graphic descriptions of the ‘death camps’ by the Inuit show that this did not occur and that a few prolonged their existence by cannibalism. The hunting failure may have been caused by an unusually bad summer when the summer vegetation did not flourish and the caribou herds failed to arrive,
    Roobol (2019) suggested that Terror was abandoned in summer 1847 when ice movements threw her over onto her side and her three masts were broken. There is testimony of a reoccupied Erebus in the Terror Bay/Imnguyaaluk Island area. Her wreck was found and identified in Wilmot and Crampton Bay near O’Reilly Island in 2014. The 1848 retreat began on 26th April and the men carried about 40 days short rations. Those that returned would have got back at the latest about 40 days later or around 4th June 1848. After Erebus was reoccupied, when was she released? Was Erebus released later in summr1848 or in summer1849? There are two hints at when this might have occurred and they contradict one another.
    When the overturned Terror was abandoned, Captain Crozier may have led his men ashore onto King William Island and built a camp there at a place today called ‘Crozier’s Landing’, but was known to the expedition incorrectly as it turned out, as Victory Point. Boats and stores from Terror were brought there and work started on possible preparations for an overland retreat presumably in the fear that Erebus might suffer a similar fate to Terror as both ships were trapped in a moving ice stream on a lee shore without a safe winter harbour.
    Captain Crozier’s thinking here is of great interest for he had assumed command of the expedition on the death of Sir John Franklin on June 11th 1847. Admiralty orders were that he was to move aboard Erebus and place Commander Fitzjames in charge of Terror. He did not do this and chose to remain with his men as indicated by Fitzjames signing himself as ‘Captain of HMS Erebus’ in the 1848 Victory Point message. That Crozier would fail to follow an Admiralty instruction was a serious matter and gives us an insight into how seriously he viewed the crisis that had overtaken the expedition. It is possible that Captain Crozier saw the flagship decision to try to force the North-West Passage with both ships as a ‘Flagship Folly’. Captain Fitzjames after the ships were trapped in the ice stream had signed the 1847 message form ‘All well’, which would not have been the understanding of a veteran polar explorer like Captain Crozier. In the ten or eleven months that the two ships had been trapped in the ice stream he had had plenty of time to reflect on the dangers the ships were facing and on the options for extracting at least some of the men. The ships were equipped with a large library and he no doubt pondered the writing of Sir James Clark Ross, who was the first European onto the north-west coast of King William Island. There he had observed the ice stream that originated in the Beaufort Sea of the Arctic Ocean pushing up against the shores of King William Island. He had written in his uncle’s book (Ross, 1835, p.291):
    ‘The pack of ice which had in the autumn of the last year, been pressed against the shore, consisted of the heaviest masses that I had ever seen in such a situation, with others, the lighter flows had been thrown up on some parts of the coast, in a most extraordinary and inconceivable manner; turning up large quantities of shingle before them, and, in some places, having travelled as much as a half mile beyond the limits of the highest tide mark’.
    Did Captain Crozier dissociate himself from the ‘Flagship Folly’ by moving ashore with his men to build a ‘survival camp’ where they could start making preparations for an overland retreat? This way he was protecting his men and boats from the hazards of ice movement. It proved timely as Erebus was not released by the ice to return home with both crews aboard in summer 1847. So the plan and preparations would have gone ahead for a land retreat in spring 1848, a few months before the food supplies ran out.
    The men who returned from the 1848 retreat would have first arrived back at the camp at Crozier’s Landing as the ships were some 5 leagues (28 km) further away across the frozen sea. Searchers for the lost expedition eventually found Crozier’s Landing and were impressed by a four foot high pile of clothing there that may once have filled a tent. Inuit testimony later describes the last survivors aboard Erebus as ‘black men’. This suggests that after some years of living like the Inuit by hunting, their clothing (like that of Sir Earnest Shackleton’s men) became impregnated with oil and blubber soot. The hint is that after remanning Erebus there was insufficient time to get all the needed equipment back on board the ship and the spare clothing was left behind. This suggests that Erebus might have been released in August 1848.
    However there exists another piece of Inuit testimony that suggests that both Erebus and Terror (with the latter on her side) were still together in spring 1849. If this is correct then the remanned Erebus could not have been released before autumn 1849. The testimony was collected in 1849 by the Master of the whaling ship ‘Chieftain’. It describes four ships in the ice, with one on her side. Hoever it is a single source testimony and therefore not the most reliable. (Woodman, (1991, p. 211) wrote:
    ‘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 was 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 but that the remanned Erebus had not yet been released by spring 1849.
    So at this stage it looks as if Erebus was released either shortly after the return of men from the 1848 retreat or one year later in summer 1859.
    QUESTION. Was HMS Erebus released by the ice in summer 1848 or 1849?

    • This topic was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by John Roobol.
    • This topic was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by Admin.
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