to fulfil the scientific obligations of the mission.
In the event, much new land was mapped, along the river’s course and along the Arctic coast, but Franklin left his return too late and his men were caught in vicious weather conditions as winter approached. Their food ran out and they were reduced to eating berries and lichens wherever they could find them. Franklin recalled later that one day ‘the whole party ate the remains of their old shoes [moccasins of untanned leather] to strengthen their stomachs for the fatigue of the day’s journey’. The dreadful conditions produced bitter divisions. Ten of the accompanying Canadian voyageurs (fur traders who also acted as scouts and porters) died on the march home, and one of those who survived, Michel Terohaute, was believed to have done so by cannibalism. He then shot an English member of the expedition, Midshipman Robert Hood, before being shot in turn by Dr John Richardson, second-in-command of the party.
The disorganised chaos at the end of the expedition was seen by some at the time as the result of Franklin’s obstinacy and unwillingness to listen to the voyageurs or the local Inuit. More recently, the editor of a 1995 edition of Franklin’s journals summed him up as ‘a solid representative of imperial culture, not only in its many positive aspects, but in its less generous dimensions as well’. But when he arrived back home a year later and told his side of their fight for survival, his book became a bestseller and, far from being criticised for jeopardising himself and his men, John Franklin quickly became a popular hero: The Man Who Ate His Boots.
Barrow’s multi-pronged attack on the Northwest Passage had brought results and, even when unsuccessful, had so firmly gripped the public imagination that men like Parry and Franklin and James Clark Ross were becoming shining lights in a new firmament – a world in which heroes fought the elements, not the enemy.
In 1824, as Erebus was being carved into shape in a quiet corner of south-west Wales, two of her fellow bomb ships, Hecla and Fury, were once more to go into action against the ice. Impressed by their sturdy design and reinforced hulls, Edward Parry, the explorer of the moment, chose them to spearhead yet another assault on the Northwest Passage.
This new journey represented a step up for the young James Clark Ross, he of the tall, straight back and leonine thatch of thick dark hair, for he was appointed Second Lieutenant on the Fury. But the expedition itself was not a success. First, the ships were held up by thick ice in Baffin Bay. They attempted to warp themselves through by driving anchors into the ice and pulling themselves along using the ships’ hawsers, but it was a dangerous technique, which, as Parry himself admitted, could go quite violently wrong: on one occasion, he recorded, ‘three of Hecla’s seamen were knocked down as instantaneously as if by a gunshot, by the sudden flying out of an anchor’. Then Fury was driven ashore and had to be abandoned on the coast of Somerset Land. After just one winter, the decision was taken to return home.
Barrow, however, remained convinced that Parry could do no wrong. With the strong support of Sir Humphry Davy of the Royal Society, he therefore entrusted him with an attempt on the North Pole. The other man of the moment, James Clark Ross, was appointed as Parry’s second-in-command. Also on board were Ross’s friend Francis Crozier and a new assistant surgeon, Robert McCormick, who would go on to play an important part in Ross’s subsequent adventures.
The expedition reached Spitsbergen in June and from there the men headed off on reindeer-drawn sledges, aiming to make about 14 miles a day on their way to the Pole. They continued north, travelling by night and resting by day to avoid snow blindness. Unfortunately, the reindeer proved less than ideal for towing the sledges and were later killed and eaten; and by the end of July the party’s progress had slowed to one mile in five days. The decision was taken to turn back. A loyal toast was drunk, and the standard they had hoped to run up at the Pole was hoisted.
Even though they hadn’t achieved their goal, Parry and his men had scored a considerable achievement. They had reached a new furthest north of 82.43°, some 500 miles from the North Pole, a record that was to stand for nearly fifty years. As for Ross, he had survived forty-eight days in the ice and had shot a polar bear. Yet the fact remained that another attempt on the North Pole had failed, leading The Times to state in a prescient editorial: ‘In our opinion, the southern hemisphere presents a far more tempting field for speculation; and most heartily do we wish that an expedition were to be fitted out for that quarter.’ That, however, was to be a long time coming.
On his return in October 1827, James Ross was promoted to commander, but, with no immediate prospect of further work, was stood down on half-pay. Thanks to his uncle, however, he didn’t have to kick his heels for long. Just a few months later John Ross, who had been cold-shouldered by Barrow and most of the Admiralty after the Croker’s Mountains fiasco, won financial support for a new polar expedition from his friend Felix Booth, the gin distiller. One of the conditions Booth imposed was that Ross should involve his nephew – a condition that the bluff and curmudgeonly John swiftly agreed to, even though he hadn’t asked James first. He even promised that James would serve as his second-in-command. Fortunately for everyone, James, now in the prime of life and in need of money, accepted.
Booth agreed to invest £18,000 of his gin fortune in fitting out Victory – not the legendary flagship of Lord Nelson, but an 85-ton steam-driven paddle-steamer, previously employed on the Isle of Man–Liverpool ferry service. Ross’s idea was that because the Victory was not wholly dependent on sail power, it would be able to push its way more easily through the thicker ice. The principle was sound enough, but the crew began to have trouble with the engine the morning after they left Woolwich. Even with it working flat out, they could only make three knots. Before they had left the North Sea they discovered that the boiler system was leaking badly (one of its designers suggested they stop up the hole with a mixture of dung and potatoes). And they were still within sight of Scotland when one of the boilers burst – as did John Ross’s patience, on being told the news: ‘as if it had been predetermined that not a single atom of all this machinery should be aught but a source of vexation, obstruction and evil’. In the winter of 1829 they dumped the engine altogether, to general relief.
Despite these teething problems, they went on to have their fair share of success. John Ross, perhaps a little sheepishly, sailed Victory through the non-existent Croker’s Mountains and out the other side of Lancaster Sound. En route he mapped the west coast of a peninsula to the south, which he named Boothia Felix, shortened later to Boothia, but still the only peninsula in the world named after a brand of gin. They made contact with the local Inuit, to the benefit of both sides. One of the Inuit was particularly impressed that Ross’s carpenter was able to fashion him a wooden leg to replace one he’d lost in an encounter with a polar bear. The new leg was inscribed with the name ‘Victory’ and the date.
Their greatest achievement was still to come. On 26 May 1831, two years into what was to be a four-year expedition, James Clark Ross set off on a twenty-eight-day expedition by sledge across the Boothia Peninsula, with the intention of pinpointing the North Magnetic Pole. Just five days later, on 1 June, he successfully measured a dip of 89°90'. He was as close as it was possible to get to the Magnetic Pole. ‘It almost seemed as if we had accomplished everything we had come so far to see and do,’ John Ross later wrote; ‘as if our voyage and all its labours were at an end, and that nothing now remained for us but to return home and be happy for the rest of our days.’
The raising of the Union Flag and the annexing of the North Magnetic Pole in the name of Great Britain and King William IV should have been the prelude to a hero’s return, but the capricious Arctic weather refused to cooperate. The ice closed in and the expedition’s survival began to look increasingly precarious. As the prospect of a third winter trapped in the Arctic turned into reality, elation gave way to bitter resignation. In June, James Ross had been triumphant. Just a few months later his uncle John wrote with feeling: ‘To us, the sight of the ice was a plague, a vexation, a torment,
