Death in the Ice Part 3: Sir John's Medal

Here's Sir John Franklin, posing for his 1845 daguerreotype, with a bad case of the flu. He's proudly wearing his Hanoverian Order of Merit. He received this in 1833 when he was made a Knight Commander of the Guelphic Order of Hanover. Franklin took his medal with him into the Arctic – presumably to wear at the formal receptions he would be expected to attend in Asia, after sailing through the Northwest passage. 

The story of this medal is also the story of how the fate of the Franklin Expedition was discovered.

Sir John's medal is displayed along with the other relics in Death in the Ice. You can have a close look at it, and read its resonant Latin motto 'Nec Aspera Terrent' – Hardships Do Not Deter Us.
 

In 1854, while the Navy was still searching fruitlessly for Franklin in the northern Arctic, hundreds of miles to the south, on the Canadian mainland, Dr John Rae solved the mystery. He was on a journey of exploration, but he wasn't looking for Franklin. 
 
John Rae was an Orkneyman, working for the Hudson's Bay Company. Here's how his biographer, Ken McGoogan, describes his achievements:

Between 1846 and 1854, he led four major Arctic expeditions, travelling more than 23,000 miles. The chief hunter of every one, Rae surveyed 1,751 miles of unexplored territory, including 1,538 miles of northern coastline. A cost-efficient marvel of stamina, resilience, and resourcefulness, he trekked 6,504 miles in the Arctic alone, mostly on snowshoes, and travelled another 6,634 miles in canoes and small boats.

In his mid-40s, he snow-shoed forty-eight miles in seven hours to a party in Toronto, where he gave an after-dinner speech about icebergs - and showed no signs of being tired!

Here's an effigy of him, in his inflatable Halkett boat, which I photographed in Stromness Museum, Orkney. The Halkett boat could be worn as a cape, its oar used as a walking stick, and its sail served as an umbrella!

Naval explorers looked down on Rae. Being in trade meant he wasn't quite a gentleman. Ernest Shackleton once said of him, 'Anyone can succeed if they're willing to go native!'

Here's Rae's buckskin-clad effigy in Kirkwall Cathedral, He's asleep beside his book of Shakespeare plays, which he took with him on all his journeys (though the real book, in Edinburgh, is much smaller).

Rae is a hero in Orkney where, thanks to Ken McGoogan's wonderful biography, Fatal Passage, he is considered the true discoverer of the last link in the Northwest Passage. He found the Rae Strait, which separates King William Land from the mainland. This was the only navigable route, and it was used by Amundsen to get through in 1903-6 (though Franklin's big ships would have run aground here).

In April 1854, Rae met a small group of Inuit in Pelly Bay on the Canadian mainland. He was startled to see that one of them was wearing a Royal Naval embroidered gold cap band sewn onto a piece of Caribou skin. The Inuk, In-nook-poo-zhe-jook, said that he had got it from another Inuit, who had found it in a camp to the west, where many koblunas had starved to death. Rae bought the cap band, and said he would buy any similar items. He suggested that the Inuit should bring them to his camp in Repulse Bay.

Later, in Repulse Bay, Rae met several Inuit families who brought around 60 relics to trade – silver cutlery, brass buttons, bits of watch cases, a silver plate engraved 'Sir John Franklin KCH', and Sir John's Hanoverian medal.  Five of the relics are shown in the exhibition, but sadly not the cap band.

 

Another relic I photographed  in Stromness Museum

Rae spent several days questioning the Inuit. This is the story they told, from Rae's official report.

In the spring, four winters past (1850), whilst some Esquimaux families were killing Seals near the shore of a large Island named in Arrowsmith's Charts, King William's Land, about forty white men were seen traveling in company...southward over the ice and dragging a boat and sledges with them.....By signs the Natives were led to believe that the Ship, or Ships, had been crushed by the ice, and that they were now going to where they expected to find deer to shoot. From the appearance of the Men (all of whom with the exception of one Officer, were hauling on the drag ropes of the sledge and were looking thin) -- they were then supposed to be getting short of provisions, and they purchased a small Seal or piece of Seal from the natives....
At a later date the same season, but previous to the disruption of the ice, the bodies of some thirty persons and some Graves were discovered on the continent, and five dead bodies on an Island near it....Some of the bodies had been buried (probably those of the first victims of famine); some were in a tent or tents; others under the boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter, and several lay scattered about in different directions. Of those found on the Island one was supposed to have been an Officer, as he had a telescope strapped over his shoulders and his double-barrel gun lay beneath him. From the mutilated state of many of the bodies and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched Countrymen had been driven to the last dread alternative -- cannibalism -- as a means of prolonging existence. 

You can read Rae's report, along with his list of the items he bought, in full here, thanks to Russell Potter.

The Admiralty sent Rae's report, which he had never intended to be made public, to the Times, who put it on their front page on 23 October. The accusation of cannibalism caused an uproar. Rae was vilified in a campaign orchestrated by Lady Jane Franklin.

Charles Dickens played a big part in this. He pointed out that it was inconceivable that Franklin, a man who had eaten his own shoes when faced with starvation, would become a cannibal.

‘No man can, with any show of reason, undertake to affirm that this sad remnant of Franklin's gallant band were not set upon and slain by the Esquimaux themselves. We believe every savage to be in his heart covetous, treacherous, and cruel; and we have yet to learn what knowledge the white man—lost, houseless, shipless, apparently forgotten by his race; plainly famine-stricken, weak, frozen, helpless, and dying—has of the gentleness of the Esquimaux nature’

With Rae's discovery, the Admiralty considered the story ended. There was no appetite to send more ships to the Arctic. The Crimean War had just begun, so the Navy was fully occupied.

But Lady Jane was desperate to find out what had really happened, and to clear her husband's reputation. Thanks to Rae, the searchers now knew where to look. She paid for a private expedition to King William Island, where the starving koblunas had last been seen alive.

To be continued...