3 - ‘In the Company of Strangers’: Shedding Light on Robert McClure's Claim of Discovery (1850–7)

Summary

In 1849, James Clark Ross having found no trace of Franklin's expedition, the Admiralty decided to send another fleet of six ships under the command of Henry Austin along the usual Atlantic route, as well as a new search expedition via the Pacific Ocean. This voyage from west to east was undertaken by the Enterprise under the command of Richard Collinson, seconded by Robert Le Mesurier McClure aboard the Investigator. This chapter examines four different accounts of the voyage of the Investigator and of its detention in the ice between January 1850 and April 1853. Strictly speaking, only three of the reports were actually written by ‘Investigators’ – as the crew liked to call themselves – since, unlike most other captains of his time, McClure did not publish his own narrative but asked a fellow officer, Sherard Osborn, to tell the tale.

A skillful naval officer, Osborn had not served on the Investigator but had participated in two expeditions searching for Franklin, first under Austin in 1850, and under Sir Edward Belcher between 1852 and 1854. McClure trusted his journals and the ship's logs to Osborn, who presented the narrative as having been simply ‘edited’, which explains why the book is still catalogued in some libraries under the authorship of McClure.