6 - Unremitting Exertions: Sentiment and Responsibility in Jane Franklin's Correspondence (1854)

Summary

At the beginning of 1854, the British Admiralty came to a difficult decision. Eight years earlier, on 19 May 1845, the Erebus and Terror had left the Thames under the command of Sir John Franklin to commence an Arctic voyage in search of the Northwest Passage. They had been glimpsed by whalers a couple of months later in Baffin Bay, but since then, European eyes had seen nothing of the ships or their crews. It was not for want of searching: since 1848 a dozen expeditions had been conducted, by sea and land, in an attempt to rescue the missing men. But the searchers had found very little – only the remains of the expedition's first winter camp on Beechey Island, including three graves. This was forlorn proof that most of the ships’ company had been alive in the spring of 1846, but no information had been left there to show where the ships might have gone next. So in 1854 the fate of the Franklin expedition remained a mystery, and most people in Britain had given up hope that rescue might still be possible. Almost nine years after the ships had departed, stocked with provisions for just three years, the Admiralty judged it time to call a halt. On 20 January the London Gazette announced that unless news of their safety arrived before the end of March, the missing officers and men would be considered to have died in Her Majesty's service.