![]() Charles Dickens would join in the smear campaign, writing on Dec. Lady Franklin would launch a smear campaign against him for suggesting that Englishmen could do something like that and for listening to the Inuit. These included several silver forks and spoons that belonged to Franklin and his officers.įor Rae, the stories of cannibalism would dog his career for the rest of his life. In addition, Rae was shown several objects that were identified as belonging to Franklin and his crew. They told Rae that they had found bones that were broken apart. Rae would continue to speak with other Inuit and they confirmed the story of the starving sailors, and also provided the first evidence of cannibalism among the sailors. The Inuk would tell him that a party of 35-40 white men had died of starvation at the mouth of the Back River. In 1854, John Rae, who was surveying the Boothia Peninsula for the Hudson’s Bay Company, would meet with an Inuk on April 21, 1854. Prior to this, there are stories of seeing men on the Erebus prior to its sinking. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, the encounters could have just been omitted from the records at the time they were recorded.Īccording to oral histories and information gathered by explorers looking for the Franklin Expedition, several Inuit boarded an abandoned ship in 1850, which had been icebound off King William Island for some time. The Victory Point Record states that the ships were deserted on Apbut it doesn’t mention any Inuit, nor are there any mentioning of Inuit in the ship logs. It is not known if the Inuit encountered the doomed crew and ships prior to the abandonment of the ships. The Inuit would play a vital role in learning what happened, as they were the last ones to ever interact with the doomed crew members. Through these searches, thousands of kilometres of coastline would be mapped, and the story of what happened would slowly emerge. ![]() ![]() Lady Franklin would press the British Admiralty to launch a search for the expeditions in 1848, and these searches would continue for decades. Over the next 400 kilometre march across the Arctic, the remaining men died, never even coming within a few hundred kilometres of the nearest Canadian outpost. By this point, nine officers and 15 men had died. On April 22, 1848, almost three years after they first set off, the remaining crew abandoned the ships and began walking across the sea ice towards the Canadian mainland. The crew would winter the next two years at the island, as various members, including Franklin himself, passed away. Spending the 1845-46 winter trapped in the ice off Beechey Island, the ice would thaw in the summer of 1846, but only two months later both ships were trapped in the ice once again off King William Island. After encountering the Prince of Wales and Enterprise whaling ships in July 1845, the crew of the ships were never heard from again. Setting sail from Kent, England in the morning of May 19, 1845, the 24 officers and 110 men on the two ships had no idea that none of them would ever see England again, except for five men who were discharged in Greenland after becoming sick. ![]() Not only did they interact with the doomed sailors and helped other explorers in their search for the crew, but even in the 21 st century they helped locate the ships beneath the waves.įirst, a bit of a refresher on the Franklin Expedition. Last year, I was on This Is A Disaster Podcast to talk about the Franklin Expedition, but today on the podcast I wanted to talk not about the disaster itself, but the Inuit and their role in the investigation of the disaster. While we know a great deal about the fate of the crew and ships, having not only found the ships but the graves of many of the crew. For over 150 years, it has captivated Canadians as we strive to learn what happened to the men of the Erebus and Terror. ![]() The loss of the Franklin Expedition is one of the most famous events in Canadian history. ![]()
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