Shining a light on a new era

In my previous post I invited readers to suggest why I found fault with a scene portraying an episode on board one of Franklin's ships. My answers all concern lighting. Firstly, the oil lamp: If Franklin and Fitzjames can see each other at all it will only be dimly, their eyes being dazzled by the brightness of the lamp between them at face level. From the Art Director's point of view it makes for a great image but in real life it would be extremely annoying for those seated at the table. The next thing to mention is that we can see portholes in the far bulkhead. Erebus and Terror didn't have any portholes, instead they had Preston's Patent Illuminators in the deck. The Captain's cabin also had (double glazed) rectangular windows in the stern of the ship. Both the Captain's cabin and the wardroom also had a skylight as does the location this scene was shot, the officers' saloon on the Cutty Sark. This begs another question - if there is light coming in through the portholes, why isn't the cabin flooded with light from the skylight? If it's daylight then why do they need the lamp?

These are fairly trivial details of set dressing but there is one detail which is anachronistic for a ship fitted out in 1845 - the oil lamp. Except that it's not an oil lamp, it's a kerosene lamp (like this one). If you try looking for an antique oil lamp on eBay about 99.5% of the results returned will be kerosene lamps. Kerosene, also known as paraffin, is thin enough to be drawn up the wick by capilliary action from a reservoir a considerable distance below the burner. On the other hand, the whale oil and vegetable oils used for lighting in Franklin's day were more viscous so the reservoir has to be almost  level with the flame. The first commercial refinery for kerosene was opened in Bathgate, Scotland, by James 'Paraffin' Young in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, so it is not credible that Franklin's ships would be lit by kerosene lamps. The raw materials for Young's refinery were varieties of coal now regarded as oil shale.

Click for full-size image

The above sketch depicts the wardroom of the steam-tender Pioneer, by her commander (from 1851), Sherard Osborn. At first glance the hanging lamp is not greatly different from the one in the documentary. This type is known as a sinubra lamp (like this one). The oil is held at the level of the burner in an annular reservoir supporting the shade and designed to minimise the shadow it casts - hence the name from Latin meaning without shadow.

The mid Victorian period in which the Franklin saga occurred is particularly fascinating for the relentless cascade of technological advances which wrought profound changes in peoples lives in a few short years. Historians frequently use 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, as a convenient boundary marker between an earlier agrarian age and the later industrial epoch. The advent of fossil energy in liquid form being just one of many technological advances which fuelled the Victorian revolution.

As a footnote, in 1821 Franklin missed an opportunity to see an early experiment with street lighting using fossil fuel, as he was engaged on his Coppermine river expedition. The demonstration was superintended by the brother of the inventor, Sir Thomas Cochrane, who was, at the time, commanding the Chilean Navy in that country's war of independence.

Chiaroscuro on the Cutty Sark

 

This frame from Louise Osmond's superb ITN/C4/Nova documentary "The Search for the North West Passage" brings to mind an artistic technique beloved of renaissance masters such as Caravaggio. Chiaroscuro, or in its most developed form Tenebrism, enhances the drama of an image through extreme contrasts of light and darkness. The dramatised scenes in this documentary are a tour de force. In this scene, shot in the officers saloon of the Cutty Sark, Anthony Gardner makes a very convincing Sir John Franklin. I have however noticed three minor mistakes. If anyone would like to suggest what they are then please go ahead. I'll add my answers in a couple of days. 

The trouble with maps.

Some musings on the changing shape of King William Island and an opinion on who really discovered the Northwest Passage.

The above map, taken from Cyriax's 1939 book, and apparently based on the pre 1848 version of the Hydrographic Office's Arctic America Sheet II,  supposedly shows the state of knowledge of King William Island region at the time Franklin sailed. What we now know to be King William Island is shown connected to Boothia by an isthmus indicated by dotted lines. The dotted lines which "did for Franklin" as some would have it - the suggestion being that had Franklin suspected that KWI was indeed an island then he would have chosen a route via the less ice-choked waters to its East - the route successfully taken by Amundsen in 1903 - and he would have achived his goal instead of dying on board the ice-bound Erebus.

The belief that King William Island was connected to Boothia stems from the above map printed in Volume 1 of John Ross' account of his 1829-34 Victory expedition. This map shows 'Poctes Bay' as the southern end of a gulf between King William Island and Boothia. The information, obtained from the Inuit, that this was a gulf instead of an open strait turned out to be faulty. The track taken by James Ross' on his return to the Victory is shown as a dotted line about twenty miles north of the disputed coastline.

Even before Ross' narrative was printed, information arrived casting doubt on the existence of Poctes Bay. George Back had returned from his journey down the Great Fish River with the information that the estuary of that river opening into a wide bay seemingly due South of Ross' Poctes Bay. This caused speculation in the press that James Ross' Victory Point was actually on an island. In an appendix to his narrative, Sir John remarked of Back's information:

The result of this enterprise has proved that the line of coast to the southward of the Isthmus of Boothia had not been completely examined, and that the information received by Commander Ross from the Esquimaux, making into a bay the land between the isthmus and Matty island, was incorrect; and thus opening a new field for conjecture; but, although it is very probable that the land to the westward of that inlet is an island, I am not of the opinion that the western sea joins with Prince Regent's inlet.

We now know that Ross was correct on both counts.

The next visitors to the region were Dease and Simpson in 1839. Dease and Simpson descended the Coppermine,  then sailed an astounding 500 mile Eastwards charting the Northern coast of the continent before charting the Southern coast of King William Island on their return. The map shown above is constructed from their written report alone. Their narrative mentions that they named the river marking their farthest East after their boats and it is duly marked on the map as Boat River. The engraver clearly didn't know that the boats were named Castor and Pollux. The Gulf of Boothia is from John Ross' narrative and noted "from Esquimaux report" - remarkably accurate in this case.


The words 'Reindeer & Musk Oxen' inscribed within the outline of King William Island are indicative of the abundence of game Dease and Simpson reported. This information may have weighed in Crozier's decision to desert the ships. 

Considerable disagreements in the longitude of various features can be noted when Dease and Simpson's survey is compared with George Back's. Generally Dease and Simpson's values are better. Notably Back has the mouth of his eponymous river on the 95th meridian of longitude while in reality it is closer to the 96th. This presented subsequent cartographers with the problem of how to reconcile the conflicting surveys.

 

The above map is from Sir John Barrow's 1846 'Voyages of discovery and research within the Arctic regions' (opposite page 528). Barrow was friendly towards James Clark Ross but had a deep animosity towards Sir John Ross. A non-existent passage is shown through the Boothia Peninsula with the legend "From Commander Ross who thinks the land runs thus". A point named for Sir John by Dease and Simpson is renamed Commander James Ross Point. For years Barrow had anonymously assassinated Sir John in the pages of the Quarterly Review. The fact that Barrow had at last put his signature to his vitriol at last gave Ross the opportunity to write a lengthy rebuttal.

Franklin's last letter from the Whalefish Islands, dated 7 July 1845, to Dr (later Sir) John Richardson seems to suggest that Franklin accepted that the likelihood of a passage between Prince Regent's Inlet and previously explored regions of the North American coast.

I admit with you that Regent's Inlet seems to be the most certain way of attaining that point, but the more I reflect upon the voyages hitherto made into that inlet the more convinced I am that James Ross and Parry are right in supposing that ships of our size if they even once got down among the islets and strong tides at the bottom of that Inlet, they would never be got out again. The coast in that part must be surveyed with boats.

The comment that "The coast in that part must be surveyed with boats" might plausibly be taken to reinforce the suggestion that Franklin would be reluctant to take his ships to the East of KWI. In any case, Franklin wanted to go West not East. It is also possible that Franklin may have sailed down the Western side of Peel Strait then became trapped while attempting to cross over to James Ross Strait.

Franklin and Crozier certainly knew how worthless the dotted lines on any printed map were. They did not need to rely on the guesswork of cartographers as the authors of the original surveys were their close associates.

The above map from the end papers of Volume 1 of Belcher's "The Last of the Arctic Voyages" shows the coastline known immediately prior to McClintock's 1858 voyage of the Fox.

McClintock's discovery of what is now known as Franklin Strait, linking Peel Sound to James Ross Strait, was the final component of the route which would, four decades later, be navigated by Roald Amundsen's Gjøa. It also completed the coastline of North America.

Even if Dr John Rae's Inuit contacts had provided him with the Victory Point record, which notes the location where Franklin's ships were beset, the route taken from Beechey Island to that point remains conjectural to this day so can not be relied on as the penultimate link in the passage to be completed by the discovery of Rae Strait.

So if the question "Who discovered the Northwest Passage" is taken to mean who first completed the discovery of a passage navigable by the ships of the time, in other words Amundsen's route, then the answer must surely be Francis Leopold McClintock.

Memorial to the crews of Erebus and Terror

One of the lesser known memorials to the dead of the Franklin expedition is this brass plaque in the former St Andrews Waterside Mission Church, on the banks of the Thames at Gravesend.

The plaque lists the crews of HM Ships Erebus and Terror, ie. the members of the ships' companies who were not officers, with the exception of John Torrington, John Hartnell, and William Braine who are buried at Beechey Island. Presumably the intention was to specifically commemorate those who had no known grave.

The men of both ships are grouped together in three categories: Petty Officers; AB's &c; and Royal Marines &c.

The Captain's Steward and the Paymaster and Pursers Steward for each ship are classed as Petty Officers while the Gunroom Stewards and Subordinate Officers' Stewards are counted among the AB's &c.

There are numerous transcription errors among the names listed. For example petty officers James Rigden and Philip Reddington are listed as Bigden: James and Beddington: Philip. Josephus Geater is listed as Geater: James. Presumably the name was abbreviated to Jos. and the engraver read it as Jas.

The Church building is not open to the public on a daily basis but is used for art exibitions and other community purposes. My thanks are due to Sandra Soder, Chair of the Gravesend Historical Society, who kindly showed me around the building in August this year, thus avoiding the need for me to enrol in a yoga class.

The Matty Island wreck

The chart showing the track of the Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the excellent CBC Franklin search website brings to mind what David Woodman described as 'One of the most unlikely of the Inuit tales'. The story, collected by Major Lachlan Taylor Burwash during several visits to King William Island between 1925 and 1929, concerns the wreck of a ship and a cache ashore near to Blenky Island to the North East of Matty Island.

Burwash's analysis was that the wreck was of one of Franklin's ships remanned after the 1848 abandonment. To my mind, the problem of the Inuit testimony giving three different locations for where one of Franklin's two ships sank is no more of a problem than the white man's testimony stating that the two ship's engines came from three different railway companies. I wholeheartedly agree with Woodman's comment that the tale "However, it is so simply and straightforwardly told, and has such telling internal consistency, that it is hard to discount entirely."

In my opinion it warrants further investigation.

The disappearing dead.

In June and July 1931, Chief Trader Paddy Gibson, manager of the Hudson's Bay Company's outpost at Gjoia Haven, made an overland journey along the south coast of King William Island in search of remains of members of the Franklin Expedition.

On an islet in Douglas bay he discovered seven skulls and a large collection of human bones together with small fragments of wood identified as oak and Norwegian pine. His conclusion was:

"It would appear that this island marked a halt in the march of the retreating crews, and was the site of one of the camps: a camp from which many never rose to pursue the terrible march."

Gibson interred the remains on the highest point of the island and built a large cairn over them.

Owen Beattie and James Savelle investigated this cairn in 1981 and reported:

"The remains of the cairn were easily located, but unfortunately all skeletal material had been removed, very likely within the last decade, and most likely by non-archaeologists."

There seems to have never been any detailed archaeological survey of these islets nor any investigation into the whereabouts of the remains. The fate of these bones is just another of the myriad minor mysteries of the Franklin saga.

I sincerely hope that some time in the future the relevant authorities sponsor a more comprehensive search of the locality and that a renewed effort is made to discover the ultimate fate of these remains.

The writing's on the wall for little 'Weesy' Coppin (if my memory serves me right).

This is a follow up to Russell Potter's recent post on "the 'Revelation' of the little child of Londonderry".

Captain Coppin's story of the 'revelation' is neatly summarised in a diary entry of William Rossetti for Friday, 15 November 1867:

They both told us, as coming from a Captain Coppin of Londonderry, and also related by a city-man Mr Allan, three or four extraordinary supernatural events with which Captain C has been connected. One is that the spirit of one of his deceased children revealed to a sister, before the M'Clintock expedition, the exact bearings of the sea-passage which would lead to a discovery of the Franklin remains; that Coppin wrote this off to Lady F; that the expedition searched accordingly, found the data correct, and that Coppin holds a letter from Lady F fully acknowledging these facts.

A decade after Lady Franklin had passed away, and nearly 40 years after the 'revelation', Coppin got together with the Reverend J Henry Skewes to publish the story.

Admiral Sir Francis Leopold McClintock was outraged by the publication and accused Skewes of fabricating the whole story.

He was wrong, Skuse's account was based on fact. Lady Franklin had taken the 'revelation' seriously.

However McClintock's error was in condemning the story in its entirety rather than in part. While founded on fact the story had been embroidered due to failures of memory, misunderstandings, and the natural tendency for a good story to improve with the telling.

Spufford labels Skewes's evidence as 'massaged' and Lloyd-Jones calls it 'greatly embellished'.

Unfortunately the octogenarian Coppin had not retained copies of the materials he had sent to Lady Franklin so critical details of the account had to rely on his failing memory.

Coppin's recollection of events is sometimes notably at odds with the surviving records. Coppin remembered that the account of the 'revelation' sent to Lady Franklin had included a postscript:

I beg to call your Ladyship's special attention to the words "Point Victory, Victoria Channel" which were brought so often before the child.

It does appear that a copy of Coppin's original letter has survived, which I'll refer to as 'the Trinity House document', from this it would appear that the actual postscript was worded:

"Victory and Victoria are frequently written in full, you have the above letters pict[ured] as they were named by the child"

Skewes gives the text of the revelation as a series of phrases:

Erebus and Terror, Sir John Franklin, Lancaster Sound, Prince Regent Inlet, Point Victory, Victoria Channel

While the Trinity House document just gives a series of letters, some in groups:

B.S., P.R.I., N.F., S.J.F., and B.V.F.R.G.R.L.S.P.F.M.F.M., and the complete words 'Victory' and 'Victoria'.

This point is corroborated by several sources quoted by Skewes: Kennedy,  Parker-Snow, and Lady Franklin.

The most important element in the 'revelation', delivered late in 1849 was that Sir John Franklin (d. 11 June 1847) was alive. This may well have encouraged Lady Franklin in her efforts to send searching expeditions.

The contribution made by William Parker Snow to Skewes's 'defence' actually undermines the case rather than strengthens it. The newspaper quotation from 1860 confirms that the revelation was mostly made up of initials, and Parker Snow had a facsimile of the child's chart. I suggest that Parker Snow's later addition to the copy of the chart in his notebook to include King William's Island again derives from a failing memory and a need to make the evidence fit the facts. The fact that Boothia was a peninsula and not an island had been known since 1847 and is mentioned in Parker Snow's own account of the 1850 'Prince Albert' expedition. Most remarkable is Skewes's admission that "The channel leading from Regent Inlet towards Victoria Channel is not in Parker Snow's chart".


Skewes quotes what is presumably Coppin's 'letter from Lady F" mentioned by Rossetti.

Dec. 21st 1859

MY DEAR MR COPPIN,
"I have received your letter of yesterday, requesting me to tell you how far the 'mysterious revelations' of your child, in 1850, respecting the expedition of my late husband, correspond with the facts recently ascertained by Captain McClintock's researches.

In reply, I have no hesitation in telling you that the child's chart drawn by herself, without as you assure me having seen an Arctic chart before, represented the ships as being in a channel which we believed at that time to be inaccessible, but which it has since been found, they actually navigated.

Moreover, the names 'Victory' and 'Victoria,' written by the little girl upon her chart, correspond with that of the point (Point Victory) on King William's Land, where the important record of the 'Erebus' and ' Terror'' was found, and with that of the strait or channel (Victoria Strait) where the ships where [sic] finally lost.

I regret that I have not at hand your very interesting letter of May, 1850, in which you made to me those remarkable communications with more detail, but I believe I am quite correct in what I have stated. I have carefully preserved your letter and the child's drawing and you may be assured that they are in safety, and can be referred to, tho' it would be difficult for me to do so at this present moment.

Ever yours, dear Mr. Coppin,
Most truly and obliged,
JANE FRANKLIN

Skewes makes clear that he believes the 'revelation' refers to Bellot Strait but it is difficult to believe that Jane is thinking of the same thing when she mentions a channel "which we believed at that time to be inaccessible". In 1850 no one could have described Bellot Strait as inaccessible because it's existence had not been imagined. Equally, it would be untrue to describe Bellot Strait as the seaway "it has since been found, they actually navigated".

Plausibly, Jane is saying that the ships are depicted.in Peel Sound or Victoria Strait, which they did navigate. This patch of sea adjacent to King William Island is shown as the inaccessible 'King William Sea' on the map printed for the account of Sir John Ross's Victory expedition.

Jane does confirm that the words 'Victory' and 'Victoria' correspond to 'Point Victory' and 'Victoria Strait', which again implies that the revelation only contained the single words 'Victory' and 'Victoria'.

She closes with the formula "Most truly and obliged" which is hardly overflowing with thanks if Coppin had really provided the key to the mystery.

In short Lady Franklin's letter does not support the contention that "the 'mysterious revelations' had revealed 'the exact bearings of the sea-passage which would lead to a discovery of the Franklin remains"


I'm my opinion there is only one document in the annals of Arctic exploration which does deserve to be called prophetic:

In a letter written by John Ross dated 5th March, 1836 - fully ten years before the Franklin Expedition sailed:

no man in his senses would commit such an act of imprudence with bomb ships such as now proposed drawing eighteen feet and with a complement of sixty men.
...
I am fully convinced that it would prove fatal to every one employed

Ross predicted that the Franklin Expedition was a suicide mission ten years before it sailed!

To sum up: Ross's sober wisdom trumps Skewes's hectoring hyperbole