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

Masques and Masks

On  the 1850 search expedition (Resolute, Assistance, Intrepid, and Pioneer) commanded by Horatio T Austin, Parry's practice of holding theatrical entertainments and costume parties (including one onboard the Fury where the then Midshipman Crozier appeared as a native of Africa, and others were chimney sweepers), to relieve the monotony of the long Arctic winter, was revived. Handwritten newspapers were circulated containing amusing original compositions as well as factual essays. These pastimes had not been pursued on James Clark Ross's 1848 expedition in Enterprise and Investigator but who knows what performances may have taken place on Franklin's ships?

A facsimile edition containing the five issues of The Illustrated Arctic News (in imitation of the Illustrated London News), was later printed and distributed after Austin's squadron had returned home. Part of the front page of the issue for December 31 1850 is shown below.

The illustration headed "ARCTIC SKETCHES" and subtitled "FASHIONS FOR THE MONTH" is of particular interest.

The figure on the left brings to mind (again!) Charles Francil Hall's account of Oookbarloo's tale of the black faced men with "little black noses" who frightened the Inuit dog sled driver with "three great noises".

"These men who were then all around him, had black faces, black hands, black clothes on - were black all over! They had little black noses, only so big: [the old lady here put her hand on the bridge of her nose showing that the noses were not more than half the length & size of common ones] & this Innuit was very much alarmed because he could not get away from these black men but especially was he frightened when they made three great noises [three rounds of cheers as Too- koo-li-too thinks these great noises were]."

A report from visitor to the Resolute, prior to the expedition's departure, would seem to explain the illustration.

" ... a sort of helmet is to be worn on the head, to which is attached a mask of knitted wool, wadded and lined with silk, and doubly thick over the nose, leaving only an aperture for the eyes. These masks are of different colours; and the whole attire, especially when the hands disappear in the huge fur gauntlets which complete it, is almost ludicrous."

Ludicrous to some, but possibly terrifying to others.

A modern photograph of  a man wearing a ski mask shows how the thick cloth of a mask can reduce the apparent size of the nose to a small bump, which may explain the little black noses.

Fabric fragments in the National Maritime Museum's collection of Franklin Relics appear to have once at least approximated black in colour and there is also an Inuit report of black clad bodies being found on the islet of Keeuna.

It is not difficult to find other nineteenth century reports of face masks being used to protect against cold weather.

In his narrative of his 1851 expedition, in the brig Prince Albert, Kennedy recounts:

"We had all been exercising our ingenuity in the contrivance of various little arrangements for the protection of the face against the effects of the frost, and this morning a curious observer might have studied with some interest the idiosyncrasies of individual genius as exhibited in the variety of grotesque appendages to noses, cheeks, eyes, chins, and every vulnerable spot of the human face divine. ... For the face some had cloth masks, with neat little crevices for the mouth, nose, and eyes;"

In his narrative of his 1836 voyage in HMS Terror, Captain Back recounts:

"By way of experiment Lieutenant Smyth put on a common mask, and at first considered it rather comfortable, until getting heated with exertion, a cake of ice was formed inside, which, not being the kind of lining he preferred, was immediately rejected, and from the face the mask was transferred to the end of a boarding pike, the point being thrust through one of the eyes, and carried in that way over his shoulder. With such a Gorgon's head, it was laughingly remarked, we need not fear to face a troop of bears."

Of Parry's 1821 voyage (Hecla and Griper), it was reported that:

"The sailors generally wore masks, warmly lined, when upon deck. Upon their return below they were examined by their messmates, for fear there should be any white spots upon their faces. These white spots were the effects of the intense cold in congealing the blood, and if not attended to, were the forerunners of mortification; they were, therefore, immediately rubbed with snow, until the free circulation returned."

In the first two of these examples it seems that the masks were improvised during the expeditions, and it is not difficult to find other examples of similar ingenuity....

It would be very surprising if the officers and crews of Franklin's ships did not find solutions to the problems of Arctic travel which were similar to those improvised on other expeditions. If that is accepted, then the simplest explanation for the terrifying appearance of the black faced men is that they were members of the ship's company who went on deck wearing their cold weather gear, complete with face masks, and when they saw the Inuit dog sled driver they gave him the traditional Royal Navy salutation of three cheers.

The tent mentioned in the story doesn't present any difficulties as long as we don't interpret the third-hand account of the original testimony too literally.

"Before the Captain took him down into his Cabin he told this Innuit to take a look over to the land, the Captain pointing out to him the exact spot where there was a big Tupik (tent). The Captain asked him if he saw the tent, & the Innuit told him he did. Then the Captain told him that black men, such as he had just seen, lived there, and that neither he (this Innuit) nor any nor any of his people must ever go there."

I now think the simplest explanation is that the tent was a magnetic observatory sited 200 yards away on the floe so that the instruments wouldn't be affected by the ship's ironwork. This would have been out of bounds for the ship's crew, and the Inuit too, and for the same reason - that any iron implements they carried would be detrimental to the measurements.

I've repeatedly come back to the puzzle of the black faced men because I believe it is important, particularly as it impacts on the possible chronology of other events attested by the Inuit, such as Kokleearngnun's 'great tuktoo hunt' and Bayne's 'Cemented Vaults'. My current view is that the visit of the anonymous dog sled driver occurred in the spring of 1847 when the expedition was not in distress, as the original text of the Victory Point record says - "All Well".

It's recorded that the faces of members of sledging parties sometimes became 'as black as ebony' with soot from cooking over tallow lamps. This would not happen on board the ships as they were equipped with efficient coal fired galley stoves and there would have been no excuse for not washing. There was a widely held, though erroneous, belief that a lack of cleanliness increased the likelihood of scurvy so the officers took great pains to ensure that the ships and men were clean and wholesome as possible. The inuit account makes clear that the black faced men were under the control of the Captain so, to my mind, theories that these men were dirty because of a breakdown of discipline simply won't wash.

Cans of Confusion

Copyright Paul Ward, www.coolantarctica.com

Aside from the exhumations of the 1980s, there has been very little scholarly work published concerning the traces left by the Franklin party's 1845-6 overwintering at Beechey Island.

I was therefore pleased to read an article by Todd Hansen (plus an addendum), recently published in Polar Record, which answered several questions which had been bugging me for ages.

Near the South East end of Beechey island, many large, rusting, empty tin cans can be seen to this day. Some are arranged into a memorial cross. Plenty of photographs of these can be found on the web, some referring to the theory that the lead solder contributed to the expedition's demise.

However, these are not the cans supplied by Goldner to Franklin's expedition in 1845. They are the cans left behind in August 1854 by Edward Belcher's searching expedition. Many intact cans were left in Northumberland House, which was built as a refuge in the hope that any wandering survivors of the lost expedition might find it. Empty cans were also built into a cairn mimicking the cairn built by Franklin's men near the North West corner of the island.

James Clark Ross, in his 1847 Account of the Antarctic expedition, wrote "it would be better that the canisters in which the meats are preserved should be of a much stouter tin", and it appears this advice was taken as Belcher's cans, although rusty, still look quite sturdy while Franklin's cans have almost entirely disintegrated. The site of the 'Franklin can cairn', reported by the first searchers to reach Beechey, is now marked by a mossy crater containing rusty fragments. The crater was made by searchers digging up the gravel where the cairn stood and the growth of moss is attributed to the minerals provided by the decay of the cans.

Site of the 'Franklin can cairn', Beechey Island. Copyright Todd Hansen

An additional puzzle concerns the number of can-built cairns found by the searchers: Was there one can-cairn or several?.

The account published in 1852 by Peter Sutherland, the surgeon to William Penny's expedition in the brigs  'Lady Franklin' and 'Sophia' includes the paragraph:

        The meat-tins were piled up in heaps in the same regular manner as shot is piled up; each had been filled with loose shingle, and when the tiers of a single layer were completed the interstices were also filled up with shingle. In this way several mounds were raised to a height of nearly two feet, and they varied in breadth from three to four yards. Six or seven hundred tins were counted, and many more besides these were dug up and emptied out in search of documents.

The information that there were "several mounds" of cans is contradicted by the same author in a letter to the Times, on 20th January 1852, which describes "upwards of 600 empty tin canisters which were found in one heap". The best explanation I can think of for this discrepancy is that there was but a single cairn which Sutherland had first seen after it had already been partly dismantled by searchers looking for a record. He put what he saw into his journal manuscript but the letter to the Times reflects the truth he learned subsequently.

There is an interesting post-script to the story of the cans left at Northumberland House. In 1885 the remaining stores were pillaged by Inuits (they found many of the preserved meats to be bad). The story was reported by Alexander Fairweather, Captain of a Dundee whaler, who was able to save a collection of documents left by visitors to Beechey Island, from Belcher in 1854 to Allan Young in 1875.  More than twenty years later Fairweather's ship, the Terra Nova, would carry Scott's fateful expedition to the Antarctic.

Captain Back's Patent Poison Producer

This bizarre contraption is my home-made experiment intended to shed some light on the question of the origin of the lead detected in the bones of participants in the Franklin Expedition. The apparatus is designed to  approximate the system originally installed on HMS Terror following the suggestion of Captain George Back on the 16th of May, 1836. A 2kw wallpaper steamer plays the part of the Fraser stove and the condenser/snow-tank is a black plastic box which normally holds paper for recycling. The five-foot length of lead piping between them is arranged so that any water condensed within it can't flow back into the steamer but instead drains via a narrow plastic tube into a glass jar on the floor. This approximates the arrangements shown on the 1837 profile drawing of HMS Terror but has the advantage, for experimental purposes, that the water which condenses in the pipe can be collected separately instead of mixing with the boiler water. 

I had been worrying how to test the lead content of the water produced. There are test strips available, for a few pounds, which give a yes/no answer to the question of whether lead is present in tap water and there are digital colorimeters, costing a few hundreds, which give an accurate measurement in terms of parts per million. In the event, no special equipment is needed. The water collected is cloudy with lead carbonate - white lead. After an hour or so the water clears leaving a powdery deposit at the bottom of the jar. When the jar is shaken it produces a pretty snow storm of glinting crystals, as shown by the middle one of the three jars in the photo above. This sample was produced as the result of 30 minutes operation. The conclusion I draw from this demonstration is: that the water making systems in place on Erebus and Terror during the fatal 1845 Franklin Expedition are likely to have introduced relatively huge quantities of lead, measurable in terms of grams per day, into the drinking water supplies, when the ships were overwintering. This seems likely to have been the major source of lead exposure, totally overwhelming any trace amounts absorbed from any other of the proposed sources.

Men in Black 2: Blame it on the Bogie.

My first thoughts on looking for a folk festival which could explain Oookbarloo's testimony was to turn to the accounts of Arctic whalers. My reasoning being that, as many of the crew came from the Northern parts of Britain, at least some would have been familiar with whaling traditions. Sure enough there are several reports of May-day festivities on the ice, involving garlands of ribbons and a ceremony with King Neptune similar to the more familiar crossing-the-line rituals. Nothing about blacked up men though.

Next I turned to land-based festivals, and sure enough, the May-Day festival of the London chimney sweeps has blacked up men in abundence.

Here's an account from Charles Dickens dated 1836. He laments:

"This gradual decay and disuse of the practice of leading noble youths into captivity, and compelling them to ascend chimneys, was a severe blow, if we may so speak to the romance of chimney sweeping"

- and one from Fraser's magazine dated 1842

All the Year Round from 1893 reports:

"the Mayday celebration, with its barbaric music, and its mysterious Jack-in-the-green, when, with other strange figures, some grinning black fellow would represent the foul fiend and drive lads and lasses screaming before him, was a thing to move the stoutest heart.


The Children's magazine from 1893 informs: "They are not real black-a-moors, but they seem to be nearly as black in their skins as if they were Africans born"

A good proportion of the ships' crew came from the London region and so would have been perfectly familiar with these festivities.

The looks and behaviour of the "black men" in Oookbarloo's report seem to fit perfectly with the descriptions of the contempory May-day festivities of the sweeps. The date of May 1, 1847 (six weeks before Franklin's death) would allow for the dog-sledge driver's second visit to have been "when the sun was high, that is, it was well into spring or summer" .

So, I'd say that Charles Francis Hall was absolutely spot-on when he mused that the native had interrupted some kind of pantomime or entertainment.

Referring to the picture at the top of this page, Andrew Graham-Dixon's article begins:

"In anticipation of May 1 and its traditional festivities, this week’s picture is Thomas Sevestre’s watercolour of a curious but now-defunct ritual". 

He's not quite right there because the festvities dipicted were revived about thirty years ago and are now a major event in several places, including my home town. 

I have to say I'm completely amazed by this connection!


 

Original: 21/12/2011
Update: 15/04/2012
I no longer think that the above is a plausible explanation for the black-faced, black-clad men who frightened the inuit dog-sled driver. One reason is that, in contrast to other folk celebrations which are attested on Arctic expeditions, the sweeps' festival had a commercial motivation - the coins collected from the crowd. Another reason is that I've had a better idea.

Black men, Welsh wigs, and the Knights Templar

One of the most intriguing examples of iniut testimony published in David C. Woodman's "Unravelling the Franklin mystery: Inuit testimony" is Ook-bar-loo's tale of an unnamed dog-sled driver who made three visits to a ship beset in ice near a large island. The Captain was always very kindly but on the third occasion the visitor was apparently encircled by a group of men who had "black faces, black hands, black clothes on - were black all over" and terrified he vowed never to return.

It has been suggested that the story reflects a time after the 1848 abandonment, when the ships had been remanned, discipline had broken down, and rival factions of the expedition's company were eking out a squalid, savage, existence and possibly resorting to cannibalism.

In contrast, I suggest it may reflect a far happier state of the expedition between the besetment of 12 September 1846 and Franklin's death on 11 June 1847.

With the vaguries of the old lady's memory, Tookoolitoo's interpretation, and Hall's notebooks, we can not be certain that every nuance of meaning in the transcribed version was intended by the original witness.

For example the sentence:

"Before the Captain took him down into his cabin he told this Innuit to take a look over to the land, the Captain pointing out to him the exact spot where there was a big Tupik (tent)"  does not explicitly state that the Tupik was on the land, nor that the land was itself visible. Quite possibly the tent was in the direction of the land from the ship, but the land itself was many miles distant.

The first thought which ocurred to me was that the Tupik seen by the driver could have been canvas housing over the second ship. Another possibility is that it was a hospital tent, which would explain why the Captain didn't want the Innuit to go there.

Edward Belcher believed that the structure at Beechey Island identified as a washhouse was "more likely to have been an hospital". If the theory that the ships' water systems were a cause of lead poisoning is correct then a spell in such a hospital would likely be effective.

The weirdest part of the old lady's account is her graphic demonstration of the black men's "little black noses" - "not more than half the length & size of common ones".

Here's an image of a black-faced man with a tiny nose:

Quite frightening although not inappropriate for the frigid regions.  It's from the Wikipedia article "Balaclava (clothing)". I'd call it a ski-mask rather than a Balaclava, although there are really only a few stitches difference. Something similar was also apparently improvised by a member of Scott's 1910 Terra Nova Expedition.

There is, however, no evidence that anything resembling a balaclava was issued to the 1845 expedition.

The 1875 Nares Expedition seems to have been the first polar expedition to have been supplied with anything like balaclavas although at the time they were called "Helmet Caps", "Eugenie Helmets" or "Eugenie Wigs", as they were presented to the expedition by the exiled Empress Eugenie of France. The name Balaclava dates from the early 1880's.

Prior to the 1875 expedition the "Welsh wig" was the approved head garment. Similiar to the medieval "coif" - a close fitting cap that covers the top, back, and sides of the head.

 Eugenie Helmet and "Welsh Woolen Wig" from the Nares Expedition of 1875

"Welsh wigs" were among the list of clothing "served out to the men, on the first of July" [1829] during John Ross's Victory Expedition. They were also included in the list of sledging equipment recommended by McClintock in 1851.

However in October 1843, Henry Powell of 102 New Bond St. registered a new design of night cap. Apparently identical to a Balaclava in form, it was widely advertised in 1844 as "Powell's Tempar Cap", so it is just possible that this garment was carried on the 1845 expedition, and is connected to the story.

Another possibility is that the men were masked with black crape cloth (crêpe de Chine). This had been recommended by Parry as a piece of equipment to avoid snow-blindness. (He also recommends a Lead-Acetate eyewash!)

It was also included in McClintock's list of recommendend equipment and it's effectiveness was praised on a searching expedition:

"As a preventive of this complaint a piece of black crape was given to each man to be worn as a kind of short veil attached to the hat which we found to be very serviceable."

At least a version of the fabric can be proven to have been taken on the 1845 expedition as among the relics brought back by McClintock are "a pair of leather goggles with crape instead of glass, a small green crape veil".

These are two possibilities which should be counted with other explanations.

My favoured explanation is that Franklin kept a happy ship and the black men were simply members of the ship's company indulging in high spirited horseplay. If this is the case then the unforseen consequence that contact with the inuit was curtailed may have been truly unfortunate.

Fitzjames' cabin

 This is my approximation of the cabin on HMS Erebus of Commander James Fitzjames. It's mostly based on the picture below which was published in the May 24, 1845 issue of the Illustrated London News.

I've flipped the ILN picture from the way it was printed to make it accord with the ship's plans. The most noticeable feature on my view compared with the ILN's is the wash stand which the 1839 plans show to the left of the doorway as you go in. The space is no bigger than a decent size closet - about half the size of the en-suite bathroom of the hotel room I stayed in last week.