In search of James Fitzjames

While the British can seem obsessed with the exploits of Scott and Shackleton in Antarctica, Canadians are fascinated with the fate of the 1845 Franklin Expedition that set out in search of Northwest Passage, an Arctic waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, plus 129 crew members disappeared and little is known as to what happened - other than there is evidence that some of them survived for a number of years, along with lurid tales of cannibalism and lead poisoning.

A whole publishing industry has grown up around the expedition, while marine archaeologists regularly try and establish what exactly happened to the crew. Much has been written about Sir John Franklin, the leader, but there is scant information about other members of the crew, particularly James Fitzjames, the third in command on the voyage and captain of the Erebus. That was until William Battersby's James Fitzjames: The Mystery Man of the Franklin Expedition was published last year.

The author recently talked about how he came to write Fitzjames's biography at Kennington's Durning Library, as a guest of the Friends of the library. He explained that as someone working in institutional investment marketing he travelled incessantly, often to San Francisco. On one flight the financier found himself reading Barrow's Boys while travelling above the Arctic, the area where the grisly events contained in the book took place. He became obsessed with the Franklin expedition and after leaving his job during Lehman Brothers bank collapse, decided to pursue this interest, resurrecting his original training as an archaeologist.

Battersby was aware of the many theories about the expedition but found himself irritated by numerous inconsistencies. So he decided to start from scratch and look at the subject afresh. Initial research led him to deciding to concentrate on the life of Fitzjames.

The talk consisted of a romp through the sailor's relatively short life (he was 32 when he joined the expedition). Previous references to the man usually had him down a fast-rising adventurous glamour boy of the British navy. He took part in the first steamer trip down the the Euphrates River and fought China during the first Opium War. Then, at the age of 29, he was promoted from lieutenant to commander. This has usually been attributed to an aristocratic background. However, after trawling through a mountain of archive material, Battersby discovered that Fitzjames was illegitimate and a self-made man, plus many more facts about the man.

This was a fascinating talk that brought Fitzjames and navy life in the 1840s alive. It was illustrated with such newly discovered details as unseen paintings by the sailor and the fact HMS Erebus and HMS Terror can, on close inspection, be seen reflected in the band around his hat (picture above).

There were plenty of questions but, inevitably, the one that generated the most interest was over a slide featuring the skulls, minus jawbones, of some of the Franklin expedition members. There's no getting away from the fact that all talk of this failed voyage from over 160 years ago will always turn to cannibalism.

More on the book can be seen here and here.

Thanks to the Friends of Durning Library for organising such an illuminating evening. Mention must also be made of the fact that they are fighting hard to prevent sections of the service being closed down as part of the current UK spending cuts. The talk was yet another example of the varied services public libraries provide for the community.

On the Proper Use of Stars

Another day, another Franklin story. The latest news is that TV adventurer Bear Grylls claims to have found human bones, the remnants of huge fires built from ship timber, and tools carved from whale bone, which may help to explain the fate Sir John Franlin, his 129 men and their two ships. Grylls and his crew made the discovery while on a mission to enter the record books as the first team to navigate the treacherous Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean in inflatable boats. More details here.

Meanwhile, On the Proper Use of Stars, a novel about Franklin's doomed expedition has just been published. An English translation of Quebec writer Dominique Fortier's Du bon usage des etoiles (2008), it focuses on Francis Crozier, Franklin's second-in-command who turns a sceptic eye on the ambitions of his leader.

Life moves on and Grylls has just tweeted "off to start filming new Degree deodorant commercials today".

Sir John Franklin

It was reported in July that a ship lost while searching for missing explorer Sir John Franklin in the Arctic over 150 years ago had been found by Canadian archaeologists. The HMS Investigator, sent by London in 1850 to try to locate Franklin and his crew, was located in 11 metres of water at Banks Island, in the west of the Arctic archipelago.

Franklin and his entire crew were lost after setting sail for Northern Canada in 1845 during a fruitless attempt to find the Northwest Passage, a trade route between the Atlantic and Pacific through the Arctic Ocean. As an aside, a series of eight sketches of the voyage of HMS Investigator, reviewed in The Observer, appeared in 1854.

(Observer, August 13 1854)

The most recent news about Franklin is that a box containing documents linked to his doomed expedition has just been dug up in Gjoa Haven in the Canadian Northwest Territories. The exact contents of the unopened, sand-filled container will not be known for about three weeks. However, the view from Russell Potter's informative and reliable Visions of the North blog is that it will most likely contain records of Roald Amundsen, who was known to have left several caches in the area.

North-West Passage

A story in last Saturday's Independent recounted how two sailors navigated the North-West Passage, the fabled sea route along the northern Canadian coast believed to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, in a 17-foot open sailing boat. Until very recently this journey would have been impossible as the way was clogged with thick ice. However, due to global warming, the route is nearly ice-free for the first time since records began.

Early European navigators sailed north into the Arctic during the 16th and 17th centuries in search of the passage. The British parliament offered £20,000 to the first person to complete the passage, in 1744, and over the following years expeditions gradually discovered parts of the Canadian Arctic archipelago as they pursued the prize. John Franklin, a veteran of arctic exploration, set out in 1845 on a well equipped north west passage expedition but when no news was heard from the crew, more than 40 parties were launched in search of them. Eventually is was discovered that the Franklin party had died from scurvy and starvation, along with evidence that the sailors had resorted to cannibalism - a fact reported with glee by the press.

According to polar historian, Beau Riffenburgh, in Myth of the Explorer, this marked the beginning of a sensational style of journalism that promoted and exaggerated exploits. Heroic myths were created to enthrall the general public, while less eventful, but more useful, scientific expeditions of the latter part of the 19th century were ignored.