The Ships the Inuit Knew About All Along: Franklin 1845

Eighteen forty-five. Two ships, a hundred and twenty-nine men. Three graves. A note in a stone pile. A report the nation will not believe. Then silence, for a hundred and sixty years. How do two ships stay lost when people said where they were?

May, eighteen forty-five. From Greenhithe, on the River Thames, two Royal Navy ships set out to finish a map. The Northwest Passage, a sea route through the Arctic islands north of Canada, is still not fully charted. The ships are Erebus and Terror, under Sir John Franklin. They carry three years of food, much of it sealed in tins, and a library of more than a thousand books. Franklin believes the food could last five. This is not a gamble. This is the Navy at its most organised. At Greenland, some men go home, which leaves a hundred and twenty-nine. Whalers in Baffin Bay see the ships, and they are the last Europeans ever to do so. After that, nothing. No letter, no signal, no ship. Years later, searchers reach a small island, and find three graves.

The island is Beechey Island, in the Canadian Arctic. Searchers find a winter camp, a stone cairn, and three graves. The headstones name John Torrington, John Hartnell and William Braine, who died that first winter. But there is no note. Not one line about where the ships went next. Years pass. In the north, a Scottish doctor named John Rae is exploring for the Hudson's Bay Company. In the spring, at Pelly Bay, he meets some Inuit. One of them has a gold band on his cap.

The Inuit tell Rae that white men starved to death, ten or twelve days away. Rae buys the cap band. Weeks later, other families tell him more. They saw at least forty white men, dragging a boat south along the west coast of King William Island. Their leader, a tall man with a telescope, was thought to be Captain Crozier, who commanded Terror. The ships, they said, were crushed by ice. Later, they found about thirty bodies, near the mouth of the Back River, and signs of cannibalism. Rae hears all this at Repulse Bay. He buys relics, including a silver plate engraved with Sir John Franklin's name, and writes two reports, a blunt one for the Admiralty, and a polite one for the public. The Admiralty releases the wrong one. Britain is appalled. Royal Navy men, the public says, would never do such a thing. Lady Franklin recruits Charles Dickens, who attacks the evidence in his magazine. In a private letter, he calls the Inuit a gross handful of uncivilised people, with a domesticity of blood and blubber. Rae is never knighted. The Inuit were right about the men. Now someone has to find the proof.

Lady Franklin pays for one last ship, the Fox, under Captain Francis McClintock. Inuit on King William Island tell his crew of two wrecked ships, one at a place they call Ugjulik, the place of the bearded seals. Then one of his officers, Lieutenant William Hobson, finds a stone cairn at Victory Point. Inside is one sheet of paper, with two messages. Put it beside everything else, and the story falls into order. They sail in May, eighteen forty-five. By July, they have vanished from Europe's sight. They winter at Beechey Island. In September, eighteen forty-six, the ice closes round both ships off King William Island. The first message is dated the twenty-eighth of May, eighteen forty-seven. All well. Two weeks later, on the eleventh of June, Franklin is dead. In April, eighteen forty-eight, the ships are abandoned, and a hundred and five men set out to walk south, under Captain Crozier. The searchers' side is shorter. The graves, in eighteen fifty. Rae, in eighteen fifty-four. The note, in eighteen fifty-nine. None of the hundred and five is known to have come home. What happened to the rest?

So what killed a hundred and twenty-nine men? Nobody knows. Lead, say some researchers, perhaps from the solder in the tins. Scurvy. Tuberculosis. Botulism. Each has defenders, and each has critics. These are theories, and only theories. The bones are plainer. On King William Island, searchers find remains from the march. A study in nineteen ninety-seven found cut marks on about a quarter of them, and said this supports the Inuit accounts of cannibalism. Rae's report was supported by the bones. Rae, at least, is remembered. In October, two thousand and fourteen, Westminster Abbey installs a plaque to him. But the ships are still missing.

The Inuit had an answer for that too. In eighteen sixty-nine, the American explorer Charles Francis Hall is told by a man named Inukpujijuk that a ship sank off the Adelaide Peninsula. Inukpujijuk marks the place on an Admiralty chart, northeast of O'Reilly Island. It is written down. Then, for a long time, nothing. Searchers look along the shore, and dive. In nineteen ninety-two, David Woodman publishes the Inuit evidence in a book, and spends years searching. Still nothing. Through all of it, there is one man. Louie Kamookak, a teacher and historian from Gjoa Haven, spends decades collecting stories from elders. In two thousand and eight, Parks Canada starts a new search, guided by Inuit testimony. Woodman's verdict is that without traditional knowledge, it would have been wholly impractical. In the sixth year, a helicopter lands on a small island.

It is the first of September, two thousand and fourteen. A helicopter party, led by archaeologist Doug Stenton, lands on an island in Wilmot and Crampton Bay. They find a piece of rusted metal, a davit pintle, from a Royal Navy ship. The next day, Ryan Harris, who has led the underwater search since two thousand and eight, sees sonar images of an intact ship on the seabed. They have found HMS Erebus. It lies northeast of O'Reilly Island, close to where Inukpujijuk told Hall it sank, a hundred and forty-five years earlier. Louie Kamookak knew. Asked which ship it was, he said, Erebus. Two years later, a hunter named Sammy Kogvik tells the Arctic Research Foundation about a tall wooden pole he saw sticking out of the ice in Terror Bay. He kept quiet, he says, because he had no proof. The foundation's research vessel, the Martin Bergmann, sails into the uncharted bay. After about two and a half hours of searching, they find a ship. HMS Terror. It sits upright, in about twenty-four metres of water, not crushed by the ice, as people had long believed. Inside, cameras show a table, a food tin, wine bottles, a ship's bell. The foundation's leader says everything is still the way it should have been left. Both ships were found within two years, guided by Inuit knowledge. But finding the ships answers one question, and opens another.

Today the wrecks are a national historic site of Canada, the first managed jointly by Inuit and Parks Canada. Inuit Guardians watch over both sites. Louie Kamookak died in March, twenty eighteen. Now look at the ledger. The Inuit said the men walked south. The note says they set out south. The Inuit said a ship sank near O'Reilly Island. Erebus lies there. Each account was once dismissed. Each has held up. So how do two ships stay lost for a hundred and sixty-six years? The sea is vast, and the ice is cruel. And one reason, perhaps, is that for a long time the Inuit account was treated as a story, not a map. The men did not come home. But the ships, at last, have been found. Next: Boston, January, nineteen nineteen. A tank bursts, and twenty-one people die.