Resolute (20 page)

It had no effect because McClure knew just what he was doing. By removing the weakened crewmen from the ship he would be able to apportion their rations among the twenty he had selected to stay aboard. Once the hoped-for thaw came he and those he had spared would be able, he was convinced, to accomplish the only goal that now mattered to him. They would be able to sail the
Investigator
through the passage he had found.

It was now March, too early for the ice—if it was ever going to—to release the
Investigator.
But conditions had improved enough for the
Resolute
to risk sending out a sledge party to see if McClure was still at Mercy Bay. To lead the party, Kellett chose Lieutenant Bedford Pim, who had previously served with the captain aboard the
Herald.
Pim, like Kellett, was totally dedicated to finding both McClure and Franklin. He actually believed that there was a strong possibility that Sir John and his men might be in Russia, and had received permission from the Admiralty to walk across Siberia in an attempt to locate them. Hearing of the plan, Lady Franklin had contributed five hundred pounds to the cause. Pim's expedition, however, had never been launched.

Pim and his team left for Mercy Bay on March 10. Almost immediately they were forced to stop and wait out a four-day blizzard that made traveling impossible. When they were finally able to resume, Pim found that the going was more difficult than he could have imagined. “Hummocks after hummocks followed each other in apparently endless succession,” he wrote in his diary on March 23. “Sometimes composed of very old, then young ice, on the former the surface was so glossy and uneven that the men could scarcely stand, on the latter the snow had filled up the interstices, into which men and sledges sank deeply at every step; in short after a hard day's work we only accomplished 2 1/2 miles.” (The art of sledging was a vital technique for Arctic explorers, yet it was one of the most demanding forms of transporation on earth, see note 1, page 269.)

Still he pushed on. On March 29 his sledge broke down completely and he decide to continue on by foot with just two of his men, ordering the others to take the damaged sled back to Cape Dundas and wait for his return.

Meantime, McClure was preparing to send his weakened crewmen out on their certain-to-be-disastrous journey. The party would probably have already left but for the sudden death of one of their companions. Now, on April 6, McClure and his first lieutenant were walking beside the
Investigator
, pondering the question of how they would be able to dig a grave in the frozen ground. They had no idea of how their fortunes were about to change.

Off in the distance, Pim—his face completely blackened from having sat huddled next to the campfire night after night—and his two men had found Mercy Bay and had spotted the ship. McClure later wrote of his encounter with the men in his journal:

“To rush at and seize him by the hand was the first impulse,” McClure later recalled, “for the heart was too full for the tongue to speak.” He went on:

But even in the hour of his greatest relief, McClure's deceptive nature came almost immediately to the front. Although it was probably the furthest thing from Bedford Pim's mind, McClure was aware that, according to the terms of the reward offered by Parliament, half of the £10,000 due to him for having discovered the Northwest Passage now rightfully belonged to the crew of the
Resolute
, who had rescued him. With a straight face, McClure informed Pim that, as grateful as he was to see him, he didn't really need his help. All of his men, he told Pim, were more than healthy enough to sail the
Investigator
out of the ice and would the lieutenant please take him to the
Resolute
so that he could inform Captain Kellett of that fact? Outranked by McClure, Pim had no choice but to grant the commander his wish.

BEDFORD PIM
rescues the crew of the
Investigator.
This illustration appeared in the published diary of the ship's Inuit interpreter, Johann Miertsching. When the
Investigator
was abandoned, Robert McClure collected and purposely mislaid his officers' journals, knowing they contained negative accounts of his handling of the voyage. Somehow, Miertsching managed to keep his diary and publish his bitter account.

And so, about a week later, there on the deck of the
Resolute
they stood—the captain of the rescue ship and the man who earlier had so openly deceived him on his way to finding the passage. But this time Kellett would not be fooled. He ordered that the
Investigator's
crew be examined by the
Resolute's
surgeon and by Dr. Armstrong, who together would determine whether or not the
Investigator's
crew, if circumstances allowed, were fit enough to sail the ship out of Mercy Bay and resume the search for Franklin. It did not take the doctors long to make their decision. Noting that a number of the men were either blind or lame and that even the healthiest ones were suffering from scurvy, they informed Kellett that they were in no shape to man a vessel. Immediately the captain ordered that the
Investigator
be left in the ice and that her officers and men be sledged to where they would be taken aboard the
Resolute
and the
Intrepid.

Kellett had few qualms about ordering the abandonment of the
Investigator.
From what Pim had told him, not only was Mercy Bay so situated that the ice would perhaps never leave it, but the ship was so buried in the floes that even if the ice should one day happen to loosen its grip, the vessel was probably too damaged to be seaworthy. Any remaining doubts that Kellett might have had were quickly dispelled by the looks of gratitude on the faces of the rescued men.

The ordeals of the
Investigator's
crew, however, were not over. On August 16, the
Resolute
and the
Intrepid
were rounding the point of a large, relatively unexplored bay, which Kellett hoped might hold some traces of Franklin. Suddenly and without warning, the
Resolute
was stuck by a huge ice floe, laying the ship dangerously to port and driving her close to the shore. Soon afterward, another huge floe hammered against the ship, placing the vessel in imminent danger of being torn apart. “There was nothing we could do against such a force;” the French officer de Bray wrote, “we could only wait, counting on Providence which had protected us thus far. Fortunately the ship was not taking on water and withstood the pressures valiantly. Afteran hour of cruel anxiety we were delighted to see the ice sliding slowly past our stern; a few charges of powder were exploded underthe ice and helped the movement. Finally around 10 o'clock the floe which had threatened to overwhelm us had passed and the ship's stern was afloat.”

It had been an extremely close call, and conditions did not improve. “30 August 1853,” read de Bray's journal entry for that day. “The temperature is dropping rapidly, and sadly, we see that the ice is not disposed to allow passage. The prospect of second wintering,… is not a very pleasant one, and yet I believe that everyone is beginning to resign themselves to the inevitable. The ice which formed around the ship during the night is already 3 inches thick and we have been blasting it to free ourselves.”

Barely making it back to the harbor at Dealy Island, the crews of the
Resolute
and the
Intrepid
prepared for their second winter in the ice. For the
Investigator's
refugees, it would be their fourth season of imprisonment. Once again Kellett would not allow the crews of the
Resolute
or the
Intrepid
to remain idle. It had been during the previous winter that they had found McClure. Now they would do whatever they could from where they lay to find traces of Franklin.

“At 7 o'clock,” wrote de Bray, “we released our first balloon, which carries with it about a thousand squares of paper spaced along an iron wire with a slow match.” It was an ingenious idea. Printed on each piece of paper was the
Resolute's
precise position. As the balloon was released, the match was lit so that the pieces of paper would fall at well-spaced distances: “Thus distributed at various points on the Arctic landscape they may fall in the hands of some travelers and thus give Franklin or his companions news of us,” de Bray explained.

The winter of 1853–54 proved to be almost as bitterly cold as the previous record-breaking winter had been. In Wellington Channel where the
Assistance
and the
Pioneer
were hunkered down, Belcher's highly accurate instruments reported temperatures as low as 62½ degrees below zero, and for eighty-four consecutive hours, his thermometer never climbed higher than minus five degrees.

Cold as it was, Kellett's anchorage at Dealy Island was a good one and he was certain that the
Resolute
and the
Intrepid would
be released in the summer, along with Belcher's ships. But Kellett had no confidence in Belcher's commitment to search or in his ability to organize searching parties. From what he had learned, nothing had been accomplished by the Wellington Channel area explorations thus far. Once summer came, Kellett believed, things would be different. Despite its narrow escape from the floes, the
Resolute
was in excellent shape. So too was the
Intrepid.
M'Clintock and Mecham had proven themselves unrivaled as leaders of sledging parties. Bedford Pim had certainly shown what he could accomplish. With McClure found and safely aboard, the crew would be able to focus on Franklin. And Kellett hadn't forgotten the still-missing Collinson. They would search for him as well.

Edward Belcher, on the other hand, had no such optimism. He was having a miserable winter, most of it his own doing. He had taken to the bottle, and was now drunk much of the time. His relationship with his officers had fallen almost completely apart. When the
Pioneer's
capable captain Sherard Osborn had complained of his commander's lack of leadership, Belcher had had him arrested. And Belcher's penchant for pettiness had become worse than ever. One of his favorite targets had been the ship's artist, young Walter May. After being publicly humiliated by Belcher over such failings as having neglected to inform the commander of the shooting of a small rabbit or having written a report on the wrong-sized paper, May had argued back and had been relieved of his duties. None of it bothered Belcher. He had only one desire: He wanted to go home.

For his part, Kellett was determined to stay in the Arctic for as long as it took to accomplish the mission. When the first signs of spring appeared, he sent one of his officers by sledge to Belcher with a detailed report of his search plans once the ships were free to move about again. It is doubtful if Belcher even glanced at the report. Instead, he sent the officer back to the
Resolute
with an astounding reply. Beaten down by two winters in the ice and no longer in control of his officers, Belcher had had enough. He was ordering all of the ship's companies to make their way to the
North Star
, which had somehow gotten free of the ice off Beechey Island. The expedition was over. They were all sailing back to England.