Resolute (37 page)

Of all the scores of individuals who played central roles in the Franklin saga, John Richardson may well have ended up leading the most distinguished life of all. The man who accompanied John Franklin on both his first and second expeditions and who, along with James Clark Ross, was the first to go out in search of Franklin, had three separate careers—Arctic explorer, surgeon, and naturalist.

Richardson's influence in Arctic matters continued long after he returned home from his search for Sir John. His participation in the Arctic Council, in particular, made him a major force in northern affairs. But his accomplishments as a naval surgeon were even more profound. A close friend of Florence Nightingale, he called upon her for advice while helping to raise British standards of nursing. Before he retired from active duty in 1855, he also played a major role in transforming the treatment of the mentally ill from pure confinement to humane, rehabilitative care. And when ether and chloroform were introduced, Richardson established himself as a pioneer in the use of general anesthesia in naval surgery.

Significant as all these accomplishments were, it was in the field of ichthyology that John Richardson made his greatest contribution. His friend Charles Darwin continually came to him seeking information about Arctic flora and fauna. So too did James Audubon. His two monumental works based on specimens he had collected during his Franklin expeditions—
Fauna Boreali-Americana
and
Flora Boreali-Americana
(the latter written by W. J. Hooker)—became instant classics and opened the new field of geographical natural history.

By the time he died in 1865, Richardson had been knighted and had received the awards and acclamation of scientific societies around the world. Many animal and plant species have been named for him, as well as an Arctic mountain, river, lake, and bay.

Unlike many of his fellow naval explorers, who found second or even third lives after their Arctic traveling days were over, Ross spent his remaining years in the country at Buckinghamshire, totally immersed in the company of his wife Ann and their four children.

Although his uncle's marriage ended in abandonment and scandal, the man who had found the Magnetic North Pole was blessed with one of the happiest of unions. “I am bound to say,” the editor of
Literary Gazette
would write, “that a more perfect state of married felicity could not be imagined…enjoying what they wished of neighboring society and entertaining friends at home, surely their life was a pleasant one, and, above all, their tastes and habits and opinions were ever in accord…if ever an observer affirm there were two human sympathies concentrated in one, it might have been affirmed of Sir James Ross and Lady Ross.” When Lady Ann Ross died in 1857, her husband went into a steady decline and died in 1862.

John Ross's life following his final venture into the Arctic at the age of seventy-two was as controversial and tumultuous as his earlier years had been. Never a favorite of many of his fellow explorers, his relations with them became even more strained when, in a pamphlet he published in 1855, he vociferously criticized almost everyone involved in the Franklin rescue effort.

Meanwhile, his personal life was hardly sanguine. His wife, many years younger than he, had run off with his lawyer after Ross had been accused of molesting two young servant girls. Ross vehemently denied the accusations, claiming that he was totally innocent and that the girl who was pregnant had been put into that condition by her brother. Nonetheless, he never saw his wife again. All this had happened when he was almost seventy years old.

John Ross would remain a controversial figure until his death in 1856. His great “Crocker Mountains” mistake would long be remembered. The truly significant achievements of his second expedition would, for the most part, be credited to his nephew. But his had been a career that had begun with the very first expeditions that John Barrow had launched and had not ended until the first real evidence of the Franklin expedition's fate had been discovered.

Despite being treated as a pariah by John Barrow, Scoresby—explorer, scientist, and the greatest of all English whalemen—never lost the respect of Arctic veterans such as Edward Parry, who, in a letter to Scoresby, informed him that he would always be regarded as one of “us Arctic men.” When Barrow died, the Arctic Council, “being aware of your great experience in all matters connected with the Polar Sea and of the value that consequently attaches to your opinions,” openly sought his advice.

Scoresby remained active until the day he died. At the age of forty, he received a calling to become a minister and entered Cambridge University, where he earned a Doctor of Divinity degree. He began his religious duties as chaplain of the Mariners' Church in Liverpool, and then became the longtime vicar of a church in the industrial town of Bradford. Among his innovations was the establishment of a floating chapel, which became highly popular with mariners.

Scoresby never lost his interest in science and, in his later years, his work in magnetism led to the creation of some of the most effective compasses yet developed. He also took a personal interest in the new phenomenon of hypnosis, and earned a reputation as one of its most effective practitioners. Always restless, he made two trips to America and one to Australia. When he was almost seventy, he astounded his fellow passengers, by climbing high into the rigging to check the effectiveness of one of the compasses he was developing. He died in Toronto in 1857.

Schwatka's 1878-79 expedition established beyond a doubt the loss of the written records of the Franklin expedition. In 1883, the U. S. Army sent Schwatka, now a lieutenant, on a journey of exploration down the Yukon River. With a small group of men, he traveled the length of the river, from its head to its mouth, a distance of more than thirteen hundred miles. It was the longest raft journey that had ever been made. Within months of completing the record trip, Schwatka resigned from the army. Beginning in 1896, he led five separate private expeditions, two to Alaska and three to northeastern Mexico. His lectures and writings describing the customs of the people he met on these trips and the flora and fauna he recorded were highly popular.

In the early 1890s, Schwatka began to suffer from a painful stomach ailment, probably brought on by his years of heavy drinking. Resorting to the use of laudanum, he died on November 2, 1892, from an overdose of the drug.

After returning from his brief search for Franklin aboard the
Prince Albert
, the colorful and flamboyant Snow spent most of the rest of his life absorbed in literary pursuits. One of them involved Charles Francis Hall who, upon finding himself without funds after completing his first expedition, decided to write a book to help finance his next Arctic search. Hall asked Snow to help him write the volume. When it was finished, Snow claimed that he had written most of it, which was probably not true, since the majority of the book was based directly on quotations from Hall's journals. Before Hall left on his second expedition, he was sued by Snow, who claimed that Hall owed him money for his work. To Snow's dismay, the court summarily dismissed the suit.

Snow's many other works were far less controversial and continue to be regarded as important geographical writings. Included in his canon are:
Voyage of the
Prince Albert
in Search of Sir John Franklin: A Narrative of Every-Day Life in the Arctic Seas
and
A Two Years' Cruise off Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, Patagonia, and in the River Plate.
Snow also authored a popular tract in which he advocated the migration of the English working class to British Columbia. Several of his articles appeared in such prestigious publications as the
Atlantic Monthly.