Resolute (42 page)

A joint venture of the Admiralty and the Royal Geographical Society, the mission of the
Challenger
expedition, organized at a time when scientific investigation of the oceans was in its infancy, was highly ambitious. At 362 sampling stations in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, the
Challenger's
scientists were to determine the ocean depth, the composition of both the shallowest and deepest water, and the speed and direction of surface currents. They were also to determine if there was any animal life in the ocean depths and were to collect whatever sea life they could.

The three-masted, square-rigged
Challenger
had been originally designed as a British warship—outfitted with seventeen guns and a steam engine capable of delivering twelve hundred horsepower. For its unprecedented scientific journey it had been radically modified. All of its guns had been removed, and laboratories for natural history and chemistry, along with workrooms, extra cabins, and a special dredging platform, had been installed. Along with Captain Nares, the vessel's crew included six civilian scientists headed by Dr. C. Wyville Thomson, twenty British naval officers, and 216 crewmen. Nares also brought along his nine-year-old son.

During its four-year journey, the
Challenger
circumnavigated the globe and traveled almost seventy thousand miles. Its scientists sounded the ocean bottom to a depth of 26,850 feet, determined the patterns of ocean temperatures and currents, and charted the contours of the great ocean basins. They also discovered and cataloged over four thousand previously unknown animal species. The scientific results of the voyage were published in a fifty-volume, 29,500-page report that took twenty-three years to compile. When it was finally published, it was hailed as “the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”

By the time it ended in 1876, the long and demanding voyage had taken its toll. Seven people had died, twenty-six had been left in hospitals along the way, and several had deserted the ship at various ports of call. Nares himself did not complete the journey. In 1874 he was abruptly recalled by the Navy to take command of two ships, the
Alert
and the
Discovery
, which the Admiralty was about to send out in search of the North Pole.

The two vessels arrived in Franklin Bay in late August 1875, where the
Discovery
was left in winter quarters while the Alert, under Nares's command, sailed on, enabling Nares to become the first explorer to take a ship all the way north through the channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island (now named Nares Strait). On September 1, Nares reached latitude
82°27'
, a new record for northward travel. Here he was able to, once and for all, disprove the theory of the Open Polar Sea. There was nothing there but a vast wasteland of ice. In spring 1876, Nares sent out sledging parties seeking a route to the Pole, and on May 12, one of the expeditions, led by Albert Hastings Markham, set another record when he planted the British flag at latitude 83°20'.

Nares was now agonizingly close to the Pole, but, by this time, scurvy among his men had developed to the point that many of their lives were in jeopardy. He had no choice but to return home. He would be criticized for not having taken proper precautions against the disease, but no one could diminish his accomplishments. In the space of just four years, in areas worlds apart, he had captained both history's first great oceanographic expedition and the expedition that had come closest to reaching the North Pole.

The Midnight Sun.
In his journal, William Gilder described the “strange” effects of living in an environment of constant sunlight. “In the spring, the sun never sets,” he wrote. “There is no morning and no night. It is one continuous day for months. At first it seems very difficult to understand this strange thing in nature. One never knows when to sleep. The world seems to be entirely wrong, and man grows nervous and restless. Sleep is driven from his weary eyelids, his appetite fails, and all the disagreeable results of protracted vigils are apparent. But gradually he becomes used to this state of affairs, devises means to darken his tent, and once more enjoys his hour of rest. In fact, he learns how to take advantage of the new arrangement, and when traveling pursues his journey at night, or when the sun is lowest, because then he finds the frost that hardens the snow a great assistance in sledging.

“The sun's rays then, falling more obliquely, are less powerful, and he avoids somewhat the evils that beset his pathway at noontime. He is not so much exposed to sunburn or to snow-blindness. It may sound strangely to speak of sunburn in the frigid zone, but perhaps nowhere on the earth is the traveller more annoyed by that great ill. The heat of ordinary exercise compels him to throw back the hood of his fur coat, that the cool evenings and mornings preclude his discarding, and not only his entire face becomes blistered, but especially—if he is fashionable enough to wear his hair thin upon the top of his head—his entire scalp is affected about as severely as if a bucket of scalding water had been poured over his head. This is not an exaggeration. At a later period than that of which I am writing, Lieutenant Schwatka's entire party, while upon a sledge journey from Marble Island to Camp Daly, were so severely burned that not only their faces but their entire heads were swollen to nearly twice their natural size. And a fine-looking party they were. Some had their faces so swollen that their eyes were completely closed upon awakening from sleep. When one could see the others he could not refrain from laughing, so ludicrous was the spectacle. All dignity was lost. Even the august commander of the party was a laughing-stock, and though he knew why they laughed at each other, he could not understand why he should excite such mirth until he saw his face in a mirror. Then, when he tried to smile, his lips were so thoroughly swollen that the effect was entirely lost, and it was impossible to tell whether his expression denoted amusement, anger, or pain. The torture resulting from these burns was so severe that it was almost impossible to sleep. The fur bedding, which also served the purpose of a pillow, irritated the burns like applying a mustard-plaster to a blister. Then it was that the night was turned into day for the rest of the journey, and during the heat of the day the party were comparatively comfortable in the shelter of their tent. Straw-hats would have been the proper style of head-dress, but they had been omitted from the outfit, as was also another very important source of comfort, mosquito nettings. It is in the summer, however, that the necessity for the latter luxury is encountered.

“While the sun's rays pour down with all their force upon the devoted head of the traveler the reflection from the snow is almost as intense and still more disagreeable, for there is no possible escape from it. Not satisfied with producing its share of sunburn, it acts upon the eyes in a manner that produces that terrible scourge of the Arctic spring—snow-blindness. It is a curious fact that persons who are near-sighted are generally exempt from the evils of snow-blindness, while it appears to be more malignant with those who are far-sighted in direct ratio to the superior quality of their vision. Lieutenant Schwatka and his companion, the present writer, are both nearsighted, and during the two seasons that they were exposed to the disease neither were at any time affected by snow-blindness; while the other members of the party, and especially the natives, who have most powerful visual organs, were almost constantly martyrs to the disease whenever exposed to its attacks.”

The Search Continues.
Relics of the lost expedition continue to turn up in the Arctic, reminding us of all that remains unanswered, riddles that continue to drive individuals and entire expeditions to the region in hope of solving what has been called “the mystery that has never diminished.”

Some, like American historian and naturalist Bil Gilbert, who personally duplicated Franklin's 1820-21 overland trek from Great Slave Lake to the Arctic coast, have sought solutions by placing themselves in the explorer's footsteps. Others have combed particular sites central to the Franklin saga. The Lady Franklin Memorial Expedition of 1993, for example, led by Lieutenant Ernie Coleman of the Royal Navy and Dr. Peter Wadhams, former head of the Scott Polar Research Institute, thought they had made a major find when, on King William Island, they discovered what had all the characteristics of a burial mound. Could it be John Franklin's grave? To their disappointment, the “grave” turned out to be a large earthen mound with an empty air pocket beneath it.

Most of the modern-day searches have focused on finding the
Erebus
and the
Terror.
If, as several of the Inuit reports indicated, one of the vessels sank and the other was driven ashore, their remains have to be somewhere, waiting to be found. It's not that scores of famous wrecks, including at least two involved in the search for the passage and for Franklin, have not been located. In 1980, the
Breadalbane
, the ship that sank while attempting to bring supplies to the Belcher expedition almost one hundred years earlier, was discovered by a National Geographic expedition led by Joseph McInnes. Lying three hundred feet down on the ocean floor, the
Breadalbane
was found to be in “an excellent state of preservation,” a condition attributable to the frigid waters in which she lies. Sonar picture reveal that the vessel's masts remain intact, and a hole in her side provides a glimpse into such historic articles as her compass, signal lantern, and other navigational instruments.

In 2004, a Royal Navy expedition, named Exercise Arctic Quest 1832, organized to retrace the route taken by John and James Clark Ross on their 1829-33 passage search, found the remains of the explorers' ship
Victory
, which they had abandoned before being miraculously rescued. “To be the first British expedition to reach the winter harbours is itself a great achievement especially in the worst ice conditions in sixty years,” the team's leader, Don Mee, stated. “But to make such discoveries is beyond our wildest dreams.”

If the
Breadalbane
and the
Victory
can be found, why not the
Erebus
and the
Terror?
The major challenge is that, while the precise location where the
Breadalbane
went down and the exact spot where the
Victory
was abandoned were both well recorded, there is, as we know, no known record of the resting place of either the
Erebus
or the
Terror.
David C. Woodman, however, believes he knows where at least one of the ships will be found. His theories are based on the Inuit testimony he so thoroughly studied, particularly that given to the Schwatka expedition, and especially Inuit statements recorded by Henry Klutschak, who wrote: “Only one person, a man of sixty to seventy years by name of Ikinilik-Petulak, had himself come into contact with one of the [Franklin] ships. He was one of the first people to visit a ship, which, beset in the ice, drifted with wind and current, to a spot west of Grant Point on Adelaide Peninsula, where some islands halted its drift.” Woodman, accompanied by scientists, archaeologists, and maritime experts, has conducted a number of searches off Adelaide Peninsula. Although hampered by the same severe conditions and limited periods of time for exploration faced by his predecessors, Woodman remains convinced that he has been looking in the right place. As he reported after one of his expeditions, “Everything we had discovered tended to confirm the validity of oral history concerning the wreck—water depths, debris patterns, and the recovered artifacts all confirmed our belief that Franklin's ship lay nearby.” One thing is for certain: As long as the Franklin mystery remains, passionate seekers like Woodman will continue to attempt to solve it.

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