BOOKS.
THE A.ECTIC VOYAGE OF THE FOX.' '
GREAT as were the expectations with which the public awaited the appearance of Captain M'Clintock's narrative, we feel assured that the event will not have disappointed them. Higher testi- mony than this we could hardly bear to successful authorship. " The gallant M'Clintock," says Sir Roderick Murchison, " when he penned his journal amid the Arctic ices, had no idea whatever of publishing it; and yet there can be no doubt that the reader will peruse with the deepest interest the simple tale of how, in a little vessel of 170 tons' burthen, he and his well-chosen com- panions have cleared up this great mystery "—Franklin's fate. In one respect only is the volume defective. Captain M'Clintock's modesty prevented his doing common justice in his journal to his own conduct, and thus far his book needs to be supplemented by the oral and printed testimony (the latter in the Cornhill Maga- zine) of the officers serving under him. From them alone we learn how " his great qualities in moments of extreme peril elicited their heartiest admiration, and ensured their confidence." Proud as the country may well be of having produced those by whose courage and constancy the expedition of the Fox was pro- moted and prosecuted to a successful issue, in other respects the history of that enterprise reflects little credit either on the nation or its Government. The expenses of the expedition amounted to 10,4121., and would have considerably exceeded that sum but for the liberality of some companies and firms, whose establishmente were placed gratuitously at Lady Franklin's service on the return of the Fox. The subscriptions towards defraying this cost amounted only to 29811., more than a sixth of which (5001.) was con- lributed by Captain Allen Young, of the merchant marine, who also abandoned lucrative appointments to serve without pay under Captain M'Clintock in the subordinate post of sailing-master. And is this all that a proud and wealthy nation can be content to have done towards repairing the ungenerous fault of its Govern- ment?. The conduct of the Admiralty was at least consistent with the unhappy reputation of that cacheetie department. Their Lordships began by putting themselves in a false position as to the question of a further search after their missing seamen by prematurely, and in disregard of competent advisers, awarding 10,000/. to Dr. Rae for having, as they alleged, "ascertained the fate of the Franklin Expedition." Having committed themselves to that erroneous decision, they left Lady Franklin's touching and eloquent appeals unanswered for a whole year, until in April, 1857 Sir Charles Wood stated that "the members of her Ala- jesty/s Government having come, with great regret, to the con- clusion that there was no prospect of saving life would not be justified, for any objects which in their opinion could be obtained by an expedition to the Arctic seas in exposing the lives of offi- cers and men to the risk inseparable from such an enterprise." To the Admiralty alone, over which Sir Charles Wood then pre- sided, belongs the discredit of this paltry evasion of a national duty; we rejoice in the belief that it was as much at variance with Lord Palmerston's personal inclinations as with common sense and public honour. There was at that time lying at Portsmouth one of Sir Edward Belcher's ships, the Resolute, which, having been abandoned in the Arctic ice, was picked up by an American whaler, purchased of her rescuers by the American Government, and presented, after having been lavishly reequipped, as a free gift from the American nation to the Queen of England. The circumstances of the gift and the condition of the vessel marked her out as exclusively des- tined for the Arctic service. For any other purpose her expensive equipments would be perfectly useless and require removal—an act which could hardly be regarded as a graceful acknowledgment of American courtesy. On these grounds Lady Franklin prayed in her letter to Lord Palmerston of the 2d December, 1856, that the Resolute should be "restored to her original vocation, so that she may bring back from the Arctic seas, if not some living rem- nant of our long-lost countrymen, yet at least the proofs that they have nobly perished." We have seen upon what flimsy pretences this request was refused; but, when the Admiralty had resolved to cast upon Lady Franklin the responsibility of the expedition which they knew she would certainly send out at her own cost, why did they not place at her disposal the Resolute, of which they could not decently make any other use ? There might have been no precedent for such a loan of a Queen's ship to a subject, but the case was precisely of that kind in which it would have been proper to make such a precedent. It cannot be said that their lordships forebore from doing this lest they should seem to be participators in the act of unjustifiably risking human lives, for they really had the grace, when Lady Franklin was fitting out the Fox, to make themselves to some extent accomplices in her possibly homicidal enterprise by contributing to the supplies of the little vessel. The Fox is a wonderful little craft, and behaved admirably • but if instead of her Captain M'Clintock had com- manded the Resolute, he and his companions would.' have been exempt from many extreme perils; they would have completed their voyage in one year instead of two, and have escaped the horrors of wintering in the pack. On the 30th of August, 1857, when this dreaded anticipation was forcing itself upon his mind, he wrote thus— The Voyage of the" Fox 'u the Arctic Seas. A Narrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin and his Companions. By Captain IDClintock, R.N., LL.D. With Maps and Illustrations. Published by Murray. " Yesterday we set to work as usual to warp the ship along, and Moved her ten feet : an insignificant hummock then blocked up the narrow pas- sage; as we could not push it before us, a two-pound blasting charge was exploded, and the surface ice was shattered, but such an immense quantity of broken ice came up from beneath, that the difficulty was greatly increased
i instead of being removed, This one of the many instances in which our small vessel labours under very great disadvantages in ice-navigation—we have neither sufficient manualpower, steam power, nor impetus to force the floes asunder. I am convinced that a steamer of moderate size and power, with a crew of forty or fifty men, would have got through a hundred miles of such ice in less time than we have been beset."
Ten days later he says-
" Two days ago the ice became more slack than usual, and a long lane opened ; its western termination could not be seen from aloft. Every effort was made to get into this water, and by the aid of steam and blasting- powder we advanced 100 yards out of the intervening 170 yards of ice when the floes began to close together, a S.E. wind having sprung up. ?lad we succeeded in reaching the water, I think we should have extricated ourselves completely, and perhaps ere this have reached Barrow Strait, but S.E. and S.W. gales succeeded, and it now blows a S.S.E. gale with sleet."
And on the 13th of September he thus describes his tantalising position. The italics are his own.
There is a water-sky to the W. and N.W.' it is nearest to us in the di- rection of Cape York : could we only advance 12 or 15 miles in that direction, I am convinced we should be free to 8 tem- for Barrow Strait."
During 242 days the Fox was locked up in the ice, drifting passively with it through Baffin's Bay and Davis's Straits, a distance of 1385 statute miles—the longest drift on record. On the 25th April, 1858, she finally emerged from amidst the rolling and clashing masses of the broken pack, and through perils, the experienee of which made her captain understand how men's hairs turned grey in a few hours. Having then refitted at Holsteinborg, in Greenland, she steered once more to northward, again to en- counter imminent risks of destruction, and to fail in repeated at- tempts to reach the searching ground of the expedition by way of Peel's Sound or Bellot's Strait. At last, on the 29th of Septem- ber, the Fox was securely laid up at Port Kennedy, near the eastern end of Bella Strait, and three sledge expeditions were organised, and commanded respectively by Captain Weinstock, Lieutenant (now Commander) Hobson, and Captain Allen Young. The task assigned to the latter led him away from the last route which the remnant of Franklin's party were found to have taken, but was by no means profitless in other respects. He explored 380 miles of the coast line of Victoria Land, and discovered Welinteck's channel between it and what was formerly known as Prince of Wales's Land, but which he thus proved to be an island. Welintoek and Hobson started on the 2c1 of April, and travelled in company down the western coast of Boothia to Victoria, where they separated, to trace the shores of King William's Island in opposite' directions. It was Lieutenant Hobson's good fortune to discover on the western coast the written Record, and those other relics of Franklin's followers, particulars of which have long been published in every newspaper in the empire. The whole of the ground gone over by Hobson was again examined by Welintock, and we cannot but share his conviction that, except small articles which may possibly be hidden beneath the snow, no other undis- covered relics of our lost countrymen remain, either on King Wil- liam's Island or on Montreal Island, for that none could possibly have escaped the minute search that was made for them. The whole windswept coast of King William's Island, along the Victoria Strait, is barren of all means of human subsistence, and fully explains the desolate condition of the lost crews, who, starving and scurvy-stricken, were seen by the Esquimaux "to fall down and die" on the march.
"Hobson's report is a minute record of all that occurred during his journey of seventy-four days, and includes a list of all the relics brought on board, or seen by him. He suffered very severely in health : when only ten days out from the ship, traces of scurvy appeared ; when a month absent he walked lame ; towards the latter end of the journey he was compelled to allow himself to be dragged upon the sledge, not being able to walk more than a few yards at a time ; and on arriving at the ship on the 14th June, poor Hobaon was unable to stand. How strongly this bears upon the last Bad march of the lost crews And vet Hobson's food throughout the whole journey was pemmican of the very best quality, the most nutritious descrip- tion of food that we know of, and varied occasionally by such game as they were able to shoot. In spite of this fresh meat diet, scurry advanced with rapid strides. "At Cape Felix the very heavy masses of ice' evidently of foreign for- mation,' had drifted in from the N.W. through M'Clure Strait; Victoria Strait was full of it; and Hobson's description of the ice he passed over clearly illustrates how Franklin, leaving clear water behind him, pressed his ships into the pack when he attempted to force through Victoria Strait. How very different the result might and probably would have been had he known of the existence of a ship-channel, sheltered by King William Island from this tremendous 'polar pack !' " Here we touch upon the question, how near have we ap- proached to the discovery of a practicable North West Passage ? The answer to that question is, in Captain Welintock's words, as follows— If the season was so favourable for navigation as to open the northern part of this western sea [Franklin's Channel] (as, for instance in 1846, when Sir J. Franklin sailed down it), I think but comparatively little difficulty would be experienced in the more southern portion of it until Victoria Strait was reached. Had Sir John Franklin known that a channel existed east- ward of King William's Land (so named by Sir John Ross), I do not think he would have risked the beeetment of his ships in such very heavy ice to the westward of it ; but had he attempted the north-west passage by the eastern route, he would probably have carried his ships safely through to Behring's Straits. But Franklin was furnished with charts which indicated no passage to the eastward of King William's Land, and made that land (since discovered by Rae to be an island) a peninsula attached to the conti- nent of North America ; and he consequently had but one course open to him, and that the one he adopted. My own preference for the route by the east side of the island is founded upon the observations and experience of Rae and Collinson in 1851-2-4. lain of opinion that the barrier of ice off Bellot Strait, some 3 or 4 miles wide, was the only obstacle to our carrying the Fox, according to' my original intention, southward to the Great Fish River, passing east of King William's Island, and from thence to a winter- ing position 6n Victoria Land. Perhaps some future voyager, profiting by the experience so fearfully and fatally acquired by the Franklin expedition, and the observations of Rae, Collinson, and myself, may succeed in carrying his ehip through from sea to sea ; at least he will be enabled to direct all his efforts in the true and only direction. In the mean time to Franklin must be assigned the earliest discovery of the North-West Passage, though not the actual accomplishment of it in his ships. This will be understood when it is recollected that W. of Simpson's Straits or Victoria Land a navigable passage to Behrines Straits is known to exist along the coast of North America. Franklin himself, with his companion Richardson, surveyed by far the greater portion of that distance. Franklin's and Parry's discoveries overlap each other in longitude, and for the last thirty years or more the dis- covery of the North-West Passage has been reduced to the discovery of a link uniting the two."
The extent of new coast line discovered and laid down by Captain Welintock and his two chief officers was 800 geographi- cal miles. The contributions of the expedition to other depart- ments of science were also numerous and important. In the ac- complishment of its special purpose it was splendidly successful, and it returned home after an absence of two years and four months with the loss of only three of the crew, one of whom died from the effects of a fall, another of apoplexy, and the third (the steward) of scurvy, induced by his own intemperate and perverse habits. The voyage is altogether one of the most brilliant in the annals of Arctic discovery.
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