Franklin Relics

Ken McGoogan: It’s remarkable to think that the discovery of the nondescript artifacts you see here shook Victorian England to its foundations, refocused northern exploration, and opened up the complex geography of the Canadian Arctic. These relics derive from the Franklin expedition. It sailed in 1845, two state-of-the-art ships, with 129 men under the command of Sir John Franklin. It was expected to resolve the question of the Northwest Passage once and for all.

Having sailed from England, the two ships would proceed across the top of North America, emerge into the Pacific Ocean, trailing clouds of glory. Instead, the expedition disappeared into the Arctic. Nine years later, in April of 1854, that peerless explorer John Rae turned up the relics you see here. He was leading four men in trekking across Boothia Peninsula when they ran into an Inuit hunter wearing a gold-colored headband.

You can see it in the center of this image. Rae recognized it as a Royal Navy cap and, through his translator, William Ouligbuck, Jr., learned that the hunter had traded for it. The Inuk said it came from white men who had perished some 10 to 12 days’ journey to the West. Rae paid handsomely for the cap and said he would do the same for any more artifacts.

Not long afterwards, back at his winter campsite, several Inuit families arrived with relics, including the ones you see here. Rae learned that all these relics came from the dead white men. They had abandoned the ship and then gone slogging south and east along a distant coast. Inuit had found mutilated bodies and kettles, clear evidence that the final survivors had been driven to cannibalism.

Rae examined the relics. You can see names etched on some of them. He deduced that they did indeed come from the lost Franklin expedition, and he brought them back to England. In a report for the British Admiralty, he wrote that the final survivors had been driven to the last dread alternative as a means of sustaining life: cannibalism. The story ended up on the front page of the Times.

Rae’s reports shook Victorian England to its foundations, brought a torrent of denial. The idea that the flower of the Royal Navy had resorted to cannibalism was just untenable. At the urging of Lady Franklin, Charles Dickens published two long screeds in Household Words making racist allegations. He wrote, suggesting that the expert Rae was naive, foolish to believe the Inuit, who had probably murdered the men of the expedition.

Eventually, searchers would vindicate Rae’s report. Along with these artifacts, it served to refocus northern exploration. Where formerly the objective was to find the Northwest Passage, now, dozens of expeditions set out to find what had happened to the Franklin expedition. As to what caused the catastrophe, about that, experts continue to argue.