John Franklin

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John Franklin bigraphy, stories - Royal Navy admiral

John Franklin : biography

16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847

Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin KCH FRGS RN (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. Franklin also served as governor of Tasmania for several years. He disappeared on his last expedition, attempting to chart and navigate a section of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. The icebound ships were abandoned and the entire crew perished from starvation, hypothermia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning and scurvy.

1819: Coppermine River

In 1819, Franklin was chosen to lead an expedition overland from Hudson Bay to chart the north coast of Canada eastwards from the mouth of the Coppermine River. Between 1819 and 1822 he lost 11 of the 20 men in his party. Most died of starvation, but there was also at least one murder and suggestions of cannibalism. The survivors were forced to eat lichen and even attempted to eat their own leather boots. This gained Franklin the nickname of "the man who ate his boots".Franklin John, Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea Volume 2, 3rd Edition Page 279, (Online)

1823: Marriage and third Arctic expedition

In 1823, after returning to England,Sir John Franklin married the poet Eleanor Anne Porden. Their daughter, Eleanor Isabella, was born the following year. Eleanor (senior) died of tuberculosis in 1825, shortly after persuading her husband not to let her ill-health prevent him from setting off on another expedition to the Arctic. On 5 November 1828 he married Jane Griffin, a friend of his first wife and a seasoned traveller who proved indomitable in the course of their life together. On 29 April 1829 he was knighted by George IV. On 25 January 1836 he was made Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order by King William IV. He was made a Knight of the Greek Order of the Redeemer as well. – NLA Australian Newspapers

In 1825 he left for his second Canadian and third Arctic expedition. The goal this time was the mouth of the Mackenzie River from which he would follow the coast westward and possibly meet Frederick William Beechey who would try to sail northeast from the Bering Strait. With him was John Richardson who would follow the coast east from the Mackenzie to the mouth of the Coppermine River. At the same time William Edward Parry would try to sail west from the Atlantic. (Beechey reached Point Barrow and Parry became frozen in 900 miles east. At this time the only known points on the north coast were a hundred or so miles east form the Bering Strait, the mouth of the Mackenzie, Franklin’s stretch east of the Coppermine, and a bit of the Gulf of Boothia which had been seen briefly from land.) Supplies were better organized this time, in part because they were managed by Peter Warren Dease of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

After reaching the Great Slave Lake using the standard HBC route he took a reconnaissance trip 1,000 miles down the Mackenzie and on 16 August 1825 became the second European to reach its mouth. He erected a flagpole with buried letters for Parry. He returned to winter at Fort Franklin on the Great Bear Lake. Next summer he went downriver and found the ocean frozen. He worked his way west for several hundred miles and gave up on 16 August 1826 at Return Reef when he was about 150 miles east of Beechey’s Point Barrow. He reached safety at Fort Franklin on 21 September. He left Fort Franklin on 20 February 1827 and spent the rest of the winter and spring at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. He reached Liverpool on the first of September 1827. Richardson’s eastward journey was more successful.

1843 Visit to Victoria

Shortly after leaving his post as Governor of Tasmania Franklin revisited a cairn on Arthur’s Seat, a small mountain just inside Port Phillip Bay, that he had visited as a midshipman with Captain Matthew Flinders in April 1802.

On this trip he was accompanied by Captain Reid of The Briars and Andrew Murison McCrae of Arthurs Seat Station, now known as McCrae Homestead.McClear, Colin. A Dreamtime of Dromana. A History of Dromana through the eyes of a pioneering family. pp 50 Published by Dromana Historical Society. March 2006 pp 22 ISBN 0-9757127-6-4