Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage Read online

  After midnight, when finally the sun dipped below the horizon, Rae shook Linklater awake. He boiled water and sipped a cup of tea, then donned his snowshoes and led the way north along the unexplored coast of Wollaston Land. Having left camp with only a compass, a sextant and a musket for protection against wolves and bears, the two men travelled fast. They walked for six hours, stopping to rest only once, briefly, at the younger man’s request. At last, as the rising sun heralded the dawn, Rae rounded Cape Baring. Linklater had fallen some distance behind but the explorer forged on ahead, excited now, climbing a promontory from which, in the distance, he could see a high cape.

  This impressive landmark he named Cape Back, after George Back, who in 1821, by finding a band of Yellowknife-Dene, had saved Franklin and Richardson from starving to death at Fort Enterprise. Between that cape and the promontory on which he stood, Rae could see a large body of water (Prince Albert Sound), and wondered whether it might prove to be an east–west strait. Just ten days before, on May 14, 1851, a sledge party from Robert McClure’s icebound Investigator had reached the other side of the sound, sixty-four kilometres north—though of course Rae could not know that. He yearned to keep walking, but knew that he had run out of time.

  On May 24 Rae began to retrace his steps. He verified readings, retrieved caches and encountered a few friendly Inuit hunters. None of them had seen or heard of any Europeans. Six days after turning back, and having retrieved John Beads, Rae and his two men recrossed Dolphin and Union Strait to a high rocky point north of Cape Krusenstern. By June 4, when the trio reached Richardson Bay, a layer of water on the ice confirmed that they had concluded their snowshoe and dogsled journey just in time.

  Rae and his men reached the Kendall River station by trekking for five days from the coast, “during some of which we were fourteen hours on foot and continually wading through ice cold water or wet snow which was too deep to allow our Esquimaux boots to be of any use.” At one point Linklater slipped and lost all the cooking utensils, plates, pans and spoons. For the last two days, the men ate from large, flat stones. They survived on geese, partridges and lemming, these last proving especially tasty when roasted over the fire or between two stones.

  In his official report, Rae praised his two travelling companions. He calculated that, starting from the Kendall River, he had covered 824.5 nautical miles, or 1,516 kilometres, and he speculated, in private correspondence, that this was “perhaps the longest [journey] ever made on the arctic coast over ice.”

  Now came part two of the landmark expedition. On June 13, 1851, Hector Mackenzie joined Rae at Kendall River, arriving as planned from Fort Confidence with eight men and two boats. Two days later, with Mackenzie and ten men, Rae proceeded down the Kendall towards the Coppermine. Ice forced the party to wait for almost a week at the confluence. After further delays, by portaging around the impossible stretches and running the merely difficult ones, the party made it to Bloody Falls. There, by placing a net in an eddy below the falls, they caught forty salmon in fifteen minutes.

  At the mouth of the Coppermine, Rae set up camp and waited for the pack ice to melt farther out on Coronation Gulf. Finally, early in July, a breeze opened a narrow channel eastward. Seizing the moment, Rae sailed thirty-five kilometres by nightfall, when ice made further progress impossible. From that point on, he proceeded along the coast by taking advantage of any open water. Progress was slow and difficult. In many places, the ice lay against the rocks, forcing the men to make portages. This work, though arduous, had fortunately become routine for the steadily improving crew.

  The weather remained changeable. On the morning of July 16, as Rae and his men rounded Cape Barrow, they found themselves sailing into a torrent of rain. After they put ashore for breakfast, the weather cleared and Rae climbed a promontory. The highest rocks afforded him a discouraging view north and east across Dease Strait. As far as the eye could see, the strait lay covered by an unbroken sheet of ice—ice so thick and strong that hundreds of seals cavorted along its edges.

  Rae reboarded the boats and carried on, making slow progress by following crooked lines of water through the ice. Six days beyond Cape Barrow, a stiff southeasterly breeze opened a channel towards Cape Flinders at the western point of Kent Peninsula. Nearing that cape, which Franklin had named during his first disastrous expedition, Rae spotted three Inuit hunters and put ashore. Half a dozen other Inuit watched from a nearby island.

  The explorer approached the hunters, noting that they looked thinner and less well-fed than the Arctic native people he had met around Repulse Bay. The men at first appeared alarmed and fearful, and again Rae regretted the loss of Albert One-Eye. He offered the strangers trinkets, a gesture that gained their confidence. These men had never before communicated with Europeans. Using gestures, sign language and Inuktitut words and phrases that he had picked up, Rae questioned the men for half an hour. They had lived here all their lives, but no, they had seen no great ships. Nor had they seen any foreigners. Rae was the first.

  Disappointed but not surprised, Rae resumed his voyage eastward. He passed Point Turnagain, where in 1821—and far too late in the season—Franklin had finally turned around and begun his desperate overland retreat. Rae reached Cape Alexander, at the eastern end of Kent Peninsula, on July 24, two days earlier than Dease and Simpson had done in 1839. From here, where Dease Strait was narrowest, Rae proposed to cross to the southern coast of Victoria Land. Soon afterwards he wrote: “Had geographical discovery been the object of the expedition, I would have followed the coast eastward to Simpson Strait and then have crossed over towards Cape Franklin [on King William Island]. This course, however, would have been a deviation from the route I had marked out for myself, and would have exposed me to the charge of having lost sight of the duty committed to me.”

  Ironically, indeed tragically, had Rae carried on farther east, he would probably have discovered the fate of the Franklin expedition. He might have spotted the Erebus or the Terror, one or both of which were probably still afloat, and rescued some final survivors. If he did not see either one of those vessels, then almost certainly, on the southwest coast of King William Island, he would have found frozen corpses—some under boats, others in tents, still others face down in the snow. And he might well have found journals, diaries and last letters.

  But on July 27, 1851, as the winter ice began breaking up, the dutiful Rae beat north across Dease Strait to Victoria Land. He put into Cambridge Bay and, when a storm blew up, stayed for two days. Early in August, the men reached Cape Colborne. From that point east, Rae began delineating coastline that had never been charted. After travelling more than 150 kilometres without stopping except to cook, Rae reached an insurmountable ice barrier.

  The shore lay barren of vegetation and even of driftwood. A tract of light grey limestone had been forced up in immense blocks close to the shore by the pressure of ice. From the north came yet another gale, with heavy squalls and showers of sleet and snow. Finally the wind fell and a lane opened up along the coast, revealing reefs. Rounding these, Rae emerged into open water, set close-reefed sails and beat onwards through an ugly, chopping sea. The slightly built boats strained and heaved as pounding waves washed over them, but eventually Rae entered a snug cove and secured them.

  On August 5, in heavy weather, Rae passed high limestone cliffs rutted with deep snow. A thick, cold fog came on, encrusting the boats with ice, so he landed and broke out tents. As evening came on, the men forced their way forward for another five kilometres, pulling and poling against ever-thicker ice. Finally, just north of Albert Edward Bay, the boats ground to a halt.

  For the next two days, a relentless northeast wind kept the ice close to the shore and showed no signs of changing. Rae decided to press ahead overland. What if Franklin had reached the coast directly ahead? Or what if the waterway Rae had seen on the west coast of Wollaston Land was in fact a strait that emerged just ahead, providing a final link in the Passage?

  Just before noon on August 12,
with three men, his trusty musket and enough food to last four days, Rae began hiking north. “Hoping to avoid the sharp and ragged limestone debris with which the coast was lined,” he wrote, “we at first kept some miles inland, without however gaining much advantage, as the country was intersected with lakes, to get round which we had to make long detours. Nor was the ground much more favourable for travelling than that nearer the beach; in fact, it was as bad as it well could be, in proof of which I may mention that, in two hours, a pair of new moccasins, with thick undressed buffalo skin soles, and stout duffle socks were completely worn out, and before the day’s journey was half done every step I took was marked with blood.”

  When Rae got back to the boats, he deposited a note in a cairn. It summarized his expedition and mentioned that he had explored the coast to thirty-five miles (fifty-six kilometres) north from this point. Two years later, in May of 1853, a sledging party from HMS Enterprise, wintering in Cambridge Bay under Captain Richard Collinson, would find it.

  Early on August 15, 1851, with a fierce wind blowing from the north-northeast and the boats in danger if the wind shifted to the east, Rae sailed back a few kilometres to a safer harbour. There he waited for any favourable change in the wind and ice that would allow him to use the shelter of Admiralty Island (which he had named the previous week) to cross Victoria Strait to what he called “Point Franklin” on King William Land—by which he meant a promontory between Victory Point and Cape Crozier.

  If Rae had managed to cross Victoria Strait to this point, again he would have discovered the fate of Franklin: this is the region in which many of Franklin’s men died while struggling south along the coast of King William Island. It was not to be, however. Late that morning, Rae sailed out into the strait, but the breeze increased to a gale and shifted to the east. Facing a great accumulation of ice, Rae sought shelter in the lee of a point. The following morning, when the wind subsided, he tried once again to push across to Admiralty Island, but the ice was worse than ever.

  Four days later and some kilometres farther south, Rae made a third attempt to force a passage eastward to King William Land. But after eight kilometres, he reached a wall of close-packed ice and that left him no choice but to turn back. Rae could not know it, but the conditions he encountered recur even today, because pack ice breaking off from the polar cap travels south down the broad McClintock Channel and jams into the narrower Victoria Strait. Ironically, the Canadian expedition that in 2014 located the Erebus did so only because heavy ice prevented its ships from searching this area.

  In 1851, unable to reach King William Island, Rae proceeded southwest. On August 21, while creeping along the shore of what he called Parker Bay, Rae chanced upon a length of pinewood. He examined it with growing excitement. This was not driftwood but a piece of man-made pole. Almost six feet long, three and one-half inches in diameter, and round except for the bottom twelve inches, which were square, it appeared to be the butt end of a small flagstaff. It was stamped on one side with an indecipherable marking, and a bit of white line had been tacked to the pole near the bottom, forming a loop for signal halyards. Both the white line and the copper tacks bore the marks of the British government: a red worsted thread, the “rogue’s yarn,” ran through the white line, and a broad arrow was stamped on the underside of the head of the copper tacks.

  Rae was still carefully describing this pole in his journal and had not travelled more than a few hundred metres when the two boats came upon another stick of wood lying in the water, touching the beach. This one was a piece of oak almost four feet long and three inches in diameter, with a hole in the upper end. This post or stanchion had been formed in a wring lathe. The bottom was square, and Rae deduced from a broad rust mark that it had been fitted into an iron clasp.

  Anticipating a debate over the sources of these pieces of wood, Rae offered his analysis in his official report, and so became the first explorer to identify Victoria Land as an island. Citing the flood tide from the north, he argued that a wide channel must separate Victoria Land from North Somerset Island and that these pieces of wood had been swept down this channel along with the immense quantities of creeping ice. In his rough notes, though not in his report, Rae wrote of the two poles, “They may be portions of one of Sir John Franklin’s ships. God grant that the crews are safe.”

  Like the vast majority of naval experts, Rae believed that the lost expedition would be found far to the north. His discovery of the two pieces of wood did not change his opinion. He correctly guessed the direction from which the broken pieces had come, but overestimated the distance they had travelled.

  With these broken pieces of wood, John Rae became the first explorer to discover relics from one of the Franklin ships after it had got trapped in the ice. In his official report, he confined himself to description. After carefully stowing away the wood, the copper tacks and the line, Rae turned his attention to the wind and the waves.

  From Parker Bay, Rae made excellent time sailing west. On August 29, he crossed Coronation Gulf and found the Coppermine River raging. When the water did not fall for two days, Rae proclaimed confidence in the skill of his men and started up the river. The ledges of rock that ran along the base of the cliffs lay hidden beneath the driving current, so tracking meant walking along the top of the cliffs. The men’s strongest cord snapped four times, and so they entered the pounding river to shove the boat over the rocks. After five days of furious work, the party made camp at the Kendall River, the worst of the trek behind them.

  A few days later, on September 10, 1851, Rae and his men regained Fort Confidence. Finding everything in order and more than three thousand pounds of dried provisions in store, Rae instructed Hector Mackenzie to close the post and pay the men, specifying bonuses and gratuities. Later, his superiors would complain of his generosity.

  During his snowshoe sortie, Rae had trekked 1,740 kilometres, one of the longest such expeditions ever made over Arctic ice. He had immediately followed this with a second stunning achievement. His summer voyage east and then north along Victoria Island, during which he sailed 2,235 kilometres while charting 1,015 kilometres of unexplored coastline, stands in comparison with the Dease and Simpson voyage of 1838–39, which set an Arctic standard for small-boat travel. In addition to these physical and geographical accomplishments, Rae had discovered the first relics from the Franklin expedition.

  The day after he arrived at Fort Confidence, having completed one of the most remarkable Arctic expeditions of all time, John Rae set out southward to enjoy his hard-earned leave of absence. He was bound for Orkney and nothing was going to stop him.

  17.

  Robert McClure Narrowly Escapes Disaster

  On April 18, 1851, while John Rae was organizing his epic two-part expedition at Great Bear Lake, roughly five hundred kilometres to the north, with his ship Investigator locked in the ice of Prince of Wales Strait, Captain Robert John Le Mesurier McClure was dispatching three exploratory sledge parties. On May 14, 1851, when Rae was trekking westward along the south coast of Victoria Island, one of McClure’s sledge parties—led by William Haswell—reached the north side of Prince Albert Sound. Ten days later, when Rae reached the south side of that same sound, McClure was compiling the data from his sledging team and waiting impatiently for the ice to clear so he could resume his voyage, complete the Northwest Passage and revel in the ensuing fame and fortune.

  Robert McClure had been born in 1807 into an Irish family with military connections. He tried the army but at seventeen, seeing where the excitement was, moved to the Royal Navy. He served on anti-slavery patrols in the Caribbean and rose quickly through the ranks. In 1836–37, he ventured to the Arctic as mate on the Terror under George Back, an expedition that narrowly survived a sustained battle with Arctic ice. In 1848, after serving in North America and the Caribbean, he joined the Franklin search as first lieutenant on the Enterprise under captain James Clark Ross—an expedition that, impeded by heavy ice, spent one winter at Port Leopold, on the no
rtheast coast of Somerset Island, and managed only to investigate 250 kilometres of coastline.

  Two years later, the Admiralty decided to send two ships into the Arctic from the Pacific. Under the overall command of Richard Collinson in the Enterprise, McClure took charge of the Investigator. The ships ended up sailing separately, and failed to rendezvous in Honolulu, missing each other by a single day. McClure took a dangerous shortcut through the Aleutian Islands and, on July 31, 1850, arrived in Bering Strait ahead of Collinson. Instead of waiting, as a senior naval officer in another ship recommended, the ambitious McClure kept sailing. On August 7, the Investigator became the first exploring ship to round Point Barrow and enter the Beaufort Sea.

  With the help of Moravian missionary Johann Miertsching, who had learned Inuktitut during five years in Labrador, McClure interviewed local Inuit, none of whom had any news of Franklin. The expedition’s primary objective—though not McClure’s—was to obtain intelligence about the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin. To that end, the men hoped to capture foxes alive in traps. They would fit them with special copper collars stamped with the positions of ships and supplies and then release them, hoping that one might be caught by Franklin’s men.

  Like other expeditions, this one carried gilt metal “rescue buttons” with words pointing to key locations. These the men would give to any Inuit they encountered, hoping they might wear them and attract the notice of any Franklin survivors. As well, McClure periodically released hydrogen-filled balloons that carried messages on pieces of brightly coloured paper. In short, the search was reduced to desperate measures.

  Richard Collinson, nominal commander of the expedition, ran into heavy ice in Bering Strait and retreated for the winter to Hong Kong. McClure had already sailed eastward past the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Alone, he lacked the safety of a supporting vessel. With ice forming along the coast, he struck northeast between Victoria Island and Banks Island into Prince of Wales Strait.