Civilizations Collide in Extreme Conditions in the Search for a Northwest Passage 

An analysis of the impact 400 years of European exploration searching for a  Northwest Passage.

Preamble

• In September, Penny and I joined an Adventure Canada trip on an ice-reinforced ship that navigated its way through the Northwest Passage from the west to the east, all the way to Greenland and down its west coast

• The trip, amongst many things, highlighted the drama over a period of 400 years of finding a route through the Northwest Passage, and the history of the countries, ships and men who tried to do this. It also highlighted the lives of the Inuit who were already living there – and the significant contrast between these two worlds

Where is “there”?

• The Northwest Passage is the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago 

• The Arctic Ocean includes the North Pole region in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere and extends south to about 60°N. The Arctic Ocean is surrounded by Eurasia and North America, and the borders follow topographic features: the Bering Strait on the Pacific side and the Greenland Scotland Ridge on the Atlantic side. It is mostly covered by sea ice throughout the year and almost completely in winter 

• This environment is changing. In September 2012, the Arctic ice extent reached a new record minimum. Compared to the average extent (1979–2000), the sea ice had diminished by 49%

Who were these Arctic explorers that were driven by this European quest for a Northwest Passage?

• Earlier European attempts came from the Norse, or Vikings

• Then Columbus in 1492 and Cabot in 1497 started to find out what was across the Atlantic Ocean

• Then Frobisher discovers Labrador, Baffin Island and Frobisher Bay in 1576-78

• John Davis from 1585 to 1591 gets to Baffin Island and Labrador

• Hudson Bay became a focus from early 1600s through to the mid 1700s (Hudson; Button; Bylot; Baffin; Munk; Foxe; Knight; Middleton; Moor; Christopher), both because of furs, but also to seek out routes west; Hudson’s Bay Company established 1668

• Then the far north becomes the future, after 168 years of dead ends coming from the Hudson Bay expeditions

• Hearne in 1771 became the first European to reach the North American shores of the Arctic Ocean; Cook, in 1778 enters the western end of the Northwest Passage; Mackenzie reaches both the Arctic Ocean by the Mackenzie River in 1789 but also the Pacific in 1793

• Then Parry, Beechey, Lyon, Ross, Back, Dease and Simpson (from 1818 to 1845) continue to push and map

• The disappearance of Franklin in 1845 turned into a cause célèbre, with 129 men and two ships vanishing and 32 major search expeditions over the next 15 years. It has since become a marketable asset for the “north”

• Then the surgeon Rae in the early 1850s becomes the centre of one of the great controversies of the 19th century – the fate of the Franklin expedition

• Then in 1859 the famous Victory point letter was found – the first written evidence in the mystery, including that of Franklin’s death in 1847

• McClure is rewarded for the discovery of “a Northwest Passage” in 1854, upon his return to England

• Finally Roald Amundsen from Norway in 1903-06 achieved the first ship passage on the small sloop Gjoa

• There have been only three or four intervals of more than 15 years, in which no expedition was sent out in search of one or other of the supposed passages, from the year 1500. Nearly a hundred voyages had tried and failed to find and sail the passage until Amundsen

• Attachment #1 is a full description of these Arctic explorers (Key Arctic Explorers – the European Quest for a Northwest Passage in the Arctic Ocean): https://powellponderings.com/attachment-1-key-arctic-explorers/

Why the drive to find a passage?

• Access to Asian markets: ever since Marco Polo’s 13th century travels brought the riches of eastern Asia to Europe, Europeans sought a maritime trade route that was safer and shorter than the voyages around South America. The idea of a sea trading route from the Atlantic to the dream of spices and markets of Asia was tantalizing. The spread of Islam and the Moslem conquest of the Byzantine Empire had closed the route east from Christian Europe

• National pride along with military strength and territory: this was important, especially for Britain. The British Admiralty sponsored and outfitted many ventures. They did not want Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Norway, etc. to find a route first. By 1815 the British Royal Navy had just won the Napoleonic Wars and the Arctic was the next conquest

• Commercial rationale: many of the voyages were sponsored by business capital; high risk, yes, but for potentially high return. The big draws were fish (for example John Cabot in 1497 found lots of fish around Newfoundland); furs (witness the Muscovy Company incorporation in 1555 and then the chartering of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1668; it was interested in furs, not the Northwest Passage); and lumber. For a period it was believed that gold was found. Martin Frobisher’s third expedition in 1578 ended with many investors ruined and Frobisher’s reputation damaged when the 1,300 tons of “black ore” they extracted from an island at the entrance to Frobisher Bay was not gold but worthless rock

• The Open Polar Sea theory: There was one other misconception that encouraged certain explorers and bureaucrats. It was that warmer, open water awaited beyond the pack-ice barrier. So find a way through and it would be clear sailing over the North Pole to the riches of the East. (They didn’t have an Internet connection then to get a clear view of Earth’s polar ice caps!)

The men; ship hierarchy, logs, leadership and discipline

• Most of these explorers were young men, some not necessarily pressed into action voluntarily; impressment, (or the “press gang”) was occasionally used to man the ships

• The islands of Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland, were a source of many a sailor, in particular John Rae. They were specially sought after by the Hudson’s Bay Company

• The English (mostly) brought their affectations: teacups, silverware (Franklin had his initials on his silverware; he also brought his medals, one of which Rae purchased from the Inuit in 1854), manners, clothing, food (canned, salted or dried)

• Some of the men on the ships weren’t really that healthy to begin with. Tests done on the bodies of the Franklin crew indicate some had TB. As well proper exercise routines were minimal; living conditions for the crew were grim

• The question of leadership varied widely amongst the explorers, i.e. Greeley was a strong leader, had a military focus; he led with little collaboration; plus he followed a set routine. Some were democratic. The journals, records and log books that documented the journeys were a mixture of articulate and eloquent (Kane) to perfunctory 

• Many of the expeditions were mounted by the British Admiralty; this meant that conventional naval discipline prevailed – in other words authoritarianism and brutality dispensed, with the complicated rules that govern ships

Their food and drink; hunger; cannibalism

Inuit culture

• Hunting and fishing were the prime source of food for the Inuit. You hunt; you kill; you eat

• Raw food (seal liver, blubber and meat, as well as whale) provided essential nutrients, protein and vitamins; blood soup; partially digested plants or shrimp from the stomachs of birds and animals. (Narwhal skin and fat for example is full of Vitamin C)

• Also in the Arctic environment, depending upon time of year, there are many other nutrient  possibilities that the Inuit followed, i.e. from eating berries to lichens (the latter have been used by humans as food and as sources of medicine forever); certain herbs are used for medications and healing

• Alcohol consumption patterns have now changed in the north: the heavy drinking rate in Nunavut is now twice that of the rest of Canada, but not so back then

European behaviour

• Most expeditions were fully provisioned from England (or where ever they set out from). The Franklin expedition for example carried close to three years’ worth of supplies (some accounts say five!), including live oxen, Scotch whisky and Fortnum & Mason condiments. With 23,576 pounds of sugar, and a tenth as much tea, there was an abundance of warm sweetened beverages

• There was a heavy meat component; Franklin’s list of provisions is staggering: 32,224 pounds of beef, almost as much pork, and more the 33,000 pounds of tinned meat

• Then there was the hard stuff: the Royal Navy grog was a concoction of weak beer, rum, and lime or lemon juice loaded with Vitamin C to combat scurvy. (The Franklin Expedition carried 3,684 gallons of alcohol, likely rum, along with 9,300 pounds of lemon juice and 200 gallons of wine. Officers packed private caches of more refined wine plus cigars, chocolate, biscuits, pemmican, suet, raisons, peas, vinegar, Scotch barley and oatmeal)

• Alcohol, as it was later learned, in any form was injurious in a cold climate

• Without good nutrition, the cold wears a man down faster. Even on the ordinary full allowance of the navy, scurvy has almost invariably assailed the crews of ships after a second winter within the Arctic circle 

• If these explorers looked at the Inuit, they might have asked themselves the obvious question: these people are healthy – how do they do it?

• On one of his sledging expeditions on the mainland coast not far from “Hunger Bay” (the Starvation Cove of the British accounts), Amundsen said a “heap of bleached skeletons marks the spot where the remains of Franklin’s brave crowd drew their last breath in the last act of that sad tragedy.” Amundsen found the harbour a beautiful spot and estimated that there would be plenty of salmon in the spring, herds of caribou in the summer, and cod in the autumn. But as he said “Yet here – in this Arctic Eden – those brave travellers died of hunger.”

• Regarding cannibalism: the 1819-22 journey by Franklin (the Coppermine Expedition) concluded with a desperate retreat across uncharted territory in a state of starvation; 11 of the party of 22 died amid accusations of murder and cannibalism. Rae reported after one of his Franklin search trips in 1854 that “from the mutilated state of many of the bodies, and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last dread alternative as a means of sustaining life.” This indication of cannibalism was not well received by Britons of the time, and especially Lady Franklin. Charles Dickens was also not amused. He not only condemned the cannibalism claims as an affront to his countrymen’s honour and high Christian morals but also dismissed Inuit testimony as “the wild tales of a herd of savages.”

Clothing, use of dogs, and snow housing

Inuit culture

• Using caribou skins, Inuit seamstresses create warm, light clothing. Caribou clothing, still worn year round, is particularly warm when layered. Air trapped in the caribou fur stays warm in most Arctic conditions. Elbow-high wolf skin mitts keep hands toasty – and so on

• Dog teams are used instead of men pulling sleds; snow house techniques (required snow of a certain consistency and construction design, etc.)

• Some explorers copied Inuit methods of travel (unlike most of their British naval counterparts) such as Amundsen, Parry, McClintock and Rae; their use of dog-teams, their building of snow houses while on the trail, and certainly their clothing. As Amundsen said “woollen underclothing absorbs all the perspiration and soon becomes wet through and through. Dressed in nothing but reindeer skin, like the Eskimo, and with garments so loose and roomy on the body that the air can circulate between them, one can generally keep his things dry.”

European behaviour

• The British continued to wear their wool clothing, however – mitts and coats that became damp with their own sweat and froze stiff. Despite again looking at the Inuit, and facing the obvious

• Trouser buttons broke and fell off; holes in the cloth were patched wth thick flannel, which became frayed and rank in the endless cycle of freeze and thaw

• The Royal Navy seaman’s boots were long, square-toed, and rounded at the top; a blue cloth legging attached to the sailors’ seaboots was a useless adornment 

• The Parry Expedition’s of 1821-23 purchased dogsleds and clothing from the Inuit – a first in the annals of Arctic exploration of “going native”

• The British Admiralty did make a greater effort to develop clothing specific for the Arctic (only after the Franklin Expedition was lost)

• Francis McClintock in the 1850s was vocal in proposing a number of improvements to mariners’ clothing and equipment

Disease, physical and mental

• Scurvy was a critical one. During the mid-16th to the mid-19th centuries (the Age of Sail), it was assumed that 50% of the sailors would die of scurvy on a major trip. The British navy eventually figured that one out

• A Scottish surgeon in the Royal Navy, James Lind, in 1753 is generally credited with proving that scurvy can be successfully treated with citrus fruit.  Nevertheless, it was not until 1795 that health reformers persuaded the Royal Navy to routinely give lemon juice to its sailors. Franklin forced his men to drink juice twice a day

• Lind also argued for the health benefits of better ventilation aboard naval ships, the improved cleanliness of sailors’ bodies, clothing and bedding, and below-deck fumigation with sulphur and arsenic. He also proposed that fresh water could be obtained by distilling sea water 

• One theory has it that lead poisoning likely was occurring in Franklin’s 1845 expedition and that it was coming from the lead solder used in the manufacture of the food cans used by the men. (Amundsen himself reported how the Inuit “had eaten something from some tins which were like ours, and it had made them very ill: indeed some had actually died.”) Another theory suggests the lead came from the freshwater pipes of the ships. And a third opinion casts doubt on whether lead played any role in the expedition’s demise

• Snow blindness was another curse in the bright reflecting sun of the summer; the Inuit carved snow goggles from materials such as driftwood or caribou antlers to help prevent this. Curved to fit the user’s face with a large groove cut in the back to allow for the nose, the goggles allowed in a small amount of light through a long thin slit cut along their length. The goggles were held to the head by a cord made of caribou sinew

• What doesn’t get understood a great deal is the impact privation, darkness, confinement, smoke from lamps, long tedious winters stuck in sea ice, poor diet, and inactivity had on mental health. There are numerous accounts of men being confined or restrained because of their aberrant behaviour

• Claustrophobia was an issue with many men living in small spaces, wth low ceilings often with beams

• Leisure time activities: often spent reading, writing in journals, playing an instrument, wood carving or fancy rope work. Franklin made sure there were many diversions; the Terror had a library of 1,200 books and the Erebus even larger. He was in the habit of teaching his largely illiterate sailors how to read and write

• Each of Franklin’s ships had its own hand organ capable of playing fifty tunes (ten of which were psalms or hymns)

The ships: sails, winds, plus made of wood

• In the early exploration years the explorers used sailing ships. Thus when going into the wind, i.e. going against the wind, they had to tack back and forth

• These sailing ships were difficult to point high, i.e. sail more directly into the wind. Most could sail not much closer than 70 degrees off the wind. In narrow channels, or when trying to avoid ice, this was challenging

• Prevailing Arctic winds are what they call the polar easterlies (also known as Polar Hadley cells) –  the dry, cold prevailing winds that blow from the high-pressure areas of the polar highs at the North Pole towards the low-pressure areas within the westerlies at high latitudes. Like trade winds and unlike the westerlies, these prevailing winds blow from the east to the west, and are often irregular

• Using sails also implies having winds to move them; on some occasions ships get becalmed; in other situations, the winds can exceed safe levels, particularly tricky depending on navigation issues (unknown depth; narrow passages, etc.) 

• The ships were wooden, and vulnerable to the elements, mostly the hard and sharp ice, with much of it below the surface. Some of them were stout vessels built for battle and capable of withstanding the shock of heavy mortars. Edward Parry’s shore bombardment vessel – or “bomb” –  was an example. Some later ships had 4 to 5 foot thick hulls and metal reinforced bows

• They started to add engines, but they proved useless in the Arctic in the earlier versions where a thirty-five-knot wind was not unusual. (The train engines added to Franklin’s two ships could only provide a top speed of four knots.)

Navigation systems/maps/technology

Inuit culture

• Inuit use the land and weather to help guide them.  For example tongue-shaped snowdrifts (called uqalurait) are used for navigation, particularly during poor visibility 

• They were not using their water crafts for exploration over long distances, like the umiak or large boat for whaling for 10 to 20 people; plus the smaller kayak

European behaviour

• In the earlier days they had limited instruments, particularly for direction. In 1595 John Davis invented the backstaff (an instrument that was used to measure the altitude of a celestial body, in particular the Sun or Moon). Then came the reflecting quadrant (1731), then the sextant. (Reliable marine chronometers that determined the ship’s position by celestial navigation were unavailable until the late 18th century and not affordable until the 19th century. They were used to determine longitude – the east-west position of a point on the surface of the Earth). (Latitude is easy; longitude is tougher.)

• The islands of Orkney figure again in this analysis. As they lie almost directly east of the southern tip of Greenland and the entrance to Davis Strait, this meant that early voyagers, lacking the instrumentation to calculate longitude, could simply sail west from the great natural harbour of Stromness, the capital

• At first they had no maps or charts. Earlier, seamen had relied on the proximity of a familiar coast, on the position of celestial bodies, or on meteorological phenomena such as, say, the monsoon winds (in the Indian Ocean) but none of this was available to the earlier Arctic explorers. Plane maps were not suitable for navigation in far northern (or southern) latitudes, and by the 17th century they were replaced by Mercator projection charts that showed compass directions as straight lines. Projections other than the Mercator are also used, especially in very high latitudes

• Current flow has been used by explorers for centuries. But since the 1800s, wasn’t so predictable. The finding of the Jeannette relics indicated the existence of an ocean current flowing from east to west across the entire Arctic Ocean. (In 1879 the Jeannette, an ex-Royal Navy gunboat converted by the US Navy for Arctic exploration, and commanded by George De Long, entered the pack ice north of the Bering Strait. She remained ice-bound for nearly two years, drifting to the area of the New Siberian Islands, before being crushed and sunk in June 1881. Her crew escaped in boats and made for the Siberian coast. Three years later, relics from Jeannette appeared on the opposite side of the world on the southwest coast of Greenland!) 

• They were constantly “throwing the lead” (manually measuring water depth), as the captain had to pay very close attention to depths as well as keep his eyes on the look-out man in the crow’s nest pointing either starboard or port. (The difficulties Amundsen had with his shallow-draught Gjoa raises doubts about the argument of Franklin supporters that if his expedition had gone east rather than west of King William Island, the Erebus and Terror would have sailed through Simpson Strait and completed the Northwest Passage.)

Route options and a narrow time frame

• There are now a number of possible routes, through the Northwest Passage, e..g. the “Amundsen route” through the Lancaster Sound, then eventually south of King William Island. Back then there were no known routes, just speculation. There are now seven possible Northwest Passage routes

• The Northwest Passage possibilities open from July to September, when air temperatures hover between 5˚C and -5˚C. Any later in the year and days draw in quickly. The full transit is only navigable during a four- to six-week window from around the second week of August – in a good year

• To make the point, in 2018, the Passage saw extreme conditions which led to the Canadian Coast Guard warning against cruising through Peel Sound, the Franklin Strait and the Prince Regent Inlet. To further the point, even the luxurious exploration vessels were blocked from the James Ross Strait and Cambridge Bay 

The elements, particularly ice, temperature, shoals and serendipity

• The Arctic has ice – lots of it. It forms early in the fall in open channels. It’s a part of the world where extreme weather is constant 

• There is a phrase they used for Melville Bay, Greenland that is quite revealing – it was called the “wrecking yard” and indicated clearly the impact ice had on ships

• Solid ice covers about six million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean (ranging in thickness from .6 to 4 metres). Nearly half the surface of the water that does remain open is filled with ice flows

• The ice generally drives southward and eastward. Converging ice creates ridges and hummocks in both the Beaufort Sea and in the intricate waterways of the Northwest Passage

• Ice of all kinds – pack, brash or sea – is a dynamic, powerful element. Also, the pack ice will press down through channels and gulfs, and can overwhelm. For example apparently Franklin faced this when he pressed southward along the eastern shores of Prince of Wales Island toward an ice trap ready to spring shut at the top of Victoria Strait

• The temperatures encountered are extreme (both air and water). The Arctic Ocean’s surface temperature and salinity vary seasonally as the ice cover melts and freezes

• There is a maxim in the far North: get wet, you die. This refers to a number of things: sweat, which can freeze to skin, or perhaps to a spill from a water bottle, which can cause flesh-killing frostbite. The mortal threat of submersion looms constantly underfoot. The Arctic elevates this danger to an almost absurd level

• The Inuit are inextricably linked to the sea ice 7 to 8 months a year; it’s their frozen world

• Shoals and other hazards lie uncharted. Even today only 10% of the Arctic has been charted to modern marine navigation standards

• Weather conditions can change rapidly, plant themselves for days or dissipate in hours. On our September journey, we encountered occasions of bad conditions that necessitated route adjustments on two significant occasions 

Culture and language

Inuit culture

• Inuit culture is focussed on the land and sea and local animal and marine life – adapting as opposed to over-powering it. The ability to survive in this harsh environment was reliant on the animals, fish and sea mammals that lived around them

• Inuit have always known that the Arctic demands collaboration and respect, not only among people but also with the environment that sustains humans, and the spirit world that can destroy them

• For the Inuit, the basics were to fill the day-to-day needs of the other to eat, be clothed, have shelter, and feel secure in old age. Marriage for Inuit was a matter of survival. All family members contributed wherever they could to help everyone live more comfortably. Cooperation (in the past) started with the arranged marriage of a hunter and a seamstress

• “Traditional Nattilik Inuit (the Nattilik Inuit live in the central Canadian Arctic) families were small; children were few. Harsh Arctic conditions meant couples, long ago, practiced iqitoujug (putting out babies to die) to limit family size to ensure there was enough food to go around. Children who survived through infant were loved and treasured by all.” (Quoted from Nattilik Heritage Centre in Gjoa Haven)
• They have gone from living semi-nomadic lives to living in settlements, always along coastal regions

European behaviour

• The arrival of Hudson’s Bay trading posts, rifles, steel traps, and the RCMP (along with the missionaries) continued to trigger rapid social and economic changes

• Language was not considered a priority; for example not a single member of the Franklin expedition could converse with local Inuit

• The late 19th century brought the whalers who often spent the winter in the north to take advantage of two summer seasons. They came into contact and learned from the Inuit. But the reverse was also true: labour-saving devices were adopted (canned food, cloth; wooden boats; metal utensils) plus they learned to hunt with guns and drink alcohol – and they caught many of the European diseases

Religion; core beliefs

Inuit culture

• Inuit culture is deeply rooted in the spirit world. There is a constant fight against evil, invisible spirits who interfere in their daily life in a variety of ways, but especially by means of sickness and bad hunting. Amulets help protect themselves

• Shamans , or angakkuit, are valued for their insights. One example was when American Charles Hall was hunting for Franklin in the 1860s, an Inuit mother told him two shamans had cast a spell on the area where Franklin’s ships were abandoned. The winters that finished off Franklin and his men were so severe that they became part of Inuit legend. As the Inuit mother said the Inuit  “wished to live near that place (where the Franklin ships were) but could not kill anything for their food. They (the Inuit) really believed that the presence of Koblunas (whites) in that part of the country was the cause of all their trouble.”

• They have an ancient social code, a value system that is their source of individual and community strength in an environment where no one can stand completely alone and survive for long

• Certainly contact with white culture disrupted the Nattilik traditional way of life forever. The arrival of missionaries triggered rapid ideological changes. As the display in the museum in Gjoa Haven stated “Many Nattilik families with both Anglican and Catholic converts experienced conflict and separation.”

European behaviour

• Europeans brought missionaries of the Roman Catholic and Anglican faith, replacing many of the Inuit traditional rituals and beliefs with those dictated by the church. Then the Canadian government chose to enact a ruling which brought Inuit under federal jurisdiction and established a network of schools, hospitals and administrative centres in the Arctic

• Role of religion has changed over the centuries. It wasn’t until 1859 that Darwin published his famous On The Origin of Species, where he introduced the theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of nature selection. Before that, religions and their gods provided significant guidance 

• Franklin himself was quite religious and felt that God was at his side. One of our ship lecturers used the word “problematic” regarding the role religion played in his life implying that there was a certain fatalistic, almost doctrinaire approach to his life

Hunting and fishing

• The Inuit each season required a different set of specialized hunting tools, which every hunter knew how to make using bone, stone, skins or driftwood. Sealing and fishing tools are specialized, especially the ice-hunting harpoon, which some say is still better for breathing-hole sealing than a gun

• To repeat, the Inuit had to fish and hunt and kill  – every day – to live

• Most European expeditions had plenty of gunpowder and lead shot to shoot birds, or anything else edible, which they did. (The Franklin Expedition certainly did.)

Polar bears

• The presence of a powerful predator that hunts anything to survive hovers over all travel in the north. A polar bear can swim great distances quickly, is fast on ice and snow, has an incredible sense of smell and is fearless

• They are not only very dangerous, they often ravage provisions and can toss aside heavy boulders used to protect them

The darkness

• Depending on latitude, there is 24 hour sun for only two months of the year, and then the sun retreats; darkness envelopes for 6 months. Twilight illuminates the sky to some extent whenever the sun’s upper rim is less than 18-degrees below the horizon. This marks the limit of astronomical twilight, when the sky is indeed totally dark from horizon to horizon. When the sun drops down to 12-degrees below the horizon it marks the end of nautical twilight, when a sea horizon becomes difficult to discern. In fact, at the end of nautical twilight most people will regard night as having begun

• Once set in the fall, the sun would not rise again in the Arctic for six months. By October there is an extended sunset, the ice’s rosy glow cooling into many shades of blue and shadow, the colours of cold and night. By November the darkness is total. When the clouds clear, the icy world is revealed in starlight. During the Polar Night, which lasts from November to January, the sun doesn’t rise at all

• For modern travellers, headlamps – and the many batteries they need to keep them burning – are indispensable. For the explorers of the past four centuries, lighting options are limited. In the long winter darkness, when the crew weren’t busy with odd jobs, they would live and toil below deck by the flickering light of candles or oil lamps. Argand lamps burned whale or vegetable oil. Glass prisms bolted into the outer deck, called Preston’s Patent Ventillating Illuminators, funnelled sunlight and fresh air into cabins and mess areas 

• In the harsh Arctic environment where there is no wood, the Inuit use of the qulliq, their traditional seal oil lamp, was important. It provided light and warmth (as well as melting snow, cooking, and drying clothes)

The reality of travel time, and minimal communications

• These explorers were looking for a route through the Arctic, but remember that they also had to face returning back to their home base

• Time was measured in years. Franklin went into the Arctic in 1845, and disappeared. Back in England they weren’t really worried about him after a year of not hearing from him – as this was normal

• No explorers could communicate back to their family or sponsors, as there were no means to do so. Penny and I went in Sept 2022 – and also disappeared, but electronically; no communications was possible for much of our trip – but for only three weeks

• Some of the explorers just simply disappeared, e.g. James Knight in 1719, Franklin of course and his 129 men in 1845. Jens Munk in 1620 returned, astonishingly, with only 2 of his men, of 64

Themes from this “collision”

• The Arctic was unknown 600 years ago: the European navigators of the 15th century transformed world geography (the Indian Ocean through Vasco da Gama, the American continent from Columbus, the Pacific from Magellan) but this did not extend to the Arctic (or Antarctic), which was truly unknown 

• Climate rules: whether it be long extended periods such as the Little Ice Age, or a significant year of terrible conditions (such as facing Franklin in 1846-47), or a localized blizzard. The corollary is the importance of the magnitude of the wilderness, the vastness of what a frail human faces in an area that is quiet, cold, dark, and that stretches out as far as one can see with no human imprint 

• The benefits of the matching and blending of knowledge: indigenous knowledge gained over centuries of survival – indeed active living (weather; ice; food; shelter; clothing) in such an inhospitable land was matched with the lessons learned, biases harboured or overturned by the explorers 

• The contrast between cultures was extreme in the area of survival: men who were part of an industrial system with many layers between them (driven to explore, literate, religious, scientific, male) were encountering the Inuit surviving on the land with what the land provided them (tested/proven by survival, simple, superstitious, male/female), i.e. the reality of fishing and hunting to live – every day

• Food choice contrast: the explorers remained very meat oriented, and certainly eschewed consumption of anything raw; they also loved their booze 

• Mapping while exploring: while the explorers were looking for a route through the Northwest Passage (or searching for Franklin), they were constantly mapping the terrain through which they are passing – pushing the boundaries out of terra incognita

• Enormous resources were expended in the Franklin search: his disappearance, and subsequent searches (with major supporters from Lady Franklin to the British Admiralty to America) was costly (millions) and deadly. Between 1847 and 1859, 36 separate expeditions both by land and by sea, searched the Arctic. The Admiralty lost five ships – Intrepid, Assistance, Pioneer, Investigator and Breadalbane – in the search for Franklin. The Americans lost the brig Advance

• Military mentality a weakness: a dogged adherence to routine, custom, etc. played poorly in most of the explorer’s attempts, where nimbleness and adaptability were necessary 

• Royal Navy prejudice towards indigenous people: this helped doom the Franklin Expedition, and the arrogant disregard for Inuit knowledge prolonged efforts to find out what happened

• The Franklin saga “industry”: it has become a virtual industry in the north. Much of it remains shrouded in mystery, with important facts missing or blurred, and that adds to the appeal

• Future long-term Inuit survival is an economic and cultural balance: there is an overriding balance that the North needs to find – that of using the natural resources to lift communities out of poverty, bringing jobs and purpose to the young people while preserving as much as possible of the natural environment so the Inuit can practice their culture and for, at least some of them, live off the land as their ancestors did