SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XII, Issue 746, 31 December 1859, Page 3

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.

The 'Economist' summarises the information obtained by Captain M'Clintock, as follows : —

Captain M'CHntock succeeded, by the powerful assistance of steam, —without which he tells us he should never hays been able to penetrate the pack in Baffin's Bay,—in reaching the entrance of Lancaster Sound by the end of July, 1858. On the 11th August he erected at the general depot in Beechey Island the marble tablet, sent out by Lady Franklin for that purpose, in memory of those lost in the Erebus and Terror. Here he turned southward from Barrow Strait, and having made a fruitless attempt to penetrate the ice in Peel Sound, he returned eastward round the coast of North Somerset to Prince Regent Inlet, and sailing down it m open water reached Bellot Strait (commencing with Peel Sound) early in September. Passing through the Straits to the "westward, he still found the ice in Peel Sound impenetrable, and had at last determined on wintering at the east entrance to the strait. Here the large peninsula of Boothia (which forms the southern shore of Bellot Strait) stretched between Captain M'Clintock's winter's quarters and King William Island where he ultimately found traces of the lost expedition. On the 17th February, in early spring, journeys of search began. Captain M'Clintock succeeded in learning from the Esquimaux that a ship had been crushed by the ice off the north shore of King William Island many years previously, that the crew had survived and gone away southwards to the opposite shore of North America, hoping to find their way up the Great Fish River, but had perished in the attempt. In the later spring Captain M'CHntock turned this information to account. On the 2nd of April the exploring party started for King William Island. Captain M'Clintock took the east, and I Lieutenant Hobson the west shore of the island. ! The captain's party soon met with Esquimaux who remembered the crews of the Erebus and Terror, and were familiar with the wreck. An old woman told them that the ship was forced ashore in the autumn, and that the crew left it for the Great River (the Great Fish River), the estuary of which is just opposite King William Island ; that many of the white men dropped dead by the way; but that this was only known to the Esquimaux in the following winter, when their bodies were found. Captain M'Clintock proceeded accordingly to the mouth of tho estuary on the opposite continent, but found no Esquimaux and no further traces of the expedition. Returning to the island, he found a melancholy verification of the Esquimaux's report in the shape of a bleached skeleton surrounded by fragments of European clothing. A pocket-1 book was found showing him to be a steward or officer's servant. Lieutenant Hobson, in the meantime, had kept to the north-west shore, and had been more successful. On the 6th May, he found on Point Victory, a cairn, containing a tin case and a record of tho lost party. It appeared that after wintering at Beechey Island, they had ascended Wellington Channel, in 1846, and returned by the west side of Cornwallis Island. Then (either descending, wo suppose, Peol Sound, or sailing down Prince Regent Inlet, and passing through Bellot Strait), tihoy wore beset by the ice oil' King William Island in September, 1810. On tho 11th June, 1847, Sir John Franklin died. On tho 22nd April, 1848, the ships wero abandoned —after sticking in tho ice, with apparently little chango of position, for a year and a half. Threo days later this record was left in tho cairn, with an intimation that tho party (105 in all) under tho command of Captain Crozior, wore proceeding to tho Great Fish River.

Ono later and very melancholy trace of the party was found. Sixty-four miles from tho point where the ships woro abandoned, oil' tho S.W. point of King William Island, a boat was found on a sledge. A largo quantity of clothing and two human skeletons wore found within hor. Ono lay under a heap of clothing in the stern, another (much disturbed by animals) in the bow. These two men must have perished of disease or cold, not from starvation. Chpcolato,toa,and tobacco were found in the bout. Driftwood, which might lmvo sowed for fuel, was near.^ Two. guns loaded and cocked wero found 1 upright against the boat's side, precisely as they had been placed eleven yoavs before." The eledgo

was pointed towards the ships, as though they were returning from the Great Fish River to the

ships.

Such are the results of this noble perseverance in the search for our lost countrymen. It is no little satisfaction at last to know their melancholy fate. Captain M'Clureand Captain M'Clintock, in searching for the lost expedition, have been able to complete those sterile discoveries, in unsuccessful pursuit of which the crews of the Erebus and Terror had met their desolate fate. While they were lying beyond the reach of help, their countrymen achieved, in the hope of helping them, the scientific object which they had sought at auch a cost. But, probably, no name will ever be so closely associated by Englishmen with the enterprises of the Arctic regions as that of Sir John Franklin.