The news that Rae brought home naturally created the greatest stir in England, and it was felt that steps ought to be taken at once to discover whether any of the luckless explorers had succeeded in making their way to the territories of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Unfortunately the Crimean War was at that time occupying the full resources of the nation, and the Government accordingly appealed to the Hudson’s Bay Company to send out yet another expedition to search the neighbourhood of the Great Fish River. In response to this appeal, Mr James Anderson, chief factor of the Company, was detailed for the service, but, as he did not succeed in discovering any valuable clues, his journey need not detain us here.

After this failure the Government was indisposed to take any further steps in the matter, arguing—and it is not to be denied that they had a certain amount of reason on their side—that it was practically impossible that any member of the expedition should be still alive, seeing that eleven years had elapsed since they left England. Lady Franklin, however, was by no means disposed to let matters rest here, so, with the help of a number of friends, she fitted out the Fox, a steam yacht of 157 tons, and placed it under Commander M’Clintock, whose brilliant work in the Arctic Seas made him peculiarly fitted for such a mission. Lieutenant W. R. Hobson joined as second in command, Captain Allen Young consented to act as sailing-master, while many other members of the company had already seen Arctic service, among them being Dr Walker and Carl Petersen, the interpreter.

Fully provisioned for twenty-eight months, the Fox set sail from Aberdeen on July 1, 1857. M’Clintock found the ice in Melville Bay in a far from satisfactory condition, but, being determined to run any risks rather than linger on the journey, he entered the pack and attempted to make Lancaster Sound. For three weeks or so he pushed on in the face of great difficulties, but it soon became evident that he was not destined to cross the bay that year, and before the middle of September the Fox was firmly frozen into the pack with no prospect of release until the following spring.

After a somewhat exciting winter, during the course of which the voyage of the yacht was, on more than one occasion, nearly brought to an untimely end, she was at last released, and, after putting into Holsteinberg Bay for repairs, she made her second attempt to cross Melville Bay. On this occasion fate was kinder to her, and, on August 6, she steamed up Lancaster Sound, anchoring off Beechey Island on the 11th. Here M’Clintock landed a handsome tombstone sent out by Lady Franklin in memory of her husband and his companions, which was placed close to the monument erected to the memory of Bellot and those who had died on the previous search expeditions.

Peel Sound proved impracticable, so M’Clintock determined to make for Bellot Strait, through which no ship had yet sailed, and the very existence of which was disputed by many. All doubts upon the latter point were soon set at rest, but the violent currents which raced through the strait, bearing with them vast masses of ice that threatened the ship with instant destruction whenever she attempted to force a passage through, made it impossible for M’Clintock to reach the western ocean, and, after several gallant attempts, he was obliged to resign himself to the inevitable, and to make preparations for spending the winter in an indentation on the north side of the strait, which he named Port Kennedy.

The winter passed without misadventure, and on February 17 M’Clintock set out on a preliminary expedition, with a view to gleaning such information as he could from the Boothian natives. To his disappointment the coast seemed completely deserted, and he was thinking of turning back when he came upon four Eskimos, members of a tribe which was established in a snow village not far off. From these men he obtained some tidings of the fate of the missing explorers, though they could not add very much to what he already knew. A number of white men, they said, had been starved to death on an island near a river. None of them had seen the men, but both they and their friends had articles in their possession which had once belonged to the whites. Having engaged these natives to build him a snow-hut for the munificent remuneration of a needle apiece, he sent them back to tell their friends that he was willing to purchase any relics that they possessed at a good price. On the following day the whole community, from the oldest man to the youngest baby, put in an appearance, bringing with them numbers of spoons, forks, buttons, and knives, which M’Clintock immediately acquired. He then set out on the return journey to the ship, reaching Port Kennedy on March 14. During his absence of twenty-five days he had covered about four hundred and twenty miles, and had completed the discovery of the coast-line of continental America.

Immediately after his return he despatched Young, who had been depositing a store of provisions on Prince of Wales’ Land, on a trip to Fury Beach, with instructions to bring back a supply of sugar from the stores left there by Parry. He found an immense stock of provisions of all kinds, most of them in a marvellous state of preservation. In addition to 1200 lbs. of sugar, he brought back a couple of tins of “carrots plain” and “carrots with gravy,” which had lain on the shore for thirty-four years and were still in excellent condition.

By the beginning of April everything was in readiness for the extended sledge journeys. M’Clintock arranged that the operations should be conducted by three different parties, led by himself, Hobson, and Young. Each party was to consist of four men drawing one sledge and six dogs drawing the second sledge, besides the officer in charge and the dog-driver. He was, of course, a past master of the art of arranging sledging expeditions, and so carefully had he disposed his depots of provisions, and so skilfully had he adjusted the travelling equipment of the parties, that he expected that each of them would be able to absent itself from the ship for seventy or eighty days without any difficulty whatever.

M’Clintock and Hobson started off on their journeys on April 2. For a while their routes coincided, and, by hoisting their tents as sails, and so taking advantage of a favourable breeze, they made excellent progress. It was not until they were well on their way down the coast of Boothia that they fell in with natives, and from these they learnt that two ships had been seen some years before off King William Land. One of them had sunk in deep water, but the other had been forced ashore by the ice, where she was still supposed to remain, though much broken. It was from the latter ship, according to their story, that they had obtained most of their wood.

On April 28 they reached Cape Victoria, on the south-west Coast of Boothia Felix. Here they were to separate, and all credit must be given to M’Clintock for his generosity to his junior officer. Though he knew that, if relics were to be found at all, it would be on the west coast of King William Land, he sent off Hobson to explore that district, reserving the far less promising east coast for himself. Hobson’s instructions were to cross to Cape Felix, the most northern point of King William Land, and then to search the whole of the west coast for the missing ship or any relics or records that might be deposited there. Should his search prove unsuccessful, he was to cross to Victoria Land, and to complete the exploration of that coast from Collinson’s farthest point. In the meanwhile, M’Clintock himself meant to push southward down the east coast of King William’s Land in the direction of the Great Fish River.

The results were exactly as we have indicated. M’Clintock examined the whole of the east coast and the estuary of the Great Fish River with the utmost care, but, with the exception of an occasional relic obtained from the natives, his search was fruitless. He accordingly crossed the strait on May 24, and proceeded to link up his own explorations with those of Hobson. On the following day his patience was at last rewarded, for, while slowly walking along a gravel ridge near the beach, which the winds kept unusually bare of snow, he came upon a skeleton partly exposed. From the clothing that lay near by he gathered that the victim must have been a steward or officer’s servant, who, selecting the bare ridge-top as affording less tiresome walking, had fallen on his face in the position in which his skeleton was found. It may here be said that an old woman with whom M’Clintock communicated on his outward journey had told him that the unfortunate explorers had “fallen down and died as they walked along.” Of the melancholy truth of her words this discovery afforded a terrible confirmation.

At Cape Herschel M’Clintock found the cairn erected by Simpson, and this he demolished in the hope that the missing explorers might have left some record there, but he found nothing. Twelve miles further on he learnt that that for which he had been searching so diligently had been discovered, for he came upon a second cairn of more recent construction—the cairn which marked the end of Hobson’s brilliantly successful journey. In penetrating thus far Hobson had passed the point at which the Erebus and Terror had been abandoned, and had found the first, and, indeed, the only important record of the journey which it fell to the lot of a white man to discover.

The record, which was enclosed in a tin box and found beside a tumbled cairn, was brief enough, but it contained the whole history of the ill-fated expedition. It consisted merely of one of those printed Government forms which were supplied to all discovery ships. These forms were intended to be filled up with intimations of discoveries, accident or distress, and then to be enclosed in a bottle and thrown into the sea or else buried under a cairn. A note at the head, written in several different languages, requested the finder to forward the paper to the Secretary of the Admiralty, or, if more convenient, to hand it over to the nearest British consul, with an intimation concerning the time and place at which it had been found. It was on one of these that Franklin’s officers had made their last communication to the world. The contents of the document ran as follows:—

“H.M. ships Erebus and Terror,
Wintered in the ice in lat. 70° 5´ N., long. 98° 23´ W.
28th of May 1847.

Having wintered in 1846-7 at Beechey Island in lat. 74° 43´ 28´´ N., long. 91° 39´ 5´´ W., after having ascended Wellington Channel to lat. 77°, and returned by the west side of Cornwallis Island.

Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition.

All well.

The following notes were written round the margin:—

“This paper was found by Lieutenant Irving under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831, four miles to the northward, where it had been deposited by the late Commander Gore in June 1847. Sir James Ross’s pillar has not, however, been found; and the paper has been transferred to this position, which is that in which Sir James Ross’s pillar was erected.”

From this paper it will be seen that Franklin had made the most remarkable voyage ever recorded in the annals of Arctic exploration. After being sighted in Baffin’s Bay on July 26, 1845, he had sailed through Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait, and up Wellington Channel as far as 77° N. He had then returned to the mouth of the channel via the west coast of Cornwallis Island, and had wintered off Beechey Island in 1845-46 (the date given in the paper is obviously wrong). As soon as he was released he had attempted to make his way south to the American coast, but had been caught in the pack, never again to be released. The winter of 1846-47 was passed at a point about fifteen miles north-west of Cape Felix, the most northerly point of King William Island; and in the spring, when all on board were reported to be well, two officers and six men started off on an expedition, the direction and purpose of which are not stated. A fortnight later death spared Franklin the pain of knowing that his party could never again reach home, and of seeing his men dying of cold and starvation, one by one, before his eyes. The summer brought no prospects of escape, and during the following winter the two ships drifted southward with the ice for a distance of about thirty miles. As early in the spring as the conditions permitted, all the survivors left the ship in an effort to win their way back to civilisation, but not a single one of them succeeded in accomplishing his task. “So sad a tale,” says M’Clintock, “was never told in fewer words. There is something deeply touching in their extreme simplicity, and they show in the strongest manner that both the leaders of this retreating party were actuated by the loftiest sense of duty, and met with calmness and decision the fearful alternative of a last bold struggle for life, rather than perish without effort on board their ships.”

Before reaching the Fox M’Clintock was destined to find yet more grim evidence to the fate of the unfortunate explorers. After rounding Cape Crozier, the westernmost point of King William Island, the desolation of which was absolutely beyond description, he came upon a boat which had formed part of the Franklin expedition, and in which lay two skeletons. Hobson had previously discovered the boat, and had left in it a note for his commander to the effect that the most careful search had failed to reveal any journal or other memoranda such as might fill in the details of the story of which they already knew the terrible outline. M’Clintock instantly set about another examination of the boat and its surroundings, in the hope that he might come upon something that had escaped the eyes of his junior officer, but he was unrewarded. The boat itself he found to be of a light build such as would be suitable for the ascent of the Great Fish River, and fitted with sails, a sloping canvas roof, an ice-grapnell and a deep-sea sounding-line, which was probably intended for river work as a track-line. She was, however, mounted on so heavy a sledge that seven men in the best of health would have found dragging her over the ice no easy task.

In this boat lay two skeletons, one of them huddled up in the bows, and the other across the afterthwart. Beside them were five watches, two guns, and a number of books, for the most part devotional, but, search as they would, M’Clintock and his men could find no trace of a pocket-book or journal, nor even a scrap of clothing marked with a name which might reveal the identity of the two victims. Pieces of plate and an extraordinary variety of miscellaneous articles, ranging from two rolls of sheet-lead to tacks, were scattered about in the boat, and these M’Clintock describes as “a mere accumulation of dead weight, of little use, and very likely to break down the strength of the sledge-crews. The only provisions we could find,” he continues, “were tea and chocolate. Of the former, very little remained, but there were nearly forty pounds of the latter. These articles alone could never support life in such a climate, and we found neither biscuit nor meat of any kind.”

From the direction in which the boat’s head was pointing, and from its contents, M’Clintock concluded that the party attached to it had started out for the Great Fish River, but, finding themselves too utterly worn out to proceed far, had turned back intending to make their way to the ship. Unable to drag the boat any further, they had left it where it was found by the explorers, meaning to bring back food to their two companions who had been obliged, through weakness, to remain behind. The fact that five watches were left in the boat points to the conclusion that they had not thought of abandoning it finally. Overcome by cold and fatigue, however, they must have perished on the way.

After leaving the boat, M’Clintock pushed on his way with all possible dispatch, searching for traces of the wrecked ship as he went, but without success. He reached Point Victory on June 2, and there he found a note from Hobson, telling him that he had met with no better fortune in the execution of this part of his mission, but that he had found a duplicate of the record which we have already described. M’Clintock spent some little time in examining the cairn under which the paper had been discovered, and found strewn about it a vast variety of such miscellaneous articles as cooking-stoves, pickaxes, shovels, four feet of a copper lightning conductor, long pieces of brass curtain rods, a medicine chest, and some scientific instruments. There was also a pile of clothing four feet high, of which every article was searched. The pockets, however, were all empty, and not a single piece of the clothing was marked with its owner’s name. “These abandoned superfluities,” M’Clintock writes, “afford the saddest and most convincing proof that here—on this spot—our doomed and scurvy-stricken countrymen calmly prepared themselves to struggle manfully for life.”

There was now nothing left for M’Clintock but to return to the Fox, and this he accordingly did with all possible speed, reaching Bellot Strait on June 18. On the return journey he learned from a note left at one of the depots that Hobson had been taken seriously ill, and had grown so feeble that it had been found necessary to place him on one of the sledges. To his great relief he heard, on reaching the ship, that the scurvy from which his junior was suffering had already yielded to treatment, and that he was on the high road to recovery.

With the principal fruits of Hobson’s journey we have already dealt, and the rest may be dismissed in a few words. After leaving M’Clintock at Cape Victoria, he crossed James Ross Strait without any difficulty, and immediately turned westward round Cape Felix. Here he came upon the first signs of the Franklin expedition, in the shape of “a large cairn, close beside which were three small tents, with blankets, old clothes, and other vestiges of a shooting or magnetic station. But,” says M’Clintock, “although the cairn was dug under and a trench dug all round it to a distance of ten feet, no record was discovered.... Two miles farther to the south-west a small cairn was found, but neither record nor relics; and about three miles to the north of Point Victory a third cairn was examined, but only a broken pickaxe and empty canister found.” These with, of course, the boat and the famous record, completed the list of Hobson’s discoveries.

In the meanwhile Young had been very far from idle. It had been his mission to explore Peel, or, as it was afterwards called, Franklin Strait and Prince of Wales Island, and he had accomplished his task in the face of great difficulties. In the first place, gales were almost incessant, and it was no easy matter to make any headway at all against them; in the second place, he was disgusted to find that a channel existed between Prince of Wales Land and Victoria Land, and that his field of discovery would, in consequence, be widened, and his search lengthened. Accordingly, with a view to having as few mouths to feed as possible, he sent back most of his men and dogs to the ship, and tramped on accompanied only by a young man-of-war’s man named George Hobday. For forty days they pushed forward till Young became so ill through cold and exposure that he was obliged to return to Port Kennedy, which he reached on June 7. His spirit, however, was quite indomitable, and, in spite of the protests of the doctor, he was off again on a fresh journey three days later. In all, he was away from the ship for seventy-eight days, during the course of which he explored no fewer than 380 miles of new coast-line. This, with the 420 miles explored by M’Clintock and Hobson, makes the splendid total of 800 miles, a record of which the expedition had good reason to be proud.

M’Clintock now determined to make the best of his way home as soon as the thaw should release him. Steam was got up on August 6, in order that the opportunity might be seized when it arrived, which desirable event took place three days later. The death of his engineer had left M’Clintock very short handed, and he himself stood at the engines for twenty-four consecutive hours. Though held up occasionally by the ice, the return journey passed without any misadventure, and the Fox reached the English Channel on September 20.

It may here be added that in 1875 Captain Young attempted to follow the route opened up by Franklin and to reach Behring Strait via Peel and Franklin Straits; an impenetrable ice-barrier in Peel Strait, however, compelled him to turn back. In 1878-79, Lieutenant F. Schwatka, of the United States Army, and Mr W. H. Gilder, in the course of a brilliant journey, thoroughly explored the route over which the men of the Erebus and Terror were supposed to have travelled on their way to the Great Fish River, but, though they found many relics of the expedition, they could not discover a single paper or document of any kind.