Resolute (36 page)

Following his several Arctic explorations and adventures, including bringing the Belcher expedition home, Inglefield served in the Crimean War where he took part in the Siege of Sevastopol. A multitalented man, he spent much of his later life producing highly acclaimed marine paintings. An inventor as well, he introduced the hydraulic steering gear and the Inglefield anchor. Regarded as one of the most devoted of all British explorers, he was knighted in 1877 and named a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath ten years later. He died in 1894.

Kane, who was sickly all his life, never recovered from the rigors of his second Arctic expedition. Aware that, more than ever, his days were numbered, he worked feverishly to compile his account of the voyage, a two-volume work titled
Arctic Explorations…1853, '54, '55.
When completed in 1856, it contained nine hundred pages and was illustrated with ink sketches of the expedition that Kane had drawn. In its first year, the book sold an astounding sixty-five thousand copies.

The enormous energy that Kane poured into the project proved to be his final undoing. A year after he finished it, he died in Havana. He was thirty-seven years old. The rites attendant to his passing were unlike anything that America had ever witnessed. The governor of Cuba personally escorted Kane's funeral cortege to New Orleans. From there, the man who had come to be known as the “American Columbus” was taken by boat up the Mississippi to Cincinnati. All along the way, the banks of the river were lined with mourners. The train trip from Cincinnati to Philadelphia took four days because of long delays caused by the thousands of additional mourners who spilled over onto the tracks. When Kane's body finally reached Philadelphia, it lay in state for two weeks in order to accommodate the throngs who came to pay their last respects. The funeral itself was the largest in American history until that of President Abraham Lincoln. The frail man whose adventures in the Arctic had initiated American polar exploration had left his mark.

Captain Kellett's epaulettes, which James Buddington had found aboard the
Resolute
, were successfully returned to him. But Kellett—the man who from 1825 to 1854 had devoted his life to Arctic exploration and the search for Franklin, the man who had captained the
Resolute
and instigated the search that led to the rescue of McClure and his men, the man who had bitterly opposed Edward Belcher's decision to abandon his four seaworthy ships—never received the amount of acclaim heaped upon others with lesser accomplishments. Appointed commodore in 1854, he spent the rest of his life as commander of the British naval station in China, where he died in 1875.

Only a year after Kennedy returned in 1852 from taking the
Prince Albert
in search of Franklin, Lady Franklin sent him out again. His mission was to sail through Bering Strait and scour the western and Russian Arctic. The expedition, however, came to a halt when Kennedy's crew mutinied and he had them put into prison. Unable to find a new crew because of the outbreak of the Crimean War, Kennedy was forced to call off the expedition.

He spent the rest of his life in his native Canada where, in the late 1850s, he served as a director of the North-West Transportation Navigation and Railway Company. In 1860 he settled permanently at Red River where he and his brother owned and operated a store. Settling into the life of his province, he served as both a member of the Manitoba board of education and a magistrate. He died in 1890.

Lyon, who, before serving as second-in-command to Edward Parry on his 1821 attempt to find the passage, had undertaken an unsuccessful attempt to find the African River Niger, experienced one of the most unfortunate “afterlives” of all the naval explorers. Upon his return from the Parry expedition he was given sole command of the HMS
Griper
for another voyage to the Arctic, but unfortunately met with some of the worst weather yet encountered in the North. His mission was aborted after only five months, and was never given another naval command.

By 1825, Lyon had found himself almost destitute, a situation that was made even worse when the ship carrying him home from a temporary job in a Mexican mining company sank, carrying down with it what little remained of Lyon's possessions. Upon finally making his way to England, he received far more tragic news: His wife had died and he was left to raise their only child.

In 1827, desperate for work, Lyon took a low-paying job inspecting the gold mines of a large conglomerate in Brazil. But five years later his misfortunes continued when his eyesight began to seriously fail and he was forced to seek passage home to find medical attention. The ill-starred Lyon did not complete the voyage. He died en route, having never come close to realizing the early potential that John Barrow and others had seen in him.

Leopold M'Clintock brought the
Fox
home to a hero's welcome in 1859. Celebrated wherever he went, he received honorary degrees from England's three most prestigious universities, a medal and fellowship from the Royal Geographical Society, and was knighted by the Queen.

His days in the North, however, were not quite over. In 1860 he made his final voyage to the Arctic when he was sent to explore the possibility of laying an underwater telegraph line from Scotland to Labrador, by way of Greenland. Ironically, it was a voyage in which the man who had survived so many hardships in his quest for the passage and his search for Franklin nearly lost his life. His vessel, the
Bulldog
, was nearly wrecked and M'Clintock barely made it home.

One year later he was back at sea, and between 1861 and 1868 he commanded three different naval ships that sailed the waters of the Mediterranean, the West Indies, and the North Sea. In 1872, he was named superintendent of the Portsmouth Dockyard. His final naval appointment came in 1879 when he was named commander-in-chief of the North America and West Indies Station. Through it all, M'Clintock maintained a strong interest in Arctic matters. He oversaw the fitting out of George Nares's North Pole-seeking expedition and was an important member of the Admiralty's Arctic Committee. He died in 1907, having been promoted to the rank of admiral.

The man who, by luck, deception, and unyielding resolve, had proved the existence of the Northwest Passage, never backed down from his declaration that he had not needed to be rescued and that, left to his own devices, he would have extricated the
Investigator
from the ice and sailed her through the passage. In the account of his voyage that he published, McClure never admitted any mistakes and never mentioned the danger that he had constantly put his men in.

But he was the man who had found the passage and he was honored as such. He was knighted and eventually promoted to the rank of vice-admiral. He never returned to the Arctic, but spent the remainder of his naval career in the Pacific where, in 1857, he led a battalion of marines at the capture of Canton. He died in 1873.

Nares—who had taken part in the 1870
Challenger
expedition that had “invented” modern oceanography, and who had broken several records while searching for John Franklin on the
Resolute
and the North Pole on the
Alert
—remained a naval man to the end. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1875, he was knighted on his return from his polar search and was later awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographic Society and of France's Sociètè de Gèographie.

In 1878, he again commanded the
Alert
while conducting surveys of the Magellan Strait and the waters off Australia. He ended his career as the Admiralty's marine adviser to the board of trade.

The man who had been placed under cabin arrest by Edward Belcher experienced a full and active career after a court-martial absolved him of any wrongdoing. Along with the articles he wrote, he edited both Robert McClure's and Leopold M'Clintock's journals and arranged for their publication.

His days at sea did not end with his search for Franklin. During the Crimean War, he was given command of the HMS
Vesuvius
and served with such distinction that he was promoted to captain and awarded medals from England, Turkey, and France. In 1857, he was involved in yet another conflict when he commanded the HMS
Furious
during the Second Opium War against China.

In the years following the war, Osborn continued to travel the world, first commanding the HMS
Donegal
in Mexican waters and then leading a fleet on a voyage to China. In 1863, after serving as an agent for the Great Indian Peninsular Railway in Bombay, he began a seven-year stint as managing director of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company and oversaw the laying of an underwater cable that ran from England to India to Australia.

It was Osborn who, early in the 1870s, first suggested that the Admiralty launch a renewed search for the North Pole, an expedition in which he hoped to participate. Failing health, however, prevented him from actively taking part in the search, and he had to content himself with working with Leopold M'Clintock to prepare George Nares for the venture. He died in 1875, shortly before the Nares expedition was launched.

No British naval explorer has received greater or more enduring acclaim than Edward Parry. When he died in 1855, the London
Times
proclaimed that “no successor on the path of Arctic adventure has yet snatched the chaplet from the brow of this great navigator. Parry is still the champion of the North.”

After his days in the Arctic were over, Parry, arguably the most devout of all the naval explorers, spent much of his time writing religious tracts which he dedicated to his wife, “the chief comforter of my earthly pilgrimage—the sharer of every joy, and the alleviator of every sorrow—but a faithful counselor and friend, through many a rough and thorny path in our journey.” He kept busy right to the end. The Admiralty first appointed him to reorganize its Packet Service and then placed him in charge of its Steam Department. In 1846, he became captain superintendent of the large naval hospital at Haslar, where his senior physician was John Richardson. There, his unqualified support of Richardson's medical innovations helped facilitate significant advancements in nursing practices and the care of the insane.

The only whaling captain to have been given command of a British naval vessel, Penny, because of what was regarded by the Admiralty as a premature return from his 1850-51 search for Franklin and his open dispute with Horatio Austin, was never again asked to join in the rescue effort. He returned to whaling and, in 1853, became the first whaling captain to purposely winter in the Arctic, where he introduced the practice of floe whaling. One of the earliest promoters of the construction of steam whaling ships, he made his last whaling voyage in 1863. He died in 1892.

The man who found Robert McClure had an extremely full life after serving aboard the
Resolute.
He remained in the navy and served in wars in Russia and in China, during which he was wounded six times. Promoted to the rank of commander in 1858, he was sent to the Isthmus of Suez, where he studied the possibility of building an inter-ocean canal. After retiring from the Navy in 1870, he studied law and was called to the bar in 1873. The author of several books and magazine articles, he died in 1886.

Although Lieutenant W. J. S. Pullen had spent most of his time in the Arctic cast in the relatively unglamorous role of commander of a supply ship, he had, in the course of his duties in 1849, led a party of small boats on a courageous journey along the northern Alaska coast in search of Franklin, but had found nothing. In 1855, Pullen commanded the HMS
Falcon
in the Balkans in the campaign during the Crimean War. For the rest of his naval career he was involved in coastal patrols and conducting surveys for the laying of underwater telegraph lines. Promoted to the rank of vice admiral in 1879, he died in 1886.

After Rae received his £10,000 reward for having found evidence of the Franklin expedition, he spent a portion of the prize outfitting a ship for further Arctic exploration. But the ship sank in the Great Lakes. Back in the Hudson's Bay Company's employ, he spent the better part of the 1860s leading long, arduous explorations. In 1861, he conducted a survey for a telegraph line that was to run between Great Britain and America, through Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. In 1865 he led another survey party as it plotted a route for a telegraph line between St. Paul and Vancouver Island.

Despite the cannibalism controversy he had spawned and the disfavor he often found himself in because of his adoption of Inuit dress and ways of life, Rae received many honors for his accomplishments. Two universities, McGill and Edinburgh, granted him honorary degrees. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London and was awarded the Founder's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. His book,
Narrative of An Expedition to the Shores of the Arctic Sea in 1846 and 1847
, and his many other writings describing his Arctic travel were well received. An expert marksman, he even found time to represent the London Scottish Regiment in shooting competitions at Wimbledon and other sites. Rae died in 1893.