Resolute (41 page)

Having been blocked to the north, Inglefield then sailed southward through both Jones and Lancaster Sounds. Along the way he discovered and named several islands and capes, including Littleton Island and Cape Sabine. Although he had found no trace of Franklin, he returned home to high acclaim for his discoveries and his valiant effort.

In 1853 he was back in the Arctic, this time as commander of the steam-powered supply ship
Phoenix.
After bringing provisions to Edward Belcher's depot ship, the
North Star
, Inglefield became involved in a heroic rescue when his sister supply vessel, the
Breadalbane
, became crushed in the ice and all of her crew had to be taken aboard the
Phoenix.
Shortly afterwards, Inglefield sailed back to England, taking with him the
Investigator's
Lieutenant Samuel Cresswell, whose father had helped instigate the Belcher expedition. It was Cresswell who would be the first to break the news that the Northwest Passage had, at last, been found.

Within months, Inglefield had retuned to northern waters, charged with again supplying the Belcher party. He arrived at Beechey Island just in time to re-lieve the
North Star
from the enormous and dangerous burden of having to transport all of the men from Belcher's abandoned ships along with the crew of the
Investigator
, who had been rescued by the men of the
Resolute.
He never reached the Pole; nor did he ever find any trace of Sir John. But Edward Inglefield made himself an important player in the Franklin drama.

Cannibalism.
Since first being described in the Bible in regard to the 723
B.C.
Siege of Samara (2 Kings 6:26-30), cannibalism has been surrounded by myth, mystery, fear, and speculation, and has been regarded in most cultures as the ultimate taboo. Although there is evidence of early ritualistic cannibalism among certain ancient groups such as the Aztecs and Easter Islanders, most anthropologists believe that accounts of such practices were greatly exaggerated. More common and more clearly documented have been the instances of cannibalism undertaken as a last resort by individuals literally on the verge of starvation.

The first documented case of mariners engaged in cannibalism was that of the survivors of the French ship
Medusa
, who in 1816 resorted to the practice after being adrift on a raft for four days. Arguably the most famous case of all took place in 1820, after the Nantucket whaleship
Essex
was sunk by a whale. The twenty members of the crew took to the vessel's three open boats and set out for South America, the nearest landfall, some two thousand miles away. After several months, one of the boats was struck by a storm and disappeared, never to be seen again. Later, with food and drinking water totally gone, the men in the other boats began to resort to cannibalism. By the time that the last of the eight survivors of the horrific voyage had been rescued in April 1821, seven crewmen had been eaten.

Another famous case took place in 1846-47 (almost the same time that Franklin's men were icebound at King William Island). Trapped by record snowfall in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the remaining members of the eighty-nine-person Donner Party were forced to sustain themselves by eating the corpses of those who had starved to death. When finally rescued, only forty-nine people remained alive.

Modern examples of cannibalism include documented accounts among Japanese soldiers trapped on Pacific islands during World War II; the case of the Uruguayan rugby team, who were stranded for more than two months when their plane crashed in the Andes in 1972; and numerous reports from North Korean defectors and refugees about the practice during the height of the disastrous famine in that country in the 1990s.

The cannibalism that occurred in 1821 during John Franklin's first overland expedition was but the first known instance of the eating of human flesh during Arctic ventures. In 1881-84, members of the American polar expedition led by Lieutenant Adolphus Greely found themselves marooned for three years in a primitive hut high above the Arctic circle. When rescuers finally found Greely and seven other survivors of the twenty-six-man party, they discovered indisputable evidence that they had kept themselves alive by eating the remains of those who had died.

The Affair of the
Resolute.
The discovery of the
Resolute
, Buddington's heroics sailing her to New London, and the ship's triumphant return to England occasioned numerous songs and poems. “The Affair of the
Resolute”
was written by English poet Martin Tupper and was reprinted many times on both sides of the Atlantic.

I

A gracious and generous action

Outweighing all sins on each side

Outshaming the treasons of faction,

Ambition, and folly, and pride.

No jealousies now shall be rankling

No silly suspicions intrude

But 'round the rememb'rance of

Franklin

Our brotherly loves be renewed.

II

The
Resolute
lying forsaken

The sport of the winds and the ice

By luck to America taken

Is nobly restored without price.

Not only refusing all ransom

But, fitted anew for the Queen

In a manner more generous and handsome,

And kinder, than ever was seen.

III

We, too, were not lacking in honor

For, waiving all claim to the ship

When Buddington's flag was upon her

We flung away quibble and quip.

“He saved her, and so let him take her,”

But handsome America said,

“I guess, Cousin, that we can make her

A prettier present instead.”

IV

“With thousands of dollars we'll buy her

With thousands of dollars repair

(Diplomacy cannot take fire

That here at least all isn't fair)

In honor of Britain's ice-heroes

Of Franklin and Ross and McClure

To gentle Victoria the Sea-Rose

Her
Resolute
thus we restore!”

V

Huzzah for this generous meeting

Huzzah, too, for Grinnell and Kane

And all the kind hearts that are beating

So nobly, from Kansas to Maine.

Our instincts are all for each other

(Though both have a tincture of heat)

And truly as brother with brother

Our bosoms in unison meet.

VI

When craft diplomacy's blindness

So often does harm in the dark

One plain, international kindness

Comes, just as the dove, to the Ark.

O, wisdom, above the astuteness

Of placemen, by cunning defiled

O, better than manhood's acuteness

This kindliness, as of a child.

Queen Victoria.
“We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.” These words, spoken by England's Queen Victoria, symbolized the spirit of what came to be known as the Victorian Age, an era in which everything seemed possible, national pride was at its zenith, and the discovery of the Northwest Passage was regarded as a British right and an inevitability of English achievement.

Born in Kensington Palace on May 24, 1819 (the same month and year that Edward Parry set out on his first search for the passage and John Franklin embarked on his first overland expedition), Alexandria Victoria inherited the throne from her childless uncle King William IV when she was eighteen years old. Despite her youth, she was determined to resist the influence of her domineering mother and, from the beginning, demonstrated a surprising maturity and an unexpected firmness of will.

The most powerful influence on her during the early years of her reign was that of her prime minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. But it would be another man who would eventually become the central figure in her life. In 1840, Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Immediately, Albert, upon whom the queen bestowed the title Prince Consort, established himself as much more than husband and companion. His influence shaped Victoria's political, as well as personal, thinking. By 1850, when the search for Franklin was in full blossom, Victoria was demanding that government officials consult with her on British affairs to a far greater degree than had been the case with her predecessors.

It was in another area, however, that Albert's influence had arguably its greatest impact. A man of unbending sexual morality, he persuaded Victoria to introduce strict sexual decorum in the court and together they made straitlaced behavior the order of the day. It was a development that made the revival of public morality synonymous with the Victorian Age—an era also marked by extraordinary industrial progress, symbolized in particular by the Great Exhibition of 1851, conceived and organized by Prince Albert to showcase England's industrial and economic might.

In 1861, Victoria's life abruptly changed when Albert died of typhoid fever. Totally devastated, she entered a period of mourning and self-imposed seclusion that lasted for almost fifteen years. In 1887, her life took another dramatic turn when the Golden Jubilee, the celebration of her fiftieth year as queen, took her out of her shell and she once again entered public life. (Some students of the monarchy believe that the rekindling of her sprit actually took place some years earlier through her relationship with her manservant John Brown. There is evidence that suggests that romance was involved and that even a secret marriage might have taken place.)

Queen Victoria died on January 22, 1901. She had ruled for sixty-three years, the longest reign in British history. By the time of her passing, she had contributed significantly to creating the climate that made exploration and discovery a national obsession. And she had played a unique role as far as the HMS
Resolute
was concerned as well.

Inuit Life.
One of the most comprehensive descriptions of the Arctic natives' way of life was written by
New York Herald
correspondent William Gilder, who accompanied Frederick Schwatka in 1878 on what became the final search for survivors of the lost Franklin expedition. The following are excerpts from Gilder's lengthy journal:

“The government among the Inuit tribes, where they have any at all, is patriarchal, consisting of advice from the older and more experienced, which is recognized and complied with by the younger. Parental authority is never strictly enforced, but the children readily defer to the wishes of their parents—not only when young, but after reaching man's estate. The old people are consulted upon on all matters of interest. The authority of parents in their family, and of the chief, or
ish-u-mat-tah
, in his tribe, is enforced without fear of punishment or hope of reward.

“The Esquimaux are polygamists, no distinction whatever being placed upon the number of wives a man shall have. I have never, however, known any instance of one having more than two at a time. This is very common, however, among the Iwilliks and Kinnepatoos, where there is a surplus of women. At least half of their married men have two wives. Every woman is married as soon as she arrives at a marriageable age, and whenever a man dies his wife is taken by someone else, so that with them old maids and widows are unknown.

“There are no wedding ceremonies among the Esquimaux, and hardly anything like sentiment is known. The relation of man and wife is purely a matter of convenience. The woman requires food, and the man needs some one to make his clothing and to take charge of his dwelling while he is hunting. Marriages are usually contracted while the interested parties are children. The father of the boy selects a little girl who is to be his daughter-in-law, and pays her father something. Perhaps it is a snow-knife, or a sled, or a dog…. The children are then affianced, and when arrived at a proper age they live together. The wife then has her face tattooed with lamp-black and is regarded as a matron in society…. The forehead is decorated with a letter V in double lines, the angle very acute, passing down between the eyes almost to the bridge of the nose, and sloping gracefully to the right and left before reaching the roots of the hair. Each cheek is adorned with an egg-shaped pattern…. The most ornamented part, however, is the chin, which receives a gridiron pattern….

“The natives of Hudson's Strait dress very much like the others, the difference being in the women's hoods, which, instead of being long and narrow, are long and wide, and provided with a drawing string. Instead of the long stockings, they wear a pair of leggings that reach about half-way up the thigh, and trousers that are much shorter than those of the western tribes. The Kinnepatoos are by all odds the most tasteful in their dress, and their clothing is made of skins more carefully prepared and better sewed than that of the others….

“It would astonish a civilized spectator to see how many people can be stowed away to sleep in one small igloo and under one blanket; but the proverbial illustration of a box of sardines would almost represent a skirmish line in comparison. Each one is rolled up into a little ball, or else arms, legs and bodies are so inextricably interwoven, that it would be impossible for any but the owners to unravel them. And these bodies are like so many little ovens, so that, no matter how cold it be, when once within the igloo, the snow-block door put up and chinked, and all stowed away in bed, Jack Frost can be successfully defied.”

George Nares.
Charles Francis Hall was not the only explorer to seek the North Pole during the 1870s. In 1875, George Nares—who, while serving aboard the
Resolute
, had distinguished himself by sledging 665 miles in sixty-nine days in one search for John Franklin, and 586 miles in fifty-six days on another—also made a notable attempt. Five years before that, however, Nares made what would be his greatest contribution when he captained the
Challenger
, a ship employed in a scientific expedition which, during its groundbreaking voyage, laid the foundations of almost every branch of oceanography as we know it today.