His dictated message – it was in Gore’s handwriting – was, Sir John thought, succinct and businesslike:
____________________ of May 1847. HM Ships Erebus and Terror… Wintered in the Ice in Lat. 70°05′ N. Long. 98°23′ W. Having wintered in 1846-7 at Beechey Island in Lat. 74°43′28″ N Long. 90°39′15″ 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. Party consisting of 2 officers and 6 Men left the ships on Monday 24th. May 1847. Gm. Gore, Lieut. Chas. F. Des Voeux, mate.
Franklin instructed Gore and Des Voeux to sign the note and fill in the date before sealing the canister and setting it deep inside James Ross’s cairn.
What Franklin hadn’t noticed during his dictation – nor Lieutenant Gore corrected – was that he had given the wrong dates for their winter at Beechey Island. It had been the first winter of 1845-46 in their sheltered ice harbour at Beechey; this year’s terrible time in the open pack ice had been the winter of 1846-47.
No matter. Sir John was convinced that he was leaving a minor message to posterity – possibly to some Royal Navy historian who wished to add an artifact to Sir John’s future report on the expedition (Sir John fully planned to write another book, the proceeds of which would bring his private fortune almost up to that of his wife’s) – and not dictating a report that would be read by anyone in the immediate future.
On the morning that Gore’s sledge party set out, Sir John bundled up and went down onto the ice to wish them Godspeed.
“Do you have everything you need, gentlemen?” asked Sir John.
First Lieutenant Gore – fourth in overall command behind Sir John, Captain Crozier, and Commander Fitzjames – nodded, as did his subordinate, Second Mate Des Voeux, the mate flashing a smile. The sun was very bright and the men were already wearing the wire-mesh goggles that Mr. Osmer, Erebus’s purser, had issued them to prevent blindness from the sun’s glare.
“Yes, Sir John. Thank you, sir,” said Gore.
“Plenty of woollies?” joked Sir John.
“Aye, sir,” said Gore. “Eight layers of well-woven good Northumberland sheep shearings, Sir John, nine if one counts the woolen drawers.”
The five crewmen laughed to hear their officers banter so. The men, Sir John knew, loved him.
“Prepared for camping out on the ice?” Sir John asked one of the men, Charles Best.
“Oh, aye, Sir John,” said the short but stocky young seaman. “We have the Holland tent, sir, and them eight wolfskin blanket robes what we sleep on and under. And twenty-four sleeping bags, Sir John, which purser sewn up for us from the fine Hudson ’s Bay blankets. We’ll be toastier on the ice than aboard the ship, m’lord.”
“Good, good,” Sir John said absently. He looked to the southeast where King William Land – or Island, if Francis Crozier’s wild theory was to be believed – was visible only as a slight darkening of the sky over the horizon. Sir John prayed to God, quite literally, that Gore and his men would find open water near the coast, either before or after caching the expedition’s message. Sir John was prepared to do everything in his power – and beyond – to force the two ships, as beaten up as Erebus was, across and through the softening ice, if only it would soften, and into the comparative protection of coastal waters and the potential salvation of land. There they might find a calm harbour or gravel spit where the carpenters and engineers could make repairs enough to Erebus – straightening the propeller shaft, replacing the screw, shoring up the twisted internal iron reinforcements and perhaps replacing some of the missing iron cladding – to allow them to press on. If not, Sir John thought – but had not yet shared the thought with any of his officers – they would follow Crozier’s distressing plan from the previous year and anchor Erebus, transfer its diminishing coal reserves and crew to Terror, and sail west along the coast in that crowded (but jubilant, Sir John was sure, jubilant) remaining ship.
At the last moment, the assistant surgeon on Erebus, Goodsir, had implored Sir John to allow him to accompany the Gore party, and although neither Lieutenant Gore nor Second Mate Des Voeux were enthusiastic about the idea – Goodsir was not popular with the officers or men – Sir John had allowed it. The assistant surgeon’s argument for going was that he needed to gain more information on edible forms of wildlife to use against the scurvy that was the primary fear of all arctic expeditions. He was particularly interested in the behavior of the only animal present this odd non-summer arctic summer, the white bear.
Now, as Sir John watched the men finish lashing their gear to the heavy sledge, the diminutive surgeon – he was a small man, pale, weak-looking, with a receding chin, absurd side whiskers, and a strangely effeminate gaze that put off even the usually universally affable Sir John – sidled up to start a conversation.
“Thank you again for allowing me to accompany Lieutenant Gore’s party, Sir John,” said the little medico. “The outing could be of inestimable importance in our medical evaluation of the antiscorbutic properties of a wide variety of flora and fauna, including the lichens invariably present on the terra firma of King William Land.”
Sir John involuntarily made a face. The surgeon could not have known that his commander had once survived on thin soup made from such lichen for several months. “You’re very welcome, Mr. Goodsir,” he said coolly.
Sir John knew that the slouching young popinjay preferred the title of “Doctor” to “Mister,” a dubious distinction since, although from a good family, Goodsir had trained as a mere anatomist. Technically on par with the warrant officers on board both ships, the civilian assistant surgeon was entitled, in Sir John’s eyes, only to be called Mr. Goodsir.
The young surgeon blushed at his commander’s coolness after the easy banter with the crewmen, tugged at his cap, and took three awkward steps backward on the ice.
“Oh, Mr. Goodsir,” added Franklin.
“Yes, Sir John?” The young upstart was actually red-faced, almost stammering with embarrassment.
“You must accept my apologies that in our formal communiqué to be cached at Sir James Ross’s cairn on King William Land, we referred only to two officers and six men in Lieutenant Gore’s party,” said Sir John. “I had dictated the message prior to your request to accompany the party. I would have written an officer, a warrant officer, an assistant surgeon, and five men had I but known you would be included.”
Goodsir looked confused for a moment, not quite sure of what Sir John was trying to tell him, but then he bowed, tugged at his cap again, mumbled, “Very good, there is no problem, I understand, thank you, Sir John,” and backed away again.
A few minutes later, as he watched Lieutenant Gore, Des Voeux, Goodsir, Morfin, Ferrier, Best, Hartnell, and Private Pilkington diminish across the ice to the southeast, Sir John, under his beaming countenance and outward serenity, actually contemplated failure.
Another winter – another full year – in the ice could undo them. The expedition would be out of food, coal, oil, pyroligneous ether for lamp fuel, and rum. This last item’s disappearance might well mean mutiny.
More than that, if the summer of 1848 were as cold and unyielding as this summer of 1847 fully promised to be, another full winter or year in the ice would destroy one or both of their ships. Like so many failed expeditions before them, Sir John and his men would be fleeing for their lives, dragging longboats and whalers and hastily clabbered-together sledges across the rotten ice, praying for open leads and then cursing them when the sledges fell through the ice and the contrary winds blew the heavy boats back on the pack ice, leads that meant days and nights of rowing for the starving men. Then, Sir John knew, there would be the overland part of any escape attempt – eight hundred miles and more of featureless rock and ice, rivers of constant rapids strewn with boulders each capable of smashing their smaller boats (the larger boats could not get down northern Canada’s rivers, he knew from experience), and native Esquimaux who were hostile more often than not and thieving liars even when they seemed to be friendly.