Trapped

John Roobol

Description

In 1845 Sir John Franklin led 129 officers and men into the Arctic to try to find the North-West Passage. None of them returned.Trapped is a novel that tells the harrowing, gruelling, fascinating story of the disastrous, ill-fated expedition of Sir John Franklin of 1845 which resulted in the deaths of the entire crew of one hundred and twenty-nine officers and men and the loss of the two expedition ships. These men were the pride of the British Navy and had volunteered heroically for the expedition into the frozen unknown to try to find the North-West Passage. The truth about their fate is still largely unknown.This extraordinary novel, written by an author who has spent seven years researching one of the most courageous expeditions in maritime history, brings alive the courage, the comradeship, camaraderie and bravery that prevailed among the expedition's members even when they faced the gravest of crises.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: The Conrad Press
• Date de parution: 11 juin 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781913227036
• Langue: English

Extrait

Trapped
a novel about the lost 1845 Franklin expedition to seek a North-west Passage
John Roobol


Trapped
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2019
Tel: [phone] www.theconradpress.com [e-mail]
ISBN 978-1-913227-03-6
Copyright © John Roobol 2019
The moral right of John Roobol to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.


Prologue
I t is late in the morning of Tuesday, May the nineteenth 1846.
Two three-masted wooden sailing ships are frozen into the ice in a winter harbour behind the flat-topped six-hundred-foot-high Beechey Island, in Barrow Strait, in what is today the Canadian Arctic.
The hills are blanketed white with winter snow that is drifting in a strong cold wind.
In the great cabin of the flagship a portly, bald-headed old captain is writing at a long table by lantern light with a quill pen.
He wears glasses on his round, kindly face, that shows lines of tiredness. He is dressed in the royal navy uniform of a captain with a royal-blue double-breasted coat with sixteen gold buttons and scarlet facings and cuffs, and royal blue gold-striped trousers.
On his shoulders he wears gold-fringed epaulettes embossed with a crown and single anchor on each shoulder. He is Sir John Franklin, leader of a Royal Navy Expedition to complete the mapping of the North-West Passage - a sea route between Europe and Asia around the north of the American continent - and if possible to sail home through it. For centuries, European explorers sought a navigable passage as a possible trade route to Asia. The economic and mercantile benefits to the nation that discovered a navigable North-West Passage would be immense. The old captain puts down the quill, raises his glasses onto his forehead, rubs his eyes and stretches his arms. He looks around the cabin, firstly at the two portraits hanging above the stern windows. One shows Queen Victoria and the other his second wife, Lady Jane Franklin. He sighs and remembers the rose fragrance Jane habitually wore and sadly wonders if he will ever see her again and enjoy that fragrance once more.
Franklin then turns back to the pages he has written and smiles at the memories of the year. Yes, it has been a great success. One year ago to this day the two expedition ships H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror set sail.
They had left Greenhithe on Monday May the nineteenth 1845. A supply ship - the Baretto Junior - had accompanied them as far as Disko Island in Greenland. There they had spent eight days topping up their supplies. The two expedition ships then crossed Baffin Bay and entered Lancaster Sound – the eastern gateway of the North-West Passage.
Franklin remembered the conversation on entering Lancaster Sound - the eastern end of the North-West Passage. He had been on deck with Commander Fitzjames and Lieutenant Gore and had addressed them. The two officers were Franklin’s right-hand men aboard the flagship. Commander James Fitzjames was second-in-command and Graham Gore was First Lieutenant. They were similar men in many respects and in a sense typical of the navy’s finest officers selected for the expedition.
Both were in their thirties, Fitzjames was thirty-four and Gore a few years older. Both were fit, strong, confident men with distinguished service records including battle experience. Fitzjames was the bigger and heavier of the two. He had a confident buoyant personality and was popular with his fellow officers. He spoke with an upper-class accent and a slight lisp. Gore was also popular and liked to paint sketches and play the flute.
‘So, we’re now in the middle of the Croker Mountains,’ Franklin observed. He smiled faintly. ‘Back in 1818, Sir John Ross thought he saw a mountain range blocking this sound, and mapped it as a bay. It’s an easy thing to do in the Arctic because of the mist and the strange lighting effects on cloud and ice. He named the mountain range after the First Secretary of the Admiralty. The next year, Edward Parry returned and sailed right through the so-called Croker Mountains – a remarkably insubstantial mountain range. He then sailed on westwards for another 620 miles to winter at Melville Island.’
Commander Fitzjames nodded: ‘An heroic and lucrative discovery, sir. As I recall, he did so well he was awarded £5,000 for crossing the 110 th meridian.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Sir John. ‘If we can get through the North-West Passage then we’ll be eligible for the Admiralty reward of £20,000. That would be an even more heroic and lucrative achievement. Well, gentlemen, at least we can learn from Sir William Parry’s efforts. He tried to sail west to get to Bering Strait, but was stopped by a great river of ice.’
Fitzjames gave a gruff nod: ‘Well, that’s at least one route less that we won’t have to search.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Franklin. ‘We should drink a toast to Sir Edward this evening.’
And indeed they did.
The ships continued westwards into Barrow Strait. One morning, a week or so after that conversation, Franklin and Fitzjames were on the quarter deck admiring the splendid scenery. Snow-covered mountains at the east end of Devon Island rose to what they estimated as about 6,500 feet and the sea was filled with pieces of ice all drifting to the east.
‘I believe the source of this ice is the great ice river that stopped Parry at Melville Island,’ Franklin said. ‘It flows south-east past Melville Island from a source in the Polar Sea.’
‘There seems to be a great deal of it.’
‘Oh, there is a lot more than this. In 1830 Ross saw such an ice river on the west side of Cape Felix in King William Land. He reported that the ice blocks were pushed up onto the shore for up to a half mile inland.’
‘Yes, Sir John, the Ross book and others by previous polar explorers in the ship’s library have been in constant circulation since we left Greenland.’
With north-westerly winds, they had found and used the ice-free water between Devon Island and the icy central parts of Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait. As they sailed west the land fell gradually until they reached Wellington Channel. There on the east side of the entrance to the channel they saw the excellent sheltered harbour behind Beechey Island, first noted by Parry. This appeared to be an ideal place to spend their first winter in the ice.
Wellington Channel appeared to be open, as the north-westerly winds had driven the ice away from the west side, leaving open water. Their orders from the Admiralty were to explore Wellington Channel if ice prevented them from proceeding south-west after Cape Walker. Franklin had decided to continue to Cape Walker.
But before they reached it (where their Admiralty orders were for them to start their exploration) Ice Master Reid, in the crow’s nest with his telescope, called down that he could see what appeared to be an open bay or sound immediately to the east of Cape Walker. But Sir John decided to stick with his orders and to pass Cape Walker before turning south-west.
So they had passed Cape Walker, but found the strait ahead to be closed with much ice that was moving. There were no open routes to the south or south west either. Again Ice Master Reid with his telescope called down to report that he could see the ice river moving not only eastwards towards them, but also great blocks of ice turning over and there was a low rumbling noise. They better understood now what had stopped Parry. Indeed they were somewhat dismayed, for their orders were to proceed to the south-west, but the moving ice river made this impossible.
Franklin went to speak to Fitzjames. ‘Commander, we have our orders very clearly to proceed south-west from here but there are no open passages. We must go back.’
‘Yes, but don’t you think we’ve a great opportunity to try to follow the open water we saw in Wellington Channel? This option is in accordance with the Admiralty Instructions and it would also enable us to test the idea of an open Polar Sea.’
Franklin gave a shrug and agreed. Fitzjames was delighted.
‘I’ve long been interested in the possibility of an open Polar Sea, Sir John.’
So flags were hoisted and the ships came about and it was not too long before they found ourselves sailing north into Wellington Channel in completely unexplored waters.
The channel is about fifty miles wide with low-lying land up to 300 feet high on either side. The rocks on both sides of the channel could be seen to be stratified or layered sedimentary in nature. To the west lay Cornwallis Land and to the east Devon Island. Except perhaps for Eskimos, they were the first men ever to reach the north coast of Cornwallis Land at latitude seventy-five degrees and thirty-eight minutes, after sailing fifty-four miles north.
The channel continued north, now between Bathurst and Devon Islands and they proceeded further north for another 110 miles. They finally emerged between the northern headlands of Bathurst and Devon Islands to view ahead of them the huge expanse of the great Polar Sea. But they could see also some snowy peaks indicating that Arctic Islands continued further north. They saw that the great Polar Sea was entirely covered in ice. Franklin, viewing all this from the quarter deck where he stood next to Fitzjames, exclaimed:
‘So there it is James, the Polar Sea and it’s all ice.’
‘What a dreadful shame,’ said Fitzjames. ‘Like Sir John Barrow, I’ve long believed ice to accumulate around the land and islands here and that an open Polar Sea existed.’
Franklin nodded: ‘Yes, it disappoints me too, because had there been an open Polar Sea, then it might have provided us with a North-W