The Ministry of Time

Chapter IX

May 1859. Captain Leopold McClintock’s search expedition has spent eight months locked in the ice by Bellot Strait. Frostbite, scurvy, and the long Arctic winter have ravaged his crew. Now the sun is back and sledging is once again practicable.

McClintock’s Lieutenant Hobson heads south along King William Land. Some Esquimaux have told him that, nine years before, they saw a straggling group of thirty starving, ragged white men—the purported remnants of Sir John Franklin’s expedition to discover the Northwest Passage. Franklin’s two ships, Erebus and Terror, have not been seen since July 1845. None of the officers and sailors who sailed with him have been found.

The Esquimaux hinted at other things too. Dismembered bodies at makeshift campsites. Boots boiled in pots, boots still filled with human flesh. Knife scores on tibia, finger bones sucked clean of marrow. A last camp in a harbor on the mainland, where they found a corpse who had passed watch chains through gashes in his earlobes, perhaps for safekeeping, perhaps clinging to the idea that he might yet return to a place where the watch was worth something. Hobson spoons his rations and wonders what his own biceps would taste like.

At the place the Europeans call Cape Felix, he finds the remains of a camp. There are tents still pitched, filled with bearskins and canvas sleeping bags. He finds two sextants, wire cartridges, snow goggles, brass screws. He concludes that this was not a camp of last resort but a scientific observatory, set up for the milder summer months. The only strange thing about it is the speed with which it was abandoned, leaving behind valuable property of the Royal Navy.

Sledging farther south, he discovers a cairn of piled stones. Inside is the only piece of communication from the Franklin expedition that will ever be discovered: a note on Admiralty notepaper, written over twice.

The first message, in strong, confident handwriting, reads:

H.M.S 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. 91° 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.

(Signed) G. M. GORE, Lieut.

(Signed) CHAS. F. DES VOEUX, Mate.

The second, wavering in the margins:

25th April 1848 H.M. ships “Terror” and “Erebus” were deserted on the 22nd April, 5 leagues N.N.W. of this, having been beset since 12th September, 1846. The officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F. R. M. Crozier, landed here in lat. 69° 37” 42” N., long. 98° 41” W. This paper was found by Lt. Irving under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir James Ross in 1831–4 miles to the Northward—where it had been deposited by the late Commander Gore in May June 1847. Sir James Ross’ pillar has not however been found and the paper has been transferred to this position which is that in which Sir J. Ross’ pillar was erected—Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1847; and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men.

(Signed) JAMES FITZJAMES, Captain H.M.S. Erebus.

(Signed) F.R.M. CROZIER, Captain Senior Offr.

and start on tomorrow, 26th, for Back’s Fish River.

The note revealed two important things.

Firstly, that the expedition had abandoned their ships in April 1848, after two consecutive summers so cold that the sea had remained frozen. Twenty-four men had already died and the lauded Franklin was among their number. Francis Crozier and James Fitzjames, captains of Terror and Erebus respectively, had led the ships’ companies in an overland march of eight hundred miles. None, as far as Hobson could tell, survived the effort.

Secondly, that Lieutenant Graham Gore—who had been granted a field promotion to Commander—was dead before the march began. History had swallowed him, closing over him as the sea does over a luckless sailor.