G'day,
Lady Franklin's Lament is well known here in Oz and the connection of the tune to McCafferty. Dylan's obvious "borrowing" of words and tune is also well known, at least in folk circles.

The Aussie connection to Franklin is that he was Governor of Tasmania for a while and gave his name to the Franklin River which was very controversial here for some years for environmental reasons.

At an earlier stage in his life he explored the north coast of Canada partly in hope of finding the north west passage. After his time as Tassie Governor he was asked to lead an expedition by sea to find the passage. As I understand it the ships were poorly provisioned, especially as they could expect to be ice bound for a winter and one of their main problems was scurvy. Some of them attempted to make it to Canada by foot but none were able to survive the walk. They were observed by Eskimos as they walked along dying one by one ("Only the Eskimo in his skin canoe"etc.) but the Eskimos had enough trouble themselves surviving the winter and did not have the resources to help a group of dying men.

I still have a newspaper article of at least 10 years ago describing, with photos, the discovery of the frozen remains of two of Franklin's crew.

The line "Ten thousand pounds would I freely give" is a reference to the fact that Lady Franklin raised twenty thousand pounds (hey it IS a folk song) to outfit an expedition to find her husband. This expedition found no trace of Franklin but did contribute a great deal to the exploration of the area. I also reckon that the song was written by one or more of the sailors involved. Well that's as likely an explanation as any other.

Cheers,
Alan