The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #170957 Message #4136687
Posted By: GUEST
15-Feb-22 - 04:18 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Cyril Tawney's 'Lady Franklin's Lament'
Subject: RE: Origins: Cyril Tawney's 'Lady Franklin's Lament'
After doing some internet digging:
In 1847 whaler William Penny attempted to make contact with the missing expedition and in the autumn of that year the Navy began to show concern and to make plans for relief expeditions.
"In the course of a decade almost 40 expeditions were sent out to search for Franklin. Among those who led these British expeditions were John Ross, his nephew James Clark Ross,. Horatio Austin, Henry Kellett, John Richardson, Edward Inglefield, and Edward Belcher. It was eventually learnt that on the brink of success his ships had been icebound off King William Island. After what must have been a dreadful winter, Franklin had died on 11 June 1847, and his surviving crew perished in a terrible ordeal while attempting to reach the Back River to the south of the icebound ships."
"The discoverer of Franklin's fate was John Rae (1853-54) who was given a reward of £10,000 despite the opposition of Franklin's widow (and Charles Dickens). The Inuit had supplied information about the lost expedition to Rae and their reports were confirmed by Leopold McClintock (1857-59) who brought back to England the only written documentation relating to Franklin's voyage"
A bit of clarificatio9n:
(Sir John Ross CB (24 June 1777 – 30 August 1856) was a Scottish Royal Navy officer and polar explorer. He was the uncle of Sir James Clark Ross,Sir James Clark Ross FRS FLS FRAS (15 April 1800 – 3 April 1862) was a British Royal Navy officer and polar explorer known for his explorations of the Arctic, participating in two expeditions led by his uncle Sir John Ross, and four led by Sir William Parry, and, in particular, for his own Antarctic expedition from 1839 to 1843.
In 1848, Ross was sent on one of three expeditions to find Sir John Franklin. The others were the Rae–Richardson Arctic expedition and the expedition aboard HMS Plover and HMS Herald through the Bering Strait. He was given command of HMS Enterprise, accompanied by HMS Investigator. Because of heavy ice in Baffin Bay he only reached the northeast tip of Somerset Island where he was frozen in at Port Leopold. In the spring he and Francis McClintock explored the west coast of the island by sledge. He recognized Peel Sound but thought it too ice-choked for Franklin to have used it. In fact Franklin had used it in 1846 when the extent of sea ice had been atypically low. The next summer he tried to reach Wellington Channel but was blocked by ice and returned to England. (Wiki)
Sherard Osborn CB FRS (25 April 1822 – 6 May 1875) was a Royal Navy admiral and Arctic explorer.
He took a prominent part in 1849 in advocating a new search expedition for Sir John Franklin, and in 1850 was appointed to the command of the steam-tender HMS Pioneer (1850) in the Arctic expedition under Horatio Thomas Austin, in the course of which he performed a remarkable sledge-journey to the western extremity of Prince of Wales Island.[2] He published an account of this voyage, entitled Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal (1852), and was promoted to the rank of commander shortly afterwards.
In the new expedition of 1852–1854 under Sir Edward Belcher he again took part as commander of Pioneer. In 1856, he published the journals of Captain Robert McClure, giving a narrative of the discovery of the Northwest Passage