HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in the Arctic, by James Wilson Carmichael. 1847. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Before the opening of the Panama Canal, the only way for ships to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean was to skirt the American continent from the south following the route opened by Magellan between 1520 and 1521. This long journey and expensive had prompted many navigators to seek a more direct route, passing through the North of America and bearing the name of "Northwest Passage". But the first expeditions had quickly shown that the enterprise was far from easy. Instead of the dream shortcut, you had to insinuate yourself between islands, canals and bays for nearly 1,500 kilometers. Not to mention the threat of cold and frost which restricted navigation to two or three summer months. Glaciers that moved with the tides could obstruct a passage or strike wooden ships and immobilize or even break them. Several attempts, several failures For this reason, the search for the Northwest Passage was for four centuries nothing but a succession of doomed and sometimes disastrous undertakings. England was the country most invested in this exploration, because it wanted to find a route to India other than that controlled by the Spaniards and the Portuguese. After the attempt of the Italian Giovanni Caboto (Jean Cabot, in French), commissioned by Henry VII in 1496, many English explorers ventured at the end of the XVI th and at the beginning of the XVII th century in northeastern Canada to look for the famous passage:Martin Frobisher in 1576, John Davis in 1585, Henry Hudson in 1610... The expedition of Robert Bylot and William Baffin in 1616 is of particular importance, since they discover the Lancaster Sound, but without being aware that it is actually the entrance to the Northwest Passage. After a long interruption, research resumed at the beginning of the 19 th century. Canada being under British domination, the English Admiralty, led by John Barrow, relaunched explorations from 1816. In 1818, after having traveled the eastern coast of Greenland, John Ross rediscovered Baffin Island and passed in front of the strait of Lancaster which he believes to be a bay. The following year, William Parry, second in command to Ross, returned to the region and traveled the strait for 750 kilometers to Melville Island, where he wintered. If he had continued, he would have ended up in the Beaufort Sea and arrived on the shores of Alaska. The providential man Later, navigators and explorers mapped northeastern Canada and the American northwest coast. But it lacks a direct sea route connecting the two ends. In 1845, the Admiralty wanted to organize a great expedition to finally conquer the Northwest Passage. The direction of the expedition is offered to Parry and Ross who decline the offer. A third name is put forward, that of Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin. Franklin had previously participated in the exploration of the Canadian Arctic. In 1819, he had led an overland expedition from Hudson Bay to the Coppermine River that had ended badly:eleven of his twenty men had died and the others had to eat the leather of their boots to survive. In 1825, another land expedition led further west had ended without pitfalls, but without reaching the set goal. In 1836, Franklin, who wanted to change his life, obtained his appointment as governor of Tasmania, a position he held until 1843, when the Colonial Office forced him to resign due to mismanagement. Despite this, and despite the fact that Franklin was 60 years old, the Admiralty trusted him by giving him the direction of the great projected expedition. When in 1845 the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror leave London for the north, the authorities are convinced that this is the decisive expedition. Both ships are sturdy three-masters whose iron-reinforced hulls and watertight compartments have been tested in Antarctica. It is estimated that Franklin's journey from the east coast of America to his victorious arrival through the Bering Strait will last no more than a year, but as a precaution tinned food is loaded for three years. There are also plans to build a 1,200-volume library in each ship to entertain the crew of 129 spread across the two ships. None of these men will come back alive. Lost in the Far North Franklin's two ships entered Lancaster Sound in July 1845. It was there that a whaler saw them for the last time. At the exit of the strait, blocked by an ice barrier, the crew must winter on the small Beechey Island, facing Devon Island, where the men set up a makeshift camp. In 1850, a relief expedition would discover this precarious refuge, where they would find more than 600 empty tin cans as well as the graves of three members of the expedition. In 1984, the study of the mummified remains of crew members by a team of forensic scientists revealed a high lead level, which would relate the cause of death to intoxication caused by the consumption of the contents of badly welded cans. The following summer, in 1846, the two ships resumed their voyage south, in the strait between the Prince of Wales and Somerset islands. But in September, they were again caught in the ice near King William Island and had to spend a second polar winter in an improvised camp. Fifteen sailors and nine officers died on the spot, in addition to Franklin who died on June 11, 1847, as evidenced by two documents discovered during another expedition organized in 1859. Specialists have criticized Franklin for not having left the King William Island to head south when he still had provisions, which would have allowed him to reach Canadian soil. The survivors, led by Captain Francis Crozier, set out at the end of April 1848. On foot, and with a lifeboat that had survived the sinking, they attempted to reach the continent at the mouth of the river Great Fish. They will never make it:during the journey, they die one after the other, from cold, from starvation and probably from diseases such as scurvy and lead poisoning. An unenviable fate In 1854, John Rae, a doctor working for the Hudson's Bay Company, met some Inuit who told him of having seen a group of forty white men pulling a boat towards the Great Fish River. That same year, Rae discovered the remains of Franklin's companions, including Captain Crozier, and guessed what must have been the terrible fate of some of these men reduced to cannibalism, as evidenced by "the contents of several pots . In the meantime, several rescue expeditions set out in hopes of finding Franklin and his crew alive. Franklin's wife persevered for several years. Although unsuccessful, these voyages were also instrumental in exploring the complex geography of the Northwest Passage. It is finally the Norwegian Roald Amundsen who will accomplish on board the Gjoa the first crossing from east to west, at the head of a daring expedition that would last three years, from 1903 to 1906. Find out more The Northwest Passage, N. and J.-C. Forestier-Blazart, Naef, 2011. Franklin's ship finally found The long search for traces of Franklin ended in September 2014 with the discovery of one of the two ships of the expedition, the HMS Erebus . Since 2008, six exploration campaigns have been carried out in the area where the Inuit claimed to have seen the unfortunate navigators, towards King William Island, until an underwater drone equipped with sonar located finally the wreckage. Two six-pound cannons, a lamp, a bronze bilge pump and the ship's bell dated 1845, mounted on the boat shortly before departure, were found. Who discovered the passage? Two candidates are vying for the honor of discovering the Northwest Passage. On the one hand, Robert McClure who, wanting to find Franklin in 1850, goes as far as Banks Island, a region explored by Parry 30 years earlier. But, caught in the ice, he remained trapped there for three years before being rescued. Amundsen was the first to successfully cross the passage of the strait between 1903 and 1906.
