Through their friendships and families, the Tennysons were connected to many of the key artistic, social and political events of the nineteenth century. One of the most surprising links was to Emily Tennyson’s maternal uncle, John Franklin, who led the 1845 expedition to discover the Northwest Passage. The expedition ended in the single greatest loss of life in the history of British polar exploration.
Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin was born in rural Lincolnshire to a merchant and the daughter of a farmer. He wanted to go to sea from an early age, and although his father hoped he would choose a more stable inland profession, he eventually agreed to let John make a trial voyage on a merchant ship at the age of twelve, presumably to try to put him off. The voyage had the opposite effect: two years later, aged fourteen, Franklin joined the Royal Navy as a first-class volunteer aboard HMS Polyphemus.
He was soon made a midshipman and continued to progress through the ranks in what became an interesting and varied naval career. He was present at several of the major naval battles of the Napoleonic wars, including the Battle of Trafalgar, where he fought aboard the HMS Bellerophon. During peacetime, he took part in several exploratory expeditions, including journeys to the Arctic, and between 1837 and 1843 served as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania.
It was at age 59 that Franklin accepted the offer to command the expedition which was to be his last. He had yearned to return to sea following his stint in government, but he was not the Admiralty’s first choice for the position due to his age. The four candidates before him, who had all either declined the role or been deemed unsuitable for it, must have thanked their lucky stars.
On 19 May 1845, the two ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, set sail from Greenhithe in Kent. They were setting out to explore the northern coast of Canada, looking for a Northwest passage which would join the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The ships travelled via Orkney and Greenland, where crew members sent their last letters home, recording that Franklin had banned swearing and drunkenness. In July 1845, they were seen by two whaling vessels. This was the last time they would be seen by Europeans.
For decades, no one in Britain knew what had happened. Two years after the ships were last heard from, the Admiralty launched an unsuccessful rescue mission. The search became a subject of intense public discussion, and the ballad “Lady Franklin’s Lament” became popular. Lady Franklin herself refused to accept that her husband might have died, and for years after his disappearance continued to write letters to him, sending them with search expeditions.
On one such expedition in 1853 – the year Emily and Alfred moved to Farringford – John Rae spoke with Inuit people in northern Canada, who recounted sightings and knowledge of the ships. These conversations provided evidence that the vessels had become stuck in the ice and that, in desperation, some crew members may have resorted to cannibalism. Rae’s findings, to his dismay, were leaked to the press in 1854 and received with horror and outrage by the British public. Many refused to believe that British sailors could have done such a thing; some criticised Rae for relying on Inuit accounts and even accused Inuit people of attacking and cannibalising the crew themselves. For many years, Rae’s reputation was unjustly tarnished, and the Inuit testimony was ignored.
In 1854, the members of the expedition were officially declared dead.
Over the ensuing years, further expeditions and modern scientific analysis have helped build a more detailed picture of what happened. In addition to the Inuit accounts, the discovery of the shipwrecks and other archaeological evidence has helped researchers to reconstruct the fate of the expedition and Emily Tennyson’s uncle, John Franklin.
It is believed that the ships became trapped in the ice near King William Island during the winter of 1846. On the 11th of June 1847, John Franklin died, among other crew members. Eventually, after one year and seven months trapped in the ice, the remaining crew members abandoned the ships and attempted the 250-mile journey overland to the nearest outpost of western civilisation. They all perished en route.
Analysis of their remains has shown that they died from a variety of factors, including malnutrition, zinc deficiency, scurvy, pneumonia and tuberculosis of the spine. It has also been conclusively shown that John Rae was correct: in their desperation, some of the men turned to cannibalism in an attempt to survive. This evidence emerged many years after the expedition disappeared.
John Franklin and his crew would be remembered as the heroic figures in the search for the Northwest Passage. In Westminster Abbey stands a memorial to Franklin, with an inscribed epitaph by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
Not here! The white north hath thy bones; and thou,
Heroic sailor soul,
Art passing on thine happier voyage now
Toward no earthly pole.