John Franklin

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John Franklin, 1828

Sir John Franklin (born April 15, 1786 in Spilsby , Lincolnshire , † June 11, 1847 off King William Island in the Canadian Arctic ) was a British rear admiral , polar explorer and lieutenant governor of Van Diemens Land (today's Tasmania ).

Life

Franklin was born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, to one of twelve children. One of his sisters was the mother of Emily Tennyson, wife of the poet Alfred Tennyson .

At the age of 14, Franklin decided to pursue a career as a seafarer and participated in the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 and in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 . During the latter he served on board the HMS Bellerophon . One of Franklin's uncle was Captain Matthew Flinders , with whom he sailed around Australia from 1801 to 1803 . In 1814 Franklin took part in the Battle of New Orleans .

Polar expeditions 1818–1827

Franklin experienced his first polar expedition , which established his fascination for this region, in 1818 under the direction of David Buchan .

During a disastrous expedition from Hudson Bay to the mouth of the Coppermine River and the Kent Peninsula in northwestern Canada in 1819-1822 , Franklin and his crew were forced to eat lichen and the like in order to survive. They even tried to eat their leather boots, which Franklin nicknamed "the man who ate his shoes" earned. Franklin lost nine of his 19 companions on this expedition. Returning to Great Britain, he married the poet Eleanor Anne Porden in 1823 and wrote the expedition report for his previous trip, which helped him to a certain fame and popularity.

Eleanor Franklin died as early as 1825. Shortly before, she had encouraged Franklin to set off on another expedition to northwestern Canada and Alaska , despite her poor health . In the course of the expedition, which lasted until 1827, Franklin first explored the coast between the mouths of the Mackenzie River (which he reached as the second European after Alexander MacKenzie in 1789) and the Coppermine River, then after returning to the Great Bear Lake in the meantime, the coast west of the Mackenzie Estuary to almost to the mouth of the Colville River .

In 1828 Franklin married Jane Griffin , a friend of his first wife. On April 29, 1829 he was raised to the nobility by King George IV as a Knight Bachelor .

Governor of Van Diemens Land

In 1836 Franklin was appointed Lieutenant governor of Van Diemens Land and Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order . As a person committed to the Enlightenment and the sciences, he made changes after a short time. So he founded a measuring station there to measure the fluctuations in geomagnetism. He and his wife also tried to enrich the local cultural life through academic readings and excursions. Both Dumont d'Urville and James Clark Ross made stops in Hobart during their Antarctic expeditions and exchanged ideas with Franklin on the results of their research trips to date. Franklin's open-minded and humanistic mindset led to conflicts within the colony there, which resulted in his recall in 1843.

Franklin before the start of the expedition 1845–1848 ( daguerreotype by Richard Beard , 62 × 76 mm, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)

The last expedition

At the advanced age of almost 60, Franklin decided to undertake another multi-year Arctic expedition, the primary goal of which was to find the Northwest Passage . After he had raised the necessary funds, he set off on May 19, 1845 with two ships, the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus , and a crew of 129 on a final expedition from which he was not to return.

Reconnaissance of the Franklin expedition

The ships of the Franklin Expedition about 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage
Graves of the Franklin expedition from 1846 on Beechey Island (view over Erebus and Terror Bay on Devon Island )

In the following eleven years numerous efforts were made to clarify the whereabouts of the expedition participants. In 1854, another explorer, John Rae , found clues to Franklin's fate, and his second wife, Lady Jane Griffin , funded further expeditions to search for the missing men. In 1859, one of these groups discovered some bodies and a note from Franklin's deputy. She gave information about the fate of the expedition and the death of Franklin.

Even if the expeditions financed by the British government, Franklin's widow and the US shipowner Henry Grinnell , which were looking for Franklin in the middle of the 19th century, did not achieve their actual goal, they contributed significantly to the exploration and mapping of the Canadian north and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago at. The polar explorers Edward Belcher , Robert McClure , Elisha Kent Kane , Isaac Israel Hayes , Edward Inglefield , William Kennedy , Joseph-René Bellot , Francis Leopold McClintock , Charles Francis Hall and Edwin De Haven were involved in the search for Franklin .

There are various theories about the fate of the expedition. Among other things, it is suspected that the participants suffered from chronic lead poisoning , caused by poorly soldered cans . The reason for this assumption was an increased lead content in the remains of some participants. On the other hand, an increased lead content in the tissue could also be caused by years of use of tin cups or drinking contaminated water long before the expedition, since lead is only broken down very slowly in the body. Lead poisoning does not necessarily lead to death.

Probably the surviving members of the expedition fell ill with scurvy after abandoning the two ships frozen in the ice . Bones found on King William Island suggest that the last survivors even fell victim to cannibalism . A large number of typical cutting and stitching patterns can be detected on the bones of some of the expedition participants, which, from a forensic point of view, were created by cutting the corpses for consumption of the meat.

In early September 2014, the remains of one of Franklin's two expedition ships were located in Victoria Strait , although it wasn't until early October that it became clear that it was the Erebus . According to Canadian Hydrographic Service , the wreck was in the Queen Maud Gulf at O'Reilly Iceland discovered.

In September 2016, 168 years after the sinking, the very well-preserved wreck of the HMS Terror was finally found in Terror Bay , a bay in the south of King William Island , far from the presumed position. Two Inuit, who had seen a large, pole-looking piece of wood sticking out of the ice on a hunting expedition around six years earlier, gave the Arctic Research Foundation the decisive tip to start the search there. The crew of the research vessel Martin Bergmann was able to locate the Terror wreck on September 3, 2016.

The fact that HMS Terror was about 96 km south of the previous search areas in 2016 led to the assumption that at least some of the survivors had tried to save themselves with this ship before they finally failed there.

Franklin as a literary figure

The German writer and historian Sten Nadolny describes Franklin's life in his novel biography The Discovery of Slowness (1983). However, this is deliberately not kept authentic , because the protagonist of the novel, in contrast to the real model, is a person committed to slowness with modern ideals .

In Dan Simmons ' novel terror is (partly fictitious and beyond with horror elements offset) story of his last expedition and told their failure.

In the novel Polar Storm by Clive Cussler , reference is made to the Franklin expedition. After Franklin's death, members of the expedition go mad there from mercury poisoning and eventually die.

The novel ... and the ice stays mute by Martin Selber , published in 1955 (and in a revision in 1979) shows a possible version of what happened.

Between 2011 and 2013, a childlike John Franklin appeared as a supporting character in the comic series MOSAIK , which made Matthew Flinders' expedition to Australia the subject of action during issues 430 to 446.

Memberships

In 1823 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1845 an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . On January 26, 1846, he became a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

Honors

Franklin Island in the Kennedy Channel ( Greenland ), Franklin Strait in the Arctic and Franklin Island in the Antarctic Ross Sea were named after John Franklin . He is indirectly named after the Franklin Shoals in front of Franklin Island and probably also for the headland Franklin Point of Intercurrence Island in the Antarctic Palmer Archipelago.

literature

Reports from John Franklin

Further specialist literature

  • Martyn Beardsley: Deadly Winter: The Life of Sir John Franklin. US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis (Maryland) 2002, ISBN 1-557-50179-3 .
  • Paul Watson: Ice ghosts: the epic hunt for the lost Franklin Expedition , New York; London: WW Norton & Company, 2018, ISBN 978-0-393-35586-4

See also: Franklin Expedition # Literature

Novels

TV documentaries

Web links

Commons : John Franklin  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 328.
  2. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 1, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 461.
  3. ↑ Mystery of the century: wreckage of legendary Franklin expedition discovered. Spiegel Online , September 9, 2014, accessed September 10, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Franklin wreck found in Arctic identified as captain's ship. The Globe and Mail , October 1, 2014, accessed July 28, 2015 .
  5. ↑ a b Peter Watson, Ship found in Arctic 168 years after doomed Northwest Passage attempt , in: The Guardian, September 12, 2016, accessed September 13, 2016
  6. ↑ Second Franklin ship found , in: Yacht-online, September 13, 2016, accessed on September 14, 2016
  7. ^ Entry on Franklin; Sir; John (1786-1847) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
  8. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 6, 2019 .
  9. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter F. Académie des sciences, accessed on November 15, 2019 (French).
predecessor Office successor
George Arthur Governor of Tasmania
1837–1843 		John Eardley-Wilmot


personal data
SURNAME Franklin, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British rear admiral and polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1786
PLACE OF BIRTH Spilsby , Lincolnshire
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 1847
Place of death off King William Island , Arctic