Northwest Passage – Days 6 & 7 on the ship at sea

It was time to head much further north to reach Lancaster Sound and our ultimate destination of Beechey Island where some of Franklin’s men are buried. Achieving this meant the captain had to put his foot down and we had to be at sea for the next two days. This took us away from Davis Strait and into Baffin Bay.

We tried to imagine what Franklin’s men would have felt as they sailed the seas northwards in the 1800s. Weather conditions change from hour to hour in the Arctic, from wet to sunny with fairly mild temperatures (today 2-6 degrees Celsius), and calm clear waters, to freezing temperatures, surface ice, icebergs and fog.

We do know that Franklin called into Disko Bay for supplies, which is where we were located on days three and four on the map above. It was at Disko Bay that it has been recorded a few members of the crew were sent back to England. Different stories have been told that this was because of ill health or perhaps too much rum. Whatever the reasons, they may have ultimately felt very lucky that their outcome was more fortuitous than their shipmates.

The Expedition Team was always keen to keep us occupied with lectures several times daily when we were not on the zodiacs or on land. These were always of a high quality, presented by two historians, zoologists, botanists, two marine biologists, two ornithologists, and two glaciologist, who were all part of the 31-person team. Each day would also include a recap of what we had achieved in the previous 24 hours.

One of the historians was Captain Ken Burton who had many awards to his name. He spent more than 25 years working in different top level capacities in the Arctic including Vessel Commander on various RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) patrol vessels. In 2000, as Captain of the St Roch II ship, he retraced the original St Roch voyages of 1940-42 circumnavigating North America via the Northwest Passage and Panama Canal. This took 169 days, covered 24,000 nautical miles and was the 73rd ship to navigate the Northwest Passage. Times have changed since Franklin’s day. Today more than 300 ships have passed through the Passage.

Ken stressed to us how Franklin’s team would have met unimaginable obstacles with continuous fog, seasickness, tiredness, increasing illness, frostbite, hunger at the latter stages, desperation, and nothing like the equipment mariners have today – just think of the advances in clothing alone. He said: “These were unchartered waters. The men took on a duty and an oath, for which they ultimately paid with their lives”.

The search for a shorter trading route through the high Arctic between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was a major initiative for the British Admiralty. The search for the crew that followed was the most intense apart for the more recent search for the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which disappeared in 2014.

The mystery of what happened to the Franklin men continues to this day. According to Ken, the finding of the Erebus and Terror “raises more questions than answers”. The wrecks, found in 2014 and 2016 respectively, are still being studied in situ at the bottom of the ocean and with great sensitivity as some of the bodies may have gone down with the ships, which raises ethical issues. There are still more than 20 bodies that have not been accounted for.

Moving on to our second day, sea conditions were calm enough to take to the zodiacs to see icebergs, ice and some wildlife.

Copyright: Words and photos Sue Barnard 2022