Sir John Franklin's 1846 expedition to find the Northwest Passage was lost to the last man, with little historical evidence about the cause of one of the greatest of Arctic exploration disasters. One of the most accepted theories has always been that both ships of the expedition, the flagship HMS Erebus and companion ship HMS Terror, were frozen into the ice off the northwest of King William Island near Victory Point and, due to several severe winters in a row, were never able to be freed. As food and supplies ran low, the survivors (who already had an unexplained but unusually high mortality rate -- including Sir John Franklin himself -- as reported in one of two brief notes that are the only surviving records of the expedition) struck out overland on foot, man-hauling sledges from Victory Point toward Back's Great Fish River. That much is supported by the two notes, and it's always been assumed that the remaining survivors died on the march, with the last remains found at Starvation Cove on Adelaide Peninsula. In this theory, the two ships Erebus and Terror were never released from the ice, and either sank in place or drifted in the pack ice until they eventually broke up and wrecked (map showing survivors' overland route according to this explanation.)
In 2014 the Canadian government's Victoria Strait Expedition found a ship which has proven to be HMS Erebus. It is far from the landing location at Victory Point: the exact location is not being given to prevent looters, but the Erebus was found somewhere between Royal Geographical Society Island and Hat Island in the Storis Passage of Victoria Strait (approximate map location.) The ship was found in remarkably well-preserved condition, which seems to argue against it drifting unmanned from Victory Point to its present position.
There is another theory on the fate of the Franklin Expedition, one put forth in 1991 by David Woodman of McGill University and based on his interpretation of contemporary Inuit testimony, which posits that the notes about leaving for the Great Fish River don't indicate a total abandonment of the ships, but instead an attempt to mount a hunting expedition on the south side of King William Island (where there was known to be more game) during the brief Arctic summer, as well as scout the prospective overland route toward the Fish River. In Woodman's theory, the men left on foot and camped on the southern side of the island, met with some Inuit hunters (as is oral tradition among the Inuit), found that travel to the Great Fish River overland on foot would be too arduous, then hunted game that they brought back to Victory Point where they re-manned at least one of the ships. The accepted theory is that all Franklin expedition survivors were dead by the summer of 1848; Woodman posits instead that, despite grievous losses from starvation, scurvy, and whatever other mysterious causes decimated the expedition, the remaining men formed a crew and, desperately short-handed, managed when the ice broke up in spring 1849 to sail one ship around the southeast coast of King William Island to the Storis Passage before becoming iced in again. The remaining men then abandoned ship for the final time and struck out for the Adelaide Peninsula, hoping to walk to Back's Great Fish River and a Hudson Bay trading company outpost. In Woodman's theory, these men are the 35 to 40 skeletons found at Starvation Cove, and some may have survived, with sporadic help from the Inuit, until as late as winter 1850.
I'm an amateur Franklin enthusiast, and it seems to me that the discovery of HMS Erebus so close to where Woodman predicted one of the ships would lie based on Inuit testimony gives a lot of weight to his otherwise unpopular theory. It definitely seems to completely explode the prevailing idea that all of Franklin's men abandoned ship in 1848 and never returned, and as far as Erebus is concerned, that Erebus and Terror were never sailed from the ice at Victory Point. It's an utter game-changer in terms of the ultimate fate of the Franklin expedition. Yet I've seen very little of this aspect of the discovery mentioned anywhere; in fact, almost every news article I've seen in the past year since the finding of HMS Erebus repeats the standard theory of the expedition's fate right along with the news of the discovery that punches a hole straight through the middle of it. Am I misunderstanding the significance of the discovery of HMS Erebus? If I am, what is the correct way to understand the impact the discovery of one of the ships in this location has on the prevailing theory?
Thanks! (Hoping we have some maritime or Arctic historians here.)
It strikes me that you are perhaps ascribing to the location a significance it can't be said to have. Abandoned ships, especially those abandoned while seaworthy, are quite capable of covering significant distances before reaching their fates. The movement of an abandoned ice-bound Erebus a distance of under 100 miles from the position it was reported abandoned to the position it sank does not strike me as at all notable. Had the ship been reported broken upon rocks, and then found 100 miles south, that would be different, but this is a good ship abandoned in ice in the middle of a body of water known to sometimes have a seasonally clear channel to the area it was found.
As an example, one of the ships sent to search for the Franklin Expedition in 1852, the HMS Resolute, was abandoned in ice in the same Northwest passages Franklin had been exploring. The year after it was abandoned, it was located floating free over a thousand miles away, and was recovered. It not only survived its encasement in ice, it made its way safely through the passages following the seasonally ice-free channels until it was spotted and taken back in to service. These days, the US President's desk in the Oval Office is made from the timbers of this ship. Other abandoned ships have sailed thousands of miles around the oceans of the world, or have followed coastlines for miles, before sinking or grounding. Pretty much nothing dropped in the ocean will come to rest where it started on the surface, and for something meant to float and travel the waves, this is particularly so.
I think the most that could be said for the location in regards to Woodman's theory would be that it doesn't disprove him, as a ship shattered against the northern coast of King William Island might, but it doesn't support him either. It simply is something that would make perfect sense for either scenario.
Not quite what you're asking because I asked mine prior to the discovery of Erebus, but you might also be interested in the responses to this question
