Sir John Richardson - Arctic Searching Expedition (Sir John Richardson) - comprehensive & illustrated - (Literary Thoughts Edition)

Every thing was ready before the appointed day; and the boats and stores, having been sent round from Portsmouth to the Thames, were embarked with the expedition men on board the "Prince of Wales" and "Westminster," bound to York Factory, the exigences of the Hudson's Bay trade of that year requiring two ships to go to that port. The stores consisted of 198 canisters of pemican, each weighing 85 lbs., 10 bags of flour, amounting in all to 8 cwt., 5 bags of sugar, weighing 4½ cwt., 2 of tea, weighing 88 lbs., 3 of chocolate, weighing 2 cwt., 10 sides of bacon, amounting to 4½ cwt., and 6 cwt. of biscuit; also 400 rounds of ball cartridge, 90 lbs. of small shot, and 120 lbs. of fine powder in 4 boat magazines. In the arm-chests and lockers of the boats, there were stowed a musket fitted with a percussion lock for each man, with a serrated bayonet that could be used as a saw; also a complete double set of tools for making or repairing a boat, a tent for each boat's crew, towing-lines, anchors, and one seine net.

Each man was provided with a Flushing jacket and trowsers, a stout blue Guernsey frock, a waterproof over-coat, and a pair of leggins. Instructions were also given that they should be furnished in winter with such moccasins and leather coats as the nature of their employment should render necessary. Could the expedition have depended on procuring supplies of provision at the Company's posts during their progress through the interior, and a sufficient quantity of pemican at one of the northern depôts for the sea voyage, the boats would have been lightly laden, and a quick advance into the interior might have been anticipated. But such not being the case, it was necessary to employ one of the Company's barges to assist in the transport; and Governor Sir George Simpson undertook to provide one, and to engage a proper crew in Rupert's Land, together with bowmen and steersmen for the expedition boats. He also agreed to select from the Company's stores a complete assortment of nets and other necessaries for the use of the party in the winter of 1847-8.

The Company's ships sailed from the Thames on the 15th of June, 1847, and, being much delayed by ice in Hudson's Straits, had a long passage; so that the "Prince of Wales" did not cross the bar of Hayes River till the 25th of August, nor the "Westminster" until five days later; and the 8th of September arrived before the expedition stores were landed. Sir George Simpson, on his annual visit to the Company's depôt at Norway House, had engaged a guide or river pilot, with the requisite number of bowmen, steersmen, and fishermen, and placed the whole under the superintendence of Mr. John Bell, chief trader, who, having resided many years on the Mackenzie, was intimately acquainted with the natives inhabiting that part of the country. Notwithstanding the high wages offered, being much in advance of the rate ordinarily paid by the Company, and though none of these men were required to extend their services beyond the winter quarters of the party in 1848, there was a scarcity of volunteers; and several of the steersmen, that were, from the necessity of the case, engaged, were men of little experience. None of them were acquainted with the neighbourhood of Great Bear Lake, and they all anticipated with more or less apprehension a season of extreme hardship in that northern region. Mr. Bell's party consisted of twenty Europeans, a guide, and sixteen Company's voyagers, together with the wives of three of the latter, and two children; making in all, with himself and two of his own children, forty-five individuals, embarked in five boats. Had the ships arrived early, there was a possibility of the party reaching Isle à la Crosse before the navigation closed, which, in that district, may be expected to occur about the 20th of October. But the very late date at which the stores were disembarked precluded such a hope; and the extreme dryness of the season, and consequent lowness of the rivers between York Factory and Lake Winipeg, obliged Mr. Bell to leave a quantity of the pemican and some other packages at York Factory, that he might reduce the draught of his boats.

These facts were communicated to me on the return of the Hudson's Bay ships to England in October; and in February, 1848, I heard by letters forwarded through Canada, that Mr. Bell and his party had, from the causes specified, made slow progress; that the boats had been often stranded and broken in the shallow waters, causing frequent detention for repairs; and that the party was overtaken by winter in Cedar Lake. Mr. Bell forthwith housed the boats, constructed a storehouse for the goods, left several men to take care of them, and such of the women and children as were unable to travel over the snow. This being done, he set out with the bulk of the party for Cumberland House, and reached it on the eighth day after leaving Cedar Lake. His first care was to establish a fishery, which he did on Beaver Lake, two days' walk further north; and having sent a division of the men thither, the others were distributed to the several winter employments of cutting fire-wood, driving sledges with meat or fish, and such-like occupations. The unforeseen stoppage of the boats occasioned a large consumption of the pemican destined for the sea voyage, but was attended by no other bad consequences, and the deficiency was amply made up in spring through the exertions of the gentlemen in charge of the Company's provision posts on the Saskatchewan; so that Mr. Bell, when he resumed his voyage northwards in the summer of 1848, was enabled to take with him as much of that kind of food as his boats could stow.

While the body of the party was thus passing the winter at Cumberland House and its vicinity, I was almost daily receiving letters from officers of various ranks in the army and navy, and from civilians of different stations in life, expressing an ardent desire for employment in the expedition. It may interest the reader to know that among the applicants, there were two clergymen, one justice of peace for a Welsh county, several country gentlemen, and some scientific foreigners, all evidently imbued with a generous love of enterprise, and a humane desire to be the means of carrying relief to a large body of their fellow creatures. But as long as there remained a hope of the return of the discovery ships in the autumn of 1847, it was not thought necessary to take any steps for the appointment of a second officer to the party which I was to command. In November, however, when the last whalers from Davis's Straits had come in, I suggested to the late Lord Auckland, then the First Lord of the Admiralty, that Mr. John Rae, chief trader of the Hudson's Bay Company, was fully qualified for the peculiar nature of the service on which we were to be employed. He had resided upwards of fifteen years in Prince Rupert's Land, was thoroughly versed in all the methods of developing and turning to advantage the natural products of the country, a skilful hunter, expert in expedients for tempering the severity of the climate, an accurate observer with the sextant and other instruments usually employed to determine the latitude and longitude, or the variations and dip of the magnetic needle, and had just brought to a successful conclusion, under circumstances of very unusual privation, an expedition of discovery fitted out by the Hudson's Bay Company, for the purpose of exploring the limits of Regent's Inlet. Lord Auckland highly approved of my suggestion, and Mr. Rae was appointed with the assent of the Governor and Committee of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Mr. Rae and I left Liverpool on the 25th of March, 1848, in the North American mail steam-packet "Hibernia," and landed at New York on the morning of the 10th of April. In addition to our personal baggage, we took with us a few very portable astronomical instruments required for determining our positions; and four pocket chronometers, one of them being the property of Mr. Frodsham, which had been used on the several expeditions of Sir W. E. Parry and Sir John Ross, and which he wished to lend gratuitously for service in the present enterprise. We had also a few meteorological instruments, and some others for determining questions in magnetism, that shall be more particularly described hereafter, when their employment comes to be mentioned. An ample supply of paper for botanical purposes, a quantity of stationery, a small selection of books, a medicine chest, a canteen, a compendious cooking apparatus, and a few tins of pemican, completed our baggage, which weighed in the aggregate, above 4000 lbs.