Various - Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 686

Sir Edward Belcher, at a time when the public anxiety about the unknown fate of Franklin was most intense, was in 1852 placed in command of an expedition more complete than any that had been previously despatched to those regions. It comprised the Resolute under Captain Kellett, the Intrepid under Captain M'Clintock, the Pioneer under Captain Sherard Osborn, the Assistance under Belcher himself, and two or three auxiliary vessels. We have not here to tell how it arose that the ships made few or no discoveries, and disappointed the government in more ways than one. The sledgings, however, were splendid; and it was a joy to all that the expedition brought M'Clure and his crew safely back to their native land. Never were officers more deeply disappointed than when Belcher commanded them, one after another, to abandon their ships in 1854. He had been out two winters; some of the ships had been long ice-bound; and the sense he entertained of his responsibility impelled him to adopt a step which certainly could not have been adopted willingly. He ordered Kellett to abandon the immovable Resolute , M'Clintock the Intrepid , and Sherard Osborn the Pioneer ; he himself abandoned the Assistance ; and the officers and crews of all four ships obtained a passage to England in such other vessels as happened to be available in the autumn of 1854. Not only so, but they also brought with them M'Clure and the crew of the Investigator (as denoted in the last paragraph). Out of these five abandoned ships four have never, so far as we are aware, been since seen by Europeans. They may perchance be iced up still, or have fallen to pieces by repeated shocks from masses of ice loosened during the brief summers. One at Mercy Bay in Banks Land, two on the shores of Melville Island, two in Wellington Channel – such were the localities of the derelicts. Perhaps some future explorers will tell us something of four of these brave old weather-beaten craft, of which, for more than twenty years, we have known nothing.

Not so concerning the fifth. And here we are brought to the deeply interesting episode of derelict briefly indicated at the beginning of this paper. Judging from such facts as appear reliable, it is probable that the ice around the Resolute loosened somewhat during the autumn of 1854; that she was drifted slowly by the current until another winter nipped her, and held her ice-bound at some point nearer the entrance to Baffin's Bay; that she was again loosened in the summer of 1855, and drifted leisurely down Davis's Strait to the point where Captain Buddington espied the wanderer. Two facts are certainly known: that the distance drifted could not have been less than a thousand miles, from Melville Island through Barrow Strait, Lancaster Sound, and Baffin's Bay to Davis's Strait; and that four hundred and seventy-four days elapsed between the abandonment and the recovery. The tough old ship was still sound; a little water had entered the hold, and a few perishable articles had decayed, but in other respects the Resolute appeared not much the worse for her strange voyage.

When the English government heard of this remarkable recovery of the old weather-beaten craft, they at once waived any right or claim they may have had to it, and surrendered it to Captain Buddington and his crew as the salvors. After nearly a year had elapsed since the recovery, an Act of Congress was passed, empowering the United States government to expend forty thousand dollars (about eight thousand pounds) in the purchase of the ship and its trappings from the fortunate finders, and the presentation of it to England as a graceful act on the part of the Great Republic. The plan was excellently carried into effect. In one of the American navy yards the Resolute was thoroughly overhauled, the defects repaired, all the equipments and stores replaced – even the officers' books, pictures, and miscellaneous articles returned exactly to the places they had occupied in the cabins. Captain Hartstein, of the United States navy, was commissioned to bring the ship to England. He arrived near Cowes shortly before the close of the year 1856; the Queen, the Prince Consort, and other members of the royal family went on board and inspected the old Resolute . The royal visitors having taken their departure, the vessel was towed into Portsmouth harbour amid much gay ceremonial, and was handed over to the authorities of the dockyard. Early in 1857 Captain Hartstein and his companions returned to America. It is mortifying to have to read that, owing to some niggardliness at the Admiralty, or perhaps more correctly that want of sentiment in English officials, we gave a shabby return for a graceful act. The Resolute should have been maintained as a memento of a most remarkable episode, even if not actually employed in further service; instead of this, the ship was dismantled and converted into a mere hulk! Another derelict was the Advance . This vessel, provided by the munificence of an American merchant, Mr Grinnell, was placed under the command of Dr Kane, and sent northward in 1853 to search for Franklin. Kane made an historically famous progress up Smith Sound to such a latitude as to bring that route into favour among Arctic explorers. The return journey was, however, a terrible one. After two winterings in the ice he abandoned his poor ship in April 1855, and made a three months' sledge-journey to the Danish settlements in Greenland. Has the Advance ever been seen by later explorers; has it been iced up for twenty-two years; or have shocks and nippings shattered it to fragments?

The Polaris , connected with an American expedition, was abandoned in October 1872, and the officers and crew returned to the United States by boats. Storms, driftings, and other calamities led to a division of the crew into two parties. One worked their way down Davis's Strait, or were drifted thither, and were picked up in April 1873 by the Tigress , off the coast of Labrador; the others, making boats out of some of the timbers of the Polaris , managed to reach the eastern side of Baffin's Bay, where they were picked up by the Ravenscraig whaler in the autumn of the same year. The poor Polaris scarcely deserved the name of a derelict; for only portions of a hull were left stranded on a coast of the icy sea.

One more example, and this also from the Arctic regions. In 1872 the Austrians did excellent work in furtherance of maritime research by fitting out a private expedition in the small ship Tegetthoff , under the management of Lieutenants Weyprecht and Payer. Instead of taking the Baffin's Bay and Smith Sound route, the Tegetthoff coasted round Norway to Nova Zembla, and wintered off that island. Instead of being free to sail in the following summer, the ship was fast locked in an ice-floe from which she could not be extricated, and drifted when the floe drifted. Luckily the drift was just in the direction which the explorers wished to go, almost due north. They came most unexpectedly to a group of islands until then totally unknown, the largest of which they named Franz Josef Land, in honour of the Emperor of Austria. They wintered in the high latitude of eighty-one degrees north, and made excellent sledge-expeditions in the spring of 1874, an account of which, together with other interesting details, was given last month in this Journal . Returning to the Tegetthoff , they found her still immovably fixed in the ice. A prospect of exhausted stores and provisions led to a resolution to abandon the ship; this was done in the summer; and a boat-voyage of three months brought the hardy adventurers to the mainland in the autumn of the same year. We cannot help fancying that the abandoned ship will one day fall into friendly hands; and if it does, the salvors will find many interesting things on board; for the crew brought away as little as possible with them, in order not to overload the boats. Meanwhile the Tegetthoff is 'waiting till called for.'

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