In 1949, human skeletal remains discovered by RCMP Inspector Henry Larsen near Cape Felix, King William Island, Nunavut, were identified as an adult male of European ancestry and a member of the 1845 Franklin Northwest Passage Expedition. The identification has never been questioned and is considered significant to reconstructions of the fate of the Franklin expedition because the sailor’s death presumably pre-dated the desertion of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in April 1848 and because no other human remains of expedition personnel have ever been found between Victory Point and Cape Felix. The aim of this study was to re-examine the basis on which the ancestry of the skeleton was interpreted to be European. A review of archival records revealed previously unpublished details concerning the location and context of the discovery, and re-assessments of the antiquity and of key morphological attributes of the bones suggest they are those of an adult male Inuk and have no connection to the 1845 Franklin expedition.

Sir Clements Markham (1830-1916), secretary of the Royal Geographical Society for many decades, is best known for his role in shaping the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and especially the career of his protege Robert Falcon Scott. His unpublished work of Franklin Expedition fiction, a 350-page handwritten manuscript held in the collection of the RGS, is an understudied artefact which has much to say about Markham’s life, work, and ideology. A work of fact-based history, yet also a fantasy on themes of chivalry, his 1899 novel James Fitzjames…, while occasionally mined for biographical information by scholars of the 19th-century Arctic, has never been fully evaluated on its own terms. An initial read reveals various preoccupations: Christian spirituality; the male body in extremis; loyalty to the imperial hierarchy; and a deep interest in establishing James Fitzjames as a heroic figure for posterity. In this paper, I aim to uncover various meanings embedded in this romance, place it into the ongoing literary afterlife of the Franklin Expedition, and demonstrate some of the insights it can offer regarding Markham’s role as a vital figure in the history of polar exploration.

The loss of Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition has provoked speculation about the cause of the fatal outcome from the expedition’s departure in 1845 to the present day. This study describes how The Lancet, first published in 1823 and now one of the world’s leading medical journals, drew conclusions at the time of the expedition’s loss, which closely parallel those of today’s most recent research. The journal took evidence from Arctic medical and naval experts to conclude in 1859 that the Admiralty’s misdirected searches committed the crews to ice-bound entrapment, which had fatal nutritional consequences. The Lancet’s prescience has been supported by recent research showing that the unique physical circumstances faced by the expedition had nutritional effects related to vitamin deficiencies, which explain mortality over the third winter and the eventual total loss. It is significant that, although published 160 years apart and with vitamins unknown in the Victorian era, both studies took robust evidence-based approaches to draw similar conclusions.

Much has been written about the so-called Franklin expedition (1845–), but not about the master mariners, who joined as “Greenland pilots,” as experienced whaling masters on Royal Navy expeditions were usually called in the 19th century. Having been on Royal Navy expeditions to the Arctic before, Thomas Blanky, the ice master of HMS Terror, was mentioned here and there in contemporary sources. But who he was and how and why he joined the expedition are still widely unanswered questions, to be dealt with for the first time here.

Much has been written about the so-called Franklin expedition (1845–52?), but not about the master mariners, who joined as “Greenland pilots,” as experienced whaling masters on Royal Navy expeditions were usually called in the 19th century. Having been on no Royal Navy expeditions before, next to nothing was known about Scottish whaling master James Reid, the ice master of HMS Erebus in Franklin’s expedition. Putting together all the available biographical information about him for the first time, the goal of this article is not only to tell who he was but also to tell how and why he joined the expedition, and as far as this is possible to say – what he experienced in its course.

Prior to 2009, it had been generally accepted that Captain Crozier was born in September 1796 and most likely on the 17th of that month. Further research, published in this Journal, then suggested that upon a fresh scrutiny of the evidence the alternative date of 16 August 1796 was more probable. This note proposes that whilst the date of 16 August was of significance to Captain Crozier, that significance was other than natal and furthermore that alternative evidence, namely a letter dated 20 March 1810 from his father to the 3rd Marquess of Downshire, records his date of birth as being 17 October 1796.

On 24 May 1847, Sir John Franklin’s third expedition reported “All well”, but less than a year later, on 22 April 1848, the 129 sailors who had set out from Britain on Erebus and Terror had been reduced to 105 survivors departing their frozen ships in a desperate attempt to escape the Arctic. At least 24 were so unhealthy that they would perish after having travelled little more than 100 km from the ships. By contrast, the small mortality rates on other contemporary Arctic expeditions, some of which stayed in the Arctic considerably longer, were consistent with the mortality rates in the Royal Navy worldwide. This paper explores the question of what difference caused so many of Franklin’s crew to die during their final months on-board the ships and in the initial stages of the escape attempt. From the perspective of cultural ecology, the most significant difference, and the ultimate cause of the catastrophe as it unfolded, was wintering in the ice pack. This distinguished the Franklin expedition from all of the other comparable overwintering expeditions, and precluded the Erebus and Terror crews from hunting or fishing. That in turn led to nutritional deficiencies due to much greater reliance on stored provisions than other expeditions.

On 22 April 1848, after three years in the Arctic, and 19 months spent ice-bound in northern Victoria Strait, the 105 surviving officers and crew of the Franklin Northwest Passage expedition deserted HMS Erebus and HMS Terror as the first step of their escape plan. They assembled at a camp south of Victory Point on the northwest coast of King William Island and made the final preparations for the next step, a 400 km trek along the frozen seashores of King William Island and Adelaide Peninsula to the Back River. All of the men died before reaching their destination, and their remains have been found at 35 locations along the route of the retreat. These discoveries have played a central role in reenactments of events thought to have occurred during the failed attempt to reach the Back River and to the disastrous outcome of the expedition. This paper presents a summary of these findings and examines the criteria used to attribute them to the Franklin expedition. It is suggested that approximately one-third of the identifications have been based on information that is inadequate to confidently assign the human remains as those of Franklin expedition personnel.