Franklin, Sir John

Franklin, Sir John (1786–1847). After a distinguished naval career in the wars against Napoleon, Franklin became the most famous British Arctic explorer of his day. Then, like Livingstone, at the end of his life, he became even more of a national figure by disappearing into the unknown. Although a naval officer trained in 1818 in using large ships to force a way through the ice of the Canadian north to find the North-West Passage and arguably a victim of that policy, Franklin made his greatest discoveries on two overland journeys of 1818–22 and 1825–7 when he explored vast areas of northern mainland Canada and traced the northern coast. After a spell as governor of Tasmania from 1834 to 1843, he was chosen to take the Antarctic ships Erebus and Terror, which Ross had used, to the Arctic to force the North-West Passage. It was later learned that, having got through sea passages to the west side of King William Island, the ships had frozen in. Franklin died, but his men survived to perish later of scurvy, starvation, and lead poisoning from their tinned foods. No fewer than 40 official and unofficial expeditions searched for Franklin (and in the process, ironically, showed there was a North-West Passage) but not until 1859 was the nature of the disaster fully established.

Roy C. Bridges