What Happened to John Franklin? Danish and British Perspectives from Francis McClintock’s Arctic Expedition, 1857–59

Abstract

Abstract By the autumn of 1847 it was clear that John Franklin and his crew were lost in the Arctic. The explorer John Rae famously reported that Franklin’s men had died, and that the last survivors had resorted to cannibalism. This was not the news Franklin’s widow Lady Jane Franklin wanted to hear, and Rae was subsequently condemned by many prominent British figures including Charles Dickens. Not accepting Rae’s testimony, Lady Franklin organized an expedition led by Captain Francis Leopold McClintock using the steam yacht Fox. One of the crewmembers on board the Fox was the Danish Arctic explorer Carl Petersen. Using both Petersen’s narrative Den Sidste Franklin Expedition med Fox (1860), and McClintock’s narrative from the same expedition, The Voyage of the ‘Fox’ in the Arctic Seas (1859), as its starting point, this article examines key differences in the perceptions of the controversy surrounding Rae’s report to the Admiralty, and how Arctic explorers were represented in the Danish and British contexts. While the idea that Franklin’s men had resorted to cannibalism in a final attempt to sustain themselves before they passed away was a significant affront to the British notion of the heroic Arctic explorer, this was not the case in the Danish context. The lost Franklin expedition generated international interest, international collaboration, and financial assistance for search missions, and therefore affords us an opportunity to explore national differences in the construction of the Arctic and the Arctic explorer.