260 FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN EXPEDITION 



laurels won in such good service for your country," "My lord, I 

 am but fifty-nine." "He appeared," says La Roquette, "as jealous 

 of a few months of his age, when it was a question of exposure to 

 great danger, or of executing a work of difficulty or suffering, as a 

 woman would be of being thought older than the parish register 

 showed." 



The prestige of Arctic service, and of his brilliant experience 

 in that field, brought around him a crowd of volunteers for the new 

 expedition, which set out under the best auspices and with ardent 

 hopes of a brilliant and successful voyage. Franklin's experience 

 had previously been along the northern coast line of the American 

 continent. Now he proposed to traverse the islanded seas border- 

 ing that coast, with the purpose of discovering that famed North- 

 west Passage which so many navigators of the past centuries had 

 sought in vain. Daring mariners had fought their way far through 

 the channels and passages of that region, and there was reason to 

 hope that Franklin, with his superior equipment, and his use of the 

 charts made by former voyagers from Frobisher down, would suc- 

 ceed where so many had failed. 



The ships chosen were the 37O-ton screw steamer "Erebus" 

 and the 34O-ton "Terror," vessels which had already made a record 

 in the Antarctic region and whose good fortune, it was trusted, 

 would follow them into the Arctic. These were the vessels which 

 had borne Sir James Ross and his party in his memorable Antarctic 

 exploration of 1839-43, when he reached the seventy-eighth degree 

 of south latitude and discovered an ice-bound region of continental 

 extent, which he named Victoria Land and traced its coast for 

 seven hundred miles. These vessels, the "Erebus" under Sir John 

 Franklin and the "Terror" under Captain Crozier, both carefully 

 refitted and provisioned for three years, sailed from the Thames in 

 the sping of 1845. 



The officers and men were one hundred and thirty-four in 

 number, a transport ship accompanied the expedition to carry stores 



