May 25, 1857.] FINAL ARCTIC SEARCH. 471 



Final Arctic Search. 



When I last addressed you as your President in 1853, it was still 

 my hopeful task, as in the previous year, to urge the Government 

 and the country to send out another expedition in search of my 

 old and honoured friend Franklin and his crews. I then con- 

 gratulated you upon fresh expectations having been raised by the 

 successful voyage of Lady Franklin's little vessel, the Isabel, under 

 Inglefield, and also in anticipation of good results from the large 

 public expedition under Belcher and Kellett. Alas, we know too 

 well what fatalities interfered with the solution of the great problem, 

 so clearly recorded last year by my lamented predecessor. Since this 

 Address was delivered, the light which had been thrown upon the 

 subject, whether by the information and memorials brought home by 

 Dr. Eae, or the exploration down the Back Eiver by Dr. Anderson, 

 has rendered me still more anxious to ascertain the real fate of the 

 Erebus and Terror, and their gallant crews. Through the un- 

 expected tidings communicated by our medallist Eae, we were no 

 longer allowed to speculate on the course followed by Franklin ; 

 the " whereabouts " of the journeyings of some, at least, of our 

 missing countrymen being for the first time made known. Had 

 these traces been discovered two years sooner, what efforts would 

 not have been saved to Great Britain and America ! All the endea- 

 vours of Belcher and De Haven to penetrate northwards by Wel- 

 lington Channel, as well as those of Kellett to communicate by a 

 north-western course with Collinson and McClure, and the almost 

 superhuman struggles of Kane to reach a Polar basin — all these might 

 have been averted! The daring efforts to penetrate with ships 

 through the intricate channels which separate the great islands of 

 the Arctic Archipelago, would have been stopped by that one fact, 

 and the Government would have known how to dissipate at once 

 the mystery which still hangs over the fate of the missing vessels 

 and a large portion of their crews. 



Is it, therefore, to be wondered at that many men of science wil- 

 lingly signed a memorial,* beseeching the Government to make a 

 final endeavour to search efficiently the area, at the edges of which 



* This document, which was prepared by myself, the list of subscribers being 

 headed by Admiral Sir F.Beaufort and General Sabine, was most kindly received 

 by Lord Palmerston in June, 1856, a month after the last Anniversary of this 

 Society. My pi'edecessors, Lord Ellesmere and Admiral Beechey, were among 

 the subscribers, as well as Lord Wrottesley, who in his last Anniversary Address to 

 the Eoyal Society handled the subject with great effect. See Proc. Roy. Soc, No. IV. 



