FRANKLIN. 91 



23. JOHN FRANKLIN. 



JOHN FRANKLIN was born at Spilsby, Lincolnshire, England, April 16, 1786. 

 At about 14 years he cruised on a merchantman and at 15 was entered as mid- 

 shipman on the Polyphemus and participated in her in the battle of Copenhagen 

 (April 1801). Two months later he joined the Investigator, a ship of discovery, 

 commanded by Captain Matthew Flinders (his kinsman), on which for nearly 

 two years he surveyed the coasts of Australia. He was wrecked on a coral reef 

 off Australia. Having returned to England, he joined the Bellerophon and was 

 in charge of its signals during the battle of Trafalgar. At the close of the war 

 with France (until which he was engaged in various naval services), he took up 

 again the work of surveying. In 1818 he started for the Northwest Passage, in 

 command of the Trent, but the accompanying Dorothea having become damaged 

 by ice, Franklin had to convoy her home. The next year he was placed in com- 

 mand of an exploring party that started overland from the shores of Hudson's 

 Bay to the Arctic shore near the mouth of the Coppermine river and back, a 

 distance of 5,500 miles. In 1825 Captain Franklin was so steadfastly bent on going 

 to sea that "to settle to business would be merely impossible." It was in action 

 that his restless spirit always found it hardest to bear; a year and a half ashore was 

 always a sufficient spell of the landsman's life for him. This year he went to 

 Canada, descended the Mackenzie River to its mouth, and traced the North 

 American coast as far as nearly to 150 West longitude. Honors were showered 

 on him on his return to England, and he published, with Dr. Richardson, an 

 account of his discoveries. He was next placed on the Mediterranean station for 

 a few years and then, in 1836, he was made lieutenant governor of Tasmania, where 

 he democratized the government, founded a college and a scientific society, and 

 assisted in the formation of a magnetic observatory at Hobart Town. In 1844 

 he returned to England, where he entered into plans that had already been laid for 

 polar research and was given charge of the expedition to discover a northwest 

 passage. He left Greenland in high spirits, and this was the last heard of him 

 directly. Subsequent search revealed that he spent the winter of 1845-1846 on 

 Beechey Island; in the autumn of 1846 his ships Erebus and Terror were beset by ice 

 and held by it during the following winter and summer. Sir John Franklin died in 

 June 1847, and the survivors started, in April 1848, on an overland journey through 

 northern Canada, but all perished on the way, leaving only their journals and bones 

 to tell their fate to the search expeditions, notably that of McClintock (q. v.). 



A brother, James (III 9), entered the East India Company's service as a cadet 

 and served in the Pindari War; and a brother, Willingham, went to Madras as judge. 

 John Franklin had a native love of discovery a curiosity. As a child he 

 had an irrepressible desire to watch callers upon a family across the way who enter- 

 tamed a great deal. From the time of his visit in an exploring trip to Australia 

 it was certainly maritime discovery rather than naval warfare upon which his 

 mind was fixed. In 1835, while waiting for employment, he made a tour of Ireland 

 with his wife; "Franklin's untiring intellectual curiosity and thirst for informa- 

 tion made it impossible for him to regard any sojourn in a new country from the 

 point of view of mere amusement, and his well-filled notebooks attest the diligence 

 with which he endeavored to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the rural 

 and economical conditions of Irish life." In Tasmania "he continued to lose him- 

 self and an exploring party in the hitherto unthreaded bush, from which, indeed, they 



