CHAPTEK V 



TASMANIA AND THE ANTAECTIO 



FROM August 16 to November 12 they stayed at Tasmania. 

 The dominant person in the island was the Governor, Sir John 

 Franklin, 1 who, seconded by Lady Franklin, gave all aid and 

 welcome with the enthusiasm of an old Arctic explorer, indeed 

 volunteering to take a share himself in the long term day 

 observations, which reminded him, he declared, of old times 

 in the North. 2 Nor, later, did he forget Hooker. Lieutenant 



1 Sir John Franklin (1786-1847). Though he fought at Copenhagen and 

 Trafalgar, it was as an explorer that Franklin won chief distinction and became 

 the friend of the elder Hooker. From 1800 he had spent three years with 

 Flinders in the Investigator surveying the coasts of Australia. In 1818 he first 

 joined in the search for the North-West Passage, for the discovery of which 

 he ultimately paid with his life. Sailing eastwards from Spitsbergen, the 

 expedition had to turn back ; but Franklin, commanding the Trent, under 

 Buchan in the Dorothea, revealed himself as a great commander and a scientific 

 investigator and was elected F.R.S. in 1822. In 1819-23 he led an exploring 

 party along the Saskatchewan and the Coppermine rivers and eastward along 

 the coast ; in 1825-7 he descended the Mackenzie river and followed the 

 coast west, trying to meet Beechey, who was pushing east from ^ehring Strait. 

 From 1837-43 he was Lieutenant-Go vernor of Tasmania, where, as will be 

 seen, he welcomed Joseph Hooker ; in 1845 he set out on his last voyage in 

 the Erebus and Terror, Ross's ships in the Antarctic, accompanied by Ross's 

 second in command, Captain Crozier, and was heard of no more. Bet\veen 

 1847 and 1857 no less than thirty-nine search-parties were sent out from 

 England and America. Piece by piece the mystery was solved. Franklin 

 was one of those who died while the ships were hopelessly beset by ice for 

 eighteen months ; Captain Crozier and the rest, 105 in number, perished 

 as they tried to march homewards. 



2 Ross's ' devotion to his beloved pendulum ' was the dominant note. In 

 the primitive room whose floor was Mother Earth, for lack of timber, ' the 

 officers relieve one another in regular watches, and I never met with such 

 devotees to science. You would be delighted to see Captain R.'s little hammock 

 swinging close to his darling Pendulum, and a large hole in his thin partition, 

 that he may see it at any moment, and Captain Crozier 's hammock is close 

 alongside of it.' 



105 



