PART VII. 



FRANKLIN'S LAST AND FATAL EXPEDITION— 1845. 

 DR JOHN RAE'S FIRST EXPEDITION— 1846-47. 



CHAPTER I. 



PURPOSE OF THE EXPEDITION — EQUIPMENT OF THE SHIPS — COMMANDEB FITZ- 



JAMES'S JOURNAL SURGEON GOODSIR WISE FORBEARANCE — DISCO 



REACHED — LAST GLIMPSE OF THE SHIPS. 



The fatal expedition of Sir John Franklin, with one hundred and thirty- 

 seven officers and men' in the discoveiy ships " Erebus " and " Terror," is 

 the unique Arctic enterprise, the scanty records of which excite at once the 

 profoundest interest in a great national loss, yet fail to gratify that interest 

 with any but the meagrest details. Within the last thirty years more than 

 forty expeditions have been fitted out from England and America with the 

 view of rescuing the lost, should any such survive, or of bringing home 

 relics or records that might cast some light on their last days. Of these 

 search expeditions, the last was that of Captain Allen Young in the " Pan- 

 dora" in 1875. From year to year details, few indeed in number, but 

 priceless as illustrating the voyage of the " Erebus " and " Terror," have 

 been gathered by various explorers ; and the history of the fate of Franklin 

 and his companions (though it may possibly for ever remain an incomplete 

 record) must be regarded, in the light of the most recent discoveries, as, to 

 this day, unwritten. But Franklin's last expedition, besides being so pro- 

 foundly interesting, and yet — perhaps necessarily — so imperfectly com- 

 memorated in the works of any single writer hitherto, is remarkable for 

 other reasons. It distinctly marks an epoch in scientific naval enterprise 

 in England. It was the last of the great voyages of discovery in the first 

 half of the present century. It closes the great discoveries of the English 

 navigators of that era with the crowning achievement of demonstrating the 

 existence of a North-West Passage. It was the first expedition in which 

 steam was practically employed — for though the " Victory," which Ross 



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