PURPOSE OF THE EXPEDITION. 383 



machinery, and thus to some extent armed for the contest with the ice, and 

 the sailors, better trained now than ever, by tradition, by personal experience, 

 and by geographical science, had an important advantage over earlier navi- 

 gators in the circumstance that they were about to enter on no aimless task, 

 but had a definite, and, in part, a well-known route laid down for them on 

 the chart of the Polar regions. That chart, almost a blank prior to 1819, 

 when Parry, the " first that ever burst into that silent sea," broke the charm 

 of silence and mystery under which these Polar regions had lain so long, 

 by entering Lancaster Sound and sailing westward half-way to Behring 

 Strait, was now marked by the tracks of successive explorers. In the north 

 of the region, ships had sailed from Bafiin Bay west to about long. 113°, 

 while in the south different explorers — Cook, Beechey, Simpson, Franklin, 

 Eichardson, and Back — ^had explored the whole North American coast east- 

 ward from the Pacific at Behring Strait to the 95th meridian west. The 

 Polar discoveries of the century, it will thus be seen, overlapped each other, 

 in an east and west direction, to the extent of no less than eighteen degrees 

 of longitude. The geographical problem, therefore, of the promoters of 

 renewed Arctic enterprise in 1843 was one simple enough, at least in scope, 

 namely, to demonstrate by discovery the existence of a sea-way connecting 

 the open water between longitude 95° and 113° in the latitude of Barrow Strait 

 and Melville Island on the north, with the open water between the same 

 meridians in the latitude of the shores of the Polar Sea in the south. In 

 other words, the one object of the period was to accomplish the discovery 

 of a complete north-west passage by connecting the discoveries of Parry on 

 the north with those of the overland explorers on the shores of the Polar 

 Sea. " How simple a matter it appeared," exclaims a recent writer, " to 

 connect the water in which Parry sailed to Melville Island in 1819 with 

 Dease and Simpson's easternmost position off the coast of America in 1838." 

 [Dease and Simpson, however, did not reach their " easternmost position " 

 till 1839.] The most eminent scientific men of the day. Sir John Barrow, 

 secretary of the Admiralty, Sir Francis Beaufort, and among explorers, 

 Parry, Sabine, Eoss, and Franklin, were eager that Government should fit 

 out an expedition for the accomplishment of this object ; and whatever may 

 have been said respecting the hopelessness of the undertaking at that time 

 and subsequently, this at least must be stated as evidence of the sound 

 judgment of the authorities named, that the expedition organised at their 

 suggestion actually and completely achieved the intended purpose— the 

 discovery of a North- West Passage. 



Sir John Franklin had been appointed Governor of Tasmania in 1838, 

 and for six years he discharged the duties of his post in such a manner as 

 to win the grateful esteem of the colonists. But Franklin was a born sea- 

 man, and his six years of civil employment had only the effect of intepsify- 



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