484 THE FRANKLIN SEAECH— 184:8-51. 



the ships, which remained firmly beset in the drifting pack until the 25th of 

 the month. Eoss had by this time drifted out of Lancaster Sound, and was 

 now off Pond's Bay. The navigation of the great northern strait had closed 

 for the year ; and as further search was therefore at an end, the commander 

 brought the expedition to a close by giving the order to "bear up" for Eng- 

 land. This expedition, in which no trace of Franklin was found, is only 

 memorable for Sir James Eoss's sledge travelling round the north and west 

 shores of North Somerset, in which he was absent from his ship forty days, 

 and in which the distance traversed was 500 miles. 



Auxiliary Voyage of the "North Star."— On the 26th May 1849, the 

 store-ship " North Star," under the command of Mr Saunders, sailed from 

 the Thames with provisions and supplies, both for Franklin's expedition and 

 for that of Sir James Eoss. Mr Saunders worked his vessel up the east 

 side of Baffin's Bay amid constant and imminent danger from the ice, which 

 was unusually heavy in the bay in the summer of 1849. Saunders's orders were 

 to proceed to Lancaster Sound with despatches and supplies for Eoss, and 

 afterwards to examine the great sounds at the head of Baffin's Bay. His pro- 

 gress was very slow, and it was the 29th July before he reached Melville Bay. 

 In endeavouring to cross over from this bay to Lancaster Sound, Saunders 

 was caught in the ice, and the " North Star " was drifted hopelessly about 

 in the pack for sixty-two days. At length on the 29th September she was 

 providentially driven into Wolstenholme Sound, where she wintered in lat. 

 76° 33' N., long. 68° 56^' W., " being," says Eichardson, "the most northerly 

 position in which any vessel has been known to have been laid up." In this 

 high latitude, the greatest cold was felt in February, during which, on one 

 occasion, the thermometer showed 64^° Fahr. below zero. 



The story of the wintering of this unfortunate vessel in Wolstenholme 

 Sound has never been written. We know, however, that four of the crew 

 died of scurvy, and that the whole suffered more or less from the same 

 cause. The detention of Mr Saunders in this remote sound, however, 

 enabled him to contradict a mischievous Eskimo report as to the fate of 

 Franklin's ship, which, had it been accepted as true, would have brought the 

 searching operations at once to a close. It appears that Sir John Eoss 

 had, during his cruise in the " Felix," picked up an Eskimo at Holstein- 

 borg, named Adam Beck — a clever, ingenious, lying wretch, who gave cur- 

 rency to a report that " two ships had been destroyed by fire in Wolsten- 

 holme Sound, and their crews massacred by the natives." This report 

 happened to explode like a bomb-shell during the second week in August, 

 when almost all the searching ships had accidentally come together in the 

 neighbourhood of the scene in which the tragedy was said to have oc- 

 curred. Many of the officers of the different expeditions were inclined to 



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