PART IX. 



ON FRANKLIN'S TRACK. 



OHAPTEE I. 



CAPTAIN PENNY, WHALING MASTER AND EXPLORER — GOODSIR's "VOYAGE IN 

 THE ' ADVICE ' (wHALER), IN SEARCH OF FRIENDS WITH SIR JOHN 

 FRANKLIN." 



Captain Penny, the discoverer of the first winter quarters (1845-46) of 

 Sir John Franklin's squadron, and, in virtue of this discovery, the first 

 navigator who had the good fortune to strike the track of the lost expedition, 

 seems to have been born to, as he has certainly lived upon, the sea. He was 

 born in 1809. At what period of infancy he took to a seafaring life is not 

 to the present writer known ; but it is certain that, at the — for him — com- 

 paratively mature age of twelve, he was already an Arctic navigator, and 

 since that period he has spent his professional life exclusively in Arctic seas, 

 fluid and frozen. Prior to the year in which he was selected by the Lords 

 Commissioners of the Admiralty to command an expedition in search of 

 Sir John Franklin, he had been in command of a whaling ship for sixteen 

 years. At the period, therefore, when he was invited to sail under the red 

 pendant, he, of all British seamen living, had the most thorough knowledge 

 and the amplest practical experience of what is loosely termed " ice-naviga- 

 tion ; " and it was in deference to these qualifications, as well as to the well- 

 known resolute character of the man, his fertility of resource, and his zeal in 

 the humane and patriotic cause which he was asked to aid, that he was ap- 

 pointed to the command of H.M. rescue ships, " Lady Franklin " and 

 "Sophia," in the early spring of 1850. 



But, in order to attain to something like an adequate notion of the char- 

 acter and capabilities of this famous navigator and discoverer, it seems 

 almost necessary to accompany him on one of his whaling voyages. Of 

 these voyages, probably none was more stirring or more successful than that 



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