Wikiplacemarks.com  
 



Find us on Google+

Franklin's lost expedition hand written note in cairn

View on map:69.808361°N 98.036499°W

Comments

The precise location on the northwest part of the island needs to be found. 

Description


Franklin's lost expedition

In April 1859, sledge parties set out from Fox to search on King William Island. On 5 May, the party led by Royal Navy Lieutenant William Hobson found a document in a cairn left by Crozier and Fitzjames.[41] It contained two messages. The first, dated 28 May 1847, said that Erebus and Terror had wintered in the ice off the northwest coast of King William Island and had wintered earlier at Beechey Island after circumnavigating Cornwallis Island. "Sir John Franklin commanding the Expedition. All well ", the message said.[42] The second message, written in the margins of that same sheet of paper, was much more ominous. Dated 25 April 1848, it reported that Erebus and Terror had been trapped in the ice for a year and a half and that the crew had abandoned the ships on 22 April. Twenty-four officers and crew had died, including Franklin on 11 June 1847, just two weeks after the date of the first note. Crozier was commanding the expedition, and the 105 survivors planned to start out the next day, heading south towards the Back River.[43] This note contains significant errors; most notably the date of the expedition's winter camp at Beechey Island is incorrectly given as 1846–47 rather than 1845–46.

References

All text is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Average user rating: Not rated

Click on a star to rate
 

Do you have a form that you would like to turn into an application?

Please share your ideas with us.

Contact us...