Pigeons and Hectographs

A few weeks ago, news broke of a WWII-era carrier pigeon, whose bones were recently found in a chimney in Surrey. And, more remarkably, attached to one of the deceased bird's legs was a small red cylinder which still contained its original encrypted message! There was a good deal of excitement, and the hope was widely expressed that the message could be decrypted, until it turned out -- according, at least to the GCHQ, the UK government's agency for such things, that the message could not be decrypted, since it apparently had made use of a "one time pad," a form of encryption which, assuming its key is truly random and is only used once, is impossible to break.

It may well be that the message itself will never be known, but, thanks to Nick Pelling and followers at his Cipher Mysteries blog, it turns out one can still learn a good deal about it. The message was signed, after all, by one "W. Stot Sjt" -- the "j" in "Serjeant" makes him a British Army NCO, as the name of that rank was spelt with a "g" in other branches of service -- so Pelling and company tracked him down and identified him as Lance Serjeant William Stout.  Stout, who died of wounds suffered on D-Day and was buried in France, and had a brief but spectacular moment of service in that campaign, apparently managing almost single-handedly to disable several German gun emplacements that lay between his unit's tanks and their goal of Caen. If sent by him, then, the message must have been dispatched on D-Day itself, and may well have consisted of a request for aerial bombardment of certain targets related to this operation, and (possibly, but I think less likely) a note that Stout had been gravely wounded. I would guess that the message was more likely sent prior to Stout's heroic actions, but unless it's eventually deciphered we may never know. Pelling also points out that that the pencilled addendum -- "lib. 1625" -- must have been made by a French speaker, since lib. was almost certainly short for "libéré" -- set free, the time of the pigeon's release for the homeward flight.

And that was when I noticed something odd, something that reminded me of a recent post of mine here about the Greely expedition's "Arctic Moon" newspaper: why were the cipher text, the Serjeant's signature, and the "Time of origin" filled out in blue, while the pigeon's name and number and time of release were written in pencil by a Frenchman?  The blue could, I suppose, have been a ball-point pen (a luxury item hard to obtain in wartime) or, perhaps the original message was, in fact, a hectograph. The pencil-weilding Frenchman indicated that there were two copies; how better to make them quickly than to use a hectograph?  The Serjeant would, with a pre-supplied form, have written the ciphertext master; this would have been taken to the officer in charge of actually dispatching the birds.  He would then have used it to make two hectographic copies, adding the details on each bird to both copies just prior to their release, and then destroying the original.  But were hectographs used at this time for this purpose? Yes indeed, according to this page, which details the work of a young woman, Pauline Gorman, who served at the Allied Forces headquarters in North Africa:

[Gorman] also operated a hectograph machine, a printing process which involved the transfer of an original, prepared with special inks, to a pan of gelatin or a gelatin pad pulled tight on a metal frame. Hectography, which required limited technology — and left few traces behind — could be used in clandestine operations.

The traces left by this process are apparent on the image of the original shown above: at the sixth line of cipher text, the bottom and part of the middle of the last two five-letter groups is oddly darker than the surrounding text, in a way that does not seem to correspond with likely variations in the pressure of a pen.  There's also some unusual touch-up at the left of the line above in the group "UAOTA." This could have been made with a hectograph pencil, the same as used for the original master copy, if (as may have happened) the duplication left these letters indistinct.

The use of the hectograph explains why a message encrypted by a British Army NCO would have been sent and marked by a French soldier -- the Frenchman was at a different location, where the birds were kept, and was using a hectograph to make copies, a good idea given that a single message would have had a far lesser chance of reaching its destination.

Arctic Newspapers III: The Polar Almanac

In the annals of Arctic newspapers, the Polar Almanac holds pride of place: it was actually printed using movable type and a press aboard H.M.S. Enterprise in Arctic Bay in 1853-4, making it -- at a slim 24 pages -- the most northerly printed book in the world. The technical challenges facing such a production, in a period when ink could, even aboard ship, freeze solid, and the cold metal parts of the press labored under the reduced efficacy of congealed lubricants, were daunting, and it is a remarkable credit to Henry Hester, the ship's coxswain, that he managed as much as he did.  Some pages were blank, or contained only a literal "almanac" of locations and temperature readings, but many had full-page text. The whole was printed on light green paper and bound in cream-colored wrappers; the print run seems to have been fairly small, as only a handful of copies have survived. Elaine Hoag, a rare book bibliographer at the National Library of Canada, and expert on Arctic shipboard printing, says only five. In her article, "Caxtons of the North," she also notes several unusual features of this newspaper: 1) That the coxswain, rather than the ship's clerk, served as printer (a necessity since the clerk, Edward Whitehead, had died earlier on the voyage); 2) The green paper of four of the surviving copies, originally intended for balloon messages, perhaps to aid in their visibility amidst the wilderness of white; 3) That it was printed with a very limited fond of type, which contained (for instance) no italic letters. It was not at all a newspaper in the sense of (even) some of the more elaborate manuscript papers, but it had the distinction of being entirely printed.

The page shown here is from what is believed to by Captain Collinson's personal copy, as it was passed down through his family, and is in remarkably good condition.

Arctic Newspapers II: The Arctic Moon

Among the more unusual papers printed by Arctic explorers is the Arctic Moon, published at Fort Conger by members of the Greely Expedition.  It was unusual not only for its content, but for its means of production; the Moon was printed using an apparatus known as the "hektograph"or gelatin duplicator, a relatively new invention at the time, and a distant cousin of the mimeograph machines common in the 1960's and '70's. Like the mimeograph, the hektograph used a dense ink containing a dark blue analine dye; one wrote with a special pencil upon coated paper; this paper was then lain down upon a bed of gelatin, which absorbed the ink. To "print" additional copies, one lay a sheet of clean paper on top of the bed of gelatin, and gently passed a roller over the surface.  The ink was then absorbed by the paper, which was then removed and allowed to dry. Lieutenant Lockwood and Sergeant Rice were the principal producers and editors of this newspaper; Lockwood drew the masthead, which depicted the main building at Fort Conger, while Rice oversaw the production; it was noted at the time that he was able to produce "enough for all, and many to spare."

This copy of the Arctic Moon was that belonging to Sergeant David L. Brainard, and is from the private collection of a friend. Alas, like nearly all surviving copies, it has suffered considerable indignities, becoming folded, torn, and water-stained on it way to becoming a dear-bought souvenir of a terrible ordeal.  There is said to be one nearly perfect copy in the archives of the Bostonian Society, but I have not been able to personally inspect it (although I certainly hope to do so someday).

The hektograph -- later hectograph -- process continued to be used well into the 1940's, when drum-based machines such as the mimeograph, as well as ink-extrusion ones such as the Gestetner, overtook it in popularity and ease of use.

Arctic Newspapers (Part 1)

The subject of shipboard newspapers in the Arctic is a large one, dating back to William Edward Parry's sojourn at Winter Harbor on Melville Island in 1819-1820, and extending through the Franklin search era of the 1850's and beyond. The earlier newspapers are distinguished in that they were circulated in manuscript, since no one had thought to bring along a printing press, but in every other way they were conducted as were their print cousins. The North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle, founded and edited by Edward Sabine on Parry's voyage, proposed as much in its first announcement:

It has been suggested that the establishment of a Weekly Newspaper may assist in enlivening the tedious and inactive months of winter, It is in contemplation therefore, to try the experiment, by circulating the first Number of the "WINTER CHRONICLE" amongst the officers of the Expedition, on Monday the 1st of November.

Sabine's efforts succeeded far beyond the original designs; the newspaper ran to twenty-one numbers, ending in March of 1820, and was crammed with all sorts of matter: News (such as it was), poems, songs, announcement for plays at the Theatre Royal, North Georgia, numerous letters to the Editor, most signed with clever pseudonyms ("Philosophicus," "Peter Trial," "Scepticus," and "Trim") and engaging in lively debate with the paper, and each other.  The results -- lightly censored, as one would expect -- had the distinction of being printed soon after Parry's official narrative, both in England and in its first American edition, printed in Philadelphia by Abraham Small, where it was bound in as a supplement to Parry's narrative. This book graces my shelves, and the paper appears thusly in its pages. It can also be perused via Google Books, and recently there was a lovely stand-alone edition published by the Green Lantern Press.

Most other early "newspapers," like the North Georgia Gazette, were not printed until after the expedition's return.  Some, though, were clearly made in anticipation of such a possibility, and among these the Illustrated Arctic News, conducted aboard HMS "Resolute,"  has pride of place. Modeled upon the Illustrated London News, with which all the (literate) crew members were to some degree familiar, it included illustrations, ornaments, and illuminated capitals of all kinds. Happily, through the good offices of the Internet Archive, you can peruse the printed facsimile, though alas not in color, a feature even the "real" illustrated papers in London did not yet possess.

Some later newspapers were, in part or whole, actually printed on board ship; Elaine Hoag of the National Library of Canada has published the most extensive research on these, both in her essay "Caxtons of the North" and in her earlier "Shipboard printing on the Franklin search expeditions," and these, along with other printed materials, will be the subject of my next post.

Guest post: Dave Woodman's Top 7

With the great interest in my earlier post about the best books with which to launch one's armchair expedition in search of Franklin, I was delighted to receive, from David C. Woodman, his personal recommendations for the top seven books on the subject, and the ideal order to read them in.  Here is his list.

1. Search for Franklin - Neatby, L.H. : A lucid and readable introduction to the subject for the "newbie" just starting out that is good for context. If you are already familiar with the subject to the extent that you know who Fitzjames is you may safely skip this and go to:

2. Sir John Franklin's Last Arctic Expedition - Cyriax, R.J. : A timeless classic, a little dated and conventional as Cyriax hated speculation. Published in 1939 so doesn't have the most recent findings, but still excellent.

3 . Barrow's Boys - Fergus Fleming : A great book to put the whole Victorian craze with exploration, and the Franklin Expedition, in a wider perspective. Fleming also brings the whole arctic enterprise alive with colourful descriptions of the actors. An easy read full of gems - after reading this you will have a deeper understanding of the men whose exploits are often recorded so matter-of-factly -  you will never think of Lyon again without thinking of his tattoos!

4. The Voyage of the "Fox" in the Arctic Seas - McClintock, Francis Leopold : Can't beat the original search documents, reads a little slowly in spots until the relics are found but an essential source.

5. Schwatka's Search: Sledging in the Arctic in Quest of Franklin Records - Gilder, William H. : As valuable as McClintock, you can't really understand the evidence without reading it. A little flowery in tone (written by a journalist vs a Naval Officer),  best read in this order for chronological reasons.

6. Deadly Winter: the life of Sir John Franklin - Martyn Beardsley : A very good biography of Sir John that sees him as a full person rather than a caricature. I tend to agree with Beardsley's conclusion but he is very fair in giving space to the alternative readings of Sir John's career and life.

7. North With Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames - John Wilson  : It is of course best to read Fitzjames' Journal in the original, but as that is difficult Wilson's fictional treatment is a good alternative and nice way to try to get the "feel" of what transpired.

100,000 Views

A quiet landmark passed by on this blog a few moments ago ... our 100,000th unique page view.  It's wonderful to think of that many views, not to mention comments (660 of them) made since we launched on February 20th, 2009.  100,000 feels like a real achievement -- well, ok, there's a blog on alien mummies that boasts of 100,000 views a month! -- but I'll take the Arctic over aliens any day.

Some other stats on the site: our viewership is broad and international: there were 13,873 views from Canada, 12,007 from the UK, 6,911 from Australia, 6,148 from Germany, 1,128 from France and 763 from Spain. Mac users make up a healthy 20% of all views, but there are also nearly a thousand Linux users and 526 who somehow managed to view the site on their BlackBerry. And what were the most popular posts?  #1 was on Sir Edwin Landseer's painting, "Man Proposes, God Disposes"; #2 was "Who Discovered the Northwest Passage"; #3 was on the Peglar Papers, and #4 was my friend Joe O'Farrell's fascinating post on the possibility that the Erebus and Terror were frozen into an iceberg, and indeed seen by eyewitnesses before drifting off to sea.

For all who have joined me on this voyage, I'm deeply grateful -- and I hope I'll be able to keep the quality and interest of the blog as high over the next three years as it was over the last three.

Maps of Disaster: The Arctic Surveys of Dease and Simpson

Along with the latest technology, the Franklin expedition took the latest maps, specially engraved for the Lords of the Admiralty by the firm of John Arrowsmith. "Arrowsmith's Charts" were the maps of the British Empire upon which the sun never set (especially in summer and north of 60 degrees latitude!). Unfortunately, the latest surveys of the area Franklin would be exploring contained grave errors which would help seal his fate. The first error was that of James Ross who, in his trip to what he called "King William Land" on the Ross Expedition of 1829-33, traversed land and water indifferently, more frequently mistaking iced-over water for land. As a result, the only viable "Northwest Passage," which lay to the east of King William, was falsely regarded as a dead-end bay, was shown on the maps as "Poctes Bay." Ross thus led credence to the false idea that King William was an extension of Boothia, whereas in fact it was a separate island. Both James and his uncle Sir John Ross persisted in the equally false notion that the "Gulf of Boothia," named by them for their sponsor, Felix Booth (he of Booth's Gin fame), opened out into the waters at the mouth of the Great Fish River. Arrowsmith's map, shown above, shows the extent of both errors.

Dease and Simpson, who had mapped the southern coast of what was then still called the "Polar Ocean," added their own errors to the charts; their latitudes were accurate enough, but their longitudes seemed to drift with the tides; they misaligned the coast of King William Land with that of the mainland, and misstated the longitude of their farthest point, just beyond the "Castor and Pollux River" (Dease and Simpson gave the river's longitude as 68°28′ N., 94°14′ W. whereas in fact the longitude is 93° 53′, an error of roughly eight miles too far west (Dr. Rae, though he confirmed Dease & Simpson's latitude, got  a longitudinal reading of 93° 15′, which is an additional 16 miles off!). These errors could be due either to extreme refraction of the sun at the horizon, or to inaccurate chronometers -- but what was most misleading was Dease & Simpson's claim that the coast tended to the east as far as they could see (shown on the map as a dotted line), whereas in reality it soon turns almost straight north. There was no wide passage there, although had Franklin's men made it so far, they might have stumbled upon the Bellot Strait.

With these charts as their guide, it's little wonder that Franklin's men, on their death march along the southern coast of King William Island, failed to cross Simpson's Strait at its narrowest point; they may well have planned to continue by land as far as the coast of the Gulf of Boothia.  Perhaps they were making for Ross's old Victory harbor; perhaps they hoped to launch their boats into the Gulf of Boothia and make their way to northern sea-lanes as had Ross.  In any case, they never made it.

They forged the last link with their lives

Many people have taken issue with the inscription on the Franklin statue in Waterloo Place, which awards Sir John and his men credit for discovering the Northwest Passage, echoing Sir John Richardson's encomium that "they forged the last link with their lives." In John Walker's film Passage (based on Ken McGoogan's book Fatal Passage), the film's director visits the statue in the company of Inuit politician and businessman Tagak Curley, who laughs as he reads out the inscription, calling it a lie and declaring that "Dead men can't discover anything"!

And yet, ironically enough, it's thanks to Inuit oral tradition that we have an account of men -- yet living -- passing eastward in the vicinity of Washington Bay on King William Island:

Tetqataq and Ukuararssuk tell that they were with Mangaq on the west shore of Ki-ki-tuk (King William Island) with their families sealing, and this a long time ago. They were getting ready to move -- it was in the morning & the sun was high -- when Tetqataq saw something in the distance on the smooth ice, something that looked white; he thought it was a bear. As soon as Tetqataq saw this something white, he told his companions of it, and they all waited, hoping it was a bear. As they watched, the white object grew larger, for it was moving towards them. At length they began to see many black objects along with what they had first espied as white in the distance. The object that they had 1st seen as white proved to be a sail raised on a boat & as they got nearer they saw this sail shake in the wind. As the object grew plainer, they thought of white men and began to be afraid. As the company of men (strangers) & the boat they were pulling got quite near, 2 men came ahead of the others and came across the ice towards where the Innuits were standing looking out, which was on the land, and the 2 men (Kabloonas) came walking up to where they were. Tetqataq and Ukuararssuk started to meet them, walking there on the ice. When they came to a crack in the ice, they stopped for the two white men to come up. The 2 white men came closer; one had a gun which he carried in his arms. This one stopped behind -- a little back -- white the other man came up as close to the 2 Innuits as the crack in the ice would allow him. The 1st man showed that he had an oo-loo (knife) when he stopped down beside the ice crack and made a peculiar kind of circling motion with the oo-loo. Right after that, he put his hand up to his mouth and lowered it all the way down his neck and breast, as if to say he wanted to get something to eat. Then the two white men moved over to the side, till they found a place where they could cross over to the 2 Innuits. Them the 1st man, who was Aglooka, spoke to them, saying "Man-nik-too- me," at the same time stroking 1st one and then the other down the breast, and also shook hands with each, repeating "Man-nik-too-me" several times. Aglooka pointed with his hand to the southward & eastward & at the same time repeated the word I-wil-ik. The Innuits could not understand whether he wanted them to show him the way there or simply to tell them that he was going there. He then made a motion northward & spoke the word "oo-me-en," making them to understand there were 2 ships in that direction. As Aglooka pointed to the N., drawing his hand & arm from that direction, he slowly moved his body in a falling direction and all at once dropped his head sideways into his hand, at the same time making a kind of combination of whirring, buzzing, & wind blowing noise. This was taken as a pantomimic representation of ships being crushed in the ice.

The account was given to Charles Francis Hall in 1869, a little more than twenty years after the events recounted -- and when Knud Rasmussen interviewed Mangaq's son Iggiararjuk in 1923, he recounted the same story, exact in every detail.  He said that the white men "were not met with again, and no one knows where they went to." Hall, like McClintock before him, knew where at least some of them had gone: westward, along the southern coast of King William Island, there lay a string of skeletons, buried and unburied, to mark the way.

The story is significant because of its location; as shown on Gould's map, the encounter took place at the edge of Washington Bay, at Cape Herschel.  And it was here, at this very spot, that Dease and Simpson erected a cairn on August 25th 1829, as they were surveying the northern "coast" of North America, extending the previous surveys of Franklin himself.  Thus, both on the basis of Inuit testimony, and on the skeletons of Franklin's men, we know for a fact that the "last link" between the areas Franklin discovered earlier in his final expedition, and the surveys heading eastward, was traversed by his men.  True, they did not manage to live long enough to relay this discovery to the rest of the world, and true too that the route they'd trudged beside was too choked with heavy, multi-year ice to ever be navigable by the kinds of ships they sailed. But unlike the body of George Mallory, found hundreds of meters below the ridge leading to the summit of Everest, these bodies were found beyond the point at which the two known surveys were connected.

So while of course the Victorian cult of the Polar hero, its themes conducted to a roaring crescendo by the astute and persistent efforts of Franklin's widow, Lady Jane, had everything to do with the erection of this statue and its inscription, I think that it's hard to find fault with its concluding phrase -- Franklin's men did indeed forge the last link -- and paid for it with their lives.

A "Navigable" Northwest Passage?

Recently, the question of in how Dr. John Rae's charting of the strait that bears his name contributed to the tracing of a Northwest Passage. There can, I hope, be no question that Rae was one of the most skilled and capable Arctic explorers and surveyors, and that his establishing King William as an island was a discovery of great geographical significance. There are those, however, who wish to credit Rae, at the expense of Franklin, as the sole discoverer of the  passage, and for them, a key part of the claim is that the Rae Strait route would have been navigable by Franklin's vessels had he tried this route. And yet, it's also widely known that, although Roald Amundsen managed this route with his tiny Gjøa, he encountered shoals which obliged him to jettison a considerable amount deck cargo in order to avoid running aground.

Ken McGoogan, author of Fatal Passage, recently put his argument this way:

Rae Strait is 14 miles wide. I have sailed through it half a dozen times in ships that are far larger -- longer, heavier, and with much deeper drafts -- than the Erebus and Terror. I did it again last month. Google the Clipper Adventurer and compare. Big ships go through Rae Strait all the time, even in the dark. Amundsen was sailing very near the coast of KWI, that is all. A bit farther out, no problem whatsoever.

For the record, the Clipper Adventurer, a purpose-built vessel for adventure tourism, has a draught of 4.72 meters (15.5 feet); HMS Terror had a draught of 4.47 m (14 feet 8 inches); according to Amundsen's journal, the Gjøa, fully loaded, drew just over 10 feet.

A recognized reference on the subject, The Northwest Passage: Arctic Straits, by Donat Pharand and Leonard H. Legault, puts it succinctly: "Reconnaissance soundings show an uneven bottom with depths varying from 9 to 77 meters and an extensive shoal area in mid-channel of 5.5 to 18 meters. The Rae Strait would hardly seem suitable for deep draft navigation." It's possible of course that a sailing vessel of Franklin's kind might have, with very good fortune, have made it through -- but then there would be the far worse problem of Simpson Strait, which is filled with shoals and hazards.  The modern vessel "Hanseatic" (draft 4.8m) spent three weeks aground there in 1996, and Pharand and Legault class it as "obviously suitable for small ships only."

So how practicable is this route -- which must of necessity include both Rae Strait and Simpson Strait? To get a definitive answer to this question, I turned to Captain Patrick R.M. Toomey, one of the most experienced modern navigators and ice-pilots in these waters; he has made more than 30 voyages to the Canadian Arctic, including 13 complete transits of the Northwest Passage (the most recent just two weeks ago), and has commanded or piloted all manner of vessels ranging from Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers to enormous Russian vessels such as “Kapitan Khlebnikov."Although Toomey shares with me and many others a profound admiration for Sir John Franklin's mettle, he understands well the limits of the vessels of those days, and feels as I do that they would never have been able to manage this route.

In response to McGoogan's claim, he states:

The “Clipper Adventurer” has been through the straits to the east of King William Island, as have other small ships of less than 5 metres draft such as “Hanseatic," and Rae Strait is not the major problem on this route. Further north, the James Ross Strait, and to the southwest the Simpson Strait are far more dangerous, as the “Hanseatic” knows only too well, having spent almost three weeks aground in the Simpson Strait in 1996. If Ken McGoogan considers “Clipper Adventurer” to be a “big ship”, he should try “The World” at 6.7 metres draft, and 196 metres length, or the Russian icebreakers “Kapitan Khlebnikov”, “Kapitan Dranitsyn” and “Admiral Makarov” (all of which I have piloted) at 8 metres draft, which could, technically and theoretically, pass all three of the straits mentioned above, but would be very foolhardy to try.

As to McGoogan's views about Rae, he has this to say:

As for the claim that John Rae was the first to discover a navigable Northwest Passage in 1854, to give him credit he did discover one of the minor channels which form the route, which Franklin might have discovered himself during his three overland and small-boat expeditions from 1819-1823, if he had had more time and better luck. I would suggest that Franklin suspected there might be several routes to the north from Queen Maud Gulf – the south shore of which he had mapped - but that he was more interested in the wider channel to the west of King William Island, due north of his explorations along the coast east of Coppermine River.  With two clumsy Royal Navy warships hardly capable of sailing to windward, with auxiliary steam power insufficient to make any progress in ice, for lack of power and sufficient coal to fuel the boilers, he would certainly have tried a wider channel to offer more sea-room. The full facts will never be known, of course, but I am sure that shore parties went out to King William Island while the ships were beset during the winter of 1846/7, to check out any channels to the east.  I am equally sure that the report back would have been that such channels would not have been recommended, despite the lack of old ice, which is not usually found in those channels, because of the lack of sea-room to manoeuvre between the shoals, especially those of James Ross Strait.  It was in James Ross Strait, I believe,  that Amundsen had his problems, and he was in a tiny little vessel, of much less draft, and much more manoeuvrable when compared to “Erebus” and “Terror”.

So this, I hope, should put an end to claims that Franklin could have sailed the route mapped by Rae. All the same, this route certainly could be and is a valid passage for modern vessels with shallower drafts, equipped with modern charts and electronic sounding devices. And, all the same, Dr. John Rae remains am extraordinary explorer, skilled surveyor, and resourceful hunter, who passed through lands where other white men died of starvation managing not only to keep himself and his party well-fed, but giving food to local Inuit along the way. So let us give him credit to him, alongside Sir John Franklin, not instead of him.

Yes, Franklin failed on his last voyage.  But let us recall, in the words of the great novelist (and navigator) Joseph Conrad, the essence of Franklin's contribution, as well as the discoveries of those who searched for him:

The dominating figure among the seamen explorers of the first half of the nineteenth century is that of another good man, Sir John Franklin, whose fame rests not only on the extent of his discoveries, but on professional prestige and high personal character. This great navigator, who never returned home, served geography even in his death. The persistent efforts, extending over ten years, to ascertain his fate advanced greatly our knowledge of the polar regions. As gradually revealed to the world, their fate appeared the more tragic in this, that for the first two years the way of the Erebus and Terror expedition seemed to be the way to the desired and important success, while in truth it was the way of death, the end of the greatest drama, perhaps, played behind the curtain of Arctic mystery.

Arctic Blackface

Peter Carney and others have brought up the question of the well-known "Black Men" story reported to Charles Francis Hall.  One possible explanation would be an onboard celebration of Guy Fawkes day, which would involve the blackening of faces as a reference to Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. Another explanation, however, might be worth considering: that the men were dressed up for a blackface "minstrel" show for the entertainment of the crews.

We know very well that, following William Edward Parry's success with shipboard theatricals enlivening the long winter darkness, all British naval ships in Arctic service were provided with theatrical props, costumes, and scripts.  One of the features of these shows, we also know, was male cross-dressing into female character.  Such broad burlesque seemed to be just the stuff to warm the hearts of the men on a cold Arctic night.  So why not blackface minstrelsy, which was in fact wildly popular in both the US and Britain from the late 1840's through the 1870's -- just the time of Franklin and the Franklin searches, and the voyages of Charles Francis Hall.  And indeed we have evidence that just these sorts of shows were staged aboard Arctic ships.  The first is from CF Hall's first book, "Life Among the Esquimaux, and describes a minstrel performance aboard the whaler "George Henry":

THEATRICALS ON BOARD THE GEORGE HENRY 

The following night, November 26th, "theatrical" performances took place on board the George Henry, The cabin was filled to its utmost capacity with Innuits and the ship's crew. "Jim Crow," the son of Artarkparu, occupied the centre of the cabin, and was performing on the "keeloun," while the other Innuits were seated all around, the female portion singing to the music. I made my way to the little after cabin, and there seated myself so as to have a full view of what was going on.  

The keeloun was accompanied by a tambourine made by Mr. Lamb. Another instrument was a triangle, a steel square pendent from a tow string, and struck with an ii-on spoon. The keeloun was played in turn by Annawa, Ooksin, Koojesse, and young Smith, a là negro ! While Annawa was going through the " sweating " process, playing the instrument and dancing the ridiculously wild figures that are indispensable, according to Innuit ideas, his music being accompanied by a full chorus of native female voices, there came bouncing into the very midst a strapping negress, setting the whole house in a roar of laughter. It was young Smith dressed in this character. The tambourine was passed into his hands, and he soon did full justice to the instrument, his or her sable fists soon knocking a hole through the whale's liver skin with which it was covered.  

When Smith first entered some of the Innuit women were much frightened. Jennie, the angeko, was seated near me, and she tried to put as great a distance as possible between herself and the negress, believing the apparition to be an evil spirit. But all shortly became reconciled to the stranger, especially when Smith resumed his place, playing and shouting, Innuit-like, and making so much fun that all our sides ached with laughter. Even the singing women were obliged occasionally to give way and join in the merriment.  

The negress was next called on to act as drummer. Ooksin held the keeloun while ske performed "Yankee Doodle," "Hail Columbia," and other pieces, with admirable skill and effect, using two iron spoons for drum-sticks. The finale was a dance by two Innuit ladies and two of the ship's crew, the music being furnished by Bailey with his " viddle."

Then this from Elisha Kent Kane's narrative of the First Grinnell:

December 25. Ye Christmas of ye Arctic cruisers. Our Christmas passed without a lack of the good things of this life.  Goodies we had galore ; but that best of earthly blessings, the communion of loved sympathies, these Arctic cruisers had not. It was curious to observe the depressing influences of each man's home thoughts, and absolutely saddening the effort of each man to impose upon his neighbor and be very boon and jolly. We joked incessantly, but badly, and laughed incessantly, but badly too ; ate of good things, and drank up a moiety of our Heidsiek ; and then we sang negro songs, wanting only tune, measure, and harmony, but abounding in noise ; and after a closing bumper to Mr. Grinnell, adjourned with creditable jollity from table to the theatre. 

So clearly, on at least two occasions -- and doubtless many more -- Arctic voyagers of the mid-nineteenth century regaled one another just as they would have had they been "home." Oh, and what of the photograph at the top of this post?  Why that's just "Bones," "Jim Kroo,""Squash," and "Cinders," members of the "Dishcover Minstrel Troupe" aboard RF Scott's Discovery in 1902.

That Time of Year Again

So here we go again: Yet another Parks Canada search for the remains of Sir John Franklin's ships, the "Erebus" and "Terror." Once more, we have the press releases, the Arctic photo-ops with Stephen Harper, the meaningful pronouncements of various government ministers, and clips of the CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier at anchor near the Adelaide Peninsula. And then, in my e-mail inbox, come the requests from journalists for images of Franklin, his ships, and Beechey Island. I always say yes.

One figure, however, really says it all: $275,000. This is the amount budgeted for this year's "search" by Parks Canada.  And, as anyone who has done a budget for an Arctic venture of any kind would know, that kind of money won't go very far.  It might enable the launch of the two research boats from the Laurier, and it might pay for a few days of dragging around side-scan sonar equipment.  But in the haystack of possibilities as to the fate of the needles that are Franklin's ships, this effort won't cover more than a few straws.  Sure, they could be lucky straws! But barring that, the effort is, in my view, largely symbolic.  In terms of meaningful underwater archaeological efforts, it's nowhere near what is likely going to be needed, and so I can't think that the government really believes it is one.  Instead, like the planting of Canadian flags on Hans Island, it's really just a symbolic effort, one which makes sense only if the motive is to prop up the narrative of Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, which it regards as its own internal waters.  This is acknowledged tacitly, and has been the subject of a CBC article, "Franklin Search about Politics as well as History" (and here I think you could substitute "instead of" for "as well as").

My sources in the Canadian Arctic, indeed, alerted me to the presence of the likely search ships in the vicinity some weeks ago; apparently they were waiting for ice conditions to become favorable.  And, despite global warming, this moment is no more predictable than in the past; if the cost of maintaining the ship and crew during the waiting period were added back in, I'm sure it would be more than the quoted figure.  Ice -- like time and tide -- may wait for no man, but waiting costs money, and to me it makes no sense to spend what's already been poured into these efforts without making them much more substantial.  The Harper government seem to want to get their sovereignty chits on the cheap -- a strategy very unlikely to lead to success in terms of actual archaeological progress.  But perhaps that's just fine with them ...