Finding Franklin

Many readers have noticed my hiatus here at Visions of the North, with only one new post since October of last year. The reason for this, though, is a happy one: I've been at work on the final touches of my new book Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search, which will be coming out September 1st from McGill-Queen's University Press.

Finding Franklin brings together much of my research on the Franklin mystery from the past twenty years, but there's also a great deal of brand-new material. I spent much of 2015 digging into the history of the Franklin search in the modern era, from Lachlan Taylor Burwash and "Paddy" Gibson in the 1920's and '30's to Barry Ranford and David Woodman in the 1990's and 2000's. I conducted more than a dozen new interviews with archaeologists, journalists, and amateur Franklin searchers, working to create a more complete and detailed picture of what we know, what each search has added to our knowledge, and what remains unknown, or unknowable. In the process, I found that searches for Franklin had been far more numerous and ambitious than I'd previously realized, and that much of what was once found has since been forgotten, with artifacts and human remains shelved away in obscure collections, or simply lost. In fact, between Burwash's first searches in the 1920's and the last of the private searches before Parks Canada became involved in 2008, there were more than fifty Franklin searches.

Finding Franklin sets the stage for these searches by recounting the essential details of the Franklin mystery, and the questions raised by early searchers such as Rae, Hall, and Schwatka. A focus throughout is the Inuit testimony, widely credited for helping to find HMS "Erebus" in 2014, but seldom discussed, or understood in detail. The book also showcases the new ways in which old evidence is being freshly examined, from the question of lead poisoning to that of identifying specific human remains. And, along the way, I offer my own reflections on the meaning of such a search, and reminiscences of my encounters with my fellow-searchers, whether on the glistening  ice of Resolute Bay or in a dim-lit booth in a pub in County Kildare. My book will, I hope, interest and engage both those who've long been curious about the Franklin mystery but have been unsure where to start, as well as those who, like myself, have long ago been bitten by the bug that leads to 'Franklinitis' -- a so-far incurable condition that spurs its sufferers to undertake their own personal pilgrimages to the books, the places, and the artifacts in which the Franklin story resides.

As the book's publication draws nearer, I'll share some of the fruits of my recent work, including a revival of my "Franklin searcher of the month" feature, this time highlighting those whose contributions, though significant, have been largely forgotten. I hope that all who have followed my earlier posting here will continue to do so, and can promise fresh news, and new approaches, to this storied mystery.

Charles Francis Hall and Robert Kruger

Sometimes it happens that the Internet, derided by some as a great time-waster, enables the sort of serendipity that would never otherwise be possible. Such is the case with Mary Greulich Moran and her great-grandfather, Johann Karl Kruger (known at the time as Robert Kruger), one of the seamen who served under Charles Francis Hall on the ill-fated "Polaris" expedition. In her comment on my earlier post about Hall's murder, she spoke of family stories of her great-grandfather's survival with the party stranded on the ice-floe, in the company of Hannah and Joe, under the command of George Tyson.

And, even more remarkably, her family still had the letter that Hall had addressed to the sailors. Some background: While the "Polaris" was still underway, some distance from her rendezvous with destiny, the regular sailors had complained, with some justice, about the poor fare they were served, while the officers and the German scientific staff enjoyed fine meals. Hall, who had apparently been unaware of this arrangement, immediately ordered that 'thenceforth, all differences between the officers' and enlisted men's messes would cease; they were brothers in a common cause and would eat the same food' (Loomis). The grateful men penned a letter of thanks:

"The men forward desire publicly to tender their thanks to Capt. C.F. Hall for his late kindness, not, however, that we were suffering want, but for the fact that it manifests a disposition to treat us as reasonable men, possessing intelligence to appreciate respect and yield it only when merited; and he need never fear but it will be our greatest pleasure to so live that he can implicitly rely on our service in any duty or emergency."

This letter deeply touched Hall -- so much so that he penned a reply, appending a list of all the crew and signing it with his traditional flourish. This letter must have been greatly valued by Kruger, and it has since been kept in good care by his family for three generations: "Sirs: The reception of your letter of thanks to me of this date I acknowledge with a heart that deeply and fully appreciates the kindly spirit that has prompted you to this act. I need not assure you that your commander has and ever will have a lively interest in your welfare. You have left your home, friends, and country—indeed, you have bid farewell for a time to the civilized world— for the object to aid me in discovering these mysterious hidden parts of the earth; therefore, I must and will care for you as a prudent father cares for his faithful children. "Your commander, “C. F. Hall."

It's not quite clear whether Hall made eleven copies of the letter (but then why list all their names and give only the general salutation "Sirs"?) or whether it was simply circulated among the men, and Kruger ended up with it, which would make its survival even more remarkable.

I am deeply indebted to Mary Greulich Moran for her forwarding a scan of the letter and her permission to publish it; on future blog posts I'll pass along more information about her great-grandfather and his role in the "Polaris" expedition. 

The Last Leaves of a Sorrowful Book

Appearing, as fate would have it, just a few weeks before McClintock's news of the fate of Franklin reached England, "The Last Leaves of a Sorrowful Book" captured the elegiac public sentiment about the lost explorers, picking up on passages from letters home from one of Franklin's officers. Their author, of course, was James Fitzjames, Franklin's second aboard HMS "Erebus," and easily one of the most capitvating figures on the expedition -- young, full of energy and passion, and (at one point) expressing his hope to spend 'at least one winter in the ice.' The letters had been reprinted before, in a nautical journal (without Fitzjames's name), though it was fairly clear then that the author must have been one of Franklin's officers on Franklin's vessel. Many years later, these letters formed the inspiration, as well as the opening passages, of John Wilson's novel, North With Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames.

This version, published in Charles Dickens's journal All the Year Round, opens with a lyrical elegy to the letters' author, framed in terms of the common fate of death that awaits us all, and the ways in which small relics of the departed still testify to their presence:

At every point of the dread pilgrimage from this world to the next, some domestic trace remains that appeals tenderly to the memory, and that leads us on, from the day when the last illness began, to the day that left us parted on a sudden from our brother or sister-spirit by the immeasurable gulf between Life and Eternity. The sofa on which we laid the loved figure so tenderly when the first warning weakness declared itself; the bed, never slept in since, which was the next inevitable stage in the sad journey; all the little sick-room contrivances for comfort that passed from our living hands to the one beloved hand which shall press ours in gratitude no more; the last book read to beguile the wakeful night, with the last place marked where the weary eyes closed for ever over the page; the little favourite trinkets laid aside never to be picked up again; the glass, still standing by the bedside, from which we moistened the parched lips for the last time; the handkerchief which dried the deathly moisture from the dear face and touched the wasted cheeks almost at the same moment when our lips pressed them at parting—these mute relics find a language of their own, when the first interval of grief allows us to see them again.

It's quite an astonishing passage, and for many years, its author was unknown. Unlike Dickens's previous journal, Household Words, the contrubutors' book for ATYR was lost, and until quite recently no one had any means of verifying who had written a given piece (there were no by-lines). But recently, with the discovery of a set of ATYR annotated by Dickens himself, these hundreds of little mysteries have been at an instant solved -- and, though I'd long guessed that Dickens himself was the writer, it turns out that it was Wilkie Collins, whose play, The Frozen Deep, had served as a more public, dramatic elegy for Franklin some three years previous.

Dr. Kane and the Bear on an American Banknote

Having enjoyed the sometimes fanciful game of imagining how Arctic explorers might look on banknotes, it occurred to me that perhaps, in the past -- especially in an era when private banks often issued their own notes -- it might have been possible that Dr. Elisha Kent Kane appeared on a banknote back in the mid-nineteenth century. I was amazed to discover that indeed this had happened, and more than once; first in 1856. with a vignette of "Dr. Kane and Party in the Arctic Regions" (of which I have not yet found an online image), and secondly in 1860, when this fanciful depiction of Kane and his men fending off an attacking bear from a boat graced a $3 note issued by the Continental Bank of Boston. The scene was engraved by DeWitt Clinton Hay after a design by Felix O.C. Darley, and is regarded even today as #24 of the top 100 nineteenth-century notes ever issued. It's a striking scene; Kane himself seems almost to be snarling back at the bear, hatchet in hand, while one of his comrades prepares to launch his spear.

Of course no such scene ever occurred, nor was Dr. Kane ever in the sort of small rowboat depicted in this engraving -- but nevertheless, after the fashion of previous heroes (one thinks of the dozens of engravings of of a  young Horatio Nelson's encounter with one), such an image seemed an ideal way to lionize (or perhaps one should say, bear-ize) a Polar hero.

Sir John Franklin a Freemason?

In researching the history of Sir John Franklin's last expedition and its aftermath, there have from time to time been a number of surprises. In quite a few of these cases, it's been because a fresh look at what we already "know" about Franklin has shown that we were, in fact, wrong: wrong about which railway engines were likely installed in his ships, wrong about which archive held which of the Daguerreotypes made of him and his officers; wrong about the extent and significance of lead poisoning among Franklin's men. To this list may now be added another discovery: the statement that Franklin was a Freemason -- often repeated in the literature of the 1850's, particularly in the United States -- can now be shown to be wrong, and on the best possible authority: Lady Jane Franklin herself.

Some background on this question: next week, I'll be giving a talk at the fabled Kane Lodge, so named in honor of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the noted American Arctic explorer who served on one and commanded another of the "Grinnell" expeditions in search of Franklin and his men. Kane was a Freemason, and the outpouring of grief that attended his death in 1857 was  -- though nationwide -- particularly felt among Freemasons. A memorial volume was published by the Grand Lodge of the the state of New York, filled with encomiums as to Kane's virtues, and frequently mentioning that he had gone in search of a brother Mason, Franklin himself. Curious about this, I wrote to the Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London, asking whether they could confirm Franklin's membership in a Masonic lodge. They wrote back that they could find no record of his being a Mason, but did have one clipping, dated only with the year 1858, in which Lady Franklin herself, in response to a letter from the officers of the Kane Lodge, regretfully corrected their assumption:

Till I read of your honourable notice you have taken, and intend taking, of my dear husband, in connection with Dr. Kane as a brother Freemason, I am ignorant that he could have any claim to that noble friend's sympathies, or to your particular regard, on the ground of fellowship in your mystic art. I could almost wish that it could be proved this was the only secret my dear husband ever preserved towards me, so unwilling am I to forego the distinction conferred on him, or to appear ungrateful for, or indifferent to, past or coming kindness.

The news may have arrived too late to correct this assumption in tributes already printed, or perhaps it was simply overlooked by the public press, which continued to refer to Franklin as a Mason in the years following. Certainly, it does not in any way diminish -- nor would Lady Franklin wish it to -- the sincere spirit of Kane, whom she considered a dear friend, or his brother Masons, in wishing to draw attention to the bond that, in so many other ways, connected these two men.

And indeed there is a connection; while we can't attribute it to Franklin, a purple glass Masonic seal was among the relics recovered by McClintock from the boat in Erebus Bay, and is preserved to this day at the National Maritime Museum. From it, we may be fairly certain that one of Franklin's officers or men was in fact a Mason, and that in his quest to find them and bring them succor, Kane was acting with a particular benevolence toward at least one of his Brothers.

I am grateful to Mr Peter Aitkenhead, Assistant Librarian at the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, for his assistance and generosity in forwarding this clipping.

Solomon Tozer, Royal Marine

Some time ago, under the title "The Sword of a Great Officer," I posted an image of the hilt of sword that had been presented to HBC Factor Roderick MacFarlane in 1857 by an elderly Inuk who told him that it was from one of Franklin's men, the "sword of a great officer." I noted that this sword was engraved with "W IV" for King William IV, and therefore dated to his reign (1830-1837). I'd  tracked down the date at which each of Franklin's senior officers might have obtained their lieutenant's commission (the usual date on which one acquired a sword), and found Fitzjames the closest match -- though, in his case, a delay between getting his passing certificate and his commission meant that he wasn't promoted until a year after William's reign ended and Queen Victoria ascended to the throne. Ah well, I thought to myself, what's a year?

To my lasting shame, I didn't take the time to look closely at the guard, which featured an open "basket" style rather than the closed gilt guard that had been standard in the Royal Navy since 1827 (and indeed, is standard still). Seeing one of these sorts of guards among the latest artifacts brought up from HMS "Erebus" pricked my memory -- and that of my colleague Glenn M. Stein as well. In response to a query by fellow Franklinite Regina Koellner -- mightn't a Sergeant of the Marines have had a sword as well? -- he passed along an image of the type of blade that would have been issued to a Sergeant in the Royal Marines (right, above) -- and lo, there was the open style of guard, almost exactly as seen on the hilt given to MacFarlane!

Which leads me to Solomon Tozer. Years ago, my good friend Dave Woodman proposed that perhaps Tozer, whose name may well have sounded to Inuit ears very similar to Crozier (rendered by Hall's informants as "Cro-zhar"), could have been the "great officer" of this Inuit story. I dismissed the idea, my head filled with romanticized notions of Fitzjames among the final survivors -- how could a mere Sergeant of the Marines, the hardest-working (and lowest-paid) of all the Expedition's members, be that man? But now, seeing the sword, I went at once to Ralph Lloyd-Jones's excellent article on the Marines who served with Franklin, and discovered that Solomon Tozer had enlisted in Bath on 12 November 1834, well within the reign of William IV!

There are, as there almost always will be, caveats and contraditions. According to Lloyd-Jones, Tozer had only been promoted to Sergeant in 1844, so if the sword had to wait until then, it's not a match. Still, he was more of a veteran than most, having already risen to the rank of Corporal in 1837, the year of Victoria's coronation. He also received, though he was not to know of it, a promotion to "color sergeant" in 1849 when, as Lloyd-Jones notes, "he was unlikely to be alive in the Arctic." And yet, if he was indeed among the last men standing, he may well have yet been living at that date. I conclude with Lloyd-Jones's epitome of his character:

At the age of 18, Tozer was 5 feet 8 1/2 inches tall with light hair, hazel eyes, and a fair complexion. He was a carpenter by trade and, as befits one who reached the highest non-commissioned rank, had an extremely neat signature. A unique solecism recorded that he was ‘D[ischarged] D[ead] North Pole [sic] expedition under Sir John Franklin’ (ADM 158/69). He appears as a fairly major, brave, and practical character in Robert Edric’s novel The Broken Lands (Edric 1992).

A great officer, indeed.

Franklin Searcher of the Month: Henry Larsen

Image courtesy of Doreen Larsen Riedel

Even before he arrived on the shores of King William, he’d already been awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, for being the first man to traverse the Northwest Passage from West to East, in command of the RCMP vessel St. Roch – a feat he repeated in the opposite direction a few years later. His name was Henry Asbjørn Larsen, and no other searcher before him came closer to standing in Franklin’s own metaphorical shoes. Larsen’s experience had been gained on numerous northern patrols over two decades; he eventually rose to the rank of Inspector, in charge of all RCMP detachments in the Canadian Arctic. Both the breadth of his experience and his keen eye for detail served him well; despite poor weather conditions and limited time, his search of the area between Cape Felix and Victory Point produced what may be some of the most significant finds since those of Schwatka.

Larsen’s search took place in the summer of 1949, just before his promotion to commanding officer of the force’s “G” division. He took two RCMP men with him, Corporal Seaforth Burton and Constable John Biench. He’d hoped to squeeze in the mission between his other duties, but news of his trip was inadvertently leaked to the press; as a cover story, an announcement was made that the trip was merely to scout a location for a new RCMP post. Larsen’s pilot, Harry Heacock, flew them over Lind Island and Victoria Strait; despite poor conditions, he was able to land briefly to establish a fuel depot at Terror Bay. Returning the following day, they were able to land and establish a base camp near Collinson Inlet. From there, they proceeded on foot, working their way up the coast to Cape Felix. At Cape Lady Jane Franklin, they found wood-chips and part of a shoe sole; joined there by Bill Cashin (who’d served as Larsen’s mechanic aboard the St. Roch), they began a close search of the area around Victory Point.

Here they had better luck, turning up two iron knees (almost certainly from a ship’s boat of the kind used by Franklin’s men), along with other small fragments of wood, nails, and wire. Continuing to Cape Felix, they made their most significant find: embedded between two mossy stones, they came upon a human skull. On their return, the artifacts were brought back to the National Museum (the precursor institution to both the Canadian Museum of Nature and the Canadian Museum of History). There, the bones were examined by Dr. Douglas Leechman, one of Canada’s pre-eminent archaeologists, who identified them as “definitely that of a white man, and a fairly young one at that.” Larsen and his companions had found the most northerly grave of one of Franklin’s men on King William Island.

courtesy of Doreen Larsen Riedel

Yet, as with earlier searches, the vital documentary evidence of this discovery has been misplaced and scattered. Larsen’s report, if indeed he submitted one, has gone missing, although R.J. Cyriax’s article about the search in the Geographical Journal was clearly based on some sort of fairly detailed communication from Larsen. Cyriax thought very highly of Larsen’s account, declaring it “much more detailed and precise than any of the published accounts with which the [present] writer is acquainted.” No trace of the report is known, and the artifacts themselves appear to have been misplaced; the curators that I’ve contacted to date have no record of them, and they were never entered into the archaeological databases of either the Northwest Territories or Nunavut. Had it not been for the assistance of Doreen Larsen Riedel, Larsen’s daughter, I might never have learned the details of their discovery. They were, fortunately, photographed, and the images deposited in the National Library of Canada; spread out on of white surface, these mossy bones glimmer with an eerie presence, frozen in the camera’s eye even though they, too, have since vanished from our sight.

The Politics of Exploration

I had originally planned to be posting on my blog this fall about the new finds from HMS "Erebus" that I'd hoped would be announced by Parks Canada. Archaeology is a patient science, though, and though news is scarce now, I'm sure there will eventually be much more to hear about this remarkable discovery and the secrets it yet has to tell. But alas, the politics of exploration have once more taken over the headlines from actual exploration itself, journalist Paul Watson's would-be exposé -- the one he says the Toronto Star wouldn't let him publish -- has now been plastered over the Internet thanks to Buzzfeed. Ordinarily, I wouldn't want to comment on such an article, but now that major news outlets such as the Ottawa Citizen have picked up the story, I fear that I need to set the record straight again. While Watson's article certainly shows that there was a fair amount of squabbling and bitterness among some of the parties involved in the 2014 search, and that some details were, at first, imperfectly conveyed to the public (understandable in the great excitement of the moment), the evidence for any deliberate deceit -- especially on the part of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society's John Geiger -- is simply nonexistent.

A large part of Watson's article hinges on remarks made by Mr. Geiger as part of the CNC documentary on the Franklin find. As the lead historical consultant for the Canadian, UK, and US versions of this program, I've reviewed scripts and checked historical facts for all three, and so am very closely aware of the many slight differences between each version. The directors, using the same available "elements" -- video sources that, added together, would fill many times the length of the program -- made a variety of different choices. The moments that Watson points to, when John Geiger uses collective pronouns, such as 'we,' and 'our efforts,' and contrasting 2014 with previous years, are moments in which he's referring to the whole history of the modern Franklin search. Here are his exact words, from the final production script of the upcoming NOVA version of the documentary, which will air in the U.S. on September 23rd:

This is a great moment for exploration. We’ve been searching for, you know, a hundred and sixty years for answers to what happened to the Franklin expedition, the best equipped, most finely prepared and trained expedition that had ever set out for the Northwest Passage — and to have it literally obliterated, end in mass disaster, no survivors and no ships. It's just … it's been a confounding mystery.

Clearly, the "us" of this "we" is us -- all the people, Canadian and American and British, Inuit and non-Inuit, who have been a part of the long search, whether as researchers in libraries, writers/scholars, or people walking the ground or probing Arctic waters.

A shorter version of Mr. Geiger's remarks was used in the Canadian and British versions, where their intended meaning might not be as clear -- but in any case it was never, so far as I am aware, Mr. Geiger's intent to claim any credit as the discoverer. These false criticisms, made by Mr. Balsillie (see here for my earlier blog post pointing out that his letter of complaints about the CBC documentary has no foundation in that program's actual contents) and echoed in Mr. Watson's article, are without any basis in fact. The credit has been given, from the very start and consistently going forward, to Ryan Harris, Marc-André Bernier, and their divers, and I am absolutely certain that, whichever version of the documentary one views, there couldn't possibly be any confusion about this fact.

I agree with Madeline Ashby's op-ed piece in the Citizen -- it indeed matters who discovered the ship! -- but Mr. Geiger has never made any claim of having done so. While we are at it, though, the Parks Canada divers themselves have often acknowledged the importance of earlier work to their find -- to Inuit testimony, both still living in the person of Louie Kamookak, and that collected and analyzed from the historical record by David C. Woodman, and to all the searches and researches, adding up to nearly fifty searches between 1926 and 2008. As with all great discoveries, it's the ultimate result of the efforts of many. Among whom I would certainly include Mr. Geiger, whose book Frozen in Time, co-written with Owen Beattie is quite often the first volume that has caused a Franklin searcher-to-be to develop a deep and lasting fascination with the Franklin story -- and that's what fuels us all.

The Tale of a Table leg ...

One of the more remarkable finds of the earlier dives upon HMS "Erebus" was a wooden element, found near the stern (where the "great cabin" was located), much resembling the leg and part of the side of a table shown in an early woodcut of Sir John Franklin's cabin, as published in the Illustrated London News shortly before his departure for the Arctic. The resemblance seems much more than superficial; though the table looks slightlymore squat in the woodcut the way the leg -- likely machine-made upon a lathe, given the date -- is turned, with two long segments separated by a rounded, shorter one.

This seems a good visual match for the leg seen in the underwater photograph from last year's dive.

Some commenters have observed that, had the damage to the stern of the "Erebus" taken place prior to or at the moment of its sinking, smaller bits of wood such as the table-leg would have had enough bouyancy that they might well have floated to the surface; that they did not suggests that the damage occurred long after the sinking, perhaps when the ship's superstructure was scoured by a passing iceberg. The Inuit certainly recalled that, after the sinking of the ship at Utjulik, they were able to recover casks, boards, and other pieces of metal and wood; these may well have been from material that had been stowed on the deck, while items below deck, such as the table, remained there and became more thoroughly waterlogged.

But we actually do have another leg to stand on: in 1949, Henry Larsen -- who had himself navigated the Northwest Passage twice as the captain of the RCMP vessel St Roch -- came to King William Island and searched its western coasts. There, among other objects, such as iron knees that doubtless came from a ship's boat, there was a turned wooden piece that appears very much like the leg of a similar, low table, about two feet four inches in length. It was apparently recovered from some point on the coast between Victory Point and Cape Felix; if indeed it came from a similar table abord HMS "Terror," then that vessel must have suffered a fairly catastrophic fate -- it would have to have been crushed in the ice severely enough that furniture from the great cabin would have broken free of the wreck and drifted to shore. And so, while I hold out some hope that the site of Terror's sinking may be found, this sort of evidence tends to give credence to fears that the wreck may be fragmentary -- what parts of it could be recovered, the Inuit surely took and make use of, leaving perhaps only a partial hull, or even just a field of débris.

[Image of table leg courtesy of Doreen Larsen Riedel; with thanks to Ship Modeler for his thoughts on this artifact.]

Where should the searchers search?

With the approach of the 2015 dive season, it won't be long before Ryan Harris, Marc-André Bernier, and the rest of the Parks Canada team return to HMS "Erebus" to renew their search for artifacts. This fabled vessel, certainly, has a wealth of secrets to tell -- but where to begin? Even with ideal conditions, the window for open-water dives is a limited one, and time will always be of the essence.

My personal expectation is that they will start with the stern of the ship. In the debris near there, we've already seen what looks like a table leg from a table shown in Sir John Franklin's cabin. Given the damage to this area, other items -- maps, log-books, and personal effects -- that were stored in Franklin's cabin are most likely to be found here. And, though the damage is regrettable, it's much easier to dive safely when one doesn't have to worry about enclosed spaces and diver safety. Small items that might otherwise escape notice -- message cylinders, eyeglasses, or (should they have been made and left behind) Daguerreotype plates, would all be much more readily found if one can sift freely through the silt, which itself forms an excellent preservative.

Secondly, it looks to me as though it may be quite possible that the ship's modified railway engine may be in this vicinity, or at least visible from there. Given its weight, and that fact that it was primarily secured in place by bulk alone, I'd think that there's a fair chance that it has settled to the aft of its original, installed location. It may be too delicately situated to move, but detailed imagery could help confirm the type of engine used, and settle many decades of research and speculation.

If time allows, it would be ideal to also search the officers' cabins, particularly Fitzjames's -- and they would be next in proximity if the search moves in a forward direction. It may be difficult for divers to enter the main area below decks, but if they can direct an ROV into that area, some imagery of the Fraser stove, which we've been told is still in situ, would be wonderful.

Lastly, it would be invaluable to account for as many of the ship's anchors as possible. To know whether any shows signs of deliberate deployment may well be -- until some detailed journal or log is retrieved -- the best evidence as to whether "Erebus" was piloted, or drifted to its present location (as would be the status of the removable rudder, as a commenter below pointed out!).

Some search for the "Terror" will doubtless go on this season as well -- but I would urge all possible efforts be directed at the bird -- that is the ship -- in the hand.

Franklin searcher of the Month: Richard Finnie

Richard Finnie -- shown here on a search, in company of L.T. Burwash, of the northwestern coasts of King William Island in 1930 -- was not only an avid investigator of the Franklin mystery, but also a pioneering filmmaker; while his Among the Igloo Dwellers (1931) never attained the status of Nanook of the North, it remains a significant early depiction of Inuit life in the pre-settlement period. Finnie eventually gained steady employment working for Canadian Bechtel on a series of more than 60 films promoting its petroleum projects -- one of which, 1967's "Fabulous Oil Sands," would doubtless raise hackles among environmentalists today (the curious can see the entire film here).

Finnie was born to the North in Dawson City in Canada's Yukon Territory in 1906; his maternal grandfather had founded the Dawson City News there in 1899. His father, Oswald Sterling Finnie, was from 1921 to 1931 the "Director" of the Northwest Territories and Yukon Branch. The younger Finnie shared his father's passion for the region, and started out at the age of eighteen as a radio operator aboard the C.G.S. Arctic. Late in the summer of 1930, he accompanied L.T. Burwash on the latter's search of King William Island; on September 6th they located what they believed to be a significant Franklin "camp" between Lady Jane Franklin and Victory Points; the results of their study were published in the very first issue of Canadian Geographic. In the 1930's he spent several years in Yellowknife, of which he left some very vivid descriptions.

Finnie later took an avid interest in music, and while on locations around the world for Bechtel, made a large number of field recordings of traditional music from Korea, Libya, Tunisia, Sumatra, South Africa, Lebanon, Cambodia, and Venezuela; these recordings are preserved in the Finnie collection at Stanford University. The collection also includes a number of significant live recordings of jazz performances and jam sessions, including some of Mugsy Spanier and Earl Hines.

Finnie is warmly remembered by those who knew him, my friend John Bockstoce among them. He eventually retired to California, but kept up an interest in northern doings for the rest of his life; he died in 1987. If anyone out there knows where a print of Among the Igloo Dwellers may be had, I'd certainly like to hear from them! It's a very hard film to find; the only copy I know of is a 16mm print at Library and Archives Canada.