The Sword of a "Great Officer"

The story is the stuff of old chivalric romances: in gratitude for helping him and his companions survive the winter, an officer of the Franklin expedition presented an Inuk hunter with his most valuable possession: his sword. And then, years later, this same hunter, now grown elderly, presented this same sword to a trader at a Hudson's Bay post, saying it had been given to him by a "great officer." And then the kicker: this sword is still in the archives of the Hudson's Bay company.

But who was this officer? Or was he an officer at all? The details are caught up in the web of interconnected, contradictory stories about "Aglooka." In the tale of the meeting at the 'crack in the ice,' there is a mention of exchanging a piece of seal meat for a "knife." Could this knife have been exaggerated in later re-tellings? In the tale of the "Aglooka" who was sheltered for a winter by Too-shoo-art-thariu, this man offered his rifle in thanks, but Too-shoo was reluctant to accept it, not sure how it worked, and so the man offered his "long knife" -- a word that Tookoolito, Hall's interpreter, believed meant "sword" -- along with "nearly everything he had." The first tale is associated with Washington Bay on King William Island, and must date to an earlier time; it's possible that the later tale may be a garbled or slightly fanciful version of the first.

As to the provenance of the sword in the HBC's collections, it was given by an elderly Inuit man to Robert MacFarlane, the chief factor of the Athabasca district in the 1880's. The date, some thirty-odd years after the Franklin expedition, is sufficient for the description of "elderly" to be given to a man in his prime in 1850. Their archival record reads as follows:

HBC 1226 A,B : MILITARY SWORD; 1830s 
This ornate sword is documented as having been retrieved by Chief Factor Roderick MacFarlane from an Inuit man who claimed that the sword had been presented to him in 1857 by an officer of the Franklin expedition. The letters"W IV" appearing on the blade and hilt refers to King WilliamIV, 1830-1837. "Moore, late, Bicknells & Moore, Old Bond Street,London," have been engraved on the brass ferrule and chape.

This last detail has given rise to speculation that the "great officer" might have been Fitzjames, who obtained his Mate's passing certificate (the prerequisite for the rank) in 1834, well within the reign of William IV. But the promotion itself would have to wait on additional service; he came close in 1837, and finally obtained the rank on 26 January 1838, more than six months after the death of William IV. The dates for most others of Sir John Franklin's officers, however, are even further off the mark (Crozier, 1826; Le Vesconte, 1841; Fairholme, 1842; Hodgson, 1842; Irving, 1843). Graham Gore was promoted in 1837, but was then in the Arctic serving with Back; King William died prior to his return. The only other candidate would be Edward Little, whose promotion in December of 1837 is just barely prior to Fitzjames's. It's possible, in these last three cases, to imagine that the officers' swords might have been purchased at a time when blades stamped "William IV" were in stock, and new ones with Queen Victoria's name were not yet available.

The date of "1857" is certainly remarkable as well -- could an officer have survived that long?

And yet what evidence do we have that the sword was presented to the Inuk by its original owner? None at all -- and indeed, given that so much of the officers' silver plate had been distributed to the men, the idea of a sword being passed to a subordinate -- possibly with the idea of bringing it home as a memorial -- has to be considered. The sense of mission in a man who was charged to return the sword to the family of its owner might account for its being retained so late in the time after the ships were abandoned -- and yet again, why would such a man suddenly give the sword away? Was it in the hope that the Inuk might return it himself someday? Lastly, we have to consider the possibility that the sword was never given at all, but simply taken from a dead body or a cache, traded from hand to hand, and eventually returned with the statement that it was from one of Franklin's officers.

As with so many other elements of the Franklin mystery, this sword -- which at first presents itself as a brilliantly specific piece of evidence -- turns out to be of uncertain provenance and significance, save in the way it has fired the imagination of those who seek answers to the many enigmas surrounding the expedition's disappearance.

Aglooka

Who was "Aglooka"? There's been a great deal of chat about this eternal question over on the Facebook page on the Franklin Expedition, with quite a few new voices. And so, although I'd caution that I don't think that we will ever have an absolute or complete answer, I thought I'd take the opportunity here to ask the question.

Aglooka -- aglukaq in Inuktitut -- means roughly "long strider," and from the point of view of the Inuit, it's a term that could be applied to almost any of the white explorers who sojourned among them. It's been associated, at various times and by various conjectures, with Sir John Ross, Frances Crozier, and Dr John Rae, and in Inuit oral histories, there are stories which -- depending in large part on when one decides the events recounted took place -- could apply to one or more of these main candidates. Some, like Charles Francis Hall, were convinced "Aglooka" was Crozier, and held fast to that belief even in the face of contradictory evidence. Some, like the eminent Franklin expert David C. Woodman, believe it more likely that "Aglooka" was not one of the senior commanders of the Franklin expedition, but rather a minor officer or even and ordinary seaman who took on a leadership role in a small group of survivors. So -- if everyone is ready -- let's review the evidence.

First there is the question of contact with the expedition while aboard their ships. Inuit testimony given to CF Hall tells us of an encounter with an expedition of two ships, one commanded by a bald man who wore spectacles (little pieces of ice) over his eyes, and who suffered some infirmity. He was called Toolooah, and his second-in-command was Aglooka. Some time after the Inuit had visited them, they told Hall that they heard that Toolooah had died, and that Alglooka had become the Esh-e-mut-ta (Hall's phonetic spelling for isumataq or leader). Such a scenario corresponds only with the Franklin expedition, as that of the Rosses -- the only other British voyage to the central coastal area in the period -- had only one ship (The Victory, unless its small coal-tender Kreuzenstern is counted), suffered no death of a commanding officer, and both Rosses were possessed of vast and healthy heads of hair.

Nevertheless, there's a problem when one connects this account to Franklin and Crozier and the Erebus and Terror: During the time they were off the NW coast of King William Island, they apparently had no contact with Inuit, since later Inuit did not, by their own account, know of ships abandoned in this area until they learned of them by way of McClintock in 1859. It's possible that the Inuit who did visit the ships did not, for some reason, communicate their visit to other Inuit bands -- there was some hostility, apparently, between the Netsilingmiut of the Boothia Peninsula who were McClintock's main informants, and the Utjulingmiut whose territory near Queen Maud Gulf put them closest to the final locations of Franklin's ships. Still, on the basis of this discrepancy, Woodman discounts the idea of any contact between Inuit and Franklin's men prior to the ships' abandonment.

We also have Inuit testimony as to witnessing the funeral of some important person near the ships. It's tempting to think this was Franklin's funeral, but when he died the ships were far offshore, separated from KWI by several miles of hummocky old ice. Woodman thinks it was, more likely, the funeral of a different, senior officer, and took place some time after at least one of the ships was re-piloted further south; this would explain the fact that the Inuit who saw it were still unaware of the Victory Point cache or any ships near there. He thinks it may well have been Crozier's funeral, a conjecture which, if true, eliminates him as a candidate for "Aglooka."

Curiously, after these accounts, our next tales of an encounter with a possible "Aglooka" seem to deal with the party of men who left the ship or ship and travelled south and then east along the coast of KWI. Somewhere along that trek, there was an encounter at the crack in the ice, where the white men traded a knife for some seal meat, and "cooked the meat with the aid of the blubber (a foolish waste of good, caloric blubber from the Inuit viewpoint). The Inuit named two of these men -- "Aglooka" was one, and the other "Doktook," the latter possibly an Inuit attempt at "Doctor." They described how Aglooka made notes in a little book, and tried to tell them what had happened to the ships by pantomime. This is perhaps a significant detail, as we know that Crozier, during his time with the Inuit of Igloolik on Parry's second expedition, was said to have learned the Inuit language better than any of the officers -- so why would he resort to pantomime? Then again, the officer did say that he was trying to get to "Iwillik" -- the area near Repulse Bay -- so maybe his vocab was just a little rusty.

We next hear of the finding of "Aglooka" at the Todd Islets, in the form of the body an officer with a gold chain around his neck. Yet the Inuit who made this identification seem to have used the name because they thought this man was Ross!

The last accounts of an "Aglooka" have to do with a man who was an excellent hunter -- so good that he shared food with the Inuit. The description matches Rae, and it's hard to rule him out as a source of some of these stories. Old Ook-bar-loo's cousin, Too-shoo-ar-thariu -- according to her at any rate -- had hosted a group of four men, including this "Aglooka." Aglooka was weak and ill, apparently because he refused to eat human flesh. The others were stronger. Too-shoo allowed them to stay in his igloo and hunt with him for a season, nursing Aglooka back to health. One of the men, not Aglooka, died early the next season, and the other three headed south, apparently planning to skirt the western coasts of Hudson's Bay and make it to Fort Churchill. They never made it; according to Hall's later informants near Marble Island, they may have been killed by sub-Arctic Indians along the way. Before they left Aglooka, who was described as a "great officer," gave Too-shoo his sword.

Hall was, of course, thrilled to think that this Aglooka was Crozier, and always referred to him as such in his diaries. He faced two disappointments: first, that Too-shoo-ar-thariu, when he finally met him in person, denied his aunt's account. Further queries seemed to indicate that Too-shoo was among the men who'd met at the crack in the ice, and that he and his fellow hunters had packed up and left, even as Aglooka ran from his tent begging them to stop. This shattered Hall's faith in the Inuit. Then, hearing the account of the possible murder of Crozier on his way south to Fort Churchill, Hall lost faith that there were any survivors of the Franklin expedition.

Aglooka, or "aglukark" as it is more often spelled, is still a common Inuit surname. The great Inuit singer Susan Aglukark was born in Fort Churchill, the place that Hall's "Aglooka" had sought to reach. And, more recently, when the Inuit of Gjoa Haven retained the services of a lawyer in their quest to protect the contents of the (later found to be empty) box under the cairn near their town, the lawyer they hired also had the last name Aglukark.

So who was this man -- who were these men? The world may never know...

BBC Story on Franklin

I wanted to put up a link to a news account of the Franklin story and modern interest in the same, written by Kate Dailey for the BBC's News Magazine. Ms. Dailey interviewed a number of the regulars from this and other online Franklin sites, including myself , William Battersby, and Tedd Betts -- and I think that the resulting story is accurate, well-written, and informative. It includes not only an account of the Parks Canada search, but of the attempted search using thermal imaging by Ron Carlson. Have a look here to read the full account. Congrats especially to William Battersby, whose distinctive voice narrates the associated slideshow, with great élan.

Still Missing: Erebus and Terror

The news has begun to trickle out that this year, the final year of the three-year long Parks Canada search for the lost ships of Sir John Franklin, has ended without result. Apparently, the special remote-controlled underwater probe brought to the search was unable to be deployed, though the reasons for this have not been made public. Of course I am disappointed, though I am also grateful to Marc-Andre Bernier, Parks Canada's chief of underwater archeology, and all the rest of the team for their efforts.

It's all too easy to give armchair advice -- but I do hope there will be further searches. My own view is that, in addition to whatever government efforts may or may not be funded, the Canadian government, as well as the territorial government of Nunavut, could and should do more to promote searches. The permitting process, under CLEY, should be streamlined in every way possible. A number of promising avenues, such as that proposed by Ron Carlson and discussed on this blog, were turned down due to technicalities, most often the absence of a government-credentialled archaeologist. So why not make such archaeologists available? In Carlson's case, he brought -- and essentially donated to the effort -- his own plane and imaging equipment; why not, instead of simply crassly denying him a permit, the territorial government helped find and place a qualified archaeologist to work with him? The cost to the Nunavut and Canada would be minimal, many times less than that of any of the state-sponsored efforts of these last three years. Another bone I have to pick is that I cannot understand why, given his work over many years on the Franklin mystery, David C. Woodman, has not been invited to participate in any of these recent searches. I believe it's unfair, and wrongheaded, to exclude the one person who knows the Inuit testimony better than any man living.

Lastly, I would observe this: in many human endeavors, it's been found that "crowd sourcing" -- the open and free participation of many in tackling a task -- is by far the most efficient way to solve many problems. If (say) the National Archives at Kew, the Maritime Museum at Greenwich, the Arctic Institute of North America, The Scott Polar Research Institute, Parks Canada, and the National Library of Canada got together, put all their resources on one wiki, including high-res imagery of every document and artifact, and a wiki-editable tag map of the search area, I'd wager that enormous progress could be made. Six very expensive days of federally-funded searching are all well and good, but in my experience, historical puzzles of this level of complexity require many voices -- experts and amateurs, Qalluunat and Inuit, historians and archivists, archaeologists and pilots -- the more voices the better.

(Image of the Muster book of HMS "Erebus" courtesy David Malcolm Shein, from the original at the National Archives, Kew)

Tragedy in Nunavut

I was greatly saddened today to learn of the crash of the First Air Boeing 737 near Resolute, Nunavut earlier today. The plane, one of six 737's in the First Air fleet, apparently encountered some sort of trouble on approach to the runaway at Resolute on a flight from Yellowknife; of 15 passengers and crew, 12 were killed; the other three are in hospital in Iqaluit as of the latest reports.

Nunavut is a vast land. But its population is only around 30,000, making it in many ways more like a town when it comes to who knows who. When I heard the news of the crash, I had that sickening feeling that someone I knew, or was connected with someone I knew, was probably aboard. And this turned out to be true; among the passengers were two granddaughters of Aziz "Ozzy" Kheraj, proprietor of the South Camp Inn in Resolute; one of them is among the survivors. Also on board, and apparently among the dead, was Randy Reid, the longtime cook at the South Camp Inn, whose wonderful cuisine was a great feature of the place. I was a guest at the South Camp in 2004, and enjoyed both the excellent food and the delightful, irascible presence of Ozzy, a true northern character whose career has taken him from the tropics to the Arctic. Word on others aboard has not made it through to the news services, but I have a feeling and the fear that, when the list is released, there may be other familiar names. My thoughts and feelings go out to all those affected in this vast, outspread town known as Nunavut.

Library of the Erebus and Terror II

I've written here before about the mystery surrounding the library of books taken aboard HMS "Terror" and "Erebus" on the Franklin expedition. As to the exact number of books, sources vary, and there are few precise descriptions. A copy of the Book of Common Prayer for each seaman was donated to the Expedition, and documents also mention the inclusion of a standard "Seaman's Library," though exactly what that meant in 1845 is not entirely clear. A number of the officers, particularly Fairholme and Fitzjames, mentioned their reading in their letters sent home from Greenland; Fitzjames mentions making a catalog of their books, but this, alas, is lost. Our other evidence comes from books recovered by Franklin searchers, most of which are held at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich; here the proof would seem to be definitive, but a number of these books are in such a fragmentary or mutilated condition that positive identification is difficult.

Nevertheless, it may well be possible that this library could, at least to some extent, be reconstructed. Copies of the official narratives of previous polar expeditions would certainly have been included; a standard nautical ephemeris and other reference works surely have been provided. Evidence may be lurking in all kinds of places, and Google Books and WorldCat could help us track down specific editions.

And now there is a perfect venue for such a collective undertaking: the LibraryThing Legacy Libraries project. They already have a catalog of the books aboard HMS Beagle, as well as several other vessels, and I've now created a catalog page for the lost library of Franklin's ships. It's fairly easy to add books -- the system will even look them up in the British Library or other catalogs and automatically fetch details. The criteria for inclusion should be (1) Books mentioned as being aboard by crewmembers or visitors to the ships at any time from their outfitting to the point at which the last letters were sent home from Greenland; (2) Books actually recovered by McClintock and other Franklin searchers; and lastly (3) Books which it can be reasonably inferred were aboard based on period evidence -- e.g. the statement that they had aboard all the previous printed narratives of British polar explorers. You can see that I've started to tag the books.

If anyone is interested in contributing, just drop me a note and I will send you the details so that you can log on, edit, add, and contribute.

New Images of HMS Investigator

Parks Canada recently concluded its new mission this year to photograph and gather information about the Franklin search ship HMS Investigator in the icy waters of Mercy Bay. There doesn't seem to have been any big press release or fanfare, but a number of images such as the one here have quietly made their appearance on the PC website. The quality of these images, when compared with those taken by the remote camera last summer, is remarkable; one can see every nail in the copper sheathing, and it's apparent that the roman numerals were not painted upon this surface, but were cut out of sheet metal and nailed on. There's nothing, at least yet, of the 3D laser telemetry they had planned to gather, nor -- alas -- any images of the interior of the captain's cabin which, the initial announcement implied, might be photographed if it proved possible to insert a camera through a nearby hole in the ship's planking. But I'm sure what we can see is just the tip of the iceberg of the images they've made.

For those who enjoy the immediacy of an audio report, you can get a series of podcasts on their site which give weekly updates on the dives and the progress of their research; I haven't yet had time to listen to all of these myself, but they've provided some interesting evidence which William Battersby discusses on his blog, and if other have listened and found items of interest, I'd certainly be glad to hear about them.

White Snow and Red Tape

Every government has its bureaucracy, and to rail against them collectively would be absurd. All the same, for those of us who celebrated the creation of Nunavut in 1999, it's disappointing to find that the territorial government's bureaucracy can be just as complicated and slow-moving as any office in Ottawa. Good intentions for Inuit cultural self-determination have been translated into regulations, and in some cases the process has ended up delaying or defeating even the kinds of historical or archaeological research that have the support of local Inuit communities and elders.

As Ron Carlson has explained on his blog, the process for applying for any kind of archaeological work in Nunavut is particularly labyrinthine. One has to have one's request signed off on by a wide array of interested parties, including local Inuit hamlets in the vicinity of the proposed work. Mr. Carlson, to his great credit, has taken the process seriously, working closely with local Inuit leaders, and taking care to provide all the requested information. Since his project, which proposes taking aerial photographs using a thermal camera, is totally non-intrusive, one would think that approving it would be a straightforward matter -- but this is far from true. Nunavut's regulations are very strict -- even taking an ordinary photograph of a possible archaeological site without a permit -- as Bear Grylls' team did last summer -- is technically illegal. In Carlson's case, he satisfied all the various entities who had to sign off on his proposal, and had the support of the Hamlets as well -- and yet his permit was denied. The reason given was his lack of archaeological qualifications! Now, if his proposal involved putting spade into soil, or even a foot upon the ground, that would be understandable, but in this case, I personally feel the rationale borders on the absurd. His proposed search is totally without impact on the ground, undertaken at his own expense, and would produce data which he would share with any and all professional archaeologists an scholars who were interested -- a great many of whom have not the means to get up to King William Island -- and they would have been enormously grateful (I know I would). And yet, apparently, unless he can locate an archaeologist to sit in the passenger seat, this potentially valuable research won't be allowed.

Ron, to his credit, plays absolutely by the book, and he hopes to return next year with the support and/or presence of qualified archaeologists. But it's a real shame that the government of Nunavut has not seen fit to approve this year's search, which I know all of us here were very hopeful could shed new light on the Franklin mystery. Fortunately, Franklinites are very patient people -- we certainly wish Ron the best and I know we'll be there to support, and to follow, his proposed mission next year.

Rumors of Parks Canada Franklin Search

It's that time of year again when -- despite what has been for the most part a more open, accessible, and timely release of materials from the Parks Canada teams involved with the Franklin search -- we once again must strain to garner what faint rumors we can as to the nature and extent of this year's activities. Fortunately, we have the good reporting of Randy Boswell to rely upon; in a recent article posted to canada.com, Boswell outlines what he's learned so far. By his account, quiet preparations are already underway for a search this year, although PC haven't released any details yet as final agreements with private partners, as well as permits and (one supposes) funding have not yet been worked out. The logistics of sending a government expedition are daunting, and the relative expense of getting a team up there and in place during what is still a fairly small window of time, don't augur well for major progress -- it all seems to depend on whether, in the limited search area identified, searchers have the good fortune to find what so many have sought for so long without result.

There are, however, some hopeful signs; I have heard from a couple of Franklin buffs about the possibility that the Canadian government may be considering the use of LIDAR telemetry to narrow the range of targets, or (possibly) even locate the ships themselves, without having to dispatch a ground team at all. LIDAR (the name is an acronym for Light Detection and Ranging) uses lasers to create detailed maps of the surface or near subsurface features; NASA has already done some impressive work with its EAARL (Experimental Advanced Airborne Research LIDAR) in creating highly detailed 3D models of coastal features, including underwater topography. Such a system could, in theory at least, be used to obtain imagery from the region of King William Island which could include submerged features such as ships or debris fields. At the very least, it's an intriguing possibility.

In the meantime Ron Carlson -- assuming some co-operation from weather, local officials, and permits -- will soon be in Gjoa Haven making final preparations for his fly-over of key KWI sites using thermal sensing technology, in hopes that he may be able to identify the site of Franklin's grave. It could be a very interesting year indeed.

Ron Carlson's Franklin Search

Over the years, as readers may imagine, I've been in touch with all kinds of people who've had ideas about searching for traces of Sir John Franklin. I've heard from psychics, conspiracy theorists, supposed "direct" descendants, pathologists, poets, and glaciologists -- each with their own angle on the Franklin mystery. But until now, I've rarely known a Franklin searcher as ready, as able, and as determined as is Ron Carlson. Carlson, by his own account, first caught the Franklin bug from my late friend Chauncey Loomis's book on CF Hall, Weird and Tragic Shores. Many who have read Chauncey's book have wondered about the loose ends of the search for the elusive "Aglooka," but as the Wizard of Oz might have put it, Mr. Carlson had one thing the others hadn't got -- an airplane. With his DeHavilland Beaver, one of the legendary workhorses of the North, and his many hours of flying experience, Carlson has set out to do a fly-over of King William Island equipped with thermal sensing cameras to detect potential Franklin burial sites. He has even, in a move reminiscent of Hall's practice camp near the Cincinnati Observatory, constructed a mock-grave in his own backyard to see whether his thermal sensing equipment could detect it -- and it could.

I retain some skepticism, of course: any Franklin grave, 160+ years later, could have receded into the background radiation of thermal imagery, much as the grave of Lieutenant Irving receded back into the visual static of rocky scree and boulders. Nevertheless, given the enormous size of the area to be searched, it seems a very sensible approach to use any sort of visual or scientific telemetry to identify worthy targets in a (frozen) ocean of possibilities. Dave Woodman did much the same with his magnetometer search, and Parks Canada have tried the same approach with side-scan sonar. Even if, on examination, most of the targets proved to be natural features, we certainly need something to limit the size of the haystack in which we are to search for this needle.

Ron has an excellent blog in which he's detailed his progress so far, including landing at Arctic airstrips in adverse wind conditions, relocating an abandoned HBC post, and visiting a church in Churchill whose stained-glass windows were donated by Lady Franklin -- I urge everyone who follows my blog to follow his! There's also just been a great article on Ron's efforts in the Lakeland Times. I'm sure that the best wishes of all Franklin buffs go with him on his search this season!

Japanese duo retrace Franklin's steps

Faithful readers of this blog will recall, perhaps, my posting from back in February about a previously unknown Japanese adventurer, Yusuke Kakuhata, and his bold plan to retrace Franklin's footsteps across some of the most barren areas of the Arctic, unsupported and on foot. At the time, I was doubly skeptical -- first, that the attempt was real, given that its only mention was on a relatively unknown English-language Japanese news site -- and second, that such a journey, undertaken as it appeared to be by a man whose previous experiences were all on guided expeditions, seemed foolhardy. It now appears I was mistaken on both fronts -- according to this new posting at the ExplorersWeb site, Mr. Kakuhata and his fellow traveller, the more experienced Yasunaga Ogita (both pictured above) have indeed completed the most difficult leg of their planned trip, making the more than 1,000 kilometre trip from Resolute Bay to Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, in 60 days. Having left Resolute on March 15, they are now resting in Gjoa before departing on the final section of their journey toward the Baker Lake region. This would seem to evoke the route supposed to have been traversed by the mysterious Kabloona known only as "Aglooka," and supposed by Charles Francis Hall to have been Francis Crozier -- for he and his two or three companions (depending on the source) are the only members of Franklin's party said by the Inuit to have headed out in this direction. Ogita and Kakuhata plan to start their journey taking sleds, then switch to backpacks when the snow withdraws and the tundra begins to thaw. The article also mentions that Mr. Ogita has been posting updates to his blog -- it's in Japanese, and didn't see a translation link, though you can auto-translate it and get the general gist.

I for one would certainly want to congratulate these two travellers -- their undertaking, although not unprecedented (the American Express Franklin Memorial Expedition followed much the same route in 2003) is certainly remarkable in its being undertaken by such a small, unsupported party, and commencing so early in the season. I hope we'll soon have more details of their journey.