little. The crew was young, tough, and seasoned.
The ships, sheathed in iron, bristled with the
latest Victorian-era technology—from steam
engines to heated water and an early daguerre-
otype camera. The vessels carried more than
three years’ worth of food and drink, as well as
two barrel organs and libraries with some 2,900
books. Two dogs and a monkey kept the men
company in their quarters.
But these small floating worlds were no
match for the Arctic’s frozen seas. On Admi-
ralty orders, the expedition sailed to one of
the most treacherous, ice-choked corners of
the far north. By September 1846, both ves-
sels were imprisoned in sea ice northwest of
King William Island. They remained so for at
least a year and a half of brutal polar cold.
By April 1848, 24 men were dead, including
Franklin himself. The rest had abandoned the
ships. In a terse statement stuffed into a cairn
on King William Island, the expedition’s new
commander, Francis Crozier, noted that he and
others were heading out on foot for the Back
River, perhaps to find better hunting, or possibly
hoping to reach a fur-trading outpost more than
700 miles away. It was Crozier’s last known com-
munication with the outside world. (More than
a half century later, in 1906, Norwegian explorer
Roald Amundsen would be credited as the first
to navigate the treacherous Northwest Passage.)
For years after Franklin’s expedition stalled,
search parties combed the region’s coastlines,