Lady Franklin outfitted five ships for Arctic search
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Her dark hair in soft curls, Jane Griffin looked all the world like a pretty and dainty young woman, perhaps with interest in the delicate home arts. Looks were deceiving. She was indeed beautiful, with sharp intelligence, educated in the sciences, and experienced in roughing it, really roughing it, on land and sea. When her husband, Sir John Franklin and his crew disappeared in Canada’s Far North, Lady Franklin ensured the missing were kept in the news and in the brass spyglasses of search expeditions.
Girls rarely engaged in science and daring activities in the 1800s, but that did not stop Griffin (born 1771, London, England). Her mother died when Griffin and her two sisters were young, but her father ensured that his daughters were appropriately cared for by a governess. John Griffin was a prosperous silk manufacturer and could afford to send his daughter to a small boarding school. He also took her on travels throughout Britain and Europe, where she wrote pages and pages of detailed journals.
Possessing fearless curiosity and love of learning, Jane Griffin “drew up a formidable plan calling for daily study of the gospels and epistles, history and logic, languages, mathematics, conversation and music,” Geraldine Rahmani said in Arctic Profiles, Arctic Institute of North America. Griffin’s interest in the Arctic first appeared in her writings in “a note about the Buchan-Franklin expedition of 1818,” years before she met the gallant British naval officer.
In 1823, Griffin’s friend Eleanor Porden married the Arctic explorer Franklin. The Griffin family and the Franklins became close friends. Porden gave birth to a daughter the next year, but the young mother died of tuberculosis in 1825, only days after she encouraged her husband to continue on with his next expedition.
Two and a half years later, Franklin returned from the voyage and was reacquainted with Griffin. “In 1828, the Griffins (father and daughter) went to Russia; there Captain Franklin joined them, and he and Jane became engaged,” according to Anne Frazer in Encyclopedia Arctica 15: Biographies (Dartmouth College Libraries). “Upon their return to England, their marriage took place on Nov. 15, 1828.” The bride was 37, the groom was 42.
Recognizing his extensive work, King George IV knighted Franklin in April 1829; the honour also bestowing upon his wife the title of Lady Franklin. The next year, the officer was given command of HMS Rainbow in the Mediterranean; while he worked, his wife “visited many parts of North Africa, Syria and Asia Minor,” described Alan Cooke in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. 10, 1972. Their next post was in Van Diemen’s Land, Tasmania, where Sir Franklin was lieutenant-governor of the island prison colony.
Engaging in natural science and social studies, Lady Franklin ventured out with “botanists and ornithologists” to map out “schemes for a more progressive system of education, and was active in introducing measures for the improvement of women convicts in the colony,” Frazer said. (In the first half of the 1800s, Van Diemen’s Land became “home” to about 72,000 convicts from Britain and Ireland.) Unfortunately, colonists did not appreciate the British woman’s enthusiasm and she was skewered in newspapers.
Sir Franklin was not a great success with his on-land duties. Discovery expeditions were his strength, and in 1845 he gladly accepted the opportunity to search for the Northwest Passage at age 59. “After Erebus and Terror set sail for the Arctic, Lady Franklin busied herself with travel to the West Indies and the United States,” Rahmani stated. She was accompanied by her niece, Sophia Cracroft.
Years passed without sign of Sir Franklin and his vessels. They should have joyfully sailed back into England’s ports by 1848. Concerned, the British Admiralty dispatched three search expeditions to Canada’s North. The rescue crews found no hint of the polar commander or crew. Lady Franklin was not about to give up on her beloved husband.
“Lady Jane Franklin lobbied relentlessly for action,” James H. Marsh and Owen Beattie wrote in The Canadian Encyclopedia. Establishing a reward of £20,000 in 1850 for anyone who could bring assistance to the Franklin crew, the British government also offered “£10,000 for information leading to their relief, and £10,000 to anyone who might ascertain the fate of the expedition.” The search was extensive, with the Admiralty itself sending eight vessels.
Hopes were kept alive with the fact that earlier explorers were able to survive for several years or more, and longer if they were helped by Inuit. Lady Franklin kept the lost Franklin Expedition in the public eye and hearts. Writing newspaper articles and letters, she petitioned for help and pushed for continued governmental assistance. Increasing the offered rewards with her own money, she also organized search expeditions with her private funds.
“Between 1850 and 1857, (Lady Franklin) outfitted five ships wholly or mainly at her own expense, and she inspired substantial contributions to her cause from other persons and from other nations,” Cooke said. To comprehend the undertaking, she became an expert in the icy Arctic geography.
In a final attempt to find her husband, Lady Franklin sent Capt. Francis McClintock and the steam yacht Fox to search for “survivors, records and other evidences of the expedition’s fate.” Three years later, the captain “returned with numerous relics, among them a record that gave news of the discovery of a northwest passage, of Franklin’s death in 1847 and of other deaths …,” Cooke outlined. Lady Franklin’s heartfelt hope of Sir Franklin’s survival was crushed … but her love of travel survived.
Accepting an invitation by American philanthropist Henry Grinnell to visit New York, Franklin and her niece arrived in 1860 to a grand reception. (Grinnell had generously provided support for two voyages to find the Arctic explorer.) Incorporating Canada into their tour, the women “visited Quebec and cruised up the Saguenay River, then stopped at Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto and Hamilton …,” Cooke said. The West was not ignored. Sailing from New York around Cape Horn, Franklin and Cracroft landed in California in early 1861, then headed for British Columbia.
Visiting Esquimalt and staying for several weeks in Victoria, Franklin crossed over to the mainland and then the Fraser River, “first by commercial vessel as far as Yale, then in a canoe paddled by 12 Indians up to the Fraser’s first falls,” Cooke wrote. Seeing enough of Canada, Franklin and Cracroft rounded out the holiday with stops in Hawaii, Japan, India and then took the long way home.
The frozen Arctic was always on Franklin’s mind, and she still hoped to retrieve her husband’s records. In her early 80s, she requested that a monument be installed in Westminster Abbey to commemorate her beloved polar explorer. On July 18, 1875, at age 83, Lady Franklin died in London, England. “For her perseverance, Lady Franklin was awarded the Founder’s Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society,” Rahmani said, “conferred for the first time upon a woman.”
Mapping and recording statistics throughout, all of those explorers dispatched to investigate the missing Franklin Expedition hastened the crucial scientific understanding of the Far North, much of it thanks to the unyielding love of Lady Jane Franklin.
In 2014, Parks Canada announced the finding of HMS Erebus in the polar waters near Prince William Island. Two years later, HMS Terror was located. All 129 members of officers and crew expired, and Franklin’s body was never found. Medical tests performed on the few remains discovered in the 1980s indicated that the men suffered dreadfully from the cold, starvation, scurvy, tuberculosis and lead poisoning. The location of the shipwrecks is now a National Historic Site, co-managed by Inuit and Parks Canada.
Susanna McLeod is a writer living in Kingston.