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Article Excerpt
(Received 4 September 2008; accepted in revised form 17 October 2008)
ABSTRACT. While the bulk of the searching parties sent out from the British ships deployed on the search for the missing Franklin expedition in the North American Arctic Islands over the period 1848-59 employed man-hauled sledges, dog sledges were also used quite extensively. The dog sledges were especially (but not exclusively) used as "couriers," that is, for communication between the various wintering ships, where speed was the primary requirement. The total distance covered by dog sledges (excluding short hauls in the vicinity of the wintering ships) was, at a minimum, 11 576 km; this distance compares with the minimum 41 555 km covered by man-hauled sledges.
Key words: dog sledges, Franklin search expeditions, North American Arctic Islands
RESUME. Bien que la plupart des equipes de recherche deployees par les navires britanniques a la recherche de l'expedition de Franklin disparue dans l'archipel Arctique nord-americain pendant la periode de 1848-1859 se soient servi de traineaux tires par des humains, elles ont egalement employe des traineaux a chiens a maintes reprises. Les traineaux a chiens servaient plus particulierement (mais non pas exclusivement) de * messagers * en ce sens qu'ils etablissaient les liens de communication entre les divers navires en hivernage, la rapidite de transmission etant essentielle. La distance totale a avoir ete parcourue par les traineaux a chiens (ce qui comprend les courtes distances dans la region des navires en hivernage) s'est chiffree, au minimum, a 11 576 kilometres, comparativement a la distance minimale de 41 555 kilometres parcourue par les traineaux tires par des humains.
Mots cles: traineaux a chiens, expeditions de recherche de Franklin, archipel Arctique nord-americain
Traduit pour la revue Arctic par Nicole Giguere.
INTRODUCTION
In the summer of 1845, John Franklin's expedition on board HMS Erebus and Terror in search of the Northwest Passage disappeared into what is now the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Initially, little concern was felt in Britain when there was no word from the expedition, since it was provisioned for three years. But when nothing had yet been heard from it by 1847, serious concern began to be raised in Britain. A search expedition (that of Sir James Clark Ross on board HMS Enterprise and Investigator) was dispatched in 1848 to try to locate the missing expedition by following in its track through Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound. This was the first of 20 expeditions (plus 11 supply expeditions and one relief expedition) dispatched to the Arctic (Ross, 2002), approaching either from the west or from the east, to search for the missing expedition. Many of them involved one or more winterings. Most were mounted by the Royal Navy, but some were privately financed, particularly by Franklin's widow, Lady Franklin, and at least two were dispatched by the government of the United States. Few clues as to the fate of the missing expedition were found until Sir Francis Leopold McClintock's expedition on board Fox discovered the only document ever retrieved that casts some light on that fate, on the northwest coast of King William Island, and a trail of abandoned equipment and skeletons along the west and south coasts of that island. On the other hand, search parties from the various wintering ships explored and mapped most of the archipelago, including the "southern tier" of the Queen Elizabeth Islands.
Most of these search parties were teams of six or seven seamen, led by an officer, hauling heavy sledges that carried food, fuel, and camping equipment. Neither snowshoes nor skis were used. The British have been widely condemned for their inability to adopt Inuit travelling techniques such as the use of dog sledges. One author has suggested that the attitude of the British naval officers was that "it was a form of cheating to use animals for transport" and that "to the English there was something noble, something romantic, about strong young men marching in harness through the Arctic wastes, enduring incredible hardships with a smile on their lips and a song in their hearts" (Berton, 1988:187). In reality, however, the use of dogs for hauling the sledges, a quintessential Inuit technique, was quite widely adopted by the British search expeditions. Dog sledging routes documented in the literature are shown in Figure 1.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
PRIOR EXAMPLES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
There was at least one precedent for a British expedition making use of dog sledges in the Arctic. Captain George F. Lyon of HMS Hecla, having been impressed by the efficiency of the dog teams driven by the Inuit during the second wintering of Sir William Edward Parry's expedition (1821-23) at Iglulik, bought a team of 11 dogs and learned to drive them (Lyon, 1824:332). In a letter to his mother dated 3 April 1822, Parry expressed great optimism as to the usefulness of these animals in Lyon's planned future trips (Parry, 1822). Experimenting with their abilities as draft animals, Lyon found that three of his dogs could pull him, on a sledge weighing 45 kg, over a distance of one mile in six minutes, while his lead dog alone could pull a load of 89 kg a distance of a mile in eight minutes (Lyon, 1824:335). On one occasion, he timed a team of seven of his dogs pulling a sledge-load of men; they covered a mile in four and a half minutes. A team of nine of his dogs used for hauling stores from Hecla to Fury, lying a mile away, covered this distance, hauling 732 kg, in nine minutes. Lyon also reported that he often travelled from Fury to Hecla in pitch darkness and blinding snowdrift, relying entirely on his dogs' direction-finding abilities to reach his destination (Lyon, 1824:335).
Reports such as Lyon's, not to mention observations by Royal Navy officers of the impressive use of sledge dogs by the Inuit (e.g., Parry, 1824:290 and facing plate), were undoubtedly familiar to the officers engaged in the Franklin search and must have encouraged the more enterprising of them to try using dogs.
As early as the latter part of 1849, the Admiralty was receiving proposals as to how the search should be mounted, including suggestions for using dogs. Thus in December 1849, Captain Sir John Ross wrote: "The expedition should first touch at Lupley [sic; Lievely, Godhavn or Qeqertarsuaq] and there procure two Danish interpreters ... and also some sledge dogs" (Great Britain, 1850:115).
On 4 January 1850, Lieutenant Sherard Osborn wrote to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, proposing that a party be sent overland to Cape Bathurst on the shores of Amundsen Gulf. Among other recommendations for this party, he wrote: "If possible a couple of dog sledges and two teams of dogs ought to be forwarded to Cape Bathurst during the summer of 1849 [sic], to be used at the discretion of the officer in command of the proposed party (Great Britain, 1850:132).
And on 28 February 1850, Mr. Thomas Ward of Hull, owner of the whaling ship Truelove, relayed to the Admiralty the suggestions of John Parker, captain of that vessel: "He advises that 12 dogs at least should be taken in each ship, and two sledges; the natives commonly run eight dogs in a sledge; but the extra number might be desirable, in case any should fall lame or die" (Great Britain, 1850:156).
SOURCES OF DOGS
No doubt influenced by suggestions from these and other experts, from the summer of 1850 onwards, many of the British search expeditions acquired dogs and sledges from one of the West Greenland settlements at which they invariably called on the way into the Arctic. Thus the expedition led by the Scottish whaling captain William Penny, on board HMS Lady Franklin and Sophia, called at Upernavik in the spring of 1850. Penny was fully aware of the value of dogs from his own extensive experience of observing and interacting with the Greenlanders and the Inuit of Baffin Island (Holland, 1970). He was able to persuade the Danish Assistant Governor, Carl Petersen, to join the expedition as interpreter and to bring his sledge and eight dogs with him. Petersen brought four on board with him at Upernavik, but they had to call at a neighbouring settlement to pick up another three that he had lent to a friend; the latter then sold Penny an eighth dog, to provide the four for each ship that Petersen had recommended (Sutherland, 1852, vol. 1:106, 121, 125). None of the other three expeditions searching for Franklin at the same time, namely the Royal Navy's expedition under Austin on board Resolute, Assistance, Pioneer, and Intrepid, De Haven's on board Advance and Rescue, or Sir John Ross's on board Felix, appear to have taken any sledge dogs.
In the following year, Captain William Kennedy, leader of a private expedition sponsored by Lady Franklin on board Prince Albert, was also able to buy six dogs and a sledge for [pounds sterling]4 at Upernavik on 10 July 1851 (Kennedy, 1853:51; Bellot, 1855, vol. 1:184). The owners insisted on cash, and Kennedy had difficulty in raising this amount, presumably having expected to barter for the dogs.
A year later, another Royal Navy expedition, consisting of HMS Resolute and Assistance, the steam tenders Pioneer and Intrepid, and the depot ship North Star, was dispatched to the Arctic under Captain Sir Edward Belcher. On 9 June 1852 at Godhavn (now Qeqertarsuaq), eight dogs were purchased, four each for Resolute and Assistance (McClin-tock, 1852-54; De Bray, 1992:23). Captain Belcher was not greatly impressed by the calibre of the dogs: "We did wrong in trusting to the Governor; he had some he wanted to get rid of (Belcher, 1855, vol. 1:39). McDougall, Resolute's Master, reported that the total number of dogs purchased at Godhavn was 11 (McDougall, 1857:49). A bitch (named Bess) that M'Clure had obtained from the Inuit at one of Investigator's stops on the north coast of Alaska joined Intrepid's dog team at Dealy Island (McClintock, 1852-54: 30 November 1853). McCormick, surgeon on board North Star, stated that he bought three dogs for the expedition from the blacksmith at Godhavn, although it is not clear whether these were included in the dogs reported by Belcher or McDougall (McCormick, 1884, vol. 2:15). McCormick also bought two animals for himself, a dog that he named Erebus and a bitch he named Terror.
Captain Belcher bought a further three dogs from the Inughuit at Kap York:
In return for our presents, but more particularly in exchange for a boat-hook and a broken oar, we obtained three very fine and handsome native dogs, not differing a hair in marks or colours from each other, being of an iron-grey, whitish beneath, dark stripe on back and shoulders, and strongly resembling a very dark-coloured Arctic wolf. (Belcher, 1855, vol. 1:66)
On his way into the Arctic via Bering Strait in 1851, Captain Collinson of HMS Enterprise bought three dogs from the Yupik Eskimos in the vicinity of Bering Strait (Collinson, 1889). To add to this number, Lieutenant Charles Jago, third lieutenant on board Enterprise, purchased a team (number unspecified) from the Inuit of the Walker Bay area of western Victoria Island in the spring of 1852 (Barr, 2007).
Also in the west, Dr. John Rae obtained his dogs from the Satudene, the Indians of the Great Bear Lake area, who also supplied him with meat (caribou and muskoxen) and fish, both for the dogs and for himself and his men (Rich, 1953).
Later, on his way into the Arctic on board Fox in 1857, on the expedition that was to reveal more than any other about the fate of the Franklin expedition, Captain Francis Leopold McClintock acquired 30 dogs in West Greenland: 10 at Godhavn, 6 at Proven, and 14 at Upernavik (McClintock, 1859). He later bought three dogs from the Inuit during his sledge trips: one on the west coast of Boothia Peninsula in February 1859 and two on eastern King William Island in May 1859 (McClintock, 1859).
Before leaving the Arctic in the summer of 1852, Captain William Kennedy, on board Prince Albert, called at Beechey Island and turned over his surviving four dogs to Captain William Pullen of North Star, thus adding to the number of dogs available for future sledge trips from the ships of Belcher's squadron (McClintock, 1852-54; Kennedy, 1853; McDougall, 1857; De Bray, 1992). Kennedy had planned to drown the dogs before leaving the Arctic, but Pullen managed to dissuade him (Pullen, 1852-54).
In the following year, Captain Edward Inglefield of the supply ship Phoenix picked up five more dogs at Upernavik on 12 July; these were added to the animals based on...
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