The Somerset press. [volume] (Somerset, Ohio) 1873-1977, 1880-10-14
The Franklin Expedition.

1t was thirty-fve years last July since
Franklin's ships were for the last time
seen in Bafin's Bay. Three years after
ward England sent the first expedition
in search of him and his men, and since
that time more than twenty more have
sailed. Little by little and piece by
piece, they have brought home the relics
and mementoes which have gradually
told the story of the fate that overlook
them in that land of perpetual ice. For
many years, there were floating about
vague beliefs that he and his men were
still alive, and might one day be found
again. This tradition was fostered by
Lady Franklin's devotion to her hus-
bands memory, and her heroic measures
for discovering the secret locked up some
where in the dreary Arctic wastes. Her
bereavement infected the sympathies of
the civilized world, and the crusades
which were preached and led, sometimes
by English pluck, often by American
enterprise, have at last brought back the
tidings that nothing more can ever be
known.
In 1854 skeletons of some of the men
were discovered. In 1859 a paper found
in cairn where it had been placed by
one of Franklins officers, briefly saying
"Sir John Franklin died on the 11th of
June, 1S47," blotted out the faint figures
which the imagination fancied it saw still
moving in that northern twilight, and
nearly destroyed Lady's Franklin's grief
stricken mind Then half a dozen
spoons, inwrought with Sir John Frank
Inns crest, were, in 1872, given by ma
tive to Captain Barry, an American ex-
plorer, with the statement that he had
taken them from cairn 700 miles dis
tant, where books and other relics still
remained. Captain Barry, with Lieuten-
ant Schwatka, were, two years ago, sent
out by the enterprise of New York mer-
chants, and landed at the head of Repulse
Bay. Thence, going and returning, they
made sledge journey of 5000 miles,
travelling over ice and snow, and, what
was still more difficult, over broken and
jagged clay stone, with marshes inter
vening, and covered with patches of
brown and green moss, with purple flow
ers peeping through the crevices of the
stones. On this journey they lived and
preserved their health by eating the food
which the Exquimaux eat and the game
which in some places abounded. During
the winter the thermometer was fire.
quently from SO to 60 degrees below zero,
and, at one time, fell to 103.
They found no cairn, as was told to
Captain Barry, but they discovered sew
eral skeletons, ships boat, or rather the
prov and stern post, with a few cGnk-
cred boards still holding together, gilt
navy buttons, copper and iron bolts,
shot, cartridges, powder-cans, barrels,
broken medicine and wine bottles, axes
and few barrel slaves. The rigid clin-
ate had preserved, for over thirty years,
pieces of navy blue cloth which were
scattered along the shores of the inlets.
With the exception of scrap of paper
marked with an index finger pointing
southerly, no writing of any sort was
found.
And so, after enduring great hardships
but no great suffering, the expedition
returned, still leaving to the Exquimuax
and the eternal cold the remains Of
Franklin and his crew. Beyond the fact
that they abandoned their vessels, the
Erebus and Terror, and attempted to drag
their boats overland in the hopes O.
launching them in the open water again,
nothing is yet, nothing probably ever
will be, definitely known of their strug.
gle and their end