THE THREE LOST MEN FROM McCLINTOCK EXPEDITION

Some time ago, I wrote about the forgotten heroes who died while trying to locate the Franklin lost expedition. The idea was to demonstrate that, the recurrent remark which says that there were more loses in the course of these searching expeditions than in the Franklin´s one itself, was unfounded. Some of those expeditions left mini graveyards, not too different to the one built by the Franklin expedition in Beechey island and which many readers surely know well. Those I have managed to locate so far are in Port Leopold, Dealy island, North Star Bay and Griffith island. 

That was also the case of Leopold McClintock searching expedition, which left two graves with their correspondant tombstones at the entrance of Bellot strait, where he was forced to winter.

McClintock had already lost a member by then, Robert Scott, their lead stocker, who died because of a fall on the 4th of december of 1857. The Yacht Fox had been beset since the 20th of august at the north end of Baffin bay, not far from Melville Bay. His, hadn´t been the first one to be involved in that situation, Ross´s Enterprise, the North Star and the Isabel had been trapped in these same waters before. The crossing of Baffin bay isn´t an easy task, its center is commonly plagued with icebergs and it has prevented some expeditions from getting into Lancaster sound for many years. This forces them to winter in the ice, or more luckily, doing that in a sheltered bay at the west coast of Greenland. 

Wintering in the pack ice was a terrible and desperate thing to do. Other explorers had experienced before the horrors of having to deal with the extremely thick ice which continuosly threatens smashing the hull. Ships are in permanent movement and very often, are placed by the ice in impossible angles making the life on board miserable. The "Ice artillery", as the always well informed McClintock reminds us that Eliza Kent Kane had christened the idefatigable attack by the ice, made resting simply impossible.

It was during the darkest days of that winter that the engine driver, Robert Scott, had the misfortune of falling through the hatchway on the 2nd december of 1857. "The steady serious man", as McClintock descibed him, died two days after the fall of internal injuries. The cursed vacancy was inmediately covered by George Brands, the engineer, who would also abruptly and unexpectedly die almost a year later. As we will soon see, George, who inherited from Scott "the whole duty of working the engines" wasn´t aware about what this duty actually was going to mean:

"Poor Scott fell down a hatchway two days only before his death, which was occasioned by the internal injuries then received ; he was a steady serious man ; a widow and family will mourn his loss. He was our engine-driver; we cannot replace him, therefore the whole duty of working the engines will devolve upon the engineer, Mr. Brand."

The Church service was read almost entirely on board, and then, a party of men, led by McClintock, dragged the corpse (we must assume that no coffin was issued for the occassion) which had been put on a sledge, to the place where poor Scott was going to be buried at sea. There is no point in summarizing or trying to give an idea about what happened there. It is much more interesting and realistic to read from McClintock´s own words how the scene was and the magical and gloomy atmosphere which surrounded it:

 "I have just returned on board from the performance of the most solemn duty a commander can be called upon .to fulfil. A funeral at sea is always peculiarly impressive ; but this evening at seven o'clock, as we gathered around the sad remains of poor Scott, reposing under an Union Jack, and read the Burial Service by the light of lanterns, the effect could not fail to awaken very serious emotions.

The greater part of the Church Service was read on board, under shelter of the housing; the body was then placed upon a sledge, and drawn by the messmates of the deceased to a short distance from the ship, where a hole through the ice had been cut : it was then " committed to the deep," and the Service com pleted. 

What a scene it was ! I shall never forget it. 

The lonely 'Fox,' almost buried in snow, completely isolated from the habitable world, her colours half-mast high, and bell mournfully tolling ; our little procession slowly marching over the rough surface of the frozen sea, guided by lanterns and direction-posts, amid the dark and dreary depth of Arctic winter*; the death-like stillness, the intense cold, and threatening aspect of a murky, overcast sky ; and all this heightened by one of those strange lunar phenomena which are but seldom seen even here, a complete halo encircling the moon, through which passed a horizontal band of pale light that encompassed the heavens ; above the moon appeared the segments of two other halos, and there were also mock moons or paraselene to the number of six. The misty atmosphere lent a very ghastly hue to this singular display, which lasted for rather more than an hour."

A burial on the ice

The winter ended and the Fox was finally extricated from its ice jail by 26 th april 1858 after eight months of confinement and having drifted south by more than two thousand kilometers. The engines were used to sail among the dangerous icebergs and floes to put distance between the pack ice and the ship. McClintock made good use of  the steam, in spite of that he was well aware of the limitations of having just one man to drive them.  His enthusiasm surpassed the practical and human limits, which had much to do with what happened the following winter. McClintock expectations of Brand were high. On one occassion he said:

"Mr. Brand alone being capable of working the engines, so that ten or twelve hours daily is all the steaming that could have been expected."

At the time they were fighting to escape the ice pack during the spring of 1858, the commander wrote:

 "We went faster, received fewer though still more severe shocks, until at length we had room to steer clear of the heaviest pieces ; and at eight o'clock we emerged from the villanous " pack," and were running fast through straggling pieces into a clear sea.The engines were stopped, and Mr. Brand permitted to rest after eighteen hours' duty, for we now have no one else capable of driving the engines."

After the expedition was resupplied in the whaling posts located on the west coast of Greenland, they sailed northward to Cape York, where they met the Arctic Highlanders and then continued, following the Baffin´s steps, following the shores of the bay till they reached Lancaster sound. 

They had reached Bellot strait and were trying to get through but the ice blocked their way westward. They tried and tried and tried again to cross Bellot strait but the ice refuse to relinquish. In the course of these operations, engines were used constantly to make the most of the occassional leads which opened before them which was depriving them from reaching their goal. 

From time to time McClintock refers to the use of steam in ways like the one which follows:

"Today an unsparing use of steam and canvas forced the ship eight miles further west we were then about half-way 'through Bellot Strait ! "

We can only imagine what that meant to George Brand, working alone hour after hour in the overheated engine room. 

McClintock decided to winter again at the entrance to Port Kennedy, and from there he would try to find some trace of the Franklin expedition by sledging. McClintock tells the shocking events which took place quite unexpectedly on the 6th November 1858:

"Yesterday Mr. Brand was out shooting as usual, and in robust health ; in the evening Hobson sat with him for a little time. Mr. Brand turned the conversation upon our position and employments last year ; he called to remembrance poor Robert Scott, then in sound health, and the fact of his having carried our " Guy Fawkes round the ship on the preceding day twelvemonth, and added mournfully,

 " Poor fellow ! no one knows whose turn it may be to go next." 

He finished his evening pipe, and shut his cabin door shortly after nine o'clock. This morning, at seven o'clock, his servant found him lying upon the deck, a corpse, having been several hours dead. Apo- plexy appears to have been the cause. He was a steady, serious man, under forty years of age, and leaves a widow and three or four children ; what their circumstances are I am not aware."

Brand was buried four days after. We can imagine this delay was provoked by bad weather or maybe because of the autopsy made in an attempt to try to ascertain the actual cause of his death. After that, he was finally put to rest in the frozen ground of Port Kennedy:

"10th. — This morning the remains of Mr. Brand, inclosed in a neat coffin, were buried in a grave on shore. A suitable headboard and inscription will be placed over it. From all that I have gathered, it appears that his mind had been somewhat gloomy for the last few days, dwell ing much upon poor Scott's sudden death."

But Brand wouldn´t be alone for a long time, he would be followed six months after by Thomas Blackwell, the ship steward. From the moment they departed from Greenland towards Lancaster sound the crew was in good health. The death of Blackwell, happened on 14th june 1859, and was unexpected, and McClintock soon found a reasonable explanation for that unfortunate incident:

"The Doctor now acquainted me with the death of Thomas Blackwell, ship's steward, which occurred only five days previously, and was occasioned by scurvy. This man had scurvy when I left the ship in April, and no means were left untried by the Doctor to promote his recovery and rally his desponding energies ; but his mind, unsustained by hope, lost all energy, and at last he had to be forcibly taken upon deck for fresh air. For months past the ship's spirits had been of necessity removed from under his control.

When too late his shipmates made it known that he had a dislike to preserved meats, and had lived the whole winter upon salt pork ! He also disliked preserved potato, and would not eat it unless watched, nor would he put on clean clothes, which others in charity prepared for him. Yet his death was somewhat unexpected ; he went on deck as usual to walk in the middle of the day, and, when found there, was quite dead. His remains were buried beside those of our late shipmate Mr. Brand."

Blackwell was the only casualty of the expedition due to scurvy, one out of 26 men after two winters. The statistics seemed to improve if we compare this rate with other previous expeditions. This reinforces the idea that they apparently were frequently supplied with abundant fresh meat during the whole trip by hunting and fishing. The stop in Greenland surely had very much to do with this happy outcome. Also, the abundant references to previous expeditions with which McClintock decorates his journal, is a clear signal that the captain had done his homework and that he had put into practice whatever measures he considered could help to fight the scurvy.

Not much later, the 10th august 1859, the ice started to open and the Fox left their winter quarters. McClintock, always a resourceful and unstoppable man, declared his intention, which eventually he achieved, to take control of the engines despite the losts of his engine driver and engineer: 

"I have been giving some attention to the engines and boiler, and hope, with the help of the two stokers, to be able to make use of our steam power."

And later:

Today steam was got up, and with the help of our two stokers I worked the engines for a short time. It is very cheering to know that we still have steam power at^ our command, although, hy the deaths of poor Mr. Brand and Robert Scott, we were deprived of our engineer and engine-driver."

McClintock´s will power is obviously a magnitude hard to measure for many of us. I raised both eyebrows when I read what he did while trying to get out of Port Kennedy, a thing which he managed to do:

"Having managed the engines for twenty- four consecutive hours, I was not sorry to get into bed."

The ship sailed towards civilization. The farewell to his lost shipmates  is quite moving and also gives a hint to their location. This could be used maybe some day to try to locate them together with other relics in their abandoned winter quarters. A boat and a cairn with a note were also left behind to accompany the graves: 

"Of the traces which we have left behind us, the most considerable are the graves of our two shipmates within the western point of our little harbour ; they were tastefully sodded round, and planted over with the usual Arctic flowers."

The expedition was over, and it was a successful one which would clear up part of the Franklin expedition mistery, though, as is happening nowadays with the archaeological work on the shipwrecks of Erebus and Terror, it also rises further unknowns.

If the graves of George Brand and Thomas Blackwell are still visible in Port Kennedy which is a thing I am unaware of.  I really want to think they are still there undisturbed by both, humans or animals, waiting to be properly repaired and marked. On the other hand, the sad proceedings of the burial of Robert Scott, gives us a precise idea of how the burials of the Franklin expedition men while being beset in the northwest coast of King William island were. 

I have tentatively pinned them in my interactive arctic Graveyard map at the mouth of the river at the center of the water channel which forms Port Kennedy, but I may be perfectly wrong:

Leopold McClintock winter quarters in Port Kennedy at the east end of Bellot strait

There are many explorers from that time still buried in the arctic, it wouldn´t be a totally crazy idea to try to locate the graves of these forgotten heroes and to build memorials to recognize their labour. The men of the Franklin expedition are not the only ones who deserve our honor.