KABLOONAS

KABLOONAS
Burial of John Franklin. Author: me

KABLOONAS

Kabloonas is the way in which the Inuit who live in the north part of Canada call those who haven´t their same ascendency.

The first time i read this word was in the book "Fatal Passage" by Ken McGoogan, when, as the result of the conversations between John Rae and some inuit, and trying to find any evidence of the ill-fated Sir John Franklin Expedition, some of then mentioned that they watched how some kabloonas walked to die in the proximities of the river Great Fish.

I wish to publish this blog to order and share all those anecdotes that I´ve been finding in the arctic literature about arctic expeditions. My interest began more than 15 years ago reading a little book of my brother about north and south pole expeditions. I began reading almost all the bibliography about Antarctic expeditions and the superknown expeditions of Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton, etc. After I was captured by the Nansen, Nobile and Engineer Andree. But the most disturbing thing in that little book, full of pictures, was the two pages dedicated to the last Franklin expedition of the S.XIX, on that moment I thought that given the time on which this and others expeditions happened, few or any additional information could be obtained about it. I couldn´t imagine that after those two pages It would be a huge iceberg full of stories, unresolved misteries, anecdotes, etc. I believe that this iceberg, on the contrary than others, would continue growing instead melting.



jueves, 19 de octubre de 2017

THE PARTY GOES ON: DR. JOHN RAE IN FUR A DAGUERROTYPE BY BEARD (EDITED)

I never thought I could find so many new pictures, not only pictures but Daguerrotypes!, in such short time. This time I am proud to announce I have found a beautifully coloured daguerrotype of Dr. John Rae dressed in his arctic outfit, apparently took in 1849, after returning from his overland voyage with Dr. Richardson. At least I had never seen this before now.


John Rae in arctic fur -
Silver Shadows - Fine Early photographs
There is a naughty smile in his face which suggest he was having fun or a good time while dressed like that in the photographic study. Interestengly one of the several streets, surely the locations of the different studies belonging "Beard´s photographic Institutions", is King William Street. It would be a curious and paradoxical coincidence that Rae had been pictured in that precise place. 

This picture had to be taken soon before Beard when bankrupt in 1850, a pity, because if he had overcome his finantial issues, maybe we could have now many more faces, in colour, of those heroic explorers who we could look at their eyes. 

EDIT: After the convincing comments of some heavyweights of the matter who projected founded doubts about the portrait belongs to John Rae, I have cooked a new theory. Maybe this man is James Clark Ross after all. I have made a quick "Photoshop" to compare the man in the daguerrotype with Ross´s face. Judge yourself:


For me the nose is very similar, if not in the James Clark ROss painting I used , it is in other paintings of him. Only his eyes look different, but as I said in the comments below, maybe J.C. Ross was somehow exhausted after the long winter of 1848-49 and that provoked that languish look. 

miércoles, 18 de octubre de 2017

THE DR JOHN RICHARDSON AND THE REASON WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER CEASE SEARCHING

This is going to be a short post, I can assure you that. As I asserted in my last blog publication, we never should stop searching for new pictures of our beloved and ancient explorers. I can guarantee you all, that I have performed multiple searches in the Internet trying to look for a more contemporary portrait of John Richardson, the Naval surgeon who accompanied John Franklin in his first  overland expedition, and whose role in it saved likely the life of John Hepburn, the faithful sailor, and maybe the life of Franklin as well. 

And what is what I have found?, a new and overexposed photograph of an aged John Richardson, likely shot at the last stages of his life. Richardson died at the age of 78 years old in 1865, so either the portrait was taken at about that age or was taken when he retired from active service at the age of 68. I would like to know who took this picture and why was it taken.

Dr John Richardson
Picture from Future museum
For those less familiar with his life, I will summarize here that John Richardson was an exceptional man, not only known for his arctic explorations, he participated in the Franklin´s first and second overland expeditions and in one of the first searching expeditions organized to find the lost Franklin in 1848, but also for his contributions to naval surgery and science.

His later work in the Harslan hospital, where he worked for some time together with William Edward Parry, consist on part, on training the surgeons who would join arctic expeditions. 

No matter how harsh his gesture could seem to you on this, or in other similar portraits of him, his achievements  speak of him in a very friendly way. You can read all the details in the brief biography of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. He stood out over the average men of his time in the three different disciplines mentioned above.  He engraved every stepp of his three different careers in the path of history. As an arctic explorer, he demonstrated outstanding phisical conditions, as a surgeon he achieved so many big things which would need a whole book to explain them all, and as a naturalist, his published work speaks for itself, he rubbed shoulders with the most prominent scientist related with that matter of his time. But on top of that, he demonstrated with his actions in moments of extreme danger at the very edge of complete disaster, that he was an extraordinary and well natured human being.

You can find other portraits of him here, our large and growing collection of portraits and pictures of Arctic and Antarctic explorers. This project consists on a pinterest board, a cooperative project where, mainly Stephen Nicholson and me, are contributing to put faces to all those heroic explorers.