WILLIAM KENEDY SEARCHING EXPEDITION

The private expedition led by William Kennedy and organized by Lady Franklin in 1851 to find his husband and the crews of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, was as unsuccessful as many others had been before, at least regarding what had to do with the accomplishment of their mission. However, this was one of the first which would include some new ingredients in the recipe of "How to perform polar expeditions" which would be adopted by future explorers, including McClintock´s famous journey in the Yacht Fox, and surely also opened the way to the new concept of modern exploration which would be used by eminent explorers like Nansen, Amundsen, Peary, etc.

Though Franklin wasn´t ultimately found, it can´t be denied that the significance of the geographical discoveries made by Kennedy, together with the fact that the expedition didn´t lose a single man during the whole journey (in spite of the many dangerous situations which had to be confronted), and that they had to spend a long winter at a very high latitude, should be considered as an outstanding triumph.

The ship, Prince Albert, was very different from almost all of their predecessors. It only weighted 90 tons, a third of the tonnage of for example the ships they were after, HMS Erebus and Terror. Only Sir John Ross before, had previously experimented this strategy during his expedition of 1829-33 in the Victory (85 tons which were extended to 150 after the modifications) and later with the Felix in 1850. Small ships were much more useful and manoeuverable in those treacherus waters allowing them to get closer to the shores to perform more appropiated reconnaissances of the ground. 

The vessel had been reinforced to make him able to endure her coming fight with the ice. This wasn´t her first mission, the previous season the Royal Navy Captain Charles Codrington Forsyth and the outlandish civilian William Park Snow, had spent the summer of 1850 looking for Franklin. The expedition had been a disaster from the beginning. The combination of a civil crew with a navy captain, seasoned with the presence of the peculiar Snow, who had convinced Lady Franklin to let him participate because of his spectral visions, led to continuous disagreements among the captain and the crew. The expedition returned prematurely for several reasons, but mainly because Snow foresaw an opportunity of gathering attention and fame if he could be the first on bringing the news of the recent discoveries which had been made in Beechey island about the Franklin expedition.

Prince Albert leaving Beechey island the day they returned after being there for some days. The ship at the background must be the North Star, the only ship which was still in the area.

Lady Franklin wanted to give it another try. This time, the crew was selected more carefully. It was also quite inferior in the number of men, though likely not in experience, compared with the regular amount employed by Navy expeditions. Its 18 members would be much easier to feed in the arctic enviroment than 60, a common figure for the crew of, for example, a bomber class ship. 

Also, Kennedy´s background made of him an appropiate candidate for the mission. He was born originally in Cumberland House, in the remote region of Saskatchewan and, though he was sent to Orkney island to the school where he would spend eight years, he had been living the rest of the time in the wildest regions of North America working first as a HBC employee, and later in his own fishery business in Lake Huron till he was contracted to lead this searching expedition to captain the Prince Albert. He knew well the rigours of that hostile land and how to deal with all of them.

Captain William Kennedy

The second in command was the French sub-officer Joseph René Bellot. From my point of view, there is no doubt this was more a formal appointment than a practical one. Bellot have asked to Kennedy and Lady Franklin to let him to participate in the expedition. He hadn´t any previous experience in arctic expeditions, but only an unstoppable will, shared by so many young officers of the time, to be part of the phenomenon which was currently happening and which was gathering the attention of the whole world. That, apparently convinced Lady Franklin who allowed him to join the expedition. In Kennedý´s narrative there are many mentions to him, in no few occasions the author mentions Bellot´s involvement in some incidents which could have perfectly well ended with his life. Maybe his lack of experience was the cause of all of them. He would eventually and sadly die during his second expedition with Edward Inglefield in 1853. My opinion about Bellot was high so far, but from the reading of Kennedy´s account of the voyage and from what I have read in some other places, like this website, for iinstance, it may have changed a bit. But elucidating this will be surely matter of another different post.

The small crew which accompanied Kennedy had among its ranks several arctic veterans. Among his members was John Hepburn, the old companion of John Franklin during his overland expedition of 1819-22 to the mouth of the Coppermine River, about who I have written earlier. Apart from the ice master, who was of course a veteran whaler captain, there were five men which had served in the same ship during the previous searching expedition, one who has accompanied John Rae and other who had traveled with John Richardson in their respective overland expeditions. The rest were Sheatland and Orkney weathered men.

Besides the usual stock of provisions and clothing, normal for this kind of expeditions, they carried or bought other interesting items not as common. Kennedy ordered the construction of kayak made of tin (which I wonder where it ended), kites and also bought in Upernavick six greenland dogs to drag sledges during the planned winter trips, not an habitual thing to find in the military expeditions. Some of the men knew well how to build igloos and snowshoes. These facts refute somehow the common say that the expeditions of that time ever learnt how to survive in the arctic regions. In Kennedy´s narrative is the first time, I think, I have read the term Innuit as well. But this doesn´t mean that Kennedy stuck only to traditional and aborigin methods, he also made widely use of explosives, Copelands blasting cylinders (which I assume was dinamite)  as he called them, which were used here and there as if in a war declared to the ice, and apparently resulted quite useful in some occasions to release his small ship.

Kennedy´s narrative of the journey "A short narrative of the second voyage of the Prince Albert in search of Sir John Franklin"is an easy and very enjoyable book. Surely he made the most of his years in Orkney. One can feel some sort of a modern, light and funny style of writing which combines very smartly the numerous entertaining anecdotes (which made me smile broadly) with the more boring descriptive parts. I have swalled the book in just two nights, breathing for that time very vividly the same atmosphere that surrounded those men.

The expedition sailed from Aberdeen the 22nd of may of 1851 to reach Stromness three days after. There, Kennedy got together with Lady Franklin and Sophie Cracroft, an encounter which Kennedy describes as follows:

"There, in our little cabin with her estimable neice, sat the truly feminine yet heroic spirit who presided over our gallant little enterprise, one whose name — if her husband's is already associated with the highest honours of geographical discovery — will not be the less so hereafter in the hearts of Englishmen, with honours of another kind — the most noble, devoted, and unwearied efforts to rescue or solve the fate of our missing countrymen."

This "Truly femenine" remark made me raised a brow. Was she supposed to be otherwise?. I wonder if the always witty Kennedy hides something behind those words. The scene continues:

"One by one each of our little party was introduced, and cheered by her words of wise and affectionate counsels. If ever three English cheers were given with the heart's best feelings of a British sailor, they were given, when stepping over the vessel's side, our noble patroness waved us her last adieu and God's blessing on our voyage."

From Orkney islands, the expedition sailed west following a parallel, as whalers and expeditions used to do, till they arrived to Farewell to sail then northward till they reached Whalefish island and Upernavik. Once in Baffin Bay, they sailed to the north end of those waters and then crossed the always naughty and dangerous central part of the bay to penetrate finally into Lancaster sound. Once there, Kennedy´s orders included the possibility to explore Prince Regent Inlet. It was thought that Franklin could have followed that route to try to find a channel in its west coast which could have lead him to the west side of Sommerset land (it would be Kennedy who would discover that this land was in fact an island and that there was in fact a strait which connects Prince Regent inlet with Peel sound) and that was what the captain precisely did.

There were also several cairns which they had necessarily to visit to ascertain if Franklin was or had been in the surroindings. Cairns built in prominent points, specially those who had been built where previous expeditions had wintered, were used as mailboxes. Expedition after expedition usually visited them to learn about the whereabouts or discoveries made by precedent expeditions and used to leave there their own proceedings. 

Port Leopold, where the first searching expedition led by James Clark Ross in 1848 had to winter, was one of these obligated stops. Prince Albert couldn´t approach it due to the amount of ice, so Kennedy and some men decided to try to land using a boat. They made it and searched for the cairns and rest of remains without finding any clue from Franklin. Unfortunately, when they tried to rejoin their comrades, the ship had been dragged south by drifting ice. The desperated captain had no other option than to prepare themselves for the winter. For that purpose, he used the abandoned steam launch left by James Ross some years before:

"The first object to be attended to, was the erecting of some sort of shelter against the daily increasing inclemency of the weather, and for this purpose the launch, left here by Sir James Ross, was selected. Her main- mast was laid on supports at the bow and stern, about nine feet in height, and by spreading two of her sails over this a very tolerable roof was obtained. A stove was set up in the body of the boat with the pipes running through the roof, and we were soon sitting by a comfortable fire, which after our long exposure to the wet and cold we stood very much in need of."

But luckily, after more than a month isolated in that place, Joseph René Bellot arrived providentially to rescue them. The ship had been freed from his icy jail and had found a suitable place to winter in Batty Bay, 80 km southward. This was the third attempt that Bellot had made to find his captain, in one of the previous he had fallen to the water through the ice spending one of his lifes.

During the return journey, a very interesting scene, worthy of being introduced in a humoristic sketch of a TV show, took place. The episode, told by the always entertaining Kennedy deserves to be presented here almost entirely:

"We pitched the tent, spread the oil-cloth, and with some coals, ..., boiled a good kettle of tea for all hands.

These preparations were, however, but introductory to another, which we found a most difficult problem indeed — namely, to contrive how we were all to pass the night in the single little tent we had brought with us. We all got in, certainly, and got the kettle in the middle ; but as for lying down to sleep, it was utterly out of the question. A London omnibus, on a racing day after live o´clock, was the only parallel I could think of to our attempt to stow thirteen men, including our colossal carpenter, into a tent intended for six. 

At last, after some deliberation, it was arranged that we should sit down six in a row, on each side, which would leave us about three feet clear to stretch our legs. Mr. Bellot, who formed the thirteenth, being the most compact and stowable of the party, agreed to squeeze in underneath them, stipulating only for a clear foot square for his head alongside the tea-kettle. Being unprovided with a candlestick, even if there had been room to place one anywhere, it was arranged that each of us should hold the candle in his hand for a quarter of an hour, and then pass it to his neighbour, and thus by the aid of our flickering taper, through the thick steam of the boiling kettle, we had just enough light to prevent us putting our tea into our neighbour's mouth, instead of our own.

" Well, boys," suggests our ever jovial first mate, Henry Anderson, 'now we are fairly seated, I´m thinking, as we can do nothing else, we had best make a night of it again. What say you to a song, Dick?'^ Whereupon, nothing loath, Mr. Richard Webb strikes up, in the first style of forecastle execu- tion, " Susannah, don't you cry for me,  which is of course received by the company with the utmost enthusiasm. Mr. Webb, your health and song," and general applause, and emptying of tea-cans, which Mr. John Smith, pleadiag inability to sing, undertakes to replenish for the night."

" Kenneth, you monster, take that clumsy foot of yours off my stomach, will you?" cries out poor Mr. Bellot, smothered beneath the weight of four-and- twenty legs, upon which the carpenter, in his eager- ness to comply, probably drives his foot into Mr. Bellot's eye.

And so, passing the song and the joke around — Mr. Bellot, occasionally making a sudden desperate effort to get up, and sitting down again in despair — with a long " blow " like a grampus — we make what Anderson calls " a night of it." No management, however, can make our solitary candle last out beyond twelve 'o'clock, or thereabout. Notwithstanding this extinguisher to the entertainments of the evening Mr. Anderson_, — while some are dozing and hob-a- nobbing in their dreams, — may still be heard keeping it up with unabated spirit in the dark, wakening every sleeper now and then with some tremendous chorus he has contrived to get up among his friends, for the '^'Bay of Biscay,^' or some favourite Greenland melody, with its inspiriting burthen of " Cheeri-lie, ah ! cheeri-lie."

Each of us got up, as may be supposed, pretty soon next morning, and certainly not much refreshed by our over-night's performances, and after a rough jour- ney over broken ice, arranged to camp early, in order to give us time before dark to erect a snow-house, and avoid the black hole of Calcutta style of encampment of the previous night."

Undoubtedly a night not to be easily forgotten, I myself have spent a nigh like that in the mountains of Sierra Nevada, Spain. It was a very cold december and we had camped at about 3.000 m of attitude or maybe more. During the night the wind broke the sticks of the tent, so after a whole restless night, we started to walk towards the nearest town. The weather was equally awful and the next night caught us. We saw an old hut and rushed into it trying to look for shelter, but the hut was crowded. There was no room to lay inside so we had to sit, the same way Kennedy and men had to, and spend a second tirelessly night seated pouring out the drippling water from the melted snow from the roof every fifteen minutes. Getting out to pee obliged to reformulate the whole puzzle every time. We called it "A Macarena night", I have somewhere the whole episode written down.

Coming back to our story and in spite of these incidents, the whole team reached the ship safe and sound time after. Kennedy had planned to start the searching with sledge parties very soon, in the middle of the winter, maybe shocking for a regular searching expedition but not for this one. In january of 1852, Kennedy, Bellot and another man travelled 50 km southward to reach the next mailbox, Fury Beach to look for clues, but the place hadn´t been visited since a previous sledge party had done so in the course of James Clark Ross expedition of 1848. 

Then, another sledge party was organized. This time they had the target of exploring the southwest region below cape Walker. The plan was to travel southwards to Fury Beach, follow the coast of Creswell bay and then, some miles south more turn to the west to reach Prince of Wales and the area where Franklin has orders to go. It was this sledge party which reached the east entrance of Bellot strait, a strait which John Ross had missed during his long expedition of 1829-33. The party travelled west and discovered doing so the strait which would be christened as Bellot strait. 

At arriving at the west end of it, Kennedy judged that there wasn´t any navigable strait to the north which could lead to Victoria strait, though there was actually one, Peel sound, which it is thought was used by Franklin to sail southwards till he got trapped north of King William island. The party crossed the sound and continued west, advancing still  many miles more westward till they decided to turn to the north. 

"Being now satisfied that Sir James Ross had in his land journey along the western shore of North Somerset in 1849, mistaken the very low and level land over which we had been travelling for a western sea, I felt no longer justified in continuing a westerly course. Whatever passage might exist to the S. W. of Cape Walker, I felt assured must now be on our north. I determined, therefore, from this time forward to direct our course north- ward, until we should fall upon some channel which we knew must exist not far from us, in this direction, by which Franklin might have passed to the S.W. "

For Kennedy it was clear that in a southwest direction from Cape Walker, there wasn´t any sea or channell but an inmense extension of land, Prince of Wales land, which in Kennedy´s opinion was linked to Somerset (now) island. They chose to travel in an opposite direction to where Franklin was, but still, Kennedy and his men were at 250 km north of Cape Felix, the north tip of King William island.

The trip, which lasted three whole months and went through 1.700 km brought no news about the Franklin expedition but was also a demonstration of how well adapted were the men to that harsh enviroment and how far a well prepared party of men, helped by sledge dog, could go. Igloos were built almos daily, and not a single casualty resulted from the adventure. The men were also expert hunters, as some anecdotes shows us:

"John Smith and I made an endeavour to approach some deer which were quietly feeding upon the stunted heather, which, as already stated, forms almost the only vegetation of this barren district, in the manner adopted by the Indians of Hudson´s Bay, by fixing our guns to the head, so as to give the appearance of horns, and crawling on all fours. We had succeeded in approaching within a fair distance for a shot, and were preparing to do execution upon them, when some movement of the sledges attracted their attention, and with a snuff of the air and a toss of their graceful antlers they bounded away, and were soon out of reach of our guns."

They found an awful weather during the whole journey. There were very long delays provoked by the pitiful conditions, some of them lasted even a whole week (in the metheorological annex is recorded a temperature of -42 ºC during the month of january). This surely shortened the distance they could have made in other circunstance. Kennedy fills his narrative with witty paragraphs which gives an idea of how bad things were and which makes the reading a real pleasure. One of my favourites is this:

"I have a strong opinion that old Eolus, with his den of ruffianly winds, that so shamefully belaboured the piousneas, must have emigrated to North Somerset since the days of Virgil. Such a high carnival of northerly gales as, during the winter months, swept round the poor little Albert, and nearly smothered us under an avalanche of snow, I believe never was heard of in any other known region of the globe. Where they all came from, and how they did not long before the winter was over blow themselves fairly out, was a wonder to us all the year round. " I have known but one gale since we entered Batty Bay,' once observed our veteran friend Hepburn, " and that was the gale that began when we came and ended when we went away."

In another occasion, Kennedy tells how he and some other mates got lost in very bad weather while they were trying to reach the ship. One of the men fell and hurt himself a leg. The man told the others he could not give a step forward. Then the captain, told him not to worry, they would leave him wrapped up in a muskox blanket and would bury him in the snow till they could come back after for him. The reaction was somehow easily foreseen:

"This Arctic prescription had a magical effect upon our patient — the back and the broken bones were speedily forgotten, and in a short time he was on his legs again, and we all trudging on once more in the old rough and tumble style of progression, till about midnight, we found ourselves standing under the lee of something which looked like a bank of snow, but which, to our great gratification, proved to be the powder-house we had erected on shore in the beginning of the winter."

The 6th of august of 1852 the ship sailed from Batty bay after having spent in that place for 330 days, almost an entire year. The crew was by then afflicted with scurvy, which had shown up affecting both, the sledge party and the remaining crew of the ship. However, they sailed to Beechey island in an attempt to offer their help to Horatio Austin´s squadron. Only the supply vessel North star was there, but a combination of the state of healthof his crew, the strict rules of the royal navy to which those who wanted to stay must be submittted and the lack of experience of many of the men belonging Austin´s  squadron dissuaded them to stay a further winter:

 "On being made acquainted with the nature of the Admiralty regulations, to which they would be subjected by their removal to the North Star, first Sutherland, and subsequently Smith, withdrew their offer, alleging, as a farther reason for their change of purpose, their fears, which I found were shared by the Prince Albert's crew in general, that the fresh men from England would not be able to bear the same fatigue as themselves, some of whom had been all their lives more or less at this hard exploring labour. Mr» Bellot and myself were thus most reluctantly compelled to abandon our enterprise, and the disap- pointment seemed to be scarcely less felt by that fine young officer, Mr. Alston, of H.M.S. North Star, who had so nobly desired to be the companion of our future adventures."

So, Prince Albert sailed east to Baffin Bay and arrived to Aberdeen the 7 th de october with all men safe and sound on board and having discovered what was going to be a pivotal piece of the puzzle to complete a sailing route through the northwest passage

William Kennedy, in his conclusions, elegantly eludes the question ahout if there was still any chance to find any survivor from the Franklin expedition, and points to the testimonies of maybe more prudent arctic prominent explorers of the moment like Kane and others who were sure that men from Franklin expedition could have survived in those arctic regions and be still alive, due to their use of igloos (which we don´t know if they were able to build) and the abundant game which they could hunt (which we know now there is so scarce in the region they were trapped than even Inuit people don´t visit it.

I would have liked to ask directly to Kennedy himself about his opinion, who he diverted to these others instead of answering himself the question. I would have liked to ask this to one who struggled for three months during his sledge trip and had to combat the scurvy which appeared the very first winter in spite of all the provisions, apart of their own, which they had at hand and used from Whaler point, Fury beach, etc.and his abilities for hunting. Surely Lady Franklin won´t have liked to know that answer. Some of the more astounding assertions which trusted on the British endurance and capabilities came from Edward Sabine:

"Colonel Sabine said, when asked, did he think our countrymen could exist in the rigour of those Polar regions ? ' The Esquimaux/ said he, ' live there ; and, where they live. English- men can live"

A thing, which we know now, that is not entirely true. 

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.