1907 Yukon Nuggets

McClintock Bay

The pleasant bay and river that flows into it, on Marsh Lake is named for a member of Britain's Royal Navy, Francis McClintock, who solved the mystery of the missing Franklin expedition.

The greatest Arctic expedition of all time was missing. Sir John Franklin, in command of 135 men, had set out from England in two wooden sailing ships in 1845. They were searching for the Northwest Passage. When nothing was heard of them for three years, the first of many search expeditions set out to find them. That was back in 1848, when Sir James Ross was in command of two ships, the Enterprise and the Investigator. Lt Francis McClintock was second in command.

When they returned to England a year later, they reported no trace of the missing Franklin expedition. The news gripped a British public then, the way a missing space expedition would today. Lady Franklin and the British government offered a stunning reward ... 20 thousand pounds to anyone who could find or provide information about the famous explorer, John Franklin. Expedition after expedition sailed into the Arctic. All came up empty handed. They were all searching too far to the east.

In 1854, Dr. John Rae led an expedition further west...toward King William Island. In this region, he learned from local Inuit that, years earlier, they had seen a party of white men pulling sledges and heading south. In 1857, in order to explore the region believed to hold the key to the missing Franklin expedition, Captain Francis McClintock set out in a small steamer named the Fox.

McClintock spent two winters in the Arctic. On one overland sledge journey, he met with a group of Inuit who told him that a three-masted ship had been crushed in the ice on the west coast of King William Island. They said the crew had reached land, but died of starvation. The Inuit produced buttons and medals belonging to British naval officers. McClintock was close to solving the mystery.

In April of 1859, McClintock, now two years into his Arctic search, travelled by sledge south along the King William Island coast. His second in command, Lt. Hobson, travelled north. McClintock found skeletons of the missing British sailors. Hobson found a document in a cairn dated May 28th, 1847. It stated that the ships were crushed in the ice off King William Island.

John Franklin had died on the 11th of June 1847, along with 25 members of the crew to this date.

The survivors were walking south pulling their meagre supplies in small row boats. Further explorations by McClintock turned up more skeletons and rotting bits of lumber from those boats. McClintock's search ended in September of 1859 with conclusive proof that the entire Franklin expedition had perished in the greatest Arctic tragedy in history.

McClintock became admiral of the British navy. He died in 1907. The river and the bay at Marsh Lake are named for this famous Arctic explorer.

 

A CKRW Yukon Nugget by Les McLaughlin.