THE SHIPS ON THE ICE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22343, 5 March 1938, Page 21

THE SHIPS ON THE ICE

A Mystery That Might Have Been Solved

THE story of the ships seen on the ice in the spring of 1851 is quite the queerest that has ever found its way between "the covers of a Parliamentary ;Blue Book, says a writer in the "Listener." For an hour or two in ;April, 1851, a handful of men on iboard a little ship in the North Atlantic had a "marvellous opportunity I—(which they unfortunately failed to take) —of solving the mystery .which then surrounded tho fate of Sir John Franklin, who had disappeared with all his men some five years before. Most people know the outlines of Franklin's story. He sailed in May, 1845, with two famous ships, the Erebus and the Terror, manned by the pick of the Navy, to complete the discovery of the Northwest Passage. He was last seen in Melville Bay, on the west coast of Greenland, on or about July 1 of that year; he was then waiting for the ice to break up so that he could cross over to Lancaster Sound, which forms the eastern entrance of the North-West Passage. On that day, Franklin and his companions vanished from the sight of civilised men. The only news of them was a message found in a cairn on King William Island in 1859, stating that the ships were abandoned after being held for 18 months in the ice. Between 1848 and 1855 no fewer than 13 separate expeditions—three by land and 10 by sea—searched for the missing explorers. Every one of these failed. Karly m April, 1851, a little English brig, the Renovation, left Limerick for Quebec. She was commanded by Edward Coward, and carried about 30 men, including one passenger, named John S. Lynch, who was going out to join the Canar dian customs service. A fortnight after sailing she was on the Newfoundland Banks —and early in the morning of April 17 she fell in with of large ice-floes, and sanded past them in clear weather rurining about six knots at a distance of three miles or so. The ice was sighted about 6 o'closk in the morning. Strange Discovery The first mate, Robert Simpson, was on watch, and as the ship forged along to leeward of the floes two large dark-coloured . masses on one of them caught his eye. He put up

his telescope and scanned them carefully, then he put it down, hardly able to believe his eyes. Another careful look decided him—and he went below to call the captain. Lying right on top of the ice, out of water, and not far apart, were two large three-masted ships. One was on her beam-ends and the other nearly upright. Their hulls were painted black and their masts white. The .ship on her beam-ends (which looked about 400 tons burthen) had sent down her yards and struck her topmasts; the other ship (which seemed slightly smaller) had these still in place, but her yards were stripped, that is, the sails had been removed from them. Both ships were flush-decked, having neither poop nor fo'c'sle. There were no signs of any life on board either ship. Naturally enough, Simpson was eager to close and examine these strange derelicts, but his captain told him to keep the ship on her course So Simpson went on deck again, but on his way he roused Lynch, the passenger, who tumbled up in all haste; and the two of them, together with such hands as were on deck, watched the receding floe and its mysterious cargo until this went out of sight about half an hour later. "D'you know," said Lvnch, "I wouldn't be surprised if they were Sir John Franklin's ships." "Quite likely," said Simpson, "and they'll be a fine prize for * anyone who falls in with them. But poor Franklin and his men must be all dead by now; it's six years since they sailed and we'd have heard of them long before this if any of 'em had survived." Little Notice Taken The Renovation reached Quebec safely, and there her officers and men told their' strange stor?, which attracted no attention at all. (Nobody there seemed to have remembered that a huge official reward was on offer—£2o,ooo —to anyone who should extricate Franklin from the Arctic and £IO,OOO to anyone who brought definite news of his ±ato Even when the story got into print (which it did soon after the ships were seen) nobody took any notice of it for about a year. It came out in an Irish provincial paper—the "Limerick Chronicle," of May 28, 1851—and apparently nowhere else.

It was published as an extract from a private letter, written by Lynch to a friend in Limerick. Then quite suddenly the story attracted official attention. In March, 1852, the Secretary of the Admiralty received a letter on the subject from a navigating officer called James Shore, who had heard about the ships on the ice from a friend of Captain Coward, and thought he had better let the Admiralty know. Official Investigation The Admiralty was now on the trail. Simpson was interviewed at Limerick, where the ship he now commanded happened to be, by the Inspector of Coastguard, Captain (afterwards Admiral) Erasmus Ommaney, who had just come back from commanding a ship in one of the Franklin search expeditions. In his report to the Admiralty, Ommaney stated that there seemed to be no shadow of doubt that two vessels were seen in the position described. Simpson, who was a fair draughtsman, had supplied Ommaney with a sketch of the ships. The captain and two of his apprentices were found, and their evidence noted. Finally, Lynch was found at Prescott, Canada, and was questioned there at length by a naval lieutenant. He proved a willing and intelligent witness, and the close agreement between his statement and Simpson's, made when there could have been no collusion, is very remarkable. During the Admiralty inquiries, a fresh and very important piece of evidence came to hand. A German brig, which reached New York on May 4, 1851, reported that she had fallen in with a great deal of ice off the Newfoundland Banks, and had also passed "two vessels abandoned and waterlogged." It appears that these were the same ships, and that the ice had broken up ana left them afloat. Beyond this, no more is known of the ships, but from the description given by Simpson and the German captain, it seems very likely that they were the lost Erebus and Terror. Had they been investigated more closely by the Renovation, the world might know more of the fate of Franklin's expedition.