Early life Franklin was born in
Spilsby, Lincolnshire, on , the ninth of twelve children born to Hannah Weekes and Willingham Franklin. His father was a merchant descended from a line of country gentlemen, while his mother was the daughter of a farmer. One of his brothers later entered the legal profession and eventually became a judge in
Madras; another joined the
East India Company; while a sister, Sarah, was the mother of
Emily Tennyson, wife of
Alfred, Lord Tennyson. John Franklin must have been affected by an obvious desire to better his social and economic position, given that his elder brothers struggled, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, to establish themselves in a wide variety of careers. Educated at
King Edward VI Grammar School in
Louth, he soon became interested in a career at sea. His father, who intended for Franklin to enter the church or become a businessman, was initially opposed but was reluctantly convinced to allow him to go on a trial voyage on a merchant ship when he was aged 12. His experience of seafaring only confirmed his interest in a career at sea, so in March 1800, Franklin's father secured him a
Royal Navy appointment on . Commanded by Captain Lawford, the
Polyphemus carried 64 guns and, at the time of Franklin's appointment, was still at sea. He did not join the vessel until the autumn of 1800. Initially serving as a first-class volunteer, Franklin soon saw action in the
Battle of Copenhagen in which the
Polyphemus participated as part of
Horatio Nelson's squadron. An expedition around the coast of Australia aboard , commanded by his cousin Captain
Matthew Flinders, followed, with Franklin now a
midshipman. The two later survived the sinking of
HMS Porpoise on their return to England, Franklin continuing the journey aboard the , which under the Captaincy of
Nathaniel Dance frightened off Admiral
Charles de Durand-Linois at the
Battle of Pulo Aura in the
South China Sea on . He was present at the
Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 aboard . During the
War of 1812 against the United States, Franklin, now a lieutenant, served aboard and was wounded during the
Battle of Lake Borgne on 14 December 1814. Franklin commanded HMS Trent in 1818 on a journey from London to
Spitzbergen, now Svalbard. The overall expedition was commanded by Captain
David Buchan on HMS
Dorothea.
1819: Coppermine expedition In 1819, Franklin was chosen to lead the
Coppermine expedition overland from
Hudson Bay to chart the north coast of Canada eastwards from the mouth of the
Coppermine River. On his 1819 expedition, Franklin fell into the
Hayes River at Robinson Falls and was rescued by a member of his expedition about downstream. Between 1819 and 1822, he lost 11 of the 20 men in his party. Most died of starvation or exhaustion, but there was also at least one murder and suggestions of
cannibalism. The survivors were forced to eat
lichen and even attempted to eat their own leather boots. This gained Franklin the nickname of "the man who ate his boots".
1823: Marriage and third Arctic expedition In 1823, after returning to England, Franklin married the poet
Eleanor Anne Porden. Their daughter, Eleanor Isabella, was born the following year. His wife died of tuberculosis in 1825. Eleanor Isabella married Reverend John Philip Gell in 1849. She died in 1860. In 1825, he left for his second Canadian and third
Arctic expedition, the
Mackenzie River expedition. The goal this time was the mouth of the
Mackenzie River from which he would follow the coast westward and possibly meet
Frederick William Beechey who would try to sail northeast from the
Bering Strait. With him was
John Richardson who would follow the coast east from the Mackenzie to the mouth of the Coppermine River. At the same time,
William Edward Parry would try to sail west from the Atlantic. (Beechey reached
Point Barrow and Parry became frozen-in to the east. At this time, the only known points on the north coast were a hundred or so miles east from the Bering Strait, the mouth of the Mackenzie, Franklin's stretch east of the Coppermine, and a bit of the
Gulf of Boothia which had been seen briefly from the land.) Supplies were better organised this time, in part because they were managed by
Peter Warren Dease of the
Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). After reaching
Great Slave Lake using the standard HBC route, Franklin took a reconnaissance trip down the Mackenzie and on , became the second European to reach its mouth. He erected a flagpole with buried letters for Parry. He returned to winter at Fort Franklin (modern-day
Délı̨nę) on
Great Bear Lake. The following summer he went downriver and found the ocean frozen. He worked his way west for several hundred miles and gave up on at Return Reef when he was about east of Beechey's Point Barrow. Reaching safety at Fort Franklin on , he left on and spent the rest of the winter and spring at
Fort Chipewyan. He reached
Liverpool on the first of September 1827. Richardson's eastward journey was more successful. Franklin's diary from this expedition describes his men playing
hockey on the ice of the Great Bear Lake; Délı̨nę, built on the site of Fort Franklin, thus considers itself to be one of the birthplaces of the sport. On , he married
Jane Griffin, a friend of his first wife and a seasoned traveller who proved indomitable in the course of their life together. On , he was
knighted by
George IV and the same year awarded the first
Gold Medal of the
Société de Géographie of France. On , he was made Knight Commander of the
Royal Guelphic Order and a Knight of the Greek
Order of the Redeemer.
1837: Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land Franklin was appointed
Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land in 1837 but was removed from office in 1843. He is remembered by a significant landmark in the centre of
Hobart—a statue of him dominates the park known as
Franklin Square, which was the site of the original Government House. On the plinth below the statue appears
Tennyson's epitaph: His wife worked to set up a university, which was eventually established in 1890, and a museum, credited to the
Royal Society of Tasmania in 1843 under the leadership of her husband.
Lady Franklin may have worked to have the Lieutenant-Governor's private botanical gardens, established in 1818, managed as a public resource. Lady Franklin also established a
glyptotheque and surrounding lands to support it near Hobart. Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin took the daughter of an
indigenous Australian woman whose community had been forcibly moved from Tasmania by the British. She was renamed
Mathinna and was raised with their own daughter Eleanor, but the Franklins abandoned her at an orphanage in
Tasmania when they returned to England in 1843. The village of
Franklin, on the
Huon River, is named in his honour, as is the
Franklin River on the
West Coast of Tasmania, one of the better known Tasmanian rivers due to the
Franklin Dam controversy. Shortly after leaving his post as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land, Franklin revisited a cairn on
Arthurs Seat, a small mountain just inside
Port Phillip Bay in
Victoria, Australia, that he had visited as a midshipman with Captain
Matthew Flinders in April 1802. On this trip he was accompanied by Captain Reid of The Briars and Andrew Murison McCrae of Arthurs Seat Station, now known as
McCrae Homestead.
1845: Northwest Passage expedition and
HMS Terror, prior to their
2014–2016 rediscovery.
King William Island is at centre, coloured a darker green, above the dotted line of the
Arctic Circle. Exploration of the Arctic coastal mainland after Franklin's second Arctic expedition had left less than of unexplored Arctic coastline. The British decided to send a well-equipped Arctic expedition to complete the charting of the Northwest Passage. After Sir
James Clark Ross declined an offer to command the expedition, an invitation was extended to Franklin, who, despite being 59 years old, accepted what was to become
Franklin's lost expedition. A younger man, Commander
James Fitzjames, was given command of , and Franklin was named the expedition commander. Captain
Francis Crozier, who had commanded during the
Ross expedition of 1841–1844 to the
Antarctic, was appointed executive officer and commander of
Terror. Franklin was given command on , and received official instructions on . photograph of Franklin taken in 1845, prior to the expedition's departure. He is wearing the 1843–1846 pattern
Royal Navy undress tailcoat with cocked hat. The crew was chosen by the
Admiralty. Most of them were Englishmen, many were from northern England, and a small number were Irishmen and Scotsmen.
Erebus and
Terror were sturdily built and were outfitted with recent inventions. These included steam engines from the
London and Greenwich Railway that enabled the ships to make on their own power, a unique combined steam-based heating and distillation system for the comfort of the crew and to provide large quantities of fresh water for the engine's boilers, a mechanism that enabled the iron rudder and propeller to be drawn into iron wells to protect them from damage, ships' libraries of more than 1,000 books, and three years' worth of conventionally preserved or tinned preserved food supplies. The tinned preserved food was supplied by a cut-rate provisioner who was awarded the contract a few months before the ships were to sail. Though the provisioner's "patent process" was sound, the haste with which he had prepared thousands of cans of food led to sloppily applied beads of
solder on the cans' interior edges, allowing lead to leach into the food. Additionally, the water distillation system may have used lead piping and lead-soldered joints, which would have produced drinking water with a high lead content. The Franklin Expedition set sail from
Greenhithe, England, on , with a crew of 24 officers and 110 men. The ships travelled north to
Aberdeen and the
Orkney Isles for supplies. From Scotland, the ships sailed to Greenland with and a transport ship,
Barretto Junior. After misjudging the location of Whitefish Bay on
Disko Island, the expedition backtracked and finally harboured in that far north outpost to prepare for the rest of their voyage. Five crew members were discharged and sent home on the
Rattler and
Barretto Junior, reducing the ships' final crew size to 129. The expedition was last seen by Europeans on , when Captain Dannett of the whaler encountered
Terror and
Erebus moored to an iceberg in
Lancaster Sound. It is now believed that the expedition wintered on
Beechey Island in 1845–46.
Terror and
Erebus became trapped in ice off
King William Island in September 1846. According to a note later found on that island, Franklin died there on , but the exact location of his grave is unknown. in 1861, prior to its installation After two years and no word from the expedition,
Lady Franklin urged the Admiralty to send a search party. Because the crew carried supplies for three years, the Admiralty waited another year before launching a search and offering a £20,000 reward () for finding the expedition. The money and Franklin's fame led to many searches. At one point, ten British and two American ships, and , headed for the Arctic. Eventually, more ships and men were lost looking for Franklin than in the expedition itself. Ballads such as "
Lady Franklin's Lament", commemorating Lady Franklin's search for her lost husband, became popular. In the summer of 1850, several expeditions, including three from England as well as one from the United States, joined in the search. They converged off the east coast of Beechey Island, where the first relics of the Franklin expedition were found, including the gravesites of three of Franklin's crewmen. Many presumed Franklin was still alive, and he was promoted to
Rear-Admiral of the Blue in October 1852, an example of an unintentional
posthumous promotion. In 1854, the Scottish explorer
John Rae, while surveying the
Boothia Peninsula for the Hudson's Bay Company, discovered the true fate of the Franklin party from talking to
Inuit hunters. He was told both ships had become icebound, and the men had tried to reach safety on foot but had succumbed to cold, and some had resorted to cannibalism.
Forensic evidence of cut marks on the
skeletal remains of crew members found on
King William Island during the late 20th century somewhat supported the Inuit accounts of reported
cannibalism. Rae's report to the Admiralty was leaked to the press, which led to widespread revulsion in
Victorian society, enraged Franklin's widow, and condemned Rae to ignominy. Lady Franklin's efforts to eulogise her husband, with support from the
British Establishment, led to a further 25 searches over the next four decades, none of which would add much further information of note regarding Franklin and his men, but contributed hugely to the mapping of the Arctic. and perhaps
tuberculosis. Toxicological reports indicated that
lead poisoning was also a possible factor. In 1997, more than 140 years after his report, Dr. Rae's account was finally vindicated; cut marks caused by blades were discovered on the bones of some of the crew found on King William Island, strongly suggesting that conditions had become so dire that some crew members resorted to cannibalism. Evidence suggestive of breakage and boiling of bones, characteristic of efforts to extract marrow, was subsequently identified. It appeared from these studies that a combination of bad weather, years locked in ice, poisoned food,
botulism, starvation, and disease, including scurvy, had killed everyone in the Franklin party. In October 2009, marine archaeologist Robert Grenier outlined recent discoveries of sheet metal and copper which have been recovered from 19th-century Inuit hunting sites. Grenier firmly believes these pieces of metal once belonged to the
Terror and formed the protective plating of the ship's hull. A quote from the British newspaper
The Guardian states: == Legacy ==