| Adventurer
Follows in
Franklin's Footsteps
The
Guardian
Posted April 24, 2003
By
David Ward
In
Baffin Bay where the whale fish blow
The fate of Franklin no man may know
The
fate of Franklin no tongue can tell,
Lord
Franklin along with his sailors do dwell.
(from
Lady Franklin's Lament, a traditional ballad)
A
woman who packed a hot water bottle when she went on her first
expedition to the Antarctic set out yesterday to follow in
the frozen footsteps of one of the great heroic failures of
British exploration.
Rebecca
Harris, who two years ago was a television set designer in
London's Soho, has been inspired by the determination of Lady
Jane Franklin, widow of Sir John Franklin, who disappeared
with all 128 members of his team after setting sail for the
Arctic in 1845.
The
expedition had been searching for the North-west Passage,
the route linking the northern Atlantic with the Pacific -
a navigational shortcut which had fascinated mariners and
explorers for centuries.
Franklin
died in the icy Canadian wasteland on June 1 1847, and more
than 100 of his team are believed to have set off on foot
down the west coast of King William Island to seek help. None
survived.
Ms
Harris will lead a team of eight along that 200-mile route
from Victory Point, where Franklin's men abandoned their ships,
to Starvation Cove, where their last traces were found: bones,
boots and an upturned boat.
For
three weeks, Ms Harris and her men will travel about 10 miles
a day on skis, dragging sledges behind them and camping on
the ice.
They
hope to challenge preconceptions about the Franklin expedition
and make a film, which may be included in a Channel 4 series
on the North-west Passage.
"My
primary aim is to make more people aware of Jane Franklin
and to question some of the premature conclusions that have
been drawn about what happened on that expedition," said
Ms Harris. The mystery has fascinated historians and explorers
for 150 years.
Lady
Jane Franklin's determined demands led to the launch of 30
search parties and a new understanding of the Arctic. She
was the first woman to be awarded the gold medal of the Royal
Geographical Society, of which Ms Harris is a fellow.
"A
bust of her stands in a corner of the main hall at the RGS,"
Ms Harris said. "She is behind so much of the mapping
of the Arctic yet so few people know about her. She never
went on an expedition but I felt she deserved a place up there
with the more well-known characters. "When I read her
letters and diaries, she became very much alive to me, a very
vibrant person."
Ms
Harris, a seasoned traveller, joined a Shackelton expedition
to the Antarctic two years ago and learned then of Franklin,
whose career was dogged by disaster. He was variously shipwrecked
off Australia, went missing in the bush, was sacked when governor
of Tasmania, failed to get to the north pole, and was wounded
at the Battle of New Orleans.
On
his first expedition to the Arctic in 1819, 11 of 20 men died
and he and others survived by eating their own boots and scraping
lichens off rocks.
Fascinated
by the dogged devotion of his widow, Ms Harris decided to
lead her own expedition.
To
give herself the time she needed, she gave up her full-time
job and took on two part-time posts - writing for a pub guide
and working in a friend's garden design shop. American Express
signed up as sponsors at the last minute.
"I
think people were surprised that I wanted to put an expedition
together. But the extraordinary thing is that if you say that
is what you want to do amazing people will give great support."
The
Guardian
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