The Franklin Expedition was rather interesting to learn about in class. These brave sailors from the late 1800’s going off on an adventure, getting stranded, going insane and eating each other for survival is one of the most metal things that has happened in history aside from everything else related to Vikings. It is even funnier to me (and going along with what Mr. Watrall had said in class, I believe his words were “refreshing” or “satisfying”) that it took a descendent of a Viking Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, to find the Northwest Passage. What really stuck with me though is how the men who had been stranded made no attempt to contact the Inuit tribesman who had been in the area who could have been their key to survival. Many questions arose in my mind after having found this out. Did the Inuits keep their distance and not make their presence known? Could the Inuits have actually been more of a threat to these men than salvation and if so, could the Inuits have been a reason some of the men had died? Not knowing much about the Inuits, I looked into this a bit further. According to The Journal of Hakluyt Society, Rondeau states that, “there is no doubt that some Inuit came into contact with some of Franklin’s men as they attempted to reach the Fish River. This is not to say that those Inuit who said that they had encountered one or both of Franklin’s ships lied or were in error, but rather they were not understood properly by white explorers. The majority of the ships sent to the Arctic by the Royal Navy to look for the Franklin Expedition did not have interpreters aboard. If the Admiralty had provided Inuit interpreters for their ships, a number of them would, most certainly, have been directed to the scene of the Franklin disaster.”

Further readings of testimonials that I have come across that have been told by the Inuit state that some Inuit hunters noticed the white sails coming towards them through the ice. They knew that it was the “White Man” and they began to be afraid. Later on, the men from the vessel walked towards the hunters and tried to talk to them but because no translators had been with them, the language barrier made it next to impossible to actually communicate the need for food or help. A later account states that the men of the Franklin expedition had traded a knife for food and had actively traded. It was also observed that the men had been hunting and trying to live off of the land. Within these observations by the Inuit, they noticed all the things that had hindered the men and their survival. They only tried hunting birds, they didn’t utilize the use of furs and didn’t use dogs.

It would seem that the biggest issue for the men of the Franklin expedition in contacting the Inuit people boils down to language and not being able to communicate for help. Mix that together with the possible craziness caused by led poisoning and the exhaustion of hunger would have made things more difficult in trying to communicate.

If anyone is interested, check out the Inuit first hand accounts about the Franklin Expedition http://www.ric.edu/faculty/rpotter/inuittest.html