North with Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames

Anne Hutchings, a former elementary-school teacher-librarian with the
Durham Board of Education, is an educational consultant.

For more than 150 years, historians and scientists have puzzled over the
fate of Sir John Franklin’s expedition in search of the Northwest
Passage. Little is known about the final outcome. We do know that in
April 1848, three years after the doomed journey began, 105 surviving
crew members abandoned their ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, striking
out overland to Back’s Fish River. By this time Franklin himself was
dead, along with eight other officers and 15 men.

We know, too, that one of the officers on board the Erebus was James
Fitzjames, who, after Franklin’s death, became second in command of
the expedition. Fitzjames kept a journal of his experiences aboard the
Erebus, written in the form of an extended letter to his cousin’s
wife, Elizabeth, whom he regarded as his “dear sister.” The first
part of this journal was sent home to Elizabeth after a stop at Disco in
Greenland.

It is at Disco that John Wilson’s North with Franklin begins. If
indeed further journals of Fitzjames existed, this is how they might
have read.

By patterning his imaginary journal on the letters sent to Elizabeth,
Wilson avoids the dry, monotonous recitation of daily events all too
common in “official” journals. Instead, Wilson’s (Fitzjames’s)
“Elizabeth” version is rich with the kinds of anecdotes, thoughts,
and details that one might share with a close friend. Fitzjames’s
personal observations of his fellow officers and men make them come to
life in the pages of the journal. The reader is struck by their
arrogance and firm belief in their own superiority and their reliance on
technology to overcome any obstacles. Captain Francis Crozier of the
Terror (and, after Franklin’s death, commander of the expedition) was
the only one, apparently, who found merit in the ways of the
“Esquimaux.” Yet his advice to observe and learn from the Natives
was scoffed at and ignored.

Perhaps just as important as the search for the Northwest Passage was
the quest for scientific data and knowledge. Fitzjames’s journal
describes the procedures used to record and make sense of magnetic
readings and the extensive collection and study of the flora and fauna
of the area. The accompanying illustrations interspersed throughout the
text give the illusion of being Fitzjames’s own sketches. In fact,
they were taken from an 1876 textbook about the Arctic.

Meticulously researched, Wilson has, through necessity, created his own
interpretation of the events that took place so long ago. Yet his
version is very believable and certainly fits with what little is known
about the ill-fated expedition. North with Franklin is both entertaining
and thought-provoking for readers of historical fiction and/or
Canadiana. Highly recommended.