Free Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany by Julian Stockwin Page B

souls.
    Henry Hudson made four momentous voyages in search of the Northwest Passage. On 22 June 1611, during his last voyage, he suffered a mutiny aboard. He and seven of his crew, plus his young son, were set adrift in a small boat and died in the Arctic bay to which his name has been given.
    Interest then waned for many years. In 1744 the British government offered a prize of £20,000 (over £3 million today) to the first person to discover the Northwest Passage. The search was on again in earnest and a series of naval expeditions, including James Cook’s third great voyage of exploration, were mounted. Much of the Arctic area was charted but the Northwest Passage remained elusive. The last official naval expedition was the famous voyage of Sir John Franklin, who sailed into Lancaster Sound in 1845 in HMS Erebus and HMS Terror and was never seen again.
    Over the course of the next decade over 30 search parties were sent out to solve the mystery of Franklin’s disappearance. This was largely due to the persistence of his wife Jane, who herself sponsored four expeditions, including the final one in 1857 led by Captain Leopold McClintock. One of the searchers in the McClintock expedition, Robert McClure, found sad relics of Franklin’s expedition. He also gained official recognition for the proof of the reality of the Northwest Passage.
    The truth of the Franklin tragedy has now emerged. During the winter of 1846–7 Franklin’s two ships became trapped in thick ice. Franklin died in June 1847 and by April of the next year 21 more had perished in the bitter conditions from a combination of starvation, scurvy and lead poisoning (from their canned food). They probably resorted to cannibalism as their situation became ever more desperate.
    Ironically, more people died looking for Franklin than perished on his final voyage.
    The fabled passage was not successfully navigated until the twentieth century, when Roald Amundsen completed a full transit by sea in his tiny vessel Gjoa in 1906.
    As the Arctic ice melts with global warming the Northwest Passage may yet turn out to be the great trade route connecting two oceans that maritime explorers sought for four centuries.

John Franklin .
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    PRESS ON – push ahead with all speed, regardless of comfort. DERIVATION : at sea a captain would often crowd on as much canvas as conditions allowed in order to complete a voyage in the shortest possible time. Thus rigged, a ship would be said to be ‘under a press of sail’, her bow pushed into the waves, resulting in a wet trip.
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T HE MAN WHO PUT AUSTRALIA ON THE MAP
    If you look at a map of Australia you are looking at the memorial of the great navigator and cartographer Matthew Flinders. In the course of his work he survived shipwreck and disaster and was imprisoned for many years as a spy. Although his life was short, his achievements made him one of the most important naval explorers of his time.
    Flinders circumnavigated the lonely continent in 1801–03. He had previously charted Tasmania with George Bass in 1798–9, demonstrating it was an island separated from the mainland by a strait of water. Flinders proved that the east coast, charted by James Cook in 1770, was part of the same land mass as the west, which had been surveyed by the Dutch navigators during the seventeenth century.
    As he was returning to England in 1803, not knowing that England was at war with France again, he put into Mauritius for repairs to his ship Cumberland . The French governor believed he was a British spy and he was incarcerated there for over six years. In 1804, detained under close confinement, he drew the first map of Australia. Towards the end of his time in Mauritius he wrote A Biographical Tribute to the Memory of Trim , the charming story of the seafaring cat who accompanied him during his circumnavigation of Australia.
    During his voyage around the great continent Flinders had noted abnormal behaviour of the compass needle, and to