Resolute by Martin W. Sandler Page A

second-in-command on his Antarctic achievement. But once again naval upper-class snobbery held sway: Crozier was not only common-born, but Irish. He would never do.
    Barrow was stuck. His final and most ambitious search—and he had no one to lead it. He knew that he had to have a recognizable figure, someone who would engender support from both the public and the press. Reluctantly, he had to admit that he had only one choice left, a person he didn’t really want. It was John Franklin.
    Franklin had led a varied career since returning from the overland expedition that had almost killed him. In 1823, he had married poet Eleanor Porden, who had given him a daughter, Eleanor. Two years after the marriage, when Franklin was offered a second overland search, his wife lay dying of tuberculosis. Despite her illness, she urged Franklin to accept the opportunity, and off he went. She died six days after his departure.
    The second overland journey was far better organized than the first had been. With Dr. John Richardson (who had served as the naturalist on Franklin’s first overland expedition) as second-in-command, the party traveled overland more than two thousand miles and successfully charted an area comprising half the Arctic coast of Canada and a large portion of the Alaskan seaboard. Under Richardson’s guidance, the expedition recorded important meteorological and geological information and made notes of more than 663 plants.
    Franklin returned to England in 1827 and a year later he married a friend of Eleanor’s, thirty-six-year-old Jane Griffin. Together they spent the next six years in the Mediterranean, where Franklin had been assigned to oversee Greece’s transition to an independent nation. For Franklin, it was a matter of biding his time, waiting for the next Arctic assignment. Surely it would come. His second Canadian venture had been an unqualified success. And he was now
Sir
John Franklin, knighted by George IV for his accomplishments.
    But he did not get the call. Returning to England in 1834, he had petitioned for the next passage-seeking assignment. It went to George Back. Two years later, he was appointed Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania). It would be a horrendous experience. Van Diemen’s Land was a prison colony, the home of eighteen thousand of England’s most hardened criminals. It had been long controlled by upper-class colonial officers who lived a life of luxury by profiting handsomely from the convicts’ labor.
    Determined to make the best of the situation, Franklin, at the strong urging of his wife, attempted to institute a series of reforms, chiefly aimed at providing more humane treatment for prisoners. He was opposed every step of the way by the colonial officials, who were accustomed to having their governor join in on the profit-taking. True to his character, Franklin spent seven agonizing years attempting to overcome the opposition. But the man who had repeatedly faced death in pitched naval engagements and the Arctic wilderness was no match for the political machinations of those whose way of life he threatened. In 1843, they succeeded in having Franklin recalled.
    It was the lowest point in his life. He was almost sixty years old; he had been removed from the search for the passage for almost twenty years, and he had returned to England an administrative failure. What he didn’t know was that, largely by default, he was about to be given the most prized assignment of them all.
    As he approached the painful conclusion that Franklin was emerging as his only option, Barrow was deeply torn. No one was more aware of Sir John’s strengths and weaknesses. It was Barrow, after all, who had entrusted the man with three of his earliest missions. On the downside, Franklin had taken part in the Buchan failure. He had lost eleven men on the Coppermine search. His experience in Van Diemen’s Land had been a disaster. Physically, he was