Month: February 2025

Launching a Sad Little Boat Model

What if we could rebuild the “Boat Place” Franklin Expedition boat from its wrecked and scattered remains? In this post I will show my efforts to reconstruct the important boat I explored last week, at the same small scale as the HMS Terror wreck diorama.

The 2.4″/6cm long model on its sledge. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

In early 2025 I set about transforming a tiny plastic model to represent the boat and sledge that searchers looking for the lost Sir John Franklin 1845 Expedition came across in 1859 on the western coast of King William Island.1 My research is summarized in the “design dossier” section of my recent post on this discovery. Stages of my build resembled some of the real modifications ship carpenters would have worked at early in 1848, as they prepared to desert HM Ships Erebus and Terror – I sawed off the old square transom (visible in the below photo) and reshaped a sharp or rounded stern using Milliput putty around a balsa wood carved-out form (later removed), and built a new curved sternpost. I added two gudgeons, on the chance that the boat could have been fitted with a rudder. As of this writing, I believe the converted boat was based on the hull of the lighter 25’ Cutter instead of the Pinnace (see below boat dimensions section for detailed information).

The model boats. The sharper and narrower whale boats are 30 scale feet long. The original square transom of the model appears beside the two-dollar Canadian coin. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

I modelled the stanchions (the two posts rising out of the hull painted two-tone black and white) to be high, with gaff jaws at their tops (as described by Lt. Hobson). Some practical tests with the model revealed that the pronounced list observed in 1859 meant that, in order for Hobson’s team to have spotted anything emerging from the high drifts of snow, that stanchion would have to be significantly taller than represented in most reconstructions. With its gaping jaws open to the sky, it must have appeared a grim marker, indeed!

The model and sledge with a list down to starboard, buried in a drift of snow in my backyard. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

I decked over the bow and stern areas based on the Durand-Brager illustration (seen in the last post). The internal layout is similar to the whale boats that the ships carried. I like to think that the crews had a space in each boat to shelter an exhausted or ill member. A foredeck and covered stern sheets may also help explain the decade-long survival in decent condition of some of the artifacts that Hobson and McClintock discovered in the boat.

The gunwales were drilled for the thowells – tiny metal rods. I believe there was no washstrake boards, so I spaced the twenty-four thowells to support a washcloth that wrapped around the hull between the posts. Hobson noted these thowells (National Maritime Museum artifact AAA2143) were doubled up to assist the paddling. I paired them to create four rowing positions a side, and ran a rope along the top of the thowells, which the washcloth would have been rove into along its top edge.

The awning, and “cutaway” view. It is also possible that the awning connected directly to the gunwales, and not to the tops of the stanchions, which may not have been fitted while sledging on land. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

Artifacts currently placed in the model hull include six modified oars (cut down with add-on blade extensions), the sheet block (AAA2198), the folded-up lead sheets (AAA2280), and some sailcloth that could be the awning or the washcloths (AAA2144). Basic pieces of boat equipment, such as two masts, and a rudder, have never been found. I have added a mast step amidships, in case information or evidence of these details turn up. When under sail, the boat would likely have carried lugsails on its two masts.2 I hope someday to model the ice grapple/anchor encountered by the searchers. The bewildering assortment of personal items, cutlery, packets of chocolate, and human remains have not been represented.

The model takes to the water. Credit:www.warsearcher.com

This boat and sledge combination may look unwieldy, especially when compared to the supremely well-adapted Inuit equivalents: animal hide boats (Umiaks) on sledges built of lightweight organic materials. But in 1859, Francis Leopold McClintock – a masterful long-distance sledge traveler – seems to have been impressed by the lost crews’ efforts at lightening it.

As with so many of the specifics about the 1845 Franklin Expedition, we continue along our own voyages of discovery. This is not the first interpretation of the Erebus Bay boat, nor will it be the last. I have created a sad miniature of that “melancholy relic.” [Read more in the Appendix below for technical info about the boats and sources]

Appendix-JC Ross (1839) and Franklin (1845) Expedition boat types and sizes and notes:

Interpreting that “Melancholy Relic” – the Erebus Bay Boatwreck

In this post I will describe the “boat place” boat at Erebus Bay that searchers looking for the lost Sir John Franklin 1845 Expedition came across in 1859. A later post will show my effort to construct a small model of this unique and sadly-fated boat, and propose some likely dimensions of the full complement of Franklin boats.

William Thomas Smith’s powerful 1895 work “They forged the last link with their lives: HMS Erebus and Terror, 1849-50.” The boat has several well-researched components, such as the washcloth around the gunwale and the ice grapnel. It also appears rigged for sailing with full masts stepped. (CC-BY-NC-ND) copyright: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich London

On May 23rd, 1859, at a wide bay on the frozen western shores of King William Island, a group looking for the lost Franklin Expedition found something incredible: A large boat on a sledge. Fourteen years after Franklin’s two ships had left Greenhithe, England, searchers had finally arrived at “ground zero” of the Franklin Expedition escape saga. They were a decade too late. Quartermaster Henry Toms and Carpenter’s Mate George Edwards – both members of Lt. William Hobson’s detached sledge party searching the coast as part of Francis Leopold McClintock’s Franklin search expedition – first spotted something odd projecting out of the snow as they scouted ahead of their mates.1 Closer examination revealed it to be a wooden stanchion, hanging like a beacon over the curved outlines of a gunwale in the high drifts of snow – beneath their feet was the ghostly outline of a large boat.

Chart showing the vicinity of King William Island with the various positions in which relics of the Arctic expedition under Sir John Franklin have been found / compiled by Lieut.-Cmdr. R.T. Gould, R.N [detail of]. “Boat Place” is indicated in red text at the base of Erebus Bay. Credit: Library and Archives Canada 3674742

The next morning Hobson’s group began in earnest a two-day process of clearing out the site and inventorying an unusual assortment of artifacts. That stanchion also marked a gravesite – the resting place of at least two unidentified Royal Navy crewmembers who were entombed within the hull. McClintock’s sledge team arrived a few days after Hobson had departed. His published description of what he called this “melancholy relic” is the standard account of the site.2 But Hobson had also drafted a report on his sledge team’s discoveries, which included a detailed description of the boat. We are indebted to archaeologist Dr. Douglas Stenton’s work resuscitating Hobson’s report about his journey from obscurity. Stenton’s publication of the report provides important additional details to help explore the boat place.3 Since Hobson’s team had excavated the snow from the boat and examined the objects found therein, the site had already been altered before McClintock’s party reached it. For a detailed list of the interesting and unusual contents of the boat, please see Russell Potter’s Visions of the North blog “The Boat” on the topic. My interest here remains focused on the boat itself.

This early 1860s illustration represents some of the major relics accurately, and shows the double-ended appearance and large proportions of the vessel. Credit: Durand-Brager, from Arthur Mangin, Voyages et Découvertes outre-mer au XIXe siècle, illustrations par Durand-Brager, 1863 ː Découverte des restes de l’expédition Franklin. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Erebus Bay find remains the only Franklin Expedition boat and sledge, originally encountered reasonably intact, whose appearance and contents were described in detail. Its importance is tied to the slightly earlier discovery by Hobson’s party of the Victory Point record, in a sealed cylinder in a cairn about 60 km northeast. An update to a routine Admiralty form mentioned the abandonment of the long-beset ships, and recorded captains Crozier and Fitzjames’s intention to mount a desperate trek with their ailing crews towards Back’s Great Fish River. The note had no specific information about how they planned to cross the vast distances involved. The Boat Place discovery seemed to illustrate the mechanism of the evacuation plan: Crew members would use drag ropes to man-haul boat/sledge combinations down and around the coastline of King William Island. They would then unship the sledges and navigate the boats to the mainland and down a treacherous river towards a still-distant fur trading post. We don’t know how this plan changed as they struggled along, losing more men, and abandoning more boats. Some of the last of a group of weary men laid down to die, under another boat, on the mainland at Starvation Cove.

Back at Erebus Bay, the 28’/8.5 m boat was found just above the frozen shoreline. It listed dramatically down to starboard. A hole may have allowed wildlife – bears or scavenging foxes – access on the low side. Both boat and heavy sledge were oriented back towards the northeast, though if that was by intent (to return towards the ships), or by happenstance, no one can say. McClintock commented on both the boat’s lightness, and the sledge’s weight. He estimated the weight of the boat to be about 700-800 lbs while the sledge could have been as much as 650 lbs (the average weight of a 28-foot whaling boat, by contrast, was about 1,000 lbs).4 His observations were informed by his great expertise in sledging, acquired during his participation on this and earlier expeditions.

A remarkable 3D interpretation of “Boat Place.” This well-researched depiction of the boat and sledge is a recent and valuable addition to the artistic reconstructions of Erebus Bay. It was inspired by Matthew Betts’ reconstruction (see notes). The outlines of one of the ships in the distance heightens the pathos of this bleak scene. Certainly, the ships did transit by the Bay at some point after April 1848. Used with written permission of Case Western, who maintains a site with 3D printing models.

The boat had been modified by the ships’ carpenters – the square transom at the stern had been removed and the boat was now pointed or “sharp” at both ends, with a curving stem and sternpost, like a broader, deeper version of the two ships’ whale boats. The “carvel” planking (flush-edge-to-edge) of the top strakes of the hull had been replaced and lighter fir “clinker” planks (overlapping) re-laid in their place. An ingenious washcloth design of canvas was fitted in the place of the heavier washstrake boards. The set of six paddles – cut-down oars converted with larger “add-on” blades – indicate that the boat had been converted for inland/river navigation.

The stem, as drawn by McClintock in his 1859 edition of The voyage of the ‘Fox’ in the Arctic seas: A narrative of the discovery of the fate of Sir John Franklin and his companions (P 292) see notes section for link.

The distinctive stem of the boat was sketched by McClintock. This was recovered two decades later by American Franklin searcher Frederick Schwatka, who, while looking for records, was leading the first expedition on King William Island that encountered the sites in the summer, not under cover of snow and ice.

According to Inuit oral testimony, there was at least one other abandoned boat with many more skeletal remains that was located nearby.5 Both boats were dismantled in the early 1860s for their useful materials and fittings. Following the initial recovery of some artifacts, the dismantling, and Schwatka’s later removals, only archaeological traces and a memorial with bone fragments remain at the site – the last vestiges of a melancholy relic.

Another famous boat/sledge with a less tragic outcome, the James Caird, originally one of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 22.5’/6.9m boats from his exploration ship Endurance, being dragged across the sea ice in Antarctica, Dec. 1915. Credit: Frank Hurley : via wikimedia commons.
The Design Dossier and References (click here):