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.

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).

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!

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.

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.

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]

Sir James Clark Ross (1839) and Sir John Franklin (1845) Expedition boat types and sizes:

Careful measurement of the existing plans for Erebus and Terror, now in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich – along with other information about the complement of ships’ boats – allows us to estimate the dimensions of these important craft. The NMM Erebus plan ZAZ5673 provides an itemized list of the boats carried onboard the 1839 James Clark Ross Antarctic Expedition, by type and length (in feet). It also indicates the outline of some of the boats. It seems reasonable to assume the boat complement from 1845 was similar to that of 1839. The largest boat hull stored on deck amidships on the boat chocks in this plan is shorter than the 30′ whaleboats which are represented as perched on and over the quarterdeck (and are distinct with their sharp bows and sterns–the rest of the boats had squared-off sterns). This is the 28′ long pinnace, and it is filled with the 23′ (small) cutter and what appears to be the 22′ gig. I was disappointed that we had no representation on this plan of the 30′ galley, the 25′ cutter, or the 12′ dinghy. But when we combine this with measurements of the outline of boats found on the contemporary weather deck plan (ZAZ5675) and information from the Terror wreck, we can estimate dimensions for most boats on these expeditions, including the massive galley, whose outline has been mostly erased from both plans for some reason – likely because it was no longer carried in 1845.

From the boat dimensions listed below, I can also hypothesize that the Erebus Bay boat began life as the large 25’ cutter, rather than the 28′ pinnace. The pinnace carried by the ships to Antarctica in 1839 was much broader in beam (8.5’/2.6m wide) than the measurements reported by McClintock or Hobson of the Erebus Bay boat. This is the important dimension for identifying the original boat, not the length. The 25’ (large) cutter’s beam was likely just a bit broader than the smaller cutter (whose dimensions are known from the Parks Canada Terror wreck diagram boatwreck), and well within the range of McClintock and Hobson’s different beam measurements of the boat the encountered in 1859 (7’3” vs. 7’6” / 2.2 vs. 2.3m).

Amidships on both exploration vessels, smaller boats “nested” on chocks inside the hulls of larger boats, like the lower halves of Matryoshka dolls. According to the above plans, in 1839 the pinnace nested at least the 23’ cutter and the gig inside it. We know from Owen Stanley’s 1845 illustrations of Erebus that this “nesting” occurred again on the way to Greenland. So another indication of the pinnace’s unsuitability as the donor boat is the width: if the boat encountered in 1859 was based off the pinnace, the smaller boats also stored on deck could not have originally fit inside it on the trip up.

Both conversions for the planned 1848 escape would have involved removing the transom, and then substantially relaying the aft boat ribs and hull planks, but the modification of the cutter could be realized without also substantially cutting down the boat keel. To modify the pinnace, and still keep the craft to the documented 28′ length, carpenters would have had to cut back the keel by several feet to install the curving sternpost (or the pinnace’s new stern would have lengthened the boat to over 30’/9.1m). Start instead with the cutter, and you only have to remove the upright sternpost and transom and round it up from the existing keel, which also results in a narrower, lighter built 28’ boat. If the boat was based off the frame of the large cutter, the boat place stem should have originally been marked “XXV” as is illustrated by an earlier example of Royal Navy boat found at NMM as plan HIL0102.³

Boat dimensions for each Franklin ship: (length/maximum beam feet/meters) based on 1839 inventory, NMM plans (ZAZ5673 and ZAZ5675) and Parks Canada Terror wreck info.

Galley (1 per ship – likely omitted 1845) 30‘/9’6” — 9.1/2.9m

Whaleboat (2 per ship) 30’/6’6” — 9.1/2.0m

Pinnace (1 per ship) 28’/8’6” — 8.5/2.6m

Large Cutter (2 per ship – Terror sent one home 1845) 25’/beam unknown but likely about 7’6” — 7.6/ca. 2.3m

Small Cutter (1 per ship, Terror’s is located at wreck site) 23’/7’3” — 7.0/2.2m

Gig (1 per ship) beam unknown but could nest inside cutters 22’ — 6.7m

Dinghy 12’ — 3.7m

Halkett Boat (at least one purchased by Franklin see NMM ZAZ6959 example) 8’8″/3’4″ — 2.6/1.0m

1. This boat began as a tiny scale version of a pinnace (if I recall correctly from the old Lindberg Jolly Roger/French frigate La Flore kit) – about 28’/8.5m long in 1/130 scale, or 2.4″/6cm long. The original model had no interior – no thwarts, mast steps, footboards, ribs. I have not represented the prominent wooden knees that support boat thwarts. Though a very small number of knee fragments have been archaeologically encountered, we don’t know if these were from elsewhere in the boat. Knees are not represented in some of the illustrations, and I wonder if the knees could have been omitted to help lighten the craft. ↩︎
2. One interesting possibility is that the boat and sledge could carry sails to assist hauling efforts over sea ice and land. “Sailing sledges” were a feature of the 1850s search expeditions. See Andrés Paredes’s KABLOONAS 2018 blog “SAILING SLEDGES AND KITES – WE WERE THEREFORE “SHIPSHAPE”!!” ↩︎
3. I have been assisted by collections staff at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich in examining both sides of this boat’s stem (AAA2282). As I mentioned in the earlier post, the length markings in roman numerals on the “data stamp” of this stem are not a diagnostic feature for this boat – they do not conclusively show “XXVIII”, or any other length, though I can say they begin with “XX”. Cross-referencing to the known boat lengths, this only rules out the Dinghy as the donor hull! Also, since no one survived to tell the tale, and in extremis Royal Navy carpentry did not necessarily follow “Woolwich dockyard” rules, we have no idea if the stem markings were updated in 1848 to represent the eventual length of the modified boat. ↩︎