Newspaper Sunday: The Franklin Expedition

One of the great legends of the 19th century was the story of the Franklin Expedition, an effort by the British Navy to find the Northwest Passage, a route to the Pacific Ocean across the top of North America. Two ships led by Sir John Franklin left England in 1845, sailed into the Arctic, and disappeared.

Various search and rescue missions were dispatched to find Franklin and his men. Graves of men who died early in the expedition, and clues and messages left behind, were eventually located.

The Canadian government recently announced new efforts to search for the wreckage of Franklin's ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus. This week in Newspaper Sunday we look back at early news coverage of the search for the Franklin Expedition.

• Jeffersonian Republican, May 17, 1849: Franklin's wife wrote to American president Zachary Taylor, pleading for help in the Arctic search for her husband.
• New York Tribune, May 21, 1850: A speech by a senator urged an American expedition to find Franklin, who, it was argued, could still be alive though "imprisoned by walls of ice."
• Fremont Journal, October 21, 1859: In 1859 news from London spread across America. Items related to Franklin had been found by a British expedition, and written materials left by crewmen indicated that Franklin himself had died 12 years earlier.
• New York Tribune, November 29, 1859: An American journalist gained entry to a display of Franklin relics brought back from the Arctic, and wrote a detailed and emotional account.

Note: After visiting the newspaper links at the Chronicling America site of the Library of Congress, click the "persistent link" to view the entire page of the newspaper.

Illustration: Sir John Franklin/courtesy New York Public Library Digital Collections

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