Artic exploration

1819

Thomas Abernethy becomes a Greenhand on the Hannibal, a whaling ship hunting bowhead whales around the east coast of Greenland.

Location: Canada

1819

James Ross Clark and Francis Crozier are both Lieutenants during Sir William Parry’s arctic expeditions.

Location: Arctic

May 23, 1819

The Coppermine Expedition sails from Gravesend under John Franklin. He has George Back with him for surveying and chart making, and John Richardson as their surgeon. They travel on board a Hudson’s Bay Company ship. As soon as they get to Canada the first of their supply problems materialised as neither the Hudson Bay Company, nor the Northwest Company, was able to provide any of the supplies that they had promised.

Location: Britain

Aug 30, 1819

Franklin and his expedition arrive at York Factory in Canada

Location: Canada

Jan 1820

Franklin sets out into the pine forests to Fort Chipewyan in order to hire men with experience of exploring Canada, as he had none. They had no tents and had to sleep on the ground covered in blankets. It was so cold that the mercury in their thermometers froze and they were even grateful for snowfall as the snow on their blankets would add extra insulation and make it less cold.

Location: Canada

Mar 1820

Franklin arrives at Fort Chipewyan and tries to buy supplies and recruit voyageurs, only to find that there was little food and none of the better voyageurs wanted to go with him.

Location: Canada

Jul 1820

Franklin leaves Fort Chipewyan for the Great Slave Lake. It takes them 10 days to reach Old Fort Providence on its northern shore where they meet with Akaitcho the leader of the Yellowknives First Nation. Akaitcho agreed that some of the people from his nation would act as guides for the expedition and take them as far as the Inuit lands.

Location: Canada

Jun 04, 1821

After a near mutiny during the winter when the expedition almost ran out of food, Franklin heads north again with a vague plan of trying to meet up with the Parry expedition that was trying to find the Northeast Passage by sea.

Location: Canada

Jul 14, 1821

Franklin first sights the Arctic Sea. They meet their first Inuit camp a few days later and their Yellowknives guides leave for home as agreed. A quarter of the voyageurs go with them.

Location: Arctic

Aug 22, 1821

Having mapped 500 miles of the Canadian coast Franklin decides to head for home, however they cannot go the way that they had come because rough weather had damaged their canoes too badly. This means that they had to use the Hood River route, which involved another trek across unknown territory.

Location: Arctic

Sep 07, 1821

The Coppermine Expedition’s supplies were exhausted as winter settled in. They were forced to eat lichen, and even boil up their boots to eat the leather. The voyageurs became mutinous again, and the only that prevented them from simply walking away was that they did not know the way to get home.

Location: Canada

Sep 26, 1821

Franklin reaches the Coppermine river, but without their canoes they have no way to cross it.

Location: Canada

Oct 04, 1821

Franklin and his party manage to cross the Coppermine river using a makeshift one man canoe built by Pierre St Germain. He crosses first taking line with him that everybody else uses to haul themselves across in his canoe.

Location: Canada

Oct 12, 1821

Franklin reaches Fort Enterpise, only to find that the supplies that he had expected had never been delivered. By this point the entire party was starving and on the point of giving up hope of every reaching home.

Location: Canada

Oct 20, 1821

By now the expedition had split in two with Franklin in the slower party. Richardson and Hepburn were in the other party. As they were foraging, they heard a shot from the camp. They found Hood dead, and Terohaute standing with a gun in his hand. They suspected that he had already killed and eaten three other men from the party, but there was nothing that they could do at this point as he was stronger than they were and armed.

Location: Canada

Oct 23, 1821

Terohaute goes to forage for lichen. Richardson took the opportunity to load his pistol, and on Terohaute's return, shot him dead.

Location: Canada

Oct 29, 1821

Richardson and Hepburn reach Fort Enterpise and found the men there barely able to move.

Location: Canada

Nov 07, 1821

The Franklin expedition is rescued by the Yellowknives, one of the Canadian First Nations. Three men arrive with food, and then got more by fishing.

Location: Canada

Oct 1822

The expedition returns to Britain. Despite his expedition being a complete failure Franklin is lauded as a hero for struggling in the face of such adversity.

Location: Britain

Feb 16, 1825

Franklin, George Back, John Richardson and Edward Kendall leave Liverpool on the Mackenzie River Expedition, their second exploration expedition into the Arctic.

Location: Liverpool

Jun 15, 1825

Mackenzie River Expedition reaches Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan River, and heads up to the Methye Portage.

Location: Canada

Jun 29, 1825

Mackenzie River Expedition picks up their equipment at the Methye Portage. This had come by a different route to Franklin and his officers, having travelled from York Factory on the Hudson Bay up the Hayes River.

Location: Canada

Aug 03, 1825

Mackenzie River Expedition reaches the headwaters of the Mackenzie River and begin to follow it down to the Arctic Ocean

Location: Canada

Aug 04, 1825

Mackenzie River Expedition reaches the point that the Mackenzie River joins the Liard River.

Location: Canada

Aug 07, 1825

Mackenzie River Expedition reaches Fort Norman

Location: Canada

Aug 08, 1825

Franklin splits his team. He sends most of them to Great Bear Lake to set up their winter quarters, while he continues to the mouth of the Mackenzie with Edward Kendall in order to perform an initial exploration.

Location: Canada

Aug 13, 1825

Franklin and Kendall reach the delta of the Mackenzie river. and begin to survey it, but have difficulty because frequent fog prevents them from using their sextant. They then travel back up the Mackenzie river to the fort, Fort Franklin, that the other party had build as their winter quarters on the Great Bear Lake.

Location: Arctic

Sep 05, 1825

Franklin and Kendall join up with the rest of the Mackenzie river expedition at Fort Franklin. They all spend an uneventful winter there and gather a large number of fish as food for the winter.

Location: Canada

Apr 10, 1826

Richardson and Kendall head out to survey the coastline of the Great Bear Lake

Location: Canada

May 01, 1826

Richardson and Kendall finish their survey of the Great Bear Lake and return to Fort Franklin and the rejoin the rest of the Mackenzie River Expedition.

Location: Canada

May 23, 1826

The ice on the Great Bear Lake starts to break up and the Mackenzie River Expedition begins preparations to head back to the coast.

Location: Canada

Jun 20, 1826

The Mackenzie River Expedition heads down the Mackenzie River to the Artic Ocean. Once they reach the mouth of the river they plan to split the expedition in two, with one team heading west and the other heading east in order to map the maximum amount of the coast before returning to Fort Franklin before the winter.

Location: Arctic

Jul 04, 1826

The Mackenzie River Expedition reaches the coast and splits in two teams. Franklin and Back led one team heading west. Kendall and Richardson led the other team heading east.

Location: Arctic

Jul 07, 1826

Richardson and Kendall exit the Mackenzie delta and reach open water

Location: Arctic

Jul 09, 1826

Franklin and Back meet an Inuit group. Franklin mentioned that they all appear in excellent health, although nearly all of them suffered from some degree of snowblindness.

Location: Arctic

Jul 15, 1826

Franklin and Back reach the Babbage River

Location: Arctic

Jul 17, 1826

Franklin and Back reach Herschel Island and meet some more Inuit

Location: Arctic

Jul 30, 1826

Franklin and Back reach what is now Alaska

Location: Arctic

Aug 08, 1826

Richardson and Kendall reaches the mouth of the Coppermine River. They travel up river to the Bloody Falls, but they do not think that they can get any further by boat.

Location: Arctic

Aug 10, 1826

Richardson and Kendall starts the overland trek back towards the Great Bear Lake.

Location: Canada

Aug 15, 1826

Richardson and Kendall encounter a group of First Nations people who led them to the headwaters of Dease River

Location: Canada

Aug 16, 1826

Franklin and Back decide to turn back towards Fort Franklin as summer was coming to an end. They had not realised that at this point they were merely 6 days journey from another expedition that was travelling east from Alaska.

Location: Arctic

Aug 18, 1826

Richardson and Kendall reaches the Great Bear Lake

Location: Canada

Aug 29, 1826

Franklin and Back were told by a group of Inuit that they had seen Richardson’s party returning to the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and that there were hostile groups hunting for them that planned to steal all of their equipment.

Location: Arctic

Sep 01, 1826

Richardson and Kendall return to Fort Franklin

Location: Canada

Sep 04, 1826

Franklin and Back reach the point that the two parties had split earlier that year.

Location: Canada

Sep 21, 1826

Franklin and Back return to Fort Franklin. Franklin is worried that they do not have enough stores at Fort Franklin to make it through the winter, and so he despatches Kendall to Fort Norman in order to get more supplies.

Location: Canada

Oct 08, 1826

Kendall returns to Fort Franklin with supplies from Fort Norman

Location: Canada

Feb 20, 1827

Franklin decides to depart from Fort Franklin on a sledge before the ice breaks up. He takes all of the expedition's charts, journals, and drawings.

Location: Canada

Sep 27, 1827

Franklin arrives back in Liverpool

Location: Liverpool

Oct 1827

Back and the other officers of the Mackenzie River Expedition arrive back in Britain where Kendall is promoted to Lieutenant.

Location: Britain

May 23, 1829

Sir John Ross sets off on an expedition to find the Northwest passage on board HMS Victory. This is sailing ship with a 30 horse power steam engine driving a set of paddle wheels as an auxiliary power source.

He takes with him his nephew James Clark Ross. Thomas Abernethy signs on with the expedition and is appointed Second Mate. The expedition has 4 officers (Sir John Ross, James Clark Ross, William Thom and George McDiarmid) and 19 men, including Abernethy.

Location: Britain

Aug 06, 1829

James Ross reaches the point that where he had been forced to turn back on the expedition that he had taken part in 10 years before.

Location: Arctic

Aug 13, 1829

The John Ross expedition reaches Fury Beach where Parry had abandoned his ship. There was no sign of the ship itself, but there were still heaps of stores on the beach. They took some of these stores and continued north.

Location: Arctic

Sep 1829

The James Ross expedition moors in Felix Harbour for to wait out the winter.

Location: Arctic

Jan 1830

They are visited by a group of Netsilik Inuit. The ship’s carpenter makes a wooden leg for one of them. The Inuit trade food and information.

Location: Arctic

Apr 09, 1830

James Clark Ross reaches the west side of Boothia Peninsula as part of a number of trips over the ice that he had been making to chart the area.

Location: Arctic

Jun 13, 1831

James Clark Ross, Abernethy, and the rest of the party return to HMS Victory. After a month on the ice they are said to look like human skeletons.

Location: Arctic

Jul 01, 1831

A party from HMS Victory including Abernethy and James Ross reach the magnetic north Pole.

Location: Arctic

Aug 1831

HMS Victory gets free of the ice, but is only able to move 4 miles before getting trapped again at Victoria Harbour.

Location: Arctic

Jan 1832

Sir James Ross decide that HMS Victory is not going to get free and they will need another plan.

Location: Arctic

May 29, 1832

James Clark Ross departs HMS Victory with Abernethy over the ice to try and get to Fury Beach in order to find out if the boats and supplies that they had seen on their way out were still there.

Location: Arctic

Jun 08, 1832

James Clark Ross returns from Fury Beach and lets the rest of the expedition know that the boats are still there and repairable.

Location: Arctic

Jul 01, 1832

The entire party from HMS Victory reaches Fury beach. They construct a shelter from the remaining timbers of Fury and then start repairing the boats there.

Location: Arctic

Aug 01, 1832

The expedition sets off in boats in the hope of finding a whaler that will take them back to Britain.

Location: Arctic

Feb 01, 1833

George Back leaves Britain in order to try and find the John Ross expedition as nothing had been heard from it since it left in 1829.

Location: Canada

Jul 08, 1833

The expedition leaves Batty Bay

Location: Arctic

Aug 14, 1833

The expedition finally reaches open water

Location: Arctic

Aug 26, 1833

The expedition is picked up by Isabella, the ship that John Ross had commanded on his 1819 expedition.

Location: Arctic

Oct 1833

The John Ross expedition returns to Britain

Location: Britain

Mar 1834

George Back receives a package of letters that tell him that the John Ross expedition which he had been looking for was now safely back in Britain. These letters also contain orders that his mission has changed and he is to explore the coast from the area that Ross had mapped at King William Island to the area that he himself had mapped with Franklin on the Coppermine River expedition.

Location: Canada

Jun 07, 1834

George Back sets out on his exploration mission

Location: Canada

Jul 23, 1834

George Back reaches salt water at the Chantrey Inlet. They explore the area and see King William Island but decide that going any further would be too great a risk and therefore turn back.

Location: Arctic

Jul 28, 1834

George Back reaches Back River, known to the local Inuit people as the Great Fish River.

Location: Canada

Sep 27, 1834

George Back reaches Fort Reliance

Location: Canada