The 160-some miles between Terror’s position off King William Land and the mouth of Great Fish River might not be traversable, even as a prelude to the arduous voyage up the river. It combined the worst of coastal ice with threats of open leads that could make them abandon the sledges and – even if there were no leads – the assured agony of hauling sledges and boats across the frozen gravel of the island itself, all while exposed to the worst of the pack-ice storms.
Once on the river, if they ever reached the river, they would be confronted with what Back had described as “a violent and tortuous course of 530 geographical miles, running through an iron-ribbed country without a single tree on the whole of its banks” and then “no fewer than 83 falls, cascades, and rapids.” Crozier had trouble imagining his men, after another month or more of man-hauling, being fit enough or well enough to confront 83 falls, cascades, and rapids in even the sturdiest boats. The portages alone would kill them.
A week earlier, before heading out with the boat-sledge teams to Terror Camp, Surgeon Goodsir told Crozier that the lemon-juice antiscorbutic, their only defense against scurvy now – as weak as it had become – would run out in three weeks or less, depending upon how many men died between now and then.
Crozier knew how quickly the full onslaught of scurvy would weaken all of them. For this 25 miles to King William Land with light sledges and full teams, on full half rations for the crossing, on a runners path that had been beaten into the ice for more than a month, they had to cover a little more than eight miles a day. On the rough terrain or coastal ice of King William Land and south, that distance might be cut in half or worse. Once the scurvy began having its way with them, they might only cover a mile a day and, if the wind died, might well not be able to pole or paddle the heavy boats upstream against the current of Back’s River. A portage of any distance in the weeks or months to come might soon become impossible.
The only things working in their favor in heading south were the very long-shot chance that a rescue party was already heading north from Great Slave Lake, searching for them, and the simple fact that it would be getting warmer as they traveled farther south. They would be following the thaw, at the very least.
Still, Crozier would have preferred staying in the northern latitudes and going the longer distance east and north to Boothia Peninsula and then across it. He knew there was only one even relatively safe way to attempt that: take the men to King William Land, cross it, then make the relatively short traverse across open ice, sheltered from the worst of the northwest wind and weather by the island itself, to the southwestern coast of the Boothia, then slowly north along the edge of the ice or on the coastal plain itself, and finally across the mountains toward Fury Bay, hoping every step of the way to meet Esquimaux.
It was the safe way. But it was the long way. 1,200 miles, almost half again longer than the alternate route south around King William Land and then further south up Back’s River.
Unless they met friendly Esquimaux soon after crossing to the Boothia, they would all be dead weeks or months before such a twelve-hundred-mile trip could be completed.
Even so, Francis Crozier would have preferred to have wagered everything on a dash straight across the ice – northeast over the worst of the pack ice in a mad attempt to replicate the astounding 600-mile small-group sledge trip made by his friend James Clark Ross eighteen years earlier when the Fury was frozen in on the opposite side of the Boothia Peninsula. The old steward – Bridgens – had been absolutely correct. John Ross had taken the best bet on survival, forcing his way north by foot and sledge and then in boats left behind up to Lancaster Sound and waiting for whalers. And his nephew James Ross showed that it was possible – just possible – to sledge from King William Land back to Fury Beach.
Erebus was still in its final ten days of agony when Crozier had detached the best man-haulers from each ship – the winners of the biggest prizes and the last money Francis Crozier had in the world – given them the best-designed sledge, and ordered Mr. Helpman and Mr. Osmer, the purser, to fit this superteam of man-haulers out with everything they might need for six weeks on the ice.
It was an eleven-man sledge headed by Erebus second mate Charles Frederick Des Vouex, its lead puller the giant Manson. Each of the other nine men were asked to volunteer. Each man did.
Crozier had to know if it was possible to man-haul a fully loaded boat sledge across the open ice in such a straight dash toward rescue. The eleven men left at six bells on 23 March, in the dark, with the temperature at thirty-eight below zero, to three rousing cheers from every ambulatory crewman assembled from both ships.
Des Voeux and his men were back in three weeks. No one had died, but they were all exhausted and four of the men had serious frostbite. Magnus Manson was the only one of the eleven-man team, including the apparently indefatigable Des Voeux, who did not seem close to death from exhaustion and hardship.
In three weeks they had been able to travel less than twenty-eight miles in a straight line from Terror and Erebus. Des Voeux later estimated that they had man-hauled more than a hundred and fifty miles to gain those twenty-eight, but there was no possibility of traveling in a straight line that far out on the pack ice. The weather northeast of their current position was more terrible than the Ninth Circle of Hell where they had been trapped for two years. Pressure ridges were Legion. Some rose to heights greater than eighty feet. Even steering their course was close to impossible when clouds hid the southerly sun and the stars were hidden for several eighteen-hour nights on end. Compasses, of course, were useless this close to the north magnetic pole.
The team had brought five tents for safety’s sake, although they had planned to sleep in only two of them. The nights were so cold out on the exposed ice that the eleven men slept the last nine nights, when they were able to sleep at all, in a single tent. But in the end they’d had no choice in the matter, since four of the sturdy tents had blown away or been ripped to shreds by the twelfth night on the ice.
Somehow Des Voeux had kept them moving to the northeast, but every day the weather worsened, the pressure ridges grew closer together, the necessary deviations from their course became longer and more treacherous, and the sledge sustained serious damage in their Herculean struggle to haul and shove it over the jagged ice ridges. Two days were lost just repairing the sledge in the howl of wind and blowing snow.
The mate had decided to turn around on their fourteenth morning on the ice. With only one tent left, he gauged their chances of survival as low. They then tried to follow their own thirteen days of ruts back to the ships, but the ice was too active – shifting slabs, moving bergs within the pack ice, and new pressure ridges rising in front of them had obliterated their track. Des Voeux, the finest navigator on the Franklin Expedition except for Crozier, took theodolite and sextant readings in the few clear moments he found in the days and nights but ended up setting his course based mostly on dead reckoning. He told the men that he knew precisely where they were. He was sure, he later admitted to Fitzjames and Crozier, that he would miss the ships by twenty miles.
On their last night on the ice, the final tent ripped and they abandoned their sleeping bags and pressed on to the southwest blindly, man-hauling just to stay alive. They jettisoned their extra food and clothing, continuing to man-haul the sledge only because they needed their water, shotguns, cartridges, and powder. Something large had been following them for their entire voyage. They could see it through the spindrift and fog and pelting hail. They could hear it circling them each endless night in the darkness.