The tall Norwegian captain of this vessel was Roald Amundsen.
He had spent years reading about the failed attempts to find a route through the frozen
waters and believed that he knew how to succeed where others had failed.
On the 19th of May 1845, Sir John Franklin, an experienced 59-year-old Arctic explorer,
set sail from Greenhithe, England.
Under his command was the nineteenth British expedition attempting to traverse the fabled
Northwest Passage, seeking a shorter route to Asia.
Franklin was leading two modified warships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, on what
would ultimately become the greatest disaster in 300 years of British exploration.
Furnished with the finest tools, technology and equipment that Victorian England had to
offer, the two vessels (weighing more than 350 tons each) were adapted in the hopes of
dominating their environment when they reached the frigid Arctic climate.
The bows of the vessels were up to eight feet thick and clad in iron, as they anticipated
ploughing through the pack-ice, navigating uncharted waters.
A library of more than 1,000 books, an organ and hearty meals of canned foods (a first
for any expedition) were stowed on board to keep the men in good health and upbeat spirits.
There was an extraordinary confidence in the power and might of these Industrial Age floating
fortresses, which is why the Royal Navy was in utter shock when it received reports that
all men had died on the expedition.
Through cold exposure, lead poisoning (perhaps from their canned food) and scurvy, the crew
had fallen into disarray after the death of Sir John Franklin, who died ten months after
the vessels became trapped in pack-ice off the coast of King William Island.
It has been more than 170 years since Franklin and his men were lost, and only now are we
finding out the full story of the tragic outcome of their failed expedition.
The wrecks of the Erebus and the Terror were discovered fairly recently.
Canadian scientists have also conducted extensive tests on the well-preserved bodies of the
sailors found on King William Island.
At the end, it appears that some resorted to cannibalism, as there seemed no escape
from the barren landscape or frigid, icy prisons that their vessels had become.
Others attempted to walk south and, except for meeting a couple of Inuit hunters who
shared their rations, they were never seen again.
Almost sixty years after Franklin's expedition, in the summer of 1903, a small 45-ton fishing
vessel named the Gjoa (pronounced "joa" in North America) set sail from Oslo under the
midnight sun, in another attempt to finally traverse the Northwest Passage.
The tall Norwegian captain of this vessel was Roald Amundsen.
He had spent years reading about the failed attempts to find a route through the frozen
waters and believed that he knew how to succeed where others had failed.
Amundsen realised that the hostile climate of the Arctic could not be conquered by rigid
power and might; rather, one would need to be flexible and adapt to the severe conditions
in order to successfully traverse the frozen landscape.
The Gjoa was not built to push through ice floes but instead, with its shallow draft
and small frame, could sail through channels that would be impassable for larger vessels.
Following the same route as Franklin's expedition, Amundsen chose to sail south from Beechy Island
down the Peel Sound.
Arctic pack-ice sometimes leaves a narrow and often shallow channel when it meets the
relatively warmer coast line.
It is through these narrow leads that Amundsen's shallow-draft fishing vessel was able to avoid
the same fate as Franklin's expedition, which became trapped in the compounding pack-ice.
Sailing around the eastern side of King William Island, Amundsen and his crew found a small
natural harbour that was safe enough for the Gjoa to be moored through winter.
This place is known today as Gjoa Haven, and a small community of just over 1,000 Inuit
lives there.
It was the Inuit who taught Amundsen how to survive in this cold, harsh climate.
Though the Inuit had been considered little more than uneducated savages by the British
explorers, Amundsen instead spent his time trying to learn everything he could from them,
recognizing that they clearly held the knowledge about survival in the Arctic.
Swapping wool clothing for animal skin undergarments and Caribou fur, he learned how to build an
igloo and how to hunt and fish in the bleak and desolate landscape.
One of the most important skills he learned here was how to travel overland with sled dogs.
In 1911, this skill would enable him to become the first man to reach the South Pole, arriving
there five weeks before Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition.
After spending two winters with the Inuit at Gjoa Haven, Amundsen once again set sail
with his crew, maneuvering through narrow, shallow channels sometimes through water only three feet deep.
Franklin and his modified warships would never have succeeded in navigating such challenging waterways.
Eventually, on August 26, 1905, the crew spotted another vessel: an American whaling ship from
San Francisco.
Thus the Northwest Passage had finally been traversed.
By comparing the strategy of Franklin's failed expedition to that of Amundsen's successful
endeavour, we are able to learn a valuable lesson.
We can often, even unconsciously, put too much faith and confidence in advances in science
and technology, the grandeur of design and human innovation, or the impressive achievements
of corporations and institutions in society around us.
Franklin and his men were confident that the material provisions and advanced technology
with which they had surrounded themselves would be sufficient to cope with whatever
nature could throw at them.
By contrast, Amundsen was able to carefully navigate a much smaller vessel through the
treacherous waters of the Arctic in an almost David-and-Goliath comparison to Franklin.
The men of Franklin's expedition perceived that the inhabitants of the frozen region
were savages and yet it was the Inuit who held the keys to survival in such a harsh
environment.
We have a subscriber from our program who just so happens to live in Gjoa Haven.
Hey Adam, how are you doing?
I'm alright.
I wanted to ask you, what was it like growing up in Gjoa Haven?
Is it normal to ever travel to Terror Bay or does that not normally happen?
The expedition with Franklin and the one with Amundsen, they left their boats in the ocean
and they were just trapped.
Obviously, being so far north, do you even to this day, do you still feel isolated from
the rest of the world?
So Amundsen succeeded where Franklin had failed and it was the Inuit and his simple approach
that led to his success.
Instead of having confidence in material possessions we should follow Amundsen's approach of humility
and a child-like method of learning and apply it in our lives too.
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