John Franklin - 1823: Marriage and Third Arctic Expedition

1823: Marriage and Third Arctic Expedition

In 1823, after returning to England,Sir John Franklin married the poet Eleanor Anne Porden. Their daughter, Eleanor Isabella, was born the following year. Eleanor (senior) died of tuberculosis in 1825, shortly after persuading her husband not to let her ill-health prevent him from setting off on another expedition to the Arctic (next paragraph). On 5 November 1828 he married Jane Griffin, a friend of his first wife and a seasoned traveller who proved indomitable in the course of their life together. On 29 April 1829 he was knighted by George IV. On 25 January 1836 he was made Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order by King George IV. He was made a Knight of the Greek Order of the Redeemer as well.

In 1825 he left for his second Canadian and third Arctic expedition. The goal this time was the mouth of the Mackenzie River from which he would follow the coast westward and possibly meet Frederick William Beechey who would try to sail northeast from the Bering Strait. With him was John Richardson who would follow the coast east from the Mackenzie to the mouth of the Coppermine River. At the same time William Edward Parry would try to sail west from the Atlantic. (Beechey reached Point Barrow and Parry became frozen in 900 miles east. At this time the only known points on the north coast were a hundred or so miles east form the Bering Strait, the mouth of the Mackenzie, Franklin's stretch east of the Coppermine, and a bit of the Gulf of Boothia which had been seen briefly from land.) Supplies were better organized this time, in part because they were managed by Peter Warren Dease of the Hudson's Bay Company. After reaching the Great Slave Lake using the standard HBC route he took a reconnaissance trip 1,000 miles down the Mackenzie and on 16 August 1825 became the second European to reach its mouth. He erected a flagpole with buried letters for Parry. He returned to winter at Fort Franklin on the Great Bear Lake. Next summer he went downriver and found the ocean frozen. He worked his way west for several hundred miles and gave up on 16 August 1826 when he was about 150 miles east of Beechey's Point Barrow. He reached safety at Fort Franklin on 21 September. Richardson's eastward journey was more successful.