First State of a Cartographic Landmark In The Search for the Northwest Passage —The Most Detailed Early Map to Show the Arctic Waterways
With Extensive Contemporary Pencil Annotations
Impressive hand-annotated example of the definitive cartographic record of the search for Franklin’s lost expedition in its rare first state.
Following the disappearance of Franklin’s 1845 expedition, a wave of search parties was dispatched in 1850 to attempt a rescue. This included over a dozen ships under six different commands that were in frequent contact with each other, if isolated for long periods of time from the outside world. In 1851, several expeditions returned to England, unsuccessful in their hunt for Franklin, but having mapped over a thousand kilometers of previously undiscovered coastline.
Captain William Penny was the first of the explorers to return to England on September 21, 1851. He brought with him news from two other expeditions which had all wintered in close proximity, those of Captain Horatio Austin and Captain Sir John Ross. Collectively, they had made the most significant discovery of new lands since 1819, going west of Melville Island, the furthest point reached during the Ross Expedition. They greatly improved the cartography of the region, mapping coastline along the Barrow Strait that had only previously seen preliminary surveys during the Ross Expedition. They also entered countless bays and sounds for the first time, discovering islands and further inlets, naming them as they went along. Much of their searches centered on the Wellington Channel, where Franklin and his men were thought to have potentially been lost, and where the three expeditions wintered.
John Arrowsmith wasted no time in publishing this map documenting their exploits – this first state of the map was issued on October 21, 1851, a month to the day after news from the three expeditions first arrived in England. Like many of history’s greatest cartographers, Arrowsmith was not only a key witness to the great explorations of his time, but also an actor in their discoveries: he created maps that were used by explorers, and was the first to incorporate their discoveries when they returned. William Kennedy, in his report on his expedition funded by Lady Franklin in 1851-2 wrote that:
…when having attained to 100° W. long., and feeling assured that we had got on an extensive tableland—that which I have named Arrowsmith Plains, from the eminent geographer to whom Arctic travellers are so much indebted…
Arrowsmith was in active correspondence with many of the leaders of these expeditions, as well as the Hudson Bay Company and the Admiralty. These men clearly valued Arrowsmith’s experience, and Arrowsmith arbitrated their debates. They were occasionally enraged when Arrowsmith, whose maps disseminated their discoveries to a wide audience, failed to accept their preferred toponyms:
In 1851, meanwhile, the whaler and Franklin searcher William Penny told [Captain William] Coppin that he got into a ‘passion’ with the cartographer John Arrowsmith over the latter’s refusal to accept the name ‘Queen Victoria Channel’ for the region north of Wellington Channel (McCorriston, 2018).
Clearly, Penny won on this front, at least in the short term – “Queen Victoria Channel of Penny 1851” appears on this first state of Arrowsmith’s map. However, by the fourth state of this map, Arrowsmith gradually changed the toponyms, extending the Wellington Channel north and reducing the font size on the Queen Victoria Channel. Over time, it seems that Arrowsmith had the last laugh – Queen Victoria Channel became Queen’s Channel, which is very rarely shown on later maps and usually displayed as an extension of the Wellington Channel.
This first state of this map was followed by three further states published by August 1853, reflecting the information quickly flowing back to London during this time. All states of this map are rare, with this first state only being known in five institutional collections (including a proof example of the first state without title, imprint, or key at the archives of the Hudson Bay Company). We are only aware of two examples of this state in private hands, including the present example.
This example of the map is particularly noteworthy for the extensive contemporary pencil annotations it contains. These trace the discoveries and explorations that were reported in the two years following publication of this map, and represent a unique constellation of knowledge that was likely drawn from multiple sources and personal interactions with some of the explorers. Of particular note is an annotation made on Albert Land that reads:
Captain Stewart 18 July to Captain Austin says the land from C. Becher trended W ½ N as far as he could see from the top of a cliff 200 ft. high.
Captain Stewart, who was under Captain Penny’s command, led a small expedition to Cape Becher in July. This is mentioned in most published reports, which is unsurprising given the importance of this area to the search for Franklin, who was thought to have potentially explored this area. However, the annotation on this map recounts the results of the Stewart expedition as it was told to Captain Austin, and reports the date on which those two met after Stewart returned. It also mentions what Stewart saw from Cape Becher, which is not included in Stewart’s own report. This information about the encounter between Austin and Stewart was not widely disseminated and did not appear in the published reports of the expedition. Given that Austin returned after Penny, and that other men under Penny’s command, including Peter Sutherland, also went to Cape Becher and were aware of Stewart’s trip there, the focus on this Stewart’s expedition as recounted to Austin suggests that the author of the annotations was potentially present at the meeting between the two men or had information relayed to him from someone who was present.
Contemporary Annotations
The Annotations on the map show the results of four separate expeditions and include knowledge that progressively became available in London between 1851 and 1853. The most extensive of the annotations relates to the McClure expedition, news of which became available in London on August 18, 1853. This expedition, which is credited with the discovery of the Northwest Passage, left England in 1850 but became trapped in the ice for several winters. The expedition was rescued in June of 1853 by the ships Resolute and Intrepid, and their extensive discoveries were taken back to London. This map shows substantial detail here, mostly corresponding to what Arrowsmith himself would include on the fourth state of this map. In particular, the Prince of Wales Strait is shown, the wintering points of the ships on the McClure are noted, particular overland expeditions are plotted, and Prince Albert and Bering Land are named. Further details of this expedition are expounded below.
In the south of the map, the route of the overland exploration of Dr. John Rae and his northernmost point reached in August of 1851 are shown, but the coastlines he includes are not described. Rae’s expedition reached as far north as the then-impassable Queen Victoria Strait, location of the wrecks of Franklin’s ships. However, this expedition tarnished Rae’s stellar reputation as he chose (correctly) to believe the rumors among Inuit that Franklin’s men had died and succumbed to cannibalism, which outraged the Victorian public.
In the northeast of the map, the map shows the results of the Inglefield expedition of 1852, which entered a number of previously unknown sounds and bays around Baffin’s Bay. These included the Smith Sound, the northern extension of Baffin’s Bay that separates northern Greenland from the Arctic Archipelago, which is shown on this map extending to the north. Inglefield’s 1852 expedition was a short expedition funded by Lady Franklin which failed to find traces of Franklin in Baffin’s Bay but successfully mapped large swathes of the coastline and was awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s prestigious Patron’s Medal.
Extensive annotations are made in the Wellington Channel in addition to those regarding the conversation between Stewart and Austin mentioned above. In particular, they replot the location of Wellington Channel and Baillie Hamilton and Margaret Islands to a correct location further east, updates that Arrowsmith himself would make in his fourth state of the map. These discoveries were made by the Austin, Penny, and Ross expeditions, which wintered in 1850-51 at the south end of the Wellington Strait and sent men and ships to explore further north and west in the summer of 1851.
The focus on the view north from Cape Becher in these annotations is of particular note as a large dispute between Captains Austin and Penny developed over the necessity of exploration to the north of the Wellington Channel. Franklin had been given instructions to explore this area only if other areas were blocked by ice and if he found an open channel. Austin and Penny differed in their assessment of whether or not this likely happened. This came to a head when, upon return to London, Penny claimed that Austin refused to loan him a steamer to explore this area, while Austin claimed such a loan had never been requested. Determining whether Wellington Channel was an open strait became a top priority, and Lady Franklin pushed for the return of ships to this area, which would discover the open nature of the waterway in 1853.
States of the Map
This first state of the map, with a publication date of October 21, 1851, extends westward to Banks Land and updates information available from the 1819-20 Parry expedition with information from the Austin, Penny, and Ross expeditions of 1850-51. A proof state, without the title, imprint, and key, survives in a single example in the archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company. We locate finished examples of this first state at the British Library, the National Maritime Museum (Greenwich), the Newberry Library, and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
In a second state, dated April 6, 1852, the map has had detail added in Victoria Land and adds significant details to Victoria Strait, Boothia Felix, Bathurst Land, Prince of Wales Land, and the Wellington Channel. For this state, we locate examples in Charles University (Prague), the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Collections Canada.
Arrowsmith's third state, also dated April 6, 1852, contains updates from the Inglefield expedition that would have reached England later in 1852. The areas with improved geography are in the northeast of the map. An example of this state is at the Huntington Library.
The fourth state has a publication date of November 16, 1852 but contains additions that must have been made in August of 1853. It has an expanded title and an additional panel added to the west to encompass McClure’s significant findings that were reported in Europe following the rescue of his expedition. This example survives two recorded examples, one held by the British Admiralty and one previously offered by this firm for sale.
We surmise that at least one interim state between the third and fourth states may have been published given the discrepancy in publication dates, but we are unable to locate proof of its existence.
The Franklin Expedition
The chart was created to inform people of the ongoing search for the lost ships of Sir John Franklin, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. They also hoped to find the Northwest Passage, as all voyages to the area had for centuries.
The nineteenth century marked a high point in the interest in finding an Arctic route to China. Earlier expeditions included that of John Ross, who made it to Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound. Ross thought the Sound only an inlet, and went no further. He was followed by a voyage led by Edward Parry, who had been with Ross, in 1819; this is the first voyage mentioned in the key of this map. Parry wintered at Melville Island, gaining him an Admiralty prize for passing the 110th meridian west. On his second voyage, 1821-23, he probed the far north reaches of Hudson Bay. On his third voyage, of 1824-25, he searched for the Northwest Passage in the Prince Regent Inlet. Ross also returned to the Arctic, but neither man located the passage.
Franklin himself had already sought the elusive feature. He led overland expeditions in 1819-1822 and 1825-27. While the first voyage was marked by privation, the second saw Franklin and his men chart over 1,000 miles of Arctic coastline. Other overland expeditions also made contributions, such as those of George Back (1833-35) and Peter Dease and Thomas Simpson (1837-9) (mentioned at the south of this map).
Franklin was a career naval officer who participated in the Battle of Trafalgar at the age of 21. Most of his career was spent in Arctic exploration, however; Franklin participated in three Arctic expeditions before his fateful final foray. First, he served in the Dorothea, under Captain Buchan, and then was put in command of the Trent while they tried to reach the North Pole. Then, he led the two aforementioned overland expeditions.
In 1845, Franklin set out in command of Terror and Erebus, as explained here in the key. He had been involved in the planning of the voyage in search of the Northwest Passage and the government fit out the ships with state-of-the-art technology and instruments. They left Greenhithe on May 19, 1845 and were sighted by a whaler off of Baffin Island in late July. After that, the ships were never seen afloat again, nor were the men seen alive, by Euro-descended people.
By late 1847, it was clear that the expedition was in trouble or even lost. No less than 39 missions set out to find his men and ships over several decades; they hailed from Britain, the United States, France, and other countries. Many were spurred on by the advocacy of Lady Jane Franklin, who worked tirelessly to raise funds and interest in finding her husband.
Later voyages pieced together a rough approximation of what happened to Terror and Erebus. The ships sailed up Wellington Channel and then headed south toward Beechey Island (the inset here), where they wintered. In spring 1846, the ships reached the northernmost point of King William Island, but then were trapped in the ice in the McClintock Channel.
By the spring of 1847, a small party reached Point Victory by traveling over the ice. There, they left a notice of their progress. John Franklin died in June of that year. The ships, still in the ice, were pulled south. The new commander of the expedition, Captain Crozier, decided to abandon the vessels. He updated the Point Victory note before the 105 survivors set out for the Great Fish River; most died on the march, near the west coast of King William Island. After that, all trace of them vanished.
The search for the Franklin Expedition
Arctic voyages typically lasted multiple years, so initially there was no alarm when Franklin and his ships did not return. By 1847, however, Lady Jane began to worry at the expedition’s absence and lobbied the Admiralty to plan rescue voyages to search for the Terror and Erebus. Charles Dickens, the famous author, was one of Lady Jane’s supporters.
Sir James Clark Ross, the nephew of Arctic explorer John Ross, had previously commanded the Erebus and the Terror on an Antarctic voyage to take magnetic observations. In 1848, he set off north to find Franklin. Ross only reached the northeast tip of Somerset Island and decided that Franklin could not have gone through Peel Sound; in fact, Franklin had gone through the sound in 1846.
Another early effort was led by Sir John Richardson and John Rae. An overland expedition, they probed the areas near the Mackenzie and Coppermine Rivers, where Franklin had proposed to explore. Richardson had previously been in the area on an earlier expedition that coincided with Franklin’s overland expeditions.
Horatio Austin, who had also previously been on Arctic expeditions, was put in command of the HMS Resolute and ordered to search for Franklin (voyage 1-8 in the key). He traveled through Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound. One of his crew, Erasmus Ommanney, found evidence that Franklin’s men had indeed reached the Arctic (voyage 3).
William Penny, a Scottish shipmaster and whaler, also joined the hunt. He searched for Franklin on whaling ships in 1847 and 1849, but was thwarted by ice. In 1850, backed by Lady Franklin, he again led a search in Jones Sound and Wellington Channel (voyages 9-12). In the HMS Lady Franklin and HMS Sophia, Penny combined his efforts with Austin’s at Beechey Island. There, they found three graves of Franklin’s men. Eventually he and Austin quarreled and he returned to Scotland.
John Rae was a physician who served as the surgeon at Hudson’s Bay Company’s post Moose Factory, on James Bay. His first Arctic exploration expedition was in 1846-7, when Franklin was still presumed alive. In 1848, he was made second-in-command on Richardson’s expedition, mentioned above. In 1849, he went back into the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the Mackenzie District. In 1851, Rae led another search for Franklin during which he traveled 5,300 miles and mapped 700 miles of the southern coast of Victoria Island. On his fourth expedition, he surveyed the Boothia Peninsula, proved King William Land to be an island, and interviewed Inuit peoples who gave him news of the tragic end of Franklin’s expedition. Rae did not return before this state was published, but his tracks are shown in the annotations.
Edward Augustus Inglefield was a naval officer who led two Arctic expeditions in search of Franklin. The first, in the Isabel, Lady Franklin’s ship, charted much of Baffin Bay, Lancaster Sound, and Smith Sound, as indicated in annotations. The second voyage, in HMS Phoenix, mentioned above, was meant to resupply Edward Belcher’s troubled expedition. It was on this expedition that Lieutenant Bellot was lost.
The McClure Expedition and the Discovery of the Northwest Passage
In 1850, the Admiralty planned a Pacific voyage to find Franklin and the passage via the Bering Strait. In January, Captain Richard Collinson, in HMS Enterprise, and Commander Robert McClure, in HMS Investigator, sailed from England and made for Cape Horn. McClure had been in the Arctic before, with George Back in the Terror in 1836-7 and with James Clark Ross in 1848-9. Collinson, however, was new to the Arctic, having previously visited the Antarctic as a midshipman and then serving primarily in Asian waters.
The ships became separated off the Chilean coast and did not meet again. McClure decided to risk a dangerous route through the Aleutian Islands, while Collinson went around the chain. Rather than waiting for Collinson as ordered, McClure hurried north. McClure’s Investigator quickly passed the mouth of the Mackenzie River and then turned northeast into a never-before charted waterway, Prince of Wales Strait, between Banks Island and Victoria Island.
The ship reached 73°10’ before it was frozen in the ice and pushed south. They wintered in the strait, which was frustrating for the ship was only thirty miles from Viscount Melville Sound. That was the farthest west that Parry had reached on his 1819 expedition. Reaching it would mean that they had completed the Northwest Passage. McClure did lead a sledge party to the northeast side of Banks Island that winter. The group could see Melville Island and, by sight at least, could say to have discovered the passage on October 26, 1850.
Despite their best wishes, the strait between Melville Island and Banks Island, now named for McClure, did not clear in the following summer of 1851. Nevertheless, the crew did seek out new information via sledges. By August, they remained unable to sail north, so McClure instead sailed south, around Banks Island. Unfortunately, this gamble, while bold, did not achieve the passage either. The Investigator was blocked by ice on the northeast coast of the island, where it wintered for 1851-2.
During that winter, McClure led a sledge party, to Melville Island’s Winter Harbor. This physically completed the previously theoretical discovery of the Northwest Passage, and by a different route (around the north of Banks Island, as opposed to via Prince of Wales Strait). McClure left a message at the harbor and found one from the Resolute, which had been there the previous spring.
The Investigator remained stuck in Mercy Bay, on Banks Island, in the winter of 1852-3. The expedition to this point is chronicled on this map, as the first news of McClure’s fate reached England in 1853. Facing short supplies and a sick crew, McClure decided to split the crew, with the healthy men staying in case the ice broke up and the sicker men walking across the ice to either Prince Regent Inlet or the mouth of the Mackenzie River.
McClure had left a note at Parry’s Rock, Winter Harbor, that they had discovered the passage, but that, if not heard from, they had likely been swept by the ice into the Polar Sea. He said that no ships should be sent to find them, so as to mitigate further loss of life. However, help was already at hand. His notes were found at Melville Island in October 1852 by a sledge party from Resolute and HMS Intrepid. In March 1853, Lieutenant Pim of the Resolute set out 170 miles over the ice to reach the Investigator.
While McClure and his first lieutenant were on shore discussing how to bury the first man who had died on the expedition, they saw a figure walking toward them. They initially thought it was one of their men being chased by a polar bear, then they thought it might be an Inuit. Only when he drew closer did they realize it was Pim.
McClure returned with Pim to the Resolute, which was in the ice near Dealy Island. This is the point to which this map is updated. Although McClure asked to be able to continue the voyage—he wanted the Investigator to make it through the passage—Captain Henry Kellett of the Resolute said that could only happen if twenty of the crew volunteered to stay with the ship. Only four did so—McClure prepared to abandon ship.
In search of McClure and Franklin: The Belcher expedition
The crew of the Investigator joined an expedition that was already in trouble by mid-1853. Sir Edward Belcher was an accomplished naval surveyor and, in 1852, he was appointed commander of the largest Franklin search mission. In addition, he was to look for McClure, who had not been contacted since 1850.
Belcher was given a squadron of five ships—HMS Assistance, HMS Resolute, HMS North Star, Pioneer, and Intrepid. He went to Wellington Channel to seek news of Franklin, while Kellett in the Resolute sought McClure. Some of the Resolute’s men, on sledges, found McClure and his crew as outlined above.
The crew of the Investigator spent a fourth winter in the ice (1853-4), this time in crowded quarters with the crews of the Intrepid and Resolute. By that spring of 1854, Belcher was nervous about his men and ships. He ordered four of the five ships abandoned (all but the North Star) and returned to England in October 1854 with Phoenix and the Breadalbane, who had come to assist them. Upon his return, Belcher was court martialed for the loss of the ships and never received another command.
McClure was not punished, nor was he investigated for the failure to recover the journals from the Investigator. In his absence, McClure had also been made captain. A parliamentary select committee then decided to award his crew with the £10,000 prize for discovery of the Northwest Passage.
Surprisingly, Resolute was freed from the ice and drifted, unmanned, to the Davis Strait. The ship was intercepted by an American whaler who towed it back south. The American government returned the ship to the British. To show their gratitude, when the ship was broken up, timbers from the ship were used to make a desk that Queen Victoria gave to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. The Resolute desk has been used by many US Presidents, including Presidents Obama and Trump.
Rarity
As noted above, this map is very rare on the market.
We note a single example offered for sale at auction (Sothebys December 2024 - The Ted Benttinen Library of Exploration and Adventure, which sold for $13,200).
We previously offered an example of the fourth state of the map in 2022.
The Arrowsmiths were a cartographic dynasty which operated from the late-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth. The family business was founded by Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1823), who was renowned for carefully prepared and meticulously updated maps, globes, and charts. He created many maps that covered multiple sheets and which were massive in total size. His spare yet exacting style was recognized around the world and mapmakers from other countries, especially the young country of the United States, sought his maps and charts as exemplars for their own work.
Aaron Arrowsmith was born in County Durham in 1750. He came to London for work around 1770, where he found employment as a surveyor for the city’s mapmakers. By 1790, he had set up his own shop which specialized in general charts. Arrowsmith had five premises in his career, most of which were located on or near Soho Square, a neighborhood the led him to rub shoulders with the likes of Joseph Banks, the naturalist, and Matthew Flinders, the hydrographer.
Through his business ties and employment at the Hydrographic Office, Arrowsmith made other important relationships with Alexander Dalrymple, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and others entities. In 1810 he became Hydrographer to the Prince of Wales and, in 1820, Hydrographer to the King.
Aaron Arrowsmith died in 1823, whereby the business and title of Hydrographer to the King passed to his sons, Aaron and Samuel, and, later, his nephew, John. Aaron Jr. (1802-1854) was a founder member of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and left the family business in 1832; instead, he enrolled at Oxford to study to become a minister. Samuel (1805-1839) joined Aaron as a partner in the business and they traded together until Aaron left for the ministry. Samuel died at age 34 in 1839; his brother presided over his funeral. The remaining stock and copper plates were bought at auction by John Arrowsmith, their cousin.
John (1790-1873) operated his own independent business after his uncle, Aaron Arrowsmith Sr., died. After 1839, John moved into the Soho premises of his uncle and cousins. John enjoyed considerable recognition in the geography and exploration community. Like Aaron Jr., John was a founder member of the RGS and would serve as its unofficial cartographer for 43 years. Several geographical features in Australia and Canada are named after him. He carried the title Hydrographer to Queen Victoria. He died in 1873 and the majority of his stock was eventually bought by Edward Stanford, who co-founded Stanford’s map shop, which is still open in Covent Garden, London today.