On May 24, 8:01*am, "True North" wrote:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1244983.html

Wow. Simply Wow!!!

"The Franklin saga plays out like a Gothic horror story, written
across the landscape of the barren Canadian Arctic," Harris says. "You
had the Royal Navy with its steam equipment and new technologies, very
high-tech ships for their day, pitting their will against the savagery
of Mother Nature and, horrifically, they lost."

In 1850, Investigator set sail on a route around South America and
north into the western Arctic. All lived through that first winter,
and the next year they survived running aground. But those waters that
seemed like a refuge — named, in gratitude, God’s Mercy Bay — would
soon imprison them for nearly three years.

Supplies and food ran low. Men became sick. McClure made a decision
that would haunt his accomplishments: He divided the weakest into two
teams and ordered them to walk in different directions to find help.
He and the others would stay behind to free the ship if the ice ever
cleared.

Harris says the orders surely would have been a death sentence for the
men sent off the ship. But with their departure imminent, there was
reprieve when HMS Resolute found Investigator in June 1853.
Investigator was abandoned, and the men walked overland to join
Resolute.

Resolute, too, was also eventually abandoned in ice, and both crews
marched to meet yet another ship. Four years after the adventure
began, Investigator’s survivors were back in England.

"Even though it wasn’t done on ship, wholly, the crew of HMS
Investigator managed to transit the Northwest Passage for the first
time, going west to east, in completely the opposite direction to what
had been envisioned," Harris says.

"Also, in doing so, they were the first to circumnavigate all of South
and North America."