Franklin’s Lost Expedition, 1845–1848

Sir John Franklin sailed from England in May 1845 with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to complete a navigable route through the Northwest Passage. The ships became trapped in sea ice near King William Island. Franklin died in June 1847, and in April 1848 the surviving officers and men abandoned the vessels and attempted to travel south.

No member of the expedition returned. Later searches, Inuit testimony, archaeological evidence and the recovery of both wrecks gradually established parts of the disaster, including starvation, disease and desperate overland movement. The expedition became a major Victorian mystery and a lasting example of the cost of treating Indigenous geographical knowledge as inferior.

William T. Vollmann’s The Rifles combines Franklin’s voyage with a late-twentieth-century journey through the Canadian Arctic. The novel treats Franklin as a recurring figure of colonial desire and links the historical expedition to the continuing social consequences of southern intrusion into Inuit communities.