Franklin, SIR JOHN, rear-admiral, Arctic explorer, and colonial governor, was born at Spilsby, Lincolnshire, April 16, 1786, the youngest son of a family of twelve children. Franklin acquired the rudiments of learning at St Ives, and attended Louth grammar-school for two years. His father, in business in Spilsby, had destined John for the church. Such, however, was his enthusiasm for the sea that he determined to be a sailor. A trial voyage to Lisbon only confirming him in this determination, he was in 1800 appointed to the quarter-deck of the Polynphemus, and had the following year the honour of serving in the hard-fought battle of Copenhagen. Two months after this engagement Franklin joined the Investigator, commanded by his relative Captain Flinders, and under this able scientific officer, who was commissioned to explore and map the coasts of Australia, acquired the skill in surveying so eminently serviceable to him in his future career. Wrecked in the Porpoise, August 18, 1803, off the coast of Australia, he made his passage from Canton to England in the Ear-Camden, commanded by Sir Nathaniel Dance, and acted as signal midshipman in the action, on 15th February 1804, in which Captain Dance repulsed a strong French squadron led by Admiral Linois. A similar post he occupied with equal intrepidity on the Bellerophon in the battle of Trafalgar. Lieutenant, and latterly first-lieutenant, in the Bedford, Franklin distinguished himself in the attack on New Orleans by capturing one of the enemy's gunboats, receiving a slight wound in the hand-to-hand combat.
The project for the discovery of a north-west passage revived at this period in the nation, and Franklin was appointed to the Trent, as second to Captain Buchan of the Dorothea, in the expedition of 1818 sent by way of Spitzbergen. Though unsuccessful in its purpose, this voyage yet served to bring conspicuously before the leading scientific men of London Franklin's eminent qualifications for the command of such enterprises, his excellent seamanship, resourcefulness, disinterested love of science, perfect truthfulness and liberal candour in the recognition of the merits of his subordinates, his buoyant cheerfulness of temper, sustained by a deep sense of religion, and calm courage in danger. He was accordingly in 1819 entrusted with the command of an Arctic expedition proceeding from York Factory through Rupert's Land. Wintering the first year on the Saskatchewan, and in the next on the 'barren grounds,' the expedition in the following summer descended the Coppermine River and surveyed a considerable stretch of coast to the eastward, returning in 1822 to York Factory after having traversed 5550 miles by land and water. On his arrival the same year in England, Franklin was raised to the post-rank of captain, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. The succeeding year, 1823, he married Eleanor, youngest daughter of Mr Porden, a distinguished architect. In a second expedition, 1825-27, Franklin descended the Mackenzie River, and traced the coast thence through 37° to near the 150th meridian, approaching within 160 miles of the most eastern point attained by Captain Beechey co-operating from Behring Strait. In recognition of his achievements Franklin was knighted in 1829, and awarded the gold medal of the Geographical Society of Paris. His first wife having died in 1825, in 1828 he married his second wife Jane, second daughter of Mr John Griffin.
Appointed to the command of the Rainbow in the Mediterranean, Franklin rendered such important service in the 'war of liberation' as to receive from King Otho the Cross of the Redeemer of Greece, and on his return to England was created Knight Commander of the Guelphic order of Hanover. As lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), 1834-43, he laboured strenuously to promote the social as well as the political well-being of the colony.
In 1845 Sir John was appointed to the command of an expedition for the discovery of the North-west Passage. The expedition, consisting of the Erebus and Terror, with 134 chosen officers and men, sailed from Greenhithe on 19th May 1845, and was last seen on the 26th July following by a whaler in Baffin Bay, in 74° 48' N. lat. and 66° 13' W. long. Franklin's instructions directed him, after approaching the longitude of about 98° W., to make southwards for the coast, along which, basing his conclusions on previous surveys, he felt assured a passage could be navigated from the Fish River to Behring Strait. No tidings of the expedition having reached England, as many as fifteen expeditions were despatched between 1848 and 1854 by England and America, with the object of rescuing or at least finding traces of the missing explorers—a mission in which Lady Franklin bore a noble part. Traces of the missing ships were discovered by Ommanney and Penny in August 1850, and brought home by the Princess Albert, which had been fitted out by Lady Franklin. The first winter, as late at least as April 1846, had, it was ascertained, been spent by Franklin and his company behind Beechey Island. In 1854 Dr Rae, conducting an exploring party of the Hudson Bay Company from Repulse Bay, was told by the Eskimos that in 1850 about forty white men had been seen dragging a boat over the ice near the north shore of King William Island, and that later in the same season their bodies were found a little to the north-west of Back's Great Fish River, where they had perished of cold and famine. The latter statement was afterwards disproved, but articles obtained by the Eskimos from Franklin's party and brought home by Dr Rae indisputably proved that the Eskimos had communicated with members of the missing expedition. Following up the direction of Dr Rae's information, the government in 1855 sent two canoes down the Great Fish River. The results of this expedition, added to the examinations which had been made by the many other expeditions of all straits, inlets, and coasts, except the region to the north of the Great Fish River, showed that a party from the Erebus and Terror endeavouring to reach the Hudson Bay Company settlements had been arrested within the channel into which the Great Fish River discharges. The next exploring party in the yacht Fox, purchased and fitted out by Lady Franklin, Captain (afterwards Sir) Leopold McClintock, sailed from Aberdeen in July 1857. From the Eskimos in Boothia many relics of Franklin's expedition were gathered by the Fox, while articles belonging to Franklin's ships and skeletons found along the west and south coasts told a terrible tale of disaster. Above all, a record found in a cairn at Point Victory told the history of the expedition down to April 25, 1848. This record attested how Franklin on attempting to reach the coast of America was arrested by the obstruction of heavy ice pressing down from Melville Island through McClintock Channel (then unknown) upon King William Island.
An addendum in the handwriting of Captain Fitzjames, dated 25th April 1848, briefly narrated that the Erebus and Terror were deserted 22d April, 5 leagues NNW. of this, having been beset since 12th September 1846; that the officers and crews, 105 souls, under Captain Crozier, landed here in 69° 37' 42" N. lat., 98° 41' W. long.; and that Sir J. Franklin died 11th June 1847. Although many relics of the ships were found in the possession of the Eskimos there is no reason to believe that the retreating crews met with foul play. The American Captain Hall's five years' sojourn among the Eskimos, during which he collected a variety of relics, only confirmed the conclusions reached by McClintock. In 1878-80 the expedition of Lieutenant Schwatka of the United States army found the skeletons and other relics of Franklin's men; the bones of one of Franklin's lieutenants (Irving) were brought to Edinburgh and buried. Such is all that is known of the fate of Franklin and his brave men. He is entitled to the honour of being the first discoverer of the North-west Passage. The point reached by his ships brought him to within a few miles of that attained from the westward by previous explorations. A monument erected in 1875 in Westminster Abbey commemorates his heroic exploits and fate. Lady Franklin, whose devotion to her husband and his work has been referred to, died on 18th July 1875 at the age of eighty-three years.
See the article POLAR EXPLORATION and the map there; also the narratives of the expeditions above referred to, especially McClintock's Narrative of the Fate of Sir John Franklin (1860); the Report of the committee appointed by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty (1852), with additional papers (1852), and papers relative to the recent Arctic expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin (1854); Brown, The North-west
Passage (1858); comparatively brief monographs by Leesly (1880) and Markham (1891); and the Life by H. D. Traill (1896). Sir John's own works were a Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in 1819-22 (1823), and a Narrative of a Second Expedition in 1825, 1826, and 1827 (1828).