Hero: a fanatic who succeeds.— David Modell.
It’s been an exciting year for hero worship in Canada. We finally found the remains of one of the two ships from the Franklin Expedition, a British initiative that, nearly 170 years ago, set out to explore, navigate and chart our Arctic in order to find the fabled Northwest Passage, gateway to the fabulous riches of the Orient.
It didn’t work out so well. Sir John Franklin either froze or starved to death — probably both — as did all 129 members of the crew. Needless to say, the saga etched forever the name of Sir John Franklin in the annals of Canadian history.
You don’t hear nearly so much about Sir Thomas Pert.
He, too, commanded vessels in the British Navy. In fact he visited Hudson Bay before Henry Hudson did. Hudson sailed into the Bay that now carries his name in 1610 while Sir Thomas was there nearly a century earlier.
Like Franklin, Pert encountered terrible weather and had to face a grumbling, frightened crew.
Unlike Franklin, Sir Thomas Pert said ‘to Hell with this’ executed a naval 180, and headed back to England.
Sir Thomas, it appears, was not Richard the Lion Hearted. In 1516 he commanded another expedition to explore the West Indies and the coast of Brazil. That voyage too, came to an unexpected end when the ships drew a spot of cannon fire off the coast of Hispaniola.
Once again, Sir Thomas Pert executed his favourite naval manoeuvre, turned tail and headed back to Blighty. His partner, Sebastian Cabot, son of explorer John Cabot, was so disgusted he left the British navy and signed on with the King of Spain.
For his part, Sir Thomas became pretty much a pariah. Historians vilified the man, blaming his ‘want of courage’ for the failure to find the Northwest Passage. He was dismissed as faint-hearted and scolded for his ‘pusillanimity’ in returning from the far North and the Caribbean without tangible success.
But here’s the thing: Sir John Franklin didn’t find the Northwest Passage either. And he caused the deaths of 128 crew members in his attempt to do so.
Could Franklin, employing different tactics, have saved his crew and shepherded them through another winter in the Arctic? The Inuit had been managing for thousands of years with much fewer resources than were aboard the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus. But then the Inuit respected their environment and adapted to it. They ate raw seal and whale blubber; they wore furs and skins for warmth. The corpses of the Franklin crew were found wearing British naval gear complete with brass buttons and knee breeches. They showed signs of lead poisoning from the soldered tins of British food they relied on.
So valiant Sir John Franklin persevered in the time-honoured, glorious tradition and managed to lose two ships and the lives of 129 men while faint-hearted, pusillanimous Sir Thomas Pert made it back to harbour with his ships and his crews intact. Twice.
Hero shmero. Call me impertinent, but I know which commander I’d rather have served under.
— Arthur Black lives on Saltspring Island. His column appears every Tuesday in The NEWS. E-mail: arblack43@shaw.ca.
