All is well on Catryn on this calm Sunday morning here in Graham Harbour  with Black Guillemots bobbing around our vessel. I was watching them last night while I was on anchor watch  flipping their small pelagic black and white bodies forward into the bay kicking with their red legs to dive and surfacing with a small fish.

Yesterday afternoon went over to the spit of land that juts out into Lancaster Sound to try and catch some supper. Seals surfaced around wondering what I was up to but no fish even on the new lure that I bought in Arctic Bay! We did see three Long Tailed Jaegers fly overhead with a high pitched call that I thought they were Gyrfalcon at first with their high pitched call and skinny wings. A single Brant Goose flew low over the water towards the huge ice berg that has ran aground to the south of us. The night that we had our bonfire ashore a couple of nights ago four Rudy Turnstones were sighted feeding.

When Napolean was safely secured on the Island of St Helena in 1813 the Admiralty creatively tried to find a reason to continue the huge influx of financial resources to its coffers.The North West Passage needed to be charted and off they went in search of the commerce route to Cathy.

In 1818 John Franklin made his first voyage on a charting vessel sent out by the Admiralty. His second voyage was as commander of the expedition in 1845 to seek the North West Passage with 130 men and two ships the Terror and Erebus along with Captain Crozier who took over the expedition after Franklins death in 1846. We do hope to visit Beechy Island which is forty miles to the West of us where Franklin and his crew were caught in the ice and wintered over in 1845.

Franklins second wife Jane was the force that blew wind in Johns sails and was a formidable character in her own right. Prior to Franklin being sent to the Arctic he was sent out to Tasmania to improve the appalling conditions of the prisoners. When Jane saw that the children, women and men were held in the same areas she immediately went to work to separate the inmates and start a school for the women and children. When the young Queen Victoria came to power Jane was one of the people she held regular court with to guide her to make changes in the society. Jane was exceptionally, well thought of and was very well connected. She would often spend the night in a prison in London to observe conditions and would invite her well heeled friends to join her. it was said that most of the prisons in England had not been updated since the 12th century.

When John and his crew got stuck in the ice  in 1845-1846 no expense was spared on four ambitious expedition to find her beloved Franklin. It does seem that the admiralty sent their rescue expeditions in the wrong direction especially with their last one commanded by Edward Belcher who abandoned four ships. One of them was his ship Resolute piloted herself later out of the ice sailing with no one on board and was boarded by the crew of a whaling ship and was sailed to England much to the dismay of the bumbling Belcher!

In 1856-57 John Rae and Lepold M’Clintock began a new way of travelling in the Arctic imitating the Eskimos and learning how they adapted to the cold climate and travelling by dogs and sled.  In 1856 Jane Franklin bought a screw yacht, the Fox, a 177 ton vessel and fitted her out for the fourth  expedition to search the area around King William Island under the command of Leopold M’Clintock. Every year the search continuous for the Terror and Erebus and the search is  mostly around King William Island.

On an interesting point when M’Clintok left Beechy Island on this very day August 16, in 1855 heading south to King William Island through Peel sound was open water with no ice and today it is solid ice and at this moment unlikely to be passable for a while!

In 1856 a  Sam Whiting a sea Captain arrived in Winona Minnesota from China and India and started the first newspaper in the new settlement. The following year he joined an expedition leaving from the east coast bound for the Arctic  to seek survivors of the Franklin expedition. Captain Francis Crozier took over the expedition after Franklins passing and today in Winona, Minnesota lives William Bill Crozier Senior and his son Bill Junior in Rochester, Minnesota both descendants of Francis Crozier!

That is it from me on this sunny afternoon from Graham Harbour and tonight we will have a cake for our friend Lee on her birthday and maybe a bonfire! Lee and her husband Gary are returning from her homeland Wales and going home to British Columbia.

Pnawn da(good afternoon from all of us here).

Hywel.