By Fiona Gould, John Rae Society Archivist
John Rae had not planned to spend a good part of his life in arctic exploration. When he left Orkney at the age of 19 in 1833 on the Prince of Wales, his intention was to return that autumn. But trapped by early ice, the ship was forced to winter off Charlton Island in Hudson Bay, where Rae spent his time treating sufferers from scurvy (with cranberries he discovered under the ice) and surveying the island in a birchbark canoe. Finding the life suited him, he accepted the post of clerk and surgeon with the Hudson’s Bay Company Moose Factory and spent the next ten years there.
Rae’s duties were not onerous and left him time to hone his skills in self-sufficiency ─ camping in all weathers, hunting, fishing, sledging and using snowshoes. The author R.M. Ballantyne who knew Rae described him as ‘one of the best snow shoe walkers’ an ‘excellent shot’ and able to withstand ‘an immense amount of fatigue’.
Sir George Simpson, governor of HBC, noticed these attributes and decided Rae was ideally suited to a task he wished to have completed: the surveying of the North American coastline which Simpson’s cousin, Thomas, and Peter Warren Dease had surveyed as far as the Castor and Pollux river in 1837-1839. Rae needed only some instruction in surveying techniques so Simpson advised him to travel to Red River (modern Winnipeg) and then Toronto to receive the required training. By June 1846 Rae was ready to set off from Churchill with 10 men and two boats: their task to explore the coastline from the Fury and Hecla Strait to Chantry inlet on the North American coastline, south of King William Island. They were to overwinter in the Arctic and continue their exploration the following spring.
First Arctic expedition 1846-1847
Rae travelled first to Repulse Bay. On advice from the Inuit, from here he planned to travel 40 miles across the base of Melville Peninsula to Committee Bay. But as weather conditions were poor, he decided to winter at Repulse Bay. The party built a stone house (Fort Hope) and spent a couple of months hunting, fishing and gathering fuel. Rae found the inflatable Halkett boat which Simpson had provided particularly useful for fishing. During this time he continued to observe the weather, ice and wildlife and also to acquire survival tips from the Inuit, including how to build a snow house.
In the spring of 1847 Rae travelled back across the isthmus to Committee Bay, across the sea ice to Pelly Bay and back around the coast of Simpson Peninsula (named by Rae after his employer). From high ground overlooking Lord Mayor’s Bay Rae could see that Boothia was a peninsula, not an island, as had been supposed. After a short break back at Repulse Bay, Rae set off to explore the west coast of Melville Peninsula, reaching Cape Crozier, about 10 miles from the Fury and Hecla Strait. The party then made their way back to Repulse Bay, Churchill and York Factory, arriving in September.
His achievement was considerable. Not only did he complete most of the surveying of the northern coastline as requested by Simpson, but he carried out the other tasks given him regarding the collection of specimens and the making of meteorological observations. In his own account of this expedition Rae lists mammals, birds, fish, plants and rocks which he took back to England, along with a table on the weather, barometric pressure and direction and strength of the wind. He established that there was no opening to the sea from the west of Hudson Bay, that Boothia was a peninsula and mapped 625 miles of unexplored coastline. More remarkable still was the fact that his party had been largely self-sufficient with regard to fuel and provisions and had wintered on the Arctic coast. This was a new approach to Arctic exploration and their return after 15 months and in good health was a source of wonder.
Second Arctic expedition 1848-1849
Following his first expedition Rae travelled to London where he was recruited by Sir John Richardson to join one searching for Sir John Franklin. Nothing had been heard of the Franklin expedition since July 1845 and the Admiralty had decided to arrange three searches: one from the East through Lancaster Sound, one from the west from Bering Strait and one further south in the Arctic archipelago. This last one was assigned to Richardson who planned to travel down the Mackenzie River and explore the coast to the east. The HBC agreed to release Rae from their service and after a couple of months in Orkney (his first visit home in fourteen years), Richardson and Rae set off from Liverpool for New York, Montreal and the Great Lakes. From there they travelled by canoe to the mouth of the Mackenzie River in an incredibly short space of time. The two men got on well and became good friends, although Rae was unimpressed by the service men who accompanied them. The plan was to sail along the coast to the Coppermine River but, as they neared Dolphin and Union Strait, they were forced to abandon the boats because of ice and to travel overland to the Coppermine and on to Fort Confidence on Great Bear Lake. Here they settled for the winter.
It was decided that in the spring Richardson would return to England, taking with him the service men, while Rae with a small group would explore the coastline of the Wollaston Peninsula and Victoria Island and seek news of Franklin’s ships from any Inuit he met. Meantime the two leaders carried out experiments on magnetism which Richardson declared to be ‘productive’.
Spring was late that year and Rae’s party of six men was again delayed by ice and Rae had no choice but to abandon their task. This was the least successful of Rae’s expeditions. They surveyed no new territory, beyond finding a river which was named Rae River. In addition, Rae lost one of his men at falls on the Coppermine ─ Albert One-Eye, an Inuit interpreter for whom Rae had a high regard. This was the only fatality on any of Rae’s expeditions and he was very upset by it, especially as he thought it happened because of another crew member’s carelessness in failing to secure a boat which Albert One-Eye then attempted to retrieve.
Third Arctic Expedition 1850-1851
This was more successful but first Rae had to carry out his duties for the HBC who had appointed him Chief Factor for the Mackenzie River District ─ a great honour but not a post for which Rae held much enthusiasm – fur trading paled in comparison with Arctic exploration. Consequently, when in the summer of 1850 he received instructions to continue the search for Franklin along the Arctic coastline, he made plans for the following year. Sir Francis Beaufort at the Admiralty was adamant that although other expeditions were planned, his hopes rested on Rae and he advised Rae to do whatever he thought best.
Rae returned to Fort Confidence. There he established fisheries and had two small boats built to his design and which he rigged himself. While he waited during the winter, he received a copy of the book he had written about his first expedition, Narrative of an expedition to the shores of the Arctic Sea in 1846 and 1847.
As he planned to cross to Wollaston Peninsula on the ice by foot, he set off early the next spring. With two men, two sledges and five dogs he made the crossing, travelling by night to avoid the glare of the sun and sleeping in snow houses by day. The party travelled east along the coast of Victoria Island, then back along that of Wollaston Peninsula as far as Cape Baring before returning to the mainland. They had travelled 824 miles in 42 days.
For the next part of the expedition they used the small boats and travelled east and northeast along the coast of Victoria Island. On their return journey they found two pieces of wood, clearly from a ship. Rae later took these to England.
Although Rae found no information about the fate of the Franklin expedition, geographically the expedition was a success. 630 miles of previously unexplored coastline were covered. Unfortunately for Rae, Captain Richard Collinson traced the coastline of Victoria Island two years later, leading to a dispute over accreditation with the Admiralty which lasted for years.
Fourth Arctic Expedition 1853-1854
Having obtained leave, Rae left straightaway for England, travelling by small boat and on snow shoes to Minnesota, and then onward by more conventional means, via Chicago, Hamilton and New York to London. Shortly after he arrived in April 1852, he requested another Arctic expedition, this time for geographical purposes only, to complete the last part of the Arctic coastline survey along the west coast of Boothia. His plan was for a small group to go overland from Chesterfield Inlet on Hudson Bay to Back River with a small boat which they would then take down to the coast and use to explore Boothia: the projected timespan was June to September 1853.
Rae had two reasons for wanting to complete the survey. First, he wanted the HBC to whom he was extremely loyal, to have the credit for this rather than the Royal Navy. Second, he was annoyed that the Admiralty had not acknowledged his earlier discovery in 1847 that Boothia was a peninsula rather than an island. His achievements as an Arctic explorer were, however, recognised by the Royal Geographical Society who in May 1852 awarded him their Founders Gold Medal for his survey of Boothia in 1848 and for his exploration on foot and in small boats of the coasts of Wollaston and Victoria. The accompanying speech referred to ‘a feat which has never been equalled in Arctic travel’.
He set off from Churchill in July 1853 but failing to make the progress he had hoped towards the Back River, turned back and decided to overwinter at Repulse Bay. He and his men collected fuel and provisions and slept in tents until there was sufficient snow to build snow houses. The following March he left with four men across the isthmus to Committee Bay, all pulling sledges. At Pelly Bay they met an Inuk who told them of a group of 35-40 Europeans who had starved to death some distance away. Rae thought this information was too vague to act upon and instructed the Inuk to tell anyone with more information to report to him at Repulse Bay. The explorers continued as far as Castor and Pollux River, where they searched a cairn built by Simpson and Dease in 1839 for any possible message from survivors of the Franklin expedition. Progress was slow because of bad weather and soft snow and Rae abandoned plans for exploring the west coast of Boothia and returned to Repulse Bay. Here he met more Inuit from whom he bought articles which had clearly belonged to members of the Franklin expedition. None of the Inuit Rae questioned had first-hand information about the site of these discoveries.
Rae returned to York Factory and sailed from Hudon Bay back to England. He had not completed the coastline survey, leaving about 150 miles unexplored, but he had proved that Boothia was a peninsula and that King William’s Land was an island, separated from Boothia by a strait, later called Rae Strait. This he realised would be navigable in summer and it was through this strait that Amundsen sailed in 1903-6 on the first voyage along the Northwest Passage. Rae would have liked to have investigated it himself but felt his first responsibility was to report the news of the fate of the Franklin expedition.
Later travels
The public outcry that resulted from Rae’s disclosure that the Inuit had reported cannibalism among the survivors of the ill-fated Franklin expedition meant that Rae did not get the reward promised for information until 1856. He had informed Sir George Simpson three years earlier that he wished to retire from the HBC, and joined his brothers in Hamilton, Ontario. There he planned his own Arctic expedition and used his share of the prize money on having a ship specially built. Because Iceberg was not ready for the Arctic season of 1857, she was lent for commercial use and sadly sank in a storm in Lake Ontario. This was a serious blow to Rae.
Although he married in 1860, he continued to travel in the next few years, conducting land surveys for the Atlantic Telegraph Company who planned a cable between Britain and America, via Orkney, Shetland, the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland to Labrador (1860), and for a Canadian Telegraph Survey in 1864. These were undertaken at the request of his former employees, the HBC. He later lived in Britain, firstly in Orkney and then in London, where he continued his interest in the Arctic by writing letters and giving papers to scientific societies.