John Rae | |
|---|---|
 Rae in 1862 | |
| Born | (1813-09-30)30 September 1813 |
| Died | 22 July 1893(1893-07-22) (aged 79) Kensington, London, England |
| Burial place | St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, Scotland |
| Education | University of Edinburgh |
| Occupation(s) | Physician, explorer,chief factor |
| Employer | Hudson's Bay Company |
| Known for | Report on the fate ofFranklin's lost expedition |
| Spouse | |
| Awards | |
John RaeFRS FRGS (Inuktitut:ᐊᒡᓘᑲ,[aɡluːka]; 30 September 1813 – 22 July 1893) was aScottish surgeon who explored parts ofnorthern Canada. He was a pioneer explorer of theNorthwest Passage.
Rae explored theGulf of Boothia, northwest of theHudson Bay, from 1846 to 1847, and the Arctic coast nearVictoria Island from 1848 to 1851. In 1854, back in the Gulf of Boothia, he obtained credible information from localInuit peoples about the fate of theFranklin Expedition, which had disappeared in the area in 1848. Rae was noted for his physical stamina, skill at hunting, boat handling, use of native methods, and ability to travel long distances with little equipment while living off the land.
Rae was born as the sixth of nine children at theHall of Clestrain inOrkney in the north ofScotland with family ties toClan MacRae. His father managed up to 300 tenant farmers for a local nobleman,Sir William Honyman, Lord Armadale and worked for many years as the Hudson Bay Company's chief representative on the Orkney islands when it came to hiring workers amongst the Orkney men that had a reputation of being hardy and skilled labourers. Already in his childhood the young John Rae learned many skills that would become useful to his later explorations. By the age of fifteen, Rae had become an excellent musket hunter, rock climber and hiker, enjoying hobbies like fishing and boating.[1]
After studying medicine inEdinburgh, he graduated with a degree from theUniversity of Edinburgh and was licensed by theRoyal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh at age 19 in 1833. Two months after graduating he accepted a post for a season as the ship's surgeon aboard thePrince of Wales, a supply ship for the Hudson Bay fur trading settlements. During his first voyage the ship was kept from its return home to Great Britain by an early winter 1833 and pack ice closing the route. The ship's crew had to spend the winter on the desertedCharlton Island. Rae's skills as a hunter and doctor, as well as his knowledge about fauna and its pharmaceutical merits managed to keep most men alive throughout the winter despite heavy cases of scurvy, which took two lives among the crew.[1]
He went to work for theHudson's Bay Company as a surgeon, accepting a post atMoose Factory,Ontario, where he remained for ten years. While working for the company, treating both European andindigenous employees, Rae became known for his prodigious stamina and skilled use ofsnowshoes. He learned to live off the land like a native and, working with the local craftsmen, designed his own snowshoes. This knowledge allowed him to travel great distances with little equipment and few followers, unlike many other explorers of theVictorian era.
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From 1836 to 1839, the Scottish explorer and fur traderThomas Simpson sailed along much of the northern coast of Canada. His cousinSir George Simpson proposed to link the furthest-east point Thomas Simpson had reached by sending an overland expedition from Hudson Bay. Rae was chosen because of his well-known skill in overland travel, but he first had to travel to theRed River Colony to learn the art ofsurveying. On20 August 1844, Rae leftMoose Factory, went up theMissinaibi River, and took the usualvoyageur route west.
When he reached the Red River Colony on 9 October, he found his instructor seriously ill. After the man died, Rae headed forSault Ste. Marie inOntario to find another instructor. The two-month, 1,200-mile (1,900 km) winter journey was bydog sled along the north shore ofLake Superior. From there, Sir George told him to go toToronto to study underJohn Henry Lefroy at theToronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory. Returning from Toronto, he received final instructions at Sault Ste. Marie.
Rae finally departed on the voyage to Simpson's furthest-east on 5 August 1845, taking the usualvoyageur route viaLake Winnipeg and reachingYork Factory on 8 October, where he wintered. On 12 June 1846, he headed north in two 22-foot (6.7 m) boats and reachedRepulse Bay at the south end of theMelville Peninsula in July. The localInuit told him that there was salt water to the northwest, so he chose this as his base. On his first journey, which began on 26 July, he dragged one of his boats 40 miles (64 km) northwest toCommittee Bay in the south of theGulf of Boothia. Here he learned from the Inuit that the Gulf of Boothia was a bay and that he would have to cross land to reach Simpson's furthest-east.
In 1830,John Ross had also been told that the Gulf of Boothia was a bay.[2] He sailed partway up the east coast of the Gulf, but soon turned back because he needed to make preparations for winter. He became one of the first Europeans to winter in the highArctic without the aid of adepot ship. By December he had learned how to buildigloos, which he later found warmer than European tents.
Rae's second journey began on 5 April 1847. He crossed to Committee Bay, travelled up its west coast for four days and then headed west across the base of theSimpson Peninsula toPelly Bay. He went north and from a hill thought he could seeLord Mayor Bay, on the west side of the Gulf of Boothia, whereJohn Ross had been trapped in ice from 1829 to 1833. He circled much of the coast of the Simpson Peninsula and returned to Repulse Bay. His third journey began on 13 May 1847. He crossed from Repulse Bay to Committee Bay and went up the east coast hoping to reach theFury and Hecla Strait, whichWilliam Edward Parry's men had seen in 1822. The weather was bad and they began to run short of food. On 28 May, Rae turned back at a place he called Cape Crozier which he thought was about 25 miles (40 km) south of the strait.
He left Repulse Bay on 12 August, when the ice broke up, and reached York Factory on 6 September 1847. He soon left for England and Scotland. Although he had not reached Simpson's furthest-east, he had reduced the gap to less than 100 miles (160 km).[3]
From 1848 to 1851, Rae made three journeys along the Arctic coast. The first took him from theMackenzie River to theCoppermine River, which had been done before. On the second he tried to cross toVictoria Island but was blocked by ice. On the third he explored the whole south coast of Victoria Island.[4]
By 1848, it was clear that SirJohn Franklin's expedition, which had traveled west from the coast of Greenland in 1845, had been lost in the Arctic. Three expeditions were sent to find him: one from the east, one through theBering Strait, and one overland to the Arctic coast, this last led bySir John Richardson. Most of the Arctic coast had been traced a decade earlier byThomas Simpson. North of the coast were two coastlines calledWollaston Land and Victoria Land (Victoria Island). Franklin's crew was thought to be somewhere in the unexplored area north of that. The 61-year-old Richardson chose Rae as his second-in-command.
TheRae–Richardson Arctic Expedition leftLiverpool in March 1848, reachedNew York, and took the usual voyageur routes west fromMontreal. On 15 July 1848, the expedition reachedFort Resolution onGreat Slave Lake.John Bell was sent downriver to establish winter quarters atFort Confidence on the east arm ofGreat Bear Lake. Richardson and Rae traveled down the Mackenzie River and turned east along the coast.
They hoped to cross north to Wollaston Land, as southern Victoria Island was then known, but ice conditions made this impossible. Through worsening ice, they rounded Cape Krusenstern at the west end ofCoronation Gulf (notCape Krusenstern inAlaska), and turned south. By the first of September it was clear that they had run out of time, so they abandoned their boats and headed overland. They crossed theRae River andRichardson River and on 15 September reached their winter quarters at Fort Confidence at the northeast end of Great Bear Lake.
In December 1848 and January 1849, Rae made two trips northeast to find a better route to Coronation Gulf. On 7 May, Richardson and Bell left with most of the men. Rae left on 9 June with seven men. Hauling a boat overland they reached theKendall River on 21 June. The next day they reached theCoppermine River and waited a week for the ice to break up. They descended the Coppermine and waited again for the ice to clear on Coronation Gulf.
It was 30 July before they reached Cape Krusenstern on Coronation Gulf. From here they hoped to cross theDolphin and Union Strait to Wollaston Land. On 19 August, they made the attempt, but after 8 miles (13 km) they were caught in fog and moving ice and spent three hours rowing back to their starting point. Rae waited as long as he could and turned back, reaching Fort Confidence on the first of September. On the return journey their boat was lost atBloody Falls and Albert One-Eye, the Inuk interpreter, was killed.
They reachedFort Simpson to the west ofYellowknife in late September 1849, where Rae took charge of theMackenzie River district.[5] A week laterWilliam Pullen showed up, having sailed east from theBering Strait and up the Mackenzie River. In June 1850, Rae and Pullen went east up the Mackenzie with that year's furs. On 25 June, just short of Great Slave Lake, he was met by an express canoe. Pullen was promoted to captain and told to go north and try again. Rae received three letters from Sir George Simpson,Francis Beaufort, and LadyJane Franklin all telling him to return to the Arctic. Simpson promised supplies and left the route to Rae's discretion. Pullen left immediately with most of the equipment.
Rae escorted the furs as far asMethye Portage and returned to Fort Simpson in August. En route he wrote Sir George a letter outlining his complex but ultimately successful plan. That winter he would go to Fort Confidence and build two boats and collect supplies. Next spring he would use dog sleds to cross to Wollaston Land and go as far as he could before the ice melt made it impossible to recross the Strait. Meanwhile, his men would have hauled the boats overland to Coronation Gulf. When the ice melted he would follow the coast by boat as long as there was open water. He reached Fort Confidence in September and spent the winter there.
On 25 April 1851, he left the fort. On 2 May he crossed the frozen strait via Douglas Island toLady Franklin Point, the southwestern-most point on Victoria Island. Heading east he passed and named theRichardson Islands and passed what he thought was the westernmost point reached by Thomas Simpson on his return journey in 1839. Heading west he passed Lady Franklin Point and followed the coast north and west around Simpson Bay, which he named. The coast swung north but it was getting late.
He made a final push, the coast swung to the northeast and on 24 May, he could look north acrossPrince Albert Sound. Unknown to Rae, just 10 days earlier, a sledge party fromRobert McClure's expedition had been on the north side of the sound. He turned south, crossed Dolphin and Union Strait safely and on 5 June turned inland. The journey to camp on theKendall River was the least pleasant part of the journey since he had to travel over melting snow and through meltwater.
On 15 June 1851, two days after the boat arrived, he set off down the Kendall River and Coppermine River with 10 men. He waited several times for the ice to clear and in early July he started east along the south coast of Coronation Gulf. In late July he crossed the mouth ofBathurst Inlet and reachedCape Flinders at the western end of theKent Peninsula. He reached Cape Alexander at its east end on 24 July, and on 27 July crossed the strait to Victoria Island. He exploredCambridge Bay which he found to be a better harbour than Dease and Simpson had reported.
He left the bay and went east along an unknown coast. The coast swung north and the weather got worse. By August he was inAlbert Edward Bay. Blocked by ice, he went north on foot and reached his furthest on 13 August. Returning, he left a cairn which was found byRichard Collinson's men two years later. He then made three unsuccessful attempts to crossVictoria Strait east toKing William Island. Victoria Strait is nearly always impassable. On 21 August, he found two pieces of wood that had clearly come from a European ship. These were probably from Franklin's ship, but Rae chose not to guess.
On 29 August, he reached Lady Franklin Point and crossed to the mainland. He worked his way up the swollen Coppermine and reached Fort Confidence on 10 September. He had traveled 1,080 miles (1,740 km) on land, 1,390 miles (2,240 km) by boat, charted 630 miles (1,010 km) of unknown coast, followed the whole south coast of Victoria Island, and proved that Wollaston Land and Victoria Land were part of the same island, but had not found Franklin.[6]
Rae headed south toFort Chipewyan inAlberta, waited for a hard freeze, travelled bysnowshoe toFort Garry inWinnipeg, took theCrow Wing Trail toSaint Paul, Minnesota, and then travelled toChicago, thenHamilton, Ontario, New York, and London, which he reached in late March 1852. In England he proposed to return to Boothia and complete his attempt to link Hudson Bay to the Arctic coast by dragging a boat to theBack River. He went to New York, Montreal, and then Sault Ste. Marie by steamer,Fort William by canoe, and reachedYork Factory on 18 June 1853, where he picked up his two boats.
He left on 24 June and reachedChesterfield Inlet on 17 July. Finding a previously unknown river, he followed it for 210 miles (340 km) before it became too small to use. Judging that it was too late to drag the boat north to the Back River, he turned back and wintered at his old camp onRepulse Bay. He left Repulse Bay on 31 March 1854. NearPelly Bay he met some Inuit, one of whom had a gold cap-band. Asked where he got it, he replied that it came from a place 10 to 12 days away where 35 or sokabloonat had starved to death. Rae bought the cap-band and said he would buy anything similar.
On 27 April, he reached frozen salt-water south of what is now calledRae Strait. A few miles west, on the south side of the bay, he reached what he believed was theCastor and Pollux River, whichSimpson had reached from the west in 1839. He then turned north along the western portion of theBoothia Peninsula, the last uncharted coast of North America, hoping to reachBellot Strait and so close the last gap in the line from Bering Strait to Hudson Bay. The coast continued north instead of swinging west to form the south shore ofKing William Land.
On 6 May, he reached his furthest north, which he named Point de la Guiche after an obscure French traveller he had met in New York. It appeared that King William Land was an island and the coast to the north was the same as had been seen byJames Clark Ross in 1831. AuthorKen McGoogan has claimed[7] that Rae here effectively discovered the final link in the Northwest Passage as followed in the following century byRoald Amundsen, although Arctic historianWilliam Barr has disputed that claim,[8] citing the uncharted 240 kilometres (150 mi) between Ross's discoveries and the Bellot Strait.
With only two men fit for heavy travel, Rae turned back. Reaching Repulse Bay on 26 May, he found several Inuit families who had come to trade relics. They said that four winters ago some other Inuit had met at least 40kabloonat who were dragging a boat south. Their leader was a tall, stout man with a telescope, thought to beFrancis Crozier, Franklin's second-in-command. They communicated by gestures that their ships had been crushed by ice and that they were going south to hunt deer. When the Inuit returned the following spring they found about 30 corpses and signs ofcannibalism. One of the artefacts Rae bought was a small silver plate. Engraved on the back was "Sir John Franklin, K.C.H". With this important information, Rae chose not to continue exploring. He left Repulse Bay on 4 August 1854, as soon as the ice cleared.
Upon his return to Britain, Rae made two reports on his findings: one for the public, which omitted any mention of cannibalism, and another for theBritish Admiralty, which included it. However, the Admiralty mistakenly released the second report to the press, and the reference to cannibalism caused great outcry in Victorian society. Franklin's widowLady Jane enlisted authorCharles Dickens, who wrote a tirade against Rae in his magazineHousehold Words deriding the report as "the wild tales of a herd of savages", and later attacked Rae and the Inuit further in his 1856 playThe Frozen Deep.[9] Arctic explorer Sir George Richardson joined them, stating that cannibalism could not be the action of Englishmen but surely the Inuit themselves. This campaign likely prevented Rae from receiving aknighthood for his efforts. 20th centuryarchaeology efforts inKing William Island later confirmed that Franklin Expedition members had resorted to cannibalism.[10]
With the prize money awarded for finding evidence of the fate of Franklin's expedition, Rae commissioned the construction of a ship intended forpolar exploration, theIceberg. The ship was built atKingston,Canada West. Rae moved toHamilton, Canada West, also onLake Ontario, in 1857, where his two brothers lived and operated a shipping firm on theGreat Lakes.
TheIceberg was launched in 1857. Rae intended to sail her to England the following year to be outfitted for polar voyages. In the meantime, she was put to use as a cargo ship. She was lost with all seven men on board in 1857, on her first commercial trip, hauling coal fromCleveland, Ohio, to Kingston. The wreck, somewhere in Lake Ontario, has never been located. While in Hamilton, Rae became a founding member of the Hamilton Scientific Association, which became the Hamilton Association for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art, one of Canada's oldest scientific and cultural organizations.
In 1860, Rae worked on the telegraph line to America, visiting Iceland and Greenland. In 1864, he made a further telegraph survey in the west of Canada. In 1884, at age 71, he was again working for the Hudson's Bay Company, this time as an explorer of theRed River for a proposed telegraph line from the United States to Russia.
John Rae died from ananeurysm inKensington, west London, on 22 July 1893. A week later his body arrived in Orkney. He was buried atSt Magnus Cathedral inKirkwall,Orkney.
A memorial to Rae, lying as in sleep upon the ground, is inside the cathedral. The memorial byNorth Ronaldsay sculptor Ian Scott, unveiled atStromness pierhead in 2013, is a statue of Rae with an inscription describing him as "the discoverer of the final link in the first navigable Northwest Passage."[11]Rae Strait,Rae Isthmus,Rae River,Mount Rae,Point Rae,[12] andRae-Edzo were all named for him.[13]
The outcome of Lady Franklin's efforts to glorify the dead of the Franklin expedition meant that Rae, who had discovered evidence suggesting a much less noble fate, was shunned somewhat by the British establishment. Although he found the first clue to the fate of Franklin, Rae was never awarded aknighthood, nor was he remembered at the time of his death, dying quietly in London. In comparison, fellow Scot and contemporary explorerDavid Livingstone was buried with full imperial honours inWestminster Abbey.
Historians have since studied Rae's expeditions and his roles in finding the Northwest Passage and learning the fate of Franklin's crew. Authors such asKen McGoogan have noted Rae was willing to adopt and learn the ways of indigenous Arctic peoples, which made him stand out as the foremost specialist of his time in cold-climate survival and travel. Rae also respected Inuit customs, traditions, and skills, which went against the beliefs of many 19th-century Europeans that most native peoples were too primitive to offer anything of educational value.[1]
In July 2004,Orkney and Shetland MPAlistair Carmichael introduced into the UK Parliament a motion proposing,inter alia, that the House "regrets that Dr Rae was never awarded the public recognition that was his due".[14] In March 2009, he introduced a further motion urging Parliament to formally state it "regrets that memorials to Sir John Franklin outside the Admiralty headquarters and inside Westminster Abbey still inaccurately describe Franklin as the first to discover the [North West] passage, and calls on theMinistry of Defence and the Abbey authorities to take the necessary steps to clarify the true position."[15] In October 2014, a plaque dedicated to Rae was installed atWestminster Abbey.[16]
Rae is depicted in the 2008 moviePassage from theNational Film Board of Canada.
He is the subject of the song 'John Rae's Welcome Home' by Scottish folksinger Malcolm MacWatt.
In June 2011, ablue plaque was installed byEnglish Heritage on the house where John Rae spent the last years of his life, No. 4 Lower Addison Gardens, inKensington, west London.[17] After a conference in September 2013 inStromness, Orkney to celebrate the 200th anniversary of John Rae's birth, a statue was erected to Rae at the pierhead. In December 2013, The John Rae Society,[18] aregistered charity under Scottish law,[19] was formed in Orkney to promote Rae's achievements.
In 2014, Historic Environment Scotland awarded a plaque to commemorate Rae at his birthplace, theHall of Clestrain. The John Rae Society purchased the Hall in 2016 with the intent of developing a museum to commemorate Rae and his achievements.[20][21] The Society began its crowdfunding campaign to restore the house in December 2024.[22]
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