John Franklin
Sir John Franklin (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British
Royal Navy officer, explorer and colonial administrator. After serving in the
Napoleonic Wars and the
War of 1812, he led two expeditions into the
Canadian Arctic and through the islands of the
Arctic Archipelago, in
1819 and
1825, and served as
Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1839 to 1843. During
his third and final expedition, an attempt to traverse the
Northwest Passage in 1845, Franklin's ships became icebound off
King William Island in what is now
Nunavut, where he died in June 1847. The icebound ships were abandoned ten months later, and the entire crew died from causes such as starvation,
hypothermia, and
scurvy.
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