‘The cold of Valparaiso’: the disintegration of William Kennedy's second Franklin search expedition, 1853–1854

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Barr, William
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1998
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Arctic; Bering Strait; Smith Sound; Jones Sound; Polar Record; Smith sound
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400025675; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400025675

Abstract In the autumn of 1852, convinced that a successful search for her husband's missing expedition via Bering Strait could only be guaranteed by using a steam vessel, Jane, Lady Franklin, decided to dispatch such a vessel herself (this was the third such expedition she mounted). Her choice of vessel fell on the screw schooner Isabel , which Captain E.A. Inglefield had just brought back from his search of Smith Sound and Jones Sound. The captain she selected was William Kennedy, who, with Enseigne-de-vaisseau Joseph-René Bellot as second-in-command, had just returned from an expedition to the eastern Arctic in Prince Albert . After a few brief months of hectic preparations, in which Lady Franklin and her niece Sophia Cracroft played an unusually active role, Isabel sailed from the Thames on 1 April 1853, bound for Bering Strait via the Strait of Magellan. Despite warnings not to do so (largely due to the danger of losing his crew to the lure of the Californian and Australian gold rushes), Kennedy put into Valparaiso on 26 August 1853. Almost all his officers and crew jumped ship. After more than two years of frustration, during which he generated some revenue by several coastal voyages off Chile, at Lady Franklin's request Kennedy brought Isabel back to England in early December 1855. Isabel was found to have dry rot and was sold. Kennedy fell out with Lady Franklin and did not participate in any further Arctic searches.