Second Arctic Expedition
During 1863 Hall planned a second expedition to seek more clues on the fate of Franklin, including efforts to find any of the rumoured survivors or their written records. The first attempt using the 95-ton schooner Active was abandoned, probably due to lack of finances caused by the American Civil War and the failed relationship with his intended second in command Parker Snow. Finally, in July 1864 a very much smaller expedition departed in the whaler Monticello.
During this second expedition (1864–69) to King William Island, he found remains and artifacts from the Franklin expedition, and made more inquiries about their fate from natives living there. Hall eventually realized that the stories of survivors had become garbled and unreliable, either by the Inuit or his own readiness to give them overly optimistic interpretations. He also became disillusioned with the Inuit by the discovery that the remnants of Franklin's expedition had deliberately been left to starve. He failed to consider that it would have been impossible for the local population to support such a large group of supernumeraries.
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