Franklin's Lost Expedition - Timeline

Timeline

• 1845, 19 May: Franklin expedition sails from England
• 1845, July: Expedition docks in Greenland, sends home five men and a batch of letters
• 1845, 28 July: Last sighting of expedition by Europeans (a whaling ship in Baffin Bay)
• 1845–46: Expedition winters on Beechey Island. Three crewmen die of tuberculosis and are buried.
• 1846: Erebus and Terror leave Beechey Island and sail down Peel Sound towards King William Island
• 1846, 12 September: Ships trapped in the ice off King William Island
• 1846–47: Expedition winters on King William Island
• 1847, 28 May: Date of first note, says "All well"
• 1847, 11 June: Franklin dies
• 1847–48: Expedition again winters on King William Island, after the ice fails to thaw in 1847
• 1848, 22 April: Erebus and Terror abandoned after one year and seven months trapped in the ice
• 1848, 25 April: Date of second note, saying 24 men have died and the survivors plan to start marching south on 26 April to the Back River
• 1850 (?): Inuit board an abandoned ship, which is icebound off King William Island
• 1850 (?): Inuit see 40 men walking south on King William Island
• 1851 (?): Inuit hunters see four men still trying to head south, last verified sighting of survivors (as reported to Charles Hall)
• 1852–1858 (?): Inuit may have seen Crozier and one other survivor much further south in the Baker Lake area
• 1854: John Rae interviews local Inuit, who give him items from the expedition and tell him the men starved to death, after resorting to cannibalism
• 1859: McClintock finds the abandoned boat and the messages on an admiralty form in a cairn on King William Island