John Franklin’s first Arctic expedition was an unmitigated disaster. The Coppermine expedition of 1819 to 1822 was part of and a short cut to the Pacific. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and 11 of the 20-strong party died. The worst moments were in September 1821, when the explorers were stuck on the wrong side of the Coppermine river on Canada’s Arctic coast. With no means of crossing and no food, they were reduced to scraping lichen from the rocks and chewing bits of boiled boot. If only they’d had one of Lieutenant Halkett’s boat-cloaks.
Gallery: The doomed quest for the North-West Passage
Advertisement
IF John FRANKLIN’S reputation rested on a novel use for his boots, Peter Halkett owed his to a reinvention of the overcoat. Despite appearances, Halkett’s stylish cloak was not aimed at elegant city gentlemen but at Arctic explorers. This was the ultimate in multi-purpose gear for the growing number of men intent on discovering the fabled North-West Passage. One moment it was a waterproof overcoat keeping out the chill polar wind, the next a cunningly contrived canoe, perfect for paddling across freezing rivers or unexpected openings in the Arctic ice.
“One moment it was a waterproof coat, the next a cunningly contrived canoe”
Halkett was born in 1820, while Franklin was struggling for survival on his first Arctic expedition. All through his boyhood Halkett would hear tales of Franklin’s adventures, for despite his failure he had returned home a hero. Franklin’s account of the Coppermine disaster, with all its horrors, and despite rumours of murder and cannibalism, was a best-seller. In 1825, the nation’s hero returned to the Arctic, and this time successfully charted almost 2000 kilometres of Canada’s north coast. Halkett would also have heard about conditions in the Arctic from his father, who had spent years in Canada with the Hudson’s Bay Company.
By the early 19th century, the British had become obsessed with the Arctic and particularly the notion of the North-West Passage, a navigable seaway said to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. For centuries explorers had searched in vain for such a passage. Now, with the Napoleonic wars over, the Royal Navy had good ships lying idle and officers sitting at home on half pay. It was the ideal time to resurrect the quest, and new expeditions set off at regular intervals.
Halkett joined the navy, but spent most of his time in warmer waters. During slack periods, however, he set his mind to solving the problem that had so nearly finished off Franklin. The Coppermine party had almost perished for want of a boat although they had started out with three. Made of wood, they proved too cumbersome to carry and had to be abandoned. What Arctic explorers needed, Halkett reckoned, was a boat so light that one man could carry it with ease. What better than a cloak that doubled as a boat when required?
In 1844, boatmen on the Thames were astonished to see a man paddling downriver in what looked like a floating slipper. Halkett was taking his boat-cloak on its maiden voyage. His answer to Franklin’s problem was a waterproof cloak with an inflatable lining that transformed cloak to one-man boat in 2 or 3 minutes. The boat-cloak was made from Macintosh cloth – cotton impregnated with India rubber dissolved in naphtha. Leaving nothing to chance, Halkett provided the lining with a pocket for the bellows and paddle blade. All a well-equipped explorer needed then was a walking stick that doubled as paddle-shaft and an umbrella to serve as a sail. Halkett paddled his cloak 15 kilometres down the Thames, and despite sitting alarmingly low in the water it didn’t take in a drop.
The Thames was one thing, the sea quite another. Yet Halkett had every confidence in his boat-cloak. Wherever his naval duties took him, he paddled it. In November 1844, he tried it in the notoriously rough Bay of Biscay. “The winds that day were too civil by half, and the sleepless bay almost quite dormant,” he later recalled. It was so calm, he complained, he was forced to furl his umbrella and paddle.
Fired with enthusiasm, Halkett designed and built a second inflatable, this time a two-man boat that could be packed into a small knapsack. “This double Boat, being worked with a paddle on each side, is moved with much greater ease and celerity than the Boat-Cloak with its single paddle,” Halkett explained in his brochure for potential customers. Like the cloak, the double boat had two roles: “When ashore in bad weather or in the night time – even upon damp or wet ground – both travellers might repose upon the dry India rubber Boat-cloth, spread out to its utmost extent uninflated.”
Despite his escapade in the Bay of Biscay, Halkett never intended his cloth boats to be used in the open sea. “They were designed for exploring rivers and inlets,” says Claire Warrior, one of the team behind a at the National Maritime Museum in London.
Both boats found favour among celebrated Arctic explorers. “Had we been possessed of such a contrivance in our first expedition, I have little doubt of our having brought the whole party in safely,” wrote John Richardson, a member of Franklin’s team who had very nearly drowned in an attempt to swim the Coppermine river. Indeed, Franklin himself was so impressed he took a Halkett boat on his final, fatal expedition in 1845.
Whether the Halkett boat was ever tried out on this ill-fated venture is not recorded; the entire expedition vanished. Desperate to learn what had happened to its two ships and 129 men, in 1848 the navy sent the first of many missions in search of them. They went equipped with Halkett boats. The government ordered a land search too, led by Richardson – and bought him a Halkett boat.
Richardson’s second-in-command was , a tough Orkneyman who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Unlike most European explorers, Rae accepted that the Inuit knew best how to cope with conditions in the Arctic and he adopted their ways. He travelled fast and light, using snowshoes and sledges, and sleeping in snowhouses. Like the Inuit, he lived off game and fish that he caught. “This sort of behaviour was considered almost un-British,” says Warrior. “The more trials and tribulations you suffered, the more heroic you were. The navy’s explorers thought their way was the right way. So while Rae copied Inuit survival techniques, they took silver cutlery, tinned food and thousands of books to read.” Rae had little time for such things nor for most of the new technology the Admiralty toyed with.
The one innovation Rae did approve of was Halkett’s inflatable boat. He had taken one on his own land expedition in 1846. His men, he reported, had found it “most useful in crossing and recrossing the river at Repulse Bay” and much preferred it to their wooden boat when fishing. “Although in constant use for upwards of six weeks on a rocky coast it never required the slightest repair.” It ought “to form part of the equipment of every expedition”, Rae concluded. When he joined Richardson to search for Franklin in 1848, Rae was pleased to find they had been given a Halkett boat. It served them well, at one point ferrying the whole party and all its gear across a river in 14 trips.
The boat-cloak doesn’t seem to have been quite so popular, although French explorer Joseph René Bellot took one on a search mounted by Franklin’s wife in 1851. It was, he wrote in his journal, “of immense value in a country where the want of wood renders it impossible to form any sort of raft”.
It was Rae, though, who eventually provided the first inkling of what had happened to Franklin and his men. In 1853, on yet another trip (with two “beautiful Halkett boats”), he met a group of Inuit who related how they had seen men dragging a boat southwards some four years earlier and how they had later found their bodies. Rae bought some of the trinkets they had taken from the bodies and took them back to England as evidence.
Halkett’s ingenious boats may have had the approval of Arctic explorers but they don’t seem to have made him his fortune. Perhaps he chose the wrong man to endorse his invention. By the time Halkett tried to cash in on Franklin’s name, the man who had eaten his boots was dead.
Gallery: The doomed quest for the North-West Passage
- “North-West Passage: An Arctic obsession” is at the National Maritime Museum in London until 3 January 2010. The exhibition looks at the brave and tragic attempts to find the fabled route from the north Atlantic to the north Pacific ()
