Richardson's published journal and the missing entries

The 1819–1822 Arctic overland expedition led by John Franklin was one of the most disastrous in polar history. In 1821 Franklin and 19 companions travelled from the expedition's winter quarters, Fort Enterprise, to the Arctic Ocean by way of the Coppermine River. Besides Franklin, this party consisted of junior naval officers Robert Hood and George Back, surgeon John Richardson, seaman John Hepburn, two Inuit interpreters, two Métis interpreters and 11 French-Canadian voyageurs who had been hired to man the expedition's canoes. After travelling along the coast as far as the Kent Peninsula, the group made the return journey to Fort Enterprise overland. Hood, one of the four interpreters and nine voyageurs did not survive the return, leaving only nine men out of the original 20 alive. Criticism and controversy have therefore featured strongly in historians’ views of the expedition (see Cavell, Reference Cavell2007, Reference Cavell2008).

Richardson's journal of this expedition was published in 1984 under the editorship of C. Stuart Houston. The manuscript on which the publication was based, held by the Richardson family until the 1960s, is owned by the library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It covers the period from 21 August 1820, when the expedition's headquarters at Fort Enterprise on Winter Lake were established, until 19 December 1821, when the survivors of the expedition arrived at the Hudson's Bay Company post at Fort Resolution, Great Slave Lake. The entries dated from August 1820 until the expedition set out for the Arctic Ocean in June 1821 are often scanty. There are frequent gaps of a week or more, evidently because nothing that Richardson deemed worth permanently recording had occurred. From June 1821 until December 1821, however, there are entries for most days, with one major exception.

There is a break from 8 October to 28 October—a three-week period during which the most dramatic and controversial events of the expedition occurred. Near the end of the return journey from the Arctic coast to Fort Enterprise, supplies were exhausted and game scarce. A small party consisting of Richardson, Hood and Hepburn separated from the main group on 7 October, staying behind in a spot with an adequate supply of firewood and the edible lichen called tripe de roche. Two days later they were joined by one of the voyageurs, Michel Teroahauté, who stated that he had been unable to keep up with the others. On 20 October, Hood died from a gunshot wound to the back of his head; strong circumstantial evidence pointed to Teroahauté as his killer. Richardson and Hepburn were suspicious but dared not accuse Teroahauté because he was armed and stronger than the two of them combined. The three men moved on together, but only a few days after Hood's death, Richardson shot Teroahauté. His explanation for this murder was that he was convinced Teroahauté intended to kill him and Hepburn once the party was closer to Fort Enterprise and Richardson's navigational skills were no longer required to find the way (see Cavell, Reference Cavell2007, pp. 157–158).

As Houston (Reference Houston1984, p. xiv) explains, the journal he published is not a field journal. Rather, it was written up, probably in early 1822, using rough notes that apparently no longer exist—whether because Richardson discarded them or because they were later lost is not known. Richardson himself explained the gap from 8 to 28 October in this journal by writing a short note after the entry for 7 October (in Houston, Reference Houston1984, p. 147):

In Houston's edition (Reference Houston1984, pp. 148–160), the note is followed by a section titled ‘Dr Richardson's narrative report: “The account drawn up and transmitted home”’. A footnote by Houston (Reference Houston1984, p. 148n) reads:

(It should be noted that no part of the journal published by Houston can be considered first-hand or unedited; only the vanished field notes would deserve that status.)

The impression thus given is that the report printed by Houston is the ‘account drawn up and transmitted home’ referred to by Richardson. However, it is in fact the account published in Franklin's Reference Franklin1823 book, under the title ‘Dr. Richardson's narrative’ (in Franklin, Reference Franklin1823, pp. 449–461; this reference is not provided by Houston). In Franklin's book, Richardson's account is in narrative style, but Houston rearranged the text into journal format, reinforcing the impression that he had found the original manuscript account upon which the published 1823 version was based.

Houston evidently did not intend to give this erroneous impression: elsewhere in the volume (1984, p. 219) he noted that both he and Richardson's biographer, Robert E. Johnson, had searched Admiralty records for the original ‘account drawn up and transmitted home’ mentioned in the journal note, without success. Nevertheless, Houston seems to have assumed that the missing manuscript account and the one printed in Franklin's book were essentially the same. He commented (1984, pp. 218–219) that Richardson had unfortunately never transcribed his field journal entries for the critical period of the expedition, instead writing only a ‘confidential letter to the Admiralty’, which ‘was most certainly modified for public perusal’. It is unclear from this passage whether Houston was suggesting that the supposed letter had been modified from the field journal account with a view to publication or that it was itself modified during the publication process. The fact that he reprinted the 1823 published text with the subtitle ‘The account drawn up and transmitted home’ suggests that the former is the correct interpretation, and reviewers of the book (for example, Davis, Reference Davis and Houston1985, p. 348; Warkentin, Reference Warkentin and Houston1985, p. 588) understood Houston in this way.

As a result of Houston's editorial comments, some historians have concluded that Richardson deliberately suppressed his field journal entries and substituted ‘a selective version’ of the facts (Steele, Reference Steele2003, p. 148, see also p. 144). The gap in the journal published by Houston has been highly detrimental to Richardson's reputation and has led to the belief that ‘we shall never know the full truth about the darker side of the expedition’ (Holland, Reference Holland and Houston1985, p. 230).

The December 1821 report

The 1819–1822 expedition owed its existence to John Barrow, the powerful second secretary of the Admiralty, and the British personnel on the 1821 journey were all from the navy. However, because it was an overland expedition Franklin officially received his orders from, and reported to, the Colonial Office and its head, Lord Bathurst. Richardson's original ‘account drawn up and transmitted home’ is therefore in the Colonial Office files. It is attached to a report from Franklin dated Fort Resolution, 19 December 1821. Richardson's December 1821 report is not, as Houston supposed, a confidential letter. Instead, it is in journal form. The account given in it is very similar—though far from identical—to the one printed in Franklin's Reference Franklin1823 book and it contains nothing that casts doubt on the published version's truthfulness regarding the deaths of Hood and Teroahauté.

Moreover, the date of the December 1821 report and Richardson's account of how he composed it indicate that the omission of the critical period from the journal published by Houston was not caused by any dishonesty or evasiveness on Richardson's part. Rather, he wrote up the critical three weeks first because Franklin had to send a report to London about the deaths of Hood and Teroahauté, and Richardson's evidence was required to make this report complete. Richardson then proceeded to write up a polished version of his journal entries for the rest of the expedition, almost certainly in early 1822 (the explorers remained at Great Slave Lake from December 1821 until May 1822, when they travelled by stages to York Factory, then sailed for home in a Hudson's Bay Company ship). When he reached the events of October 1821, Richardson simply saw no point in repeating what he had already done. The resulting journal, with its apparently incriminating gap, is the text published by Houston. As explained above, Houston initially sought to fill the gap by searching Admiralty files for the ‘account drawn up and transmitted home’ mentioned by Richardson, but no such document could be located.

Richardson had not kept any field notes in October, no doubt because all his strength was needed for practical tasks. Fortunately, Hood had left a rudimentary journal for the period up to mid-October. Using this source text, in December 1821 Richardson composed his account in much the same way as he later produced the journal published by Houston—and indeed, parts of that journal were probably based on Hood's now-lost field notes in addition to, or occasionally instead of, Richardson's own notes. At the end of the December 1821 report Richardson explained:

Further light on Richardson's method of composition is provided by a small overlap between the December 1821 report and the journal produced in early 1822. Both contain entries for 6 and 7 October. In the December 1821 version, part of the 7 October entry reads:

Forgetting exactly where he had formerly begun, in 1822 Richardson created a second version of this passage (in Houston, Reference Houston1984, p. 147):

The detail about Franklin's baggage appears in the 6 October entry in the December 1821 report, but it is included in the 7 October entry in the 1822 journal. It must therefore have come from Richardson's recollection. There is no strong reason to prefer ‘our tent being pitched M^r Franklin said prayers and took a very affectionate leave of us’ to ‘our tent being pitched and M^r Franklin having read prayers he took a very affectionate leave of us’. In view of these facts, it is most likely that Richardson produced two slightly variant texts from notes written by Hood in an abbreviated, telegraphic style, perhaps something along the lines of ‘tent pitched—prayers—affectionate leave’. The parts written from Richardson's memory were a little more erratic, yet on the whole consistent—an important point, considering that for the entries following 15 October Richardson had to rely on memory alone.

Summary of the texts produced by Richardson in 1821, 1822 and 1823

Richardson's contributions to Franklin's Reference Franklin1823 book were, then, the fourth stage in a textual evolution that may be summarised as follows:

1. 1. Field notes of the 1821 journey kept by Richardson and Hood. Neither set of notes has survived, but from a comment made by Richardson in December 1821, we know that he himself had stopped making entries by early October, while Hood continued to write a few short notes until 15 October.

2. 2. Report written in journal form by Richardson in December 1821. It covers the period 6–29 October and was based on Hood's notes plus his own recollections. In his 1822 journal (next item), Richardson called it the ‘account drawn up and transmitted home’. It is referred to in this article as ‘Richardson's December 1821 report’. The report was forwarded by Franklin to London, where it was placed in the files of the Colonial Office. Its whereabouts were previously unknown and it is printed here for the first time. Readers who wish to peruse it in full before considering my analysis of its contents should turn to the appendix.

3. 3. Journal for the period from 21 August 1820 to 19 December 1821, with the exception of 8–28 October. It was written by Richardson in 1822 from his own field notes—probably supplemented by Hood's notes—and memory. This journal is owned by the library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was published by Houston in 1984. Although it covers the years 1820 and 1821, it is usually referred to in this article as the ‘1822 journal’ from the date when it was actually written. It is also referred to as ‘Richardson's published journal’ or ‘the journal published by Houston’ and it is cited as ‘in Houston, Reference Houston1984’.

4. 4. Revised version of Richardson's December 1821 report, covering the period 7–29 October. It was published in Franklin's Narrative of a journey to the shores of the polar sea (Reference Franklin1823) under the title ‘Dr. Richardson's narrative’. In this revised version of the December 1821 report, the journal form was almost completely dropped. Instead, the information was integrated into a more conventional narrative. This report was reprinted in Houston (Reference Houston1984) with the misleading title ‘Dr Richardson's narrative report: “the account drawn up and transmitted home”’. Houston did not reprint the text exactly as it appears in Franklin's book; instead, he put it into journal form. Richardson's revised report is referred to in this article as the ‘1823 text/account/version’ and cited as ‘in Franklin, Reference Franklin1823’. It is reprinted here for purposes of comparison with the original December 1821 report (see appendix). Parts of Richardson's 1822 journal were also used in Franklin's book, but they are not considered in the present discussion.

Richardson's report in Franklin's Reference Franklin1823 book

Richardson's published Reference Richardson1823 account left much of the wording from his December Reference Richardson1821 report either unchanged or very nearly so. For example, his first version of Hood's death read:

In the second, published account (in Franklin, Reference Franklin1823, pp. 456–457), there were only minor changes:

There are, however, some important differences between the December 1821 report and the published 1823 version. Richardson did considerable revision after he reached London in October 1822 and was informed that John Murray was eager to publish Franklin's book, in which Richardson's own report would inevitably hold a prominent place. After taking lodgings together at 60 Frith Street in London, Franklin and Richardson worked closely together on the book; Richardson was paid £300 for his contributions (Richardson, Reference Richardson1823). The revisions were therefore mostly if not all his own, rather than Franklin's or Barrow's. In many cases, the new information was consistent with the original report, adding useful explanations that were the result of more detailed recollection. At the same time, however, one embarrassing fact was indeed concealed, and the discovery of the December 1821 report therefore requires modification of the expedition's official story.

After the deaths of Hood and Teroahauté, the most sensational event of the 1819–1822 expedition was the probable murder by Teroahauté of at least one of his fellow voyageurs, which, it is almost certain, was followed by cannibalism. If so, Teroahauté committed cannibalism knowingly, while Richardson, Hood and Hepburn participated without being aware of the fact. Besides Teroahauté, three other voyageurs—Jean-Baptiste Belanger, Ignace Perrault and Antonio Fontano—had turned back to join Richardson's party on 8 October. Belanger, Perrault and Fontano were never seen again. After Teroahauté joined Richardson's group, he offered them ‘wolf meat’, which Richardson later concluded had actually been human flesh. The published Reference Richardson1823 text made it clear that on 11 October the entire party had eaten the meat, and Richardson added a careful analysis (in Franklin, Reference Franklin1823, pp. 451–452) of the circumstantial evidence for believing that Teroahauté was both the murderer of his comrades and a cannibal. This analysis was clearly stated to be the result of retrospection both by himself and by Franklin.

The earlier December 1821 report, in contrast, said nothing at all about these possible murders by Teroahauté or about cannibalism. It did, however, state that Teroahauté shared more ‘wolf meat’ with Richardson's party on 12 October and 14 October. He brought in additional meat on 15 October, but it is not clear from Richardson's wording whether Teroahauté told the others about it and shared it with them or not. The entry for 14 October recounted the discovery that Teroahauté ‘conceals meat and eats it after we are gone to bed’, so on 15 October he might have been observed stealthily bringing meat that he did not share to the campsite.

When his December 1821 report was written, Richardson plainly had not yet considered the possibility of murder and cannibalism, supposing instead that the three missing voyageurs had lost their way and died of starvation. He even included the remark that on 11 October he and his companions had happily ‘made a plentiful meal’ of wolf meat. But Franklin later pushed Richardson to think more carefully about the fates of Belanger, Perrault and Fontano—a reconsideration that must have been exceptionally difficult for the doctor. By 1823 the realisation of the probable truth had made Richardson reluctant to publicise the full extent of his unwitting transgressions, although he was scrupulous enough not to eradicate all mention of the matter. Details that had formerly seemed too unimportant to include took on a new significance, and Richardson added them to the revised text. For example, he noted (in Franklin, Reference Franklin1823, p. 452) that Teroahauté had asked for a hatchet, an odd request that in retrospect seemed ‘to indicate that he took it for the purpose of cutting up something that he knew to be frozen’.

Other changes in the 1823 text included the addition of material designed to encourage idealisation of Hood, most notably through discussions of his firm religious faith and patient endurance of physical suffering (in Franklin, Reference Franklin1823, pp. 449, 454, 456). The fact that on 19 October Hood made threats against Teroahauté, which Richardson had mentioned in the December 1821 report, was edited out. Despite this, Richardson's rewriting was not designed to place Teroahauté in the worst possible light. Instead, he was careful to emphasise the voyageur's good qualities—something he had still been too shaken to do in his initial report. In December 1821, Richardson wrote that Teroahauté’s ‘conduct and character’ had helped to convince him his own life and Hepburn's were in danger. In 1823 he referred only to Teroahauté’s frightening ‘conduct’ between 15 and 23 October, and he noted conscientiously that because the voyageur's behaviour had been so good earlier in the expedition, the officers had agreed to give him some special reward (in Franklin, Reference Franklin1823, p. 457). Teroahauté, Richardson concluded, was not a monster; he had simply been broken down mentally and morally by extreme hardship (in Franklin, Reference Franklin1823, p. 459).