|
Home :: News :: History :: Boat Museum :: Gallery :: Restoration :: Support :: Links :: Downloads :: Site Map |
>Home :: History :: Dr John Rae Dr John Rae (1813 - 1893)John Rae was the first European to discover the final navigable link in the Northwest Passage (a sea route in the Arctic joining the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean) - which has been credited to Sir John Franklin and Sir Robert McClure. Born on the 30th of September 1813, at the Hall of Clestrain, Orphir, in Orkney, John Rae was the fourth son of John Rae (Senior) and Margaret Campbell Rae. John Rae's father was the factor of Sir William Honeyman's Orkney estate and also an agent, recruiting local Orkney men for the Hudson's Bay Company - the hugely influential and profitable trading company covering the northern territories of Canada at that time. John left Orkney to study medicine at Edinburgh and graduated as a surgeon in 1833. In the same year he went into the service of the Hudson's Bay Company himself, as a surgeon aboard the Prince of Wales, bound for the North Atlantic and the Arctic. The ship eventually arrived at Moose 'Factory' (or 'fort') on an island in James Bay, Rupert's Land, Canada, where he was offered the post of doctor. Working there until 1845, as both as surgeon and as a trader, Rae learned some of the skills of the native people - the Inuit and the Cree Indians. Rae adapted well to the harsh conditions of the region by adopting their survival methods and he became an expert canoeist, hunted and fished, and learned how to live off the land - he also became an expert in snowshoeing. From 1846 Rae explored the northern Canadian coast, mapping hundreds of miles of uncharted territory and in 1848 he accompanied Sir John Richardson on a search for Sir John Franklin, who had set out in 1845 on a Royal Navy Expedition to discover the Northwest Passage - a sea route in the Arctic joining the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Franklin Expedition had set out with over a hundred men, aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. However they had become lost and a huge search for them had begun. It was not known by Europeans at the time, but Franklin's ships had become stuck in pack-ice off the coast of King William Land. Franklin, plus many of his men had died of a combination of scurvy, botulism, starvation and lead poisoning. Others had died trekking towards the Back River. Rae's expeditions turned up few clues to the fate of Franklin at first - but in the years that followed, in which he continued to survey over a thousand miles of uncharted coastline, he discovered that what was thought to be 'King William Land' was actually an island - King William Island - and that the strait separating it from the mainland – now known as 'Rae Strait' – was the last uncharted link in the Northwest Passage. He had succeeded where Franklin had failed. In 1854 he finally learned from the local Inuit people that the Franklin Expedition had ended in disaster. Some time previously, Inuit hunters had discovered bodies and graves of Europeans, plus artefacts belonging to the Franklin Expedition. The Inuit also told of dead 'kabloona', as Europeans were called, near the mouth of the Back River and that these men most certainly "had been driven to the last dread alternative as a means of sustaining life" - they had resorted to cannibalism to attempt to stay alive.
His report of the fate of the Franklin Expedition was badly received. It was unthinkable in British Victorian society that men of the Royal Navy would ever resort to such acts and the fact that Rae had learned about the fate of the Expedition from Inuit - who were at the time believed to be unreliable savages - made people feel even more sceptical about his reports. Sir John Franklin's wife, Lady Jane Franklin, supported by a number of leading figures in Victorian England, led a campaign to discredit Rae and his discoveries. Franklin, not Rae, was credited with the discovery of the Northwest Passage and although he was credited for the discovery of the fate of the Franklin Expedition, he received no knighthood for his important Arctic explorations - and even till today Arctic exploration has revolved around Sir John Franklin. John Rae continued to set out on expeditions - in 1860 he was employed to carry out the land part of a survey for a projected telegraph line from Great Britain to North America via the Faeroes, Iceland and Greenland. John Rae spent his later life in London, where he died at the age of 79, on the 22nd of July, 1893. His wishes were to be buried in Orkney and his remains were transported to St. Magnus' Cathedral in Kirkwall - his grave in the churchyard is marked by a weather-beaten gravestone. His memorial can be found inside.
Reference material for this page:
You can purchase Ken McGoogan's book 'Fatal Passage - The Untold Story of John Rae' online at The Orcadian Bookshop.
Read more about John Rae and the Hudson's Bay Company at Sigurd Towrie's Orkneyjar website. Plus, John Rae and the Hall of Clestrain on The Orcadian website.
See also:
|
|
Supported by: |
|||||
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
Home :: News :: History :: Boat Museum :: Gallery :: Restoration :: Support :: Links :: Downloads :: Site Map |
Orkney Boat Museum is a company limited by guarantee, Co. Reg. No. SC273109, and is a recognised Scottish charity The Hall of Clestrain / Orkney Boat Museum - www.hallofclestrain.org.uk - Email. info@hallofclestrain.org.uk |
