Lord Franklin

(Reposted from my old blog.)

Twas homeward bound one night on the deep
Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep
I dreamed a dream and I thought it true
Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew.
                                                                   

With a hundred seamen he sailed away
To the frozen ocean in the month of May
To seek a passage around the pole
Where we poor sailors do sometimes go.
                                                                     

Through cruel hardships they vainly strove
Their ships on mountains of ice was drove
Only the Eskimo in his skin canoe
Was the only one that ever came through
                                                                       

To Baffin Bay where the whale fishes blow.
The fate of Franklin no man may know
The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell
Or Franklin alone where his seamen do dwell. 
                                                                         

And now my burden it gives me pain
For long lost Franklin I would sail the main
Ten thousand pounds would I freely give
To say on earth that my Franklin do live.

[The 'burden' is, of course, the lyric of the song, 'carried' by the melody.]

There are versions of the (traditional) lyrics at various places on the web. Russell Potter's Lord Franklin is close to the words above, as I recall them, sung by John Renbourn (on A Maid in Bedlam?), which is the definitive rendering for me. For the melody, there's a Lord Franklin midi at The Great Canadian Tunebook.

Lord John Franklin led an ill-fated expedition in 1845 with two ships to find a North-West Passage through the Canadian Arctic. The expedition became locked in the ice, some of the crew surviving for three years. The search for the lost expedition, organised by Franklin's wife, Jane, was legendary. The traces that were found told a story of horrors. But the folk tradition lingers instead on the moment of hope, the longing and waiting for the news that never came, of Franklin and his crew perhaps alive amongst the Esquimaux.

There's a great generosity of spirit in the song – it's not forgotten that so many ordinary seamen were lost too. I love the way it blends the sailors' point of view with that of Jane Franklin. It's not homoerotic, to my mind. Jane Franklin had accompanied her husband on an earlier expedition (to Tasmania or Van Dieman's Land), so she can naturally be portrayed speaking with a crewman's voice. It's about her love, but the strange and defamiliarising thing is that her love becomes the type of men's devotion to a leader.

Channel 4 did a decent (though, as always with TV, needlessly spun out) documentary on the search for the North-West Passage not long ago, and they have an excellent North-West Passage website. There's a biography of Lady Jane Franklin at the Archives Hub (UK college and university archives).