Yukon who is who

Sir John Franklin (1786 – 1847)

John Franklin was born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, the ninth of twelve children born to Hannah Weekes and William Franklin. He went on a trial voyage on a merchant ship at age twelve, and then his father secured him a Royal Navy appointment. Franklin saw action in the Battle of Copenhagen as part of Horatio Nelson’s squadron, and he was present at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and at the Battle of New Orleans. In 1819, he led an expedition to chart the north coast of Canada east from the mouth of the Coppermine River.¹⁾

In 1826, Franklin was on his second arctic expedition to explore the northern coastline to the west of the Mackenzie River. His second-in-command was Lt. Beck and he was aided by the Hudson's Bay Co. and their employee Peter Warren Dease. They sailed west from the Mackenzie Delta and named Pillage Point, Shoalwater Bay, King Point, Kay Point, Herschel Island, Babbage River, Phillips Bay, Buckland Mountains, and more. They were unable to land on Herschel but came ashore on the mainland near the mouth of what was later named the Firth River. On July 19th, they were stopped by ice near Mount Conybeare but fought on to Return Reef and on August 16 turned back. This was 160 miles from Point Barrow [Nuvuk], the point reached by Lt. Beechey who travelled from the other direction in the same year. On his return trip, Franklin mistakenly travelled a short distance up the Peel, thinking it was the west branch of the Mackenzie. They reached their home base on Great Bear Lake on Sept. 21, 1826.²⁾

Franklin disappeared while he was on an expedition to navigate and chart the Northwest Passage. His ships were ice bound and abandoned and the crew died of starvation, hypothermia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning, and/or scurvy.³⁾