3-071-271 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The American Franklin Search Expedition: graves of the comrades of Sir John Franklin, 1881. 'It will be remembered that the expedition, which was fitted out by the New York Geographical Society, was engaged from the July of 1878 to the August of 1880, in the undertaking to look for relics or traces of the fate of the British Arctic explorers, the officers and crews of H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror, on the shores of King William's Land and of the Adelaide Peninsula...The party consisted of Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, of the United States Army; Mr. W. H. Gilder, special correspondent of the New York Herald; Mr. H. W. Klutschak, special artist, and Mr. Frank Melms, of Milwaukie [sic], with Mr. J. Eberling [an Inuit interpreter and guide], who has served in preceding Arctic expeditions...[The illustration shows the]...graves and cairns, or rude stone monuments, erected by Captain F. M. Crozier, R. N., senior officer surviving in April, 1848, on the coast of Adelaide Peninsula, to commemorate the dead, before they attempted to retreat to the Great Fish or Back River. The tall crosses and obelisks now surmounting those cairns were raised at a later period, this place having been several times re-visited'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.