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The Coppermine Expedition of 1819–1822 had as its goal the exploration of the northern coast of Canada, which was accessed by way of the Coppermine River. The British expedition was organised by the Royal Navy as part of its attempt to discover and map the Northwest Passage. It was the first of three Arctic expeditions to be led by John Franklin, and also included George Back and John Richardson, both of whom would become significant Arctic explorers in their own right. The expedition was plagued by poor planning, bad luck and unreliable allies. The expected assistance from the local fur trading companies and native peoples was less forthcoming than expected, and the dysfunctional supply line, coupled with unusually harsh weather and the resulting absence of game, meant that the explorers were never far from starvation. Eventually the Arctic coast was reached, but barely had been explored before the exhaustion of the party's supplies and the onset of winter forced them to turn back. The expedition made a desperate retreat across uncharted territory in a state of starvation, often with nothing more than lichen to eat. Eleven of the twenty strong party died amid accusations of murder and cannibalism before the survivors were rescued by native people of the Yellowknife tribe, who had previously given them up for dead. In the aftermath of the expedition, John Franklin was much criticised by local fur traders for his haphazard planning and failure to adapt to the circumstances he faced, but in Britain he was received as a hero, fêted for the courage he had shown in extreme adversity. The expedition captured the public imagination, and in reference to a desperate measure he took while starving, he became known as "the man who ate his boots". ==Background== In the years following the Napoleonic Wars the British Navy, under the influence of Sir John Barrow turned its attention to the discovery of the Northwest Passage, a putative sea route around the north coast of Canada which would allow European ships easy access to the markets of the Orient. Evidence for the existence of a passage came from the fact that whalers in the Bering Strait had killed whales which carried tusks of the type used in Greenland and ''vice versa'',〔Fleming, p. 30〕 but the maze of islands to the north of Canada was almost completely unmapped; and it was not known whether a navigable, ice-free passage existed.〔In fact, no sea route through the Canadian Arctic exists which is free of ice often enough to be economically useful, though this may change in the future due to global warming.〕 In fact, by 1819 the northern coast of Canada had been glimpsed only twice by Europeans. In 1771 Samuel Hearne had followed the Coppermine River to the sea at a point around east of the Bering Strait. He was followed in 1789 by Alexander MacKenzie, who traced what is now the Mackenzie River to open sea west of the mouth of the Coppermine.〔Fleming p. 125〕 In 1818 John Barrow had sent his first expedition to seek the Northwest Passage. Led by John Ross, it ended ignominiously when Ross entered the Lancaster Sound, the true entrance to the Northwest Passage, but judging it to be a bay turned around and returned to Britain.〔Fleming pp. 29-51〕 At the same time, David Buchan made an attempt to sail directly to the North Pole from Britain (Barrow was a believer in the Open Polar Sea hypothesis), but returned only with the news that the pack ice north of Spitsbergen was a barrier which could not be breached.〔Beesly〕 The following year, John Barrow planned two further expeditions to the Arctic. A seaborne expedition under William Edward Parry would follow on from Ross' work, seeking an entrance to the Northwest Passage from Lancaster Sound. Simultaneously, a party would travel overland to the Canadian coast by way of the Coppermine River and map as much of the coastline as possible, and perhaps even rendezvous with Parry's ships. John Franklin, a lieutenant who had commanded one of David Buchan's ships the previous year, was chosen to lead the overland party. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Coppermine Expedition of 1819–22」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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