Читать книгу Arctic Searching Expedition (Sir John Richardson) - comprehensive & illustrated - (Literary Thoughts Edition) онлайн

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After deliberately weighing these and other suggestions, and fully considering the numerous plans submitted to them, the Admiralty determined that, if no intelligence of the missing ships arrived by the close of autumn, 1847, they would send out three several searching expeditions—one to Lancaster Sound, another down the Mackenzie River, and the third to Beering's Straits.

The object of the first, and the most important of the three, was to follow up the route supposed to have been pursued by Sir John Franklin; and, by searching diligently for any signal-posts he might have erected, to trace him out, and carry the required relief to his exhausted crews. Sir James Clark Ross was appointed to the command of this expedition, consisting of the "Enterprise" and "Investigator;" and, as his plan of proceeding bears upon my own instructions, I give it at length:—

"As vessels destined to follow the track of the expedition must necessarily encounter the same difficulties, and be liable to the same severe pressure from the great body of the ice they must pass through in their way to Lancaster Sound, it is desirable that two ships, of not less than 500 tons, be purchased for this service, and fortified and equipped, in every respect as were the 'Erebus' and 'Terror,' for the Antarctic Seas.