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After leaving Pitcairn, Beechey visited Crescent, Gambier, Hood, Clermont, Tonnerre, Serles, Whitsunday, Queen-Charlotte, Tehaï, and the Lancer Islands, all in the Pomautou group, and an islet to which he gave the name of Byam-Martin. Here the explorer met a native named Ton-Wari, who had been shipwrecked in a storm.
To these were now added a squadron under Captain Sir Edward Belcher consisting of the Assistance with a steam tender named the Pioneer, the Resolute with its tender the Intrepid, and the North Star. Stations were to be made at Beechey Island and at two other points in the region now indicated as the scene of Sir John Franklin's operations.
Well indeed may Englishmen be proud of men such as Ross, Parry, Clavering, Lyon, Beechey, and Franklin, and of others who have in still later days exhibited their dauntless courage and perseverance in the same cause Collinson, McClure, McClintock, Sherard Osborn, Forsyth, and many more.
Nine years later Sir William Beechey, born at Burford in Oxfordshire in 1753, died in London at the age of eighty-six.
At this spot the coast is made of yellowish limestone, presenting a very rugged outline; it is defended by enormous icebergs which the north winds pile up there in a most imposing way. It was soon lost to sight by the Forward as she opened a passage amongst the ice to get to Beechey Island through Barrow Strait.
But if the Government seemed to have lost all hope it was not so with Lady Franklin, and with the remnants of her fortune she fitted out the Fox, commanded by McClintock, who set sail in 1857, and wintered in the quarters where you made your apparition; he reached Beechey Island on the 11th of August, 1858, wintered a second time in Bellot's Strait, began his search again in February, 1859, and on the 6th of May found the document which cleared away all doubt about the fate of the Erebus and the Terror, and returned to England at the end of the year.
Anxious moments those "After that day's experience I can understand how men's hair has turned grey in a few hours," says Captain McClintock. Touching at the Danish settlements to refit, and at Pond's Bay, the little Fox, narrowly escaping destruction, at length reached Beechey Island on the 11th of August.
Captain Beechey of the Royal Navy relates that in one of his voyages in the Pacific he picked up a canoe filled with natives from Tahiti who had been driven by a gale of westerly wind six hundred miles from their own island. It has happened, too, from time to time, since the discovery of America, that ships have been forcibly carried all the way across the Atlantic.
It was plain that the food supply of the Erebus and the Terror must have been seriously depleted, and the dangers of starvation have set in long before three years were completed. Three graves were found on Beechey Island with head-boards marking the names and ages of three men of the crew who had died in the winter. Near a cape of the island was a cairn built of stone.
There were unequivocal proofs that the missing ships had spent their first winter in the immediate vicinity of Beechey Island. A finger-post was picked up, which we at once supposed had been made use of to direct parties to the ships during winter, if they should happen to have lost their way in a snowstorm.
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