Case file · Official inquiry
Charles Francis Hall's Inuit interviews
In 1869 the American Charles Francis Hall reached King William Island and recorded detailed Inuit testimony about Franklin's men, including stories of survivors seen long after 1848 and of a ship found with a dead 'big man' aboard.
1869 CE · 68.90, -97.80 · status: account
The account
Hall spent years living with Inuit and wrote down hundreds of pages of oral history. Researchers such as David Woodman and Inuit historian Louie Kamookak used these accounts to search for the ships.
The sceptical view
Some details are hard to place in time, but the overall reliability of the Inuit accounts has been borne out by the finding of both ships.
Connections in the atlas
- Charles Francis Hall's death on the Polaris
- John Rae and the Inuit testimony
- Franklin's lost expedition
- Sammy Kogvik and the wreck of HMS Terror