An engagement with the French squadron occurred in February, 1804, at which young Franklin rendered valuable service as signal midshipman. On his return to England he was assigned to the _Bellerophon_. At the battle of Trafalgar, he gallantly stood on the poop, with the dead and dying falling beside him, attending to the signals, with a coolness and accuracy that won him the unstinted admiration of his comrades. For the next two years he served under Admirals Cornwallis, St. Vincent, and Stratham; then for six years in the _Bedford_. In the disastrous attack upon New Orleans, Franklin commanded the boats in a fight with the enemy’s gunboats; he captured one of them and suffered a slight wound in the shoulder in a hand-to-hand encounter. [Illustration: JOHN FRANKLIN] He was promoted to first lieutenant for gallant service and assigned to the _Forth_, which, after the abdication of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons, conveyed the Duchess d’Angouleme back to France. [Sidenote: _SIR JOHN FRANKLIN_] It is not surprising that after such a varied and distinguished career, Franklin should be one of the first to enter with whole-souled enthusiasm into the renewed interest shown by England in Arctic discovery and exploration. Of the Buchan expedition in which Franklin was second in command, we already know the history. The succeeding expeditions, though spoken of as failures in their main object, won for him a renown quite unique in Arctic honours, and the last, so tragically fatal in its results, did more, through the numberless searching parties sent out to discover news of the missing ships, to extend the world’s scientific knowledge and geographical accuracy of Arctic America, than could possibly have been accomplished had the expedition been a success. Before taking up in detail the journeys of Sir John Franklin, it might be well to make note of a side-light in his remarkable character. To this man a career meant the paramount ambition of life, a passion stronger than the love of woman, of family, of home or physical comforts. After the return of the Buchan and Franklin expedition, the gentle poetess, Anne Porden, who had written “Viels, or Triumph of Constancy,” the “Cœur de Lion,” and a short poem on the Arctic expedition just returned, visited the _Trent_ and met the gallant John Franklin in the full blush of his youthful manhood. He fell in love, and upon his return from his first land expedition, in 1823, they were married, but with the distinct understanding that sweet Anne should “never, under any circumstances, seek to turn her husband aside from the duty he owed his country and his career.” And she kept her word, but at what sacrifice!