In the hope of finding the North-West Passage, so much coveted and so long concealed, Franklin was instructed to try a route by Wellington Channel, if ice did not block the way. The channel was found to be clear, and the explorers made their way up it, until they reached 77° N. Then their advance was blocked by ice, and they turned south and found winter quarters off Beechey Island. All, so far, had gone well, and when the ships were released from the ice at the end of the winter, hopes of further success must have run high. But presently a mistake was made that had fatal results--a mistake due to an error of the chart-makers. For some time the ships sailed gaily on, important discoveries being made from day to day. Then came the fatal decision. All was open to the south. "If they had continued on their southerly course, the two ships would have reached Bering Strait. There was the navigable passage before them. But, alas! the chart-makers had drawn an isthmus (which only existed in their imagination) connecting Boothia with King William Land. They altered their course to the west, and were lost."* Soon the ships were surrounded by a dense ice-pack, and were dangerously imprisoned. In the spring of 1847 travelling parties were sent out, and one of them, under Graham Gore's command, discovered a North-West Passage, and consequently proved the connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. When the parties returned Franklin was seriously ill, and he died on 11th June, 1847. * Markham's _The Lands of Silence_ (Cambridge University Press). No more beautiful epitaph has ever been written than the one in Westminster Abbey, which Tennyson wrote in honour of John Franklin, his uncle-in-law:-- "Not here! The cold North hath thy bones, and thou, Heroic sailor soul, Art passing on thy happier voyage now Towards no earthly pole." A terrible winter for this gallant band of explorers followed. For months and months the ice remained impenetrable, and at last the ships had to be abandoned. Even if the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ could have been freed from the ice, it was more than doubtful if they would float, so battered were they by their long, slow drift. Food was both inadequate in quantity and poisonous in quality. Twenty-two officers and men died during that winter of horror; the rest were so weak from privations that, although they knew their only chance was to retreat by Back's Fish River, none of them had the strength successfully to undertake such a march.