Arctic Exploration: Its Impact on the North

It is difficult to argue what caused the failure of Franklin’s final expedition, because we still do not know the story in its entirety. However, in contrast to the expeditions of John Rae, for example, Franklin’s was clearly missing a crucial element of exploration critical for success: indigenous aid. John Rae was a Scottish doctor who discovered where and how Franklin’s expedition ended (he also discovered the Northwest Passage, a feat for which he has wrongly gone unrecognized ever since). To be sure, Rae was something of a God among his fellow European explorers due to his superb intellect and physical prowess, but a vital part of his success as an explorer was that “his egalitarian outlook toward native peoples and his avid willingness to learn from them enabled him to develop his skills while more conventional men languished in ignorance.” For example, Rae learned how to make an igloo from the Inuit, among other survival techniques . Even though other British explorers would in time learn how to build igloos, they often refused to, citing excuses such as the difficulty ‘to get snow for the purpose’ . More importantly, it should be worth noting that Rae did not physically discover where and how the Franklin expedition ended – he relied on stories from the Inuit who had discovered it themselves. Clearly, without indigenous peoples, Arctic exploration, and by extension the Arctic itself, would not have advanced to where it is today.