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Michel immediately claimed that Hood had taken his own life. But Richardson and Hepburn knew otherwise. They were certain that Michel had not only murdered Hood, but that when the opportunity arose he was determined to kill and cannibalize both of them.
    With Hood dead, Richardson, Hepburn, and Michel broke camp and set out hoping to find either Franklin, or Back and the Indians he had gone seeking. Richardson had no doubt as to what he had to do as soon as possible. The first time he caught Michel off guard, the doctor acted. “I determined,” he stated in his journal, “as I was thoroughly convinced of the necessity of such a dreadful act, to take the whole responsibility upon myself; immediately upon Michel coming up, I put an end to his life by shooting him through the head with a pistol.”
    Calling upon every ounce of strength they had left, Richardson and Hepburn were able, on October 29, to reach Fort Enterprise. And there were Franklin and three voyageurs. They had made it. But their joy was immediately tempered by the sight before them. “No language that I can use,” wrote Richardson, “[was] adequate to convey a just idea of the wretchedness of the abode in which we found our commanding officer [and the others]. The hollow and sepulchral sound of their voices, produced nearly as great horror in us, as our emaciated appearance did on them.” Franklin and the others were indeed close to death. Two days later one of the voyageurs passed away. But on November 7, just as all hope was fading, an advance party of Indians sent ahead by Back arrived with lifesaving supplies. Back had once again saved the day.
    â€œLieut. Back, Dr. Richardson, John Hepburn … and I returned to York Factory on the 14 July,” Franklin wrote. “Thus terminated our long fatiguing and disastrous travels in North America, having journeyed by water and land (including our navigation of the Polar Sea) 5,550 miles.”
    IT HAD BEEN A JOURNEY WITHOUT PRECEDENT. And there had been some significant achievements. More than five thousand miles of uncharted wilderness had been crossed. Five hundred miles of unexplored Arctic Coast had been mapped. Back, at least, believed that the expedition had proved that finding the passage was possible. But Ross and Parry had already done that. What had been proven was that it was possible to survive in even the Arctic’s most harrowing conditions.
    Yet it had also been an unmitigated disaster. Eleven men had died. Two had been murdered. Although it would never be discussed in Victorian England, there had unquestionably been cannibalism. Ironically, Franklin, the architect of many of these disasters, returned home to fame and promotion. His published journal became an instant best-seller. The problems that his leadership had caused were almost completely ignored. He had become a hero simply by surviving. He was, after all, the man who had eaten his boots.

CHAPTER 4.
The Indomitable Parry
    â€œHow I long to be among the ice.”
— EDWARD PARRY
    J OHN BARROW had spent sleepless nights deciding who should lead the overland expedition into the Canadian Arctic. He had no such problem choosing the man who would make the next attempt at finding the Northwest Passage. Barrow was convinced that if Edward Parry rather than John Ross had been in charge of the passage-seeking expedition they had conducted just one year earlier, there would have been no turning back because of imaginary mountains, and the prize would have been gained. While Parry had been as circumspect as he could in criticizing John Ross’s behavior during their aborted search, he and Barrow were in total agreement that, as Parry would state, “Attempts at Polar discovery had been hitherto relinquished at a time when there was the greatest chance of succeeding.”
    Parry set out just days after Franklin had left on his expedition, reached the Davis Strait on June 28, 1819, and proceeded on to