John Franklin's Influence On Society

John Franklin was England’s epitome of a great explorer. His first two voyages to discover the Northwest Passage, the first from 1819-22 and the second from 1825-7, made Franklin a national hero. However, Franklin’s fateful third voyage resulted in his disappearance and consequent search for one of England’s great explorers. Franklin was famously known for his fortitude when he encountered obstacles throughout his first two explorations; when he and his crew ran out of food supplies, which was a result of poor planning, Franklin ordered them to eat their leather shoes for sustenance. When Franklin returned to England after each voyage he was greeted with fame and recognition as a great explorer. Despite Franklin’s great fame, he made a myriad mistakes before and during his third voyage that resulted in failure. Primarily, the untested new steam ships, Franklin’s negative attitude towards the …show more content…
After the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, and the massive growth of its navy, England was one of the greatest powers in the world. After defeating Napoleon, the British Navy embarked in a new direction, to “map the world and fill in the blank spaces to expand the British Empire and influence through colonialism” (Mark Deets, Lecture on 6/29/15). The prestige of being a member of the elite British Navy enticed Franklin, while creating some personal hubris and arrogance, and inspired him to search for the greatest navigational discovery in the 19th century, the Northwest Passage. Franklin’s expeditions to find the Northwest Passage labeled him as a “national hero” (Brandt, 300), and although Franklin was originally, “forthright, honorable, [and] old school” (Brandt, 300), the intense desire to discover the Northwest Passage eventually consumed him and led to poor leadership and a multitude of mistakes which resulted in catastrophic failure and Franklin’s