十八世紀北極探險沉船重見天日

Two weeks ago, as Americans were preoccupied playing Groundhog War in Iraq, a significant discovery was announced in Canada. Yes, yes, of course this is an accepted ground for joking—“Worthwhile Canadian Initiative Yields Results” being the world’s most boring headline, and so on—but in this case the initiative in question really was worthwhile, at least to anyone with an appreciation for Victorian mystery, the winter sublime, and the far north. What had taken place was the discovery, intact and underwater, of one of the two ships of the Franklin expedition, the British naval voyage that went out in search of the Northwest Passage, in 1845, got stranded in the Arctic ice, and was never seen again. (There’s a good, ghostly video of the wreck here.)

The finding of the Franklin ship—there were two, the H.M.S. Erebus and the H.M.S. Terror; no one is yet sure which has been spotted down there—is, for Canadians, a very big deal (“Canada’s Moon Shot,” the Toronto Star called it), since the Franklin expedition has long provided the single most eventful mythological moment in Canada’s admittedly not-exactly-limitlessly mythologized history. Margaret Atwood, in her essay “Concerning Franklin and His Gallant Crew,” from 1991, identifies it as a kind of origin myth of disaster in the Canadian experience. To translate it from Canadian into American terms, it is as if someone had found, in a single moment, the hull of the Titanic, the solution to the mystery of the lost colony at Roanoke, the original flag of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the menu for the Donner Party’s last meal.

The basic outlines of what happened to Franklin and his crew after they foundered in the Victoria Strait had long been surmised from various kinds of evidence, chiefly the testimony of the local Inuit people, who, in 1854, told an explorer named John Rae of a group of around thirty-five Europeans who had died of starvation while struggling south. Graves and other remains of the Franklin crew also turned up on two Arctic islands, and have over the years been subject to scientific examination, revealing, or seeming to, that the men of the expedition had already been self-poisoned by badly tinned food. But the details of what had happened remained murky, at times horrifying, and often bowdlerized. One of the significant things about the Franklin expedition, as I wrote in my book “Winter,” is that, though the voyage was a failure, the relentless search for its relics gave polar exploration the existential accents that it would keep well into the time of Scott and Shackleton. Every expedition that went out in search of Franklin, through the next decades, threatened itself to become lost, and sometimes did. It was a form of throwing good explorers after bad. The search for Franklin became far more significant than Franklin, leading to much newly mapped territory and many frozen English faces.

One of the spark plugs of the discovery of Franklin’s boat was the Canadian philanthropist and Arctic lover Jim Balsillie, who, working closely with the scientists of Parks Canada, the Prime Minister’s office, and the Royal Canadian Navy made it possible to build a “platform”—a big and hardy ship, called the Martin Bergmann, in honor of a colleague killed in a plane crash, in 2011—which could be used as a kind of floating home base for the dedicated and frequently chilly searchers. Balsillie, who made his fortune as one of the founders of Research in Motion, the firm that gave the world the BlackBerry, now devotes himself to an array of good and sometimes quixotic causes. (A friend of mine, he was also our own Malcolm Gladwell’s roommate at Trinity College, in Toronto; Canada can be a very small nation.) “I’d like to pretend we had a prescient and beautiful plan,” he said the other afternoon from Toronto. “In truth, it was all improvisation and a bit of luck. It’s mostly just doggedness that counts when you’re dragging sonar equipment across the ocean floor. I call it mowing the lawn, and the questions are mostly who has a bigger mower and who mows longer.

“There were two areas we planned on searching, one northern and one more southern, and we were hoping to do the northern search first. But there was more ice there than there had been in twenty years, so we had to look south. It was like, you know, the old joke about the drunk looking for his car keys outside, even though he lost them inside, because the light is better there. But, in this case, that’s where the car keys were.”

During that southern search, a helicopter pilot named Andrew Stirling, working under the guidance of the archaeologist Doug Stenton, began a “walk survey” of a previously unsurveyed island. “And that’s where they found it: a davit,” Balsillie said—a pulley system for deploying lifeboats. “So anyway, they looked at it and—a heart-stopping moment this was—it had the little arrows of the Royal Navy on it. So they said, ‘Let’s get over to this island and start searching right now.’ They redeployed within hours and—well, they found it.

“The basic take is that it is pretty clear now. These guys [the Franklin crew] went down Victoria Strait, they got stuck—irrefutably, I think—in the most forbidding, awful part of the Arctic, where the ice pushes down—they just got stuck in the ice. They got stuck really bad. And then what happened was that they were voyaging from Victoria Island, and they came back to the vessel and the ice broke and they actually sailed again, for a while. I think the ice broke and they sailed it down, and then they were moving around and they got close to shoals. And they said, ‘Let’s leave the ship and see if we can catch a Hudson’s Bay [trading] post.’ I think that’s what happened. Where they were sailing there’s incredible potential for near misses in shoals—the Bergmann was mowing the lawn in forty metres of water. The boat must have been caught up and stuck, or near stuck, and they found the best place they could to land. And they started walking.” Balsillie explained that these new findings made sense of many other puzzling details in the pieced-together accounts—including Inuit lore of a “ghost ship” seen sailing south, presumably the relaunched Franklin vessel.

Part of the mythology of the Franklin expedition—the Donner Party bit—involves their apparent descent into cannibalism. “From the mutilated state of many of the corpses, and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource—cannibalism—as a means of prolonging existence,” John Rae reported—a conclusion which for some reason infuriated the great Charles Dickens, who collaborated with his friend Wilkie Collins on a Franklin-themed play, “The Frozen Deep,” and fixed some of the responsibility on the guiltless Inuit themselves. “We have yet to learn what knowledge the white man—lost, houseless, shipless, apparently forgotten by his race, plainly famine-stricken, weak, frozen, helpless, and dying—has of the gentleness of the Esquimaux nature,” Dickens wrote.

“I think the cannibalism stories are irrefutable,” Balsillie said. “The way they hacked up fingers, and the marks on the different bones [among the discovered remains], and how the bones were scattered. So, using Rae’s testimony and the forensics, one can’t mount a credible case that there was not cannibalism.” Another famous Franklin-inspired image of the Victorian period was Edwin Henry Landseer’s astonishing painting “Man Proposes, God Disposes,” which shows man proposing in the form of a shipwreck, and God, or Nature, disposing in the form of two rather vulpine polar bears feasting on a human rib cage and the remains of a mast. “It always had to be someone else doing the eating,” Balsillie said. “British gentlemen in service to Queen and country don’t eat each other. Eskimos and polar bears do.”

No one is certain whether the ship found and photographed is the Terror or the Erebus. If it is the Terror, as many suspect, it would give the story a peculiarly American and ironic angle—for, in a turn that would stump even a historical novelist, the Terror was one of the ships that bombarded Baltimore on that famous night when, in the dawn’s early light, despite the rockets and bombs, our flag, if nothing else, was still there. Survival, it is often said, is the key trope of Canadian prose, and so the discovery would once again link Canadian and American history—with the Americans triumphing, sort of, and singing loudly about it, while the Canadian boat (or at least a British ship, adapted by soul rights into Canadian myth) simply survived, deep and frozen, all these years.

On the other hand, by far the most memorable of the many recyclings of the Franklin mythology in Canadian literature occurs in what many regard as the closest thing there is to the Great Canadian Novel, Mordecai Richler’s “Solomon Gursky Was Here.” In it, Ephraim Gursky, a Jewish mischief-maker escaped from London, slips aboard the Franklin expedition—and, while the honest Britishers languish with their lead-poisoned tinned rations, he and his friend Izzy fatten up on a diet of kasha and schmaltz herring, surviving to pass on their faith, and a smattering of Yiddish, to a select community of Inuit. So far, at least, no trace of the Gurskys, their herring, or the Yiddish-speaking Inuit has been found.兩週以前，美國人正忙着空襲伊拉克玩“打地鼠”的時候，一個重大的發現在加拿大宣佈。當然，這是句玩笑話。“意義非凡的加拿大倡議有了重大發現”等等是史上最無聊的頭條了。但是，這個備受質疑的倡議確實有意義，至少對癡迷維多利亞時代未解之謎、冬季壯麗景色以及北極探險故事的人來說，此次發現非比尋常。在1845年，英國皇家海軍遠征隊派出富蘭克林遠征隊探索西北航線（Northwest Passage）。遠征隊的兩隻探險船後來受困在北極冰層中，從此以後就消蹤匿跡。加拿大在水下發現了兩隻探險船的其中一隻，船身基本保存完好。

富蘭克林遠征隊出發時有兩艘探險船，分別是“恐怖號”（the us ）和“黑暗號”（ the H.M.S. Terror），後均失蹤。現在尚未確定探測到了哪一艘，但無論怎樣，這對加拿大人來說都是一件大事。（《多倫多星報》（Toronto Star）稱其相當於‘加拿大登月’），因爲富蘭克林遠征隊在加拿大那公認的“並非擁有很多未解之謎”的歷史上是最神祕的謎團了。1991年，瑪格瑞特·艾特伍德（Margaret Atwood）在她名爲《關於富蘭克林和他英勇的船員們》（Concerning Franklin and His Gallant Crew）的論文中把這當做是加拿大人歷史上神祕災難的故事的起源。富蘭克林船隊失蹤之謎是加拿大版的“泰坦尼克號事件”，這次發現就像某人在某一時刻發現了泰坦尼克號的船身，揭開了羅諾克（Rpample）部落神祕失蹤之謎、找到了最初的那一面星條旗，或者是揭曉了“當納聚會”最後一餐一樣。（Donner Party，即在美國曆史上爆發一次到西部淘金的移民大潮中，人們前往加利福尼亞的又一次長途跋涉之旅，也是慘烈的“死亡之旅”。譯註）

1854年，維多利亞海峽（Victoria Strait）當地的因紐特人告知一個名叫約翰·雷（John Rae）的探險者有關富蘭克林遠征隊的事故。當時約翰所在的返南探險隊有35人左右，飽受飢餓困擾，生命垂危。此外，再加上各種各樣的證據，富蘭克林遠征隊全軍覆沒悲劇的真相逐漸浮出水面。人們在北極兩個海島上發現了富蘭克林船員的墓和遺骸，並用了多年時間對其進行仔細研究。研究結果表明，或是可能表明了，遠征隊隊員們因爲罐裝食品嚴重地鉛中毒了。但具體發生了什麼尚未可知，有時一些研究結果得出的細節駭人聽聞、有傷風化。我在我的書《冬》(Winter)中曾寫過，有關此事最重要的一點是雖然探險失敗了，但是人們仍然不斷地派出搜尋隊，讓極地探險迎來了斯科特和薩克裏頓（Scott and Shackleton，極地探險家，譯註）的時代。在富蘭克林探險隊失蹤之後的幾十年裏，每一支搜尋艦隊都曾面臨過迷路的危險，有的最後不幸失蹤。這就可以說是派出優秀的探險家去搜尋失敗的探險家。富蘭克林遠征隊搜尋之旅比富蘭克林遠征隊本身要重要的多，由於前者，英國繪製了很多新航海圖，也有很多英國人也因此命喪北極。

此次富蘭克林沉船探索活動是由加拿大慈善家、北極愛好者吉姆·巴爾斯列（Jim Balsillie）等人發起。他本人也和加拿大公園的科學家、總理辦公室以及加拿大皇家海軍（the Royal Canadian Navy）一起合作，建立了一個“平臺”——一艘巨大而堅固的船，爲紀念在2011年遭遇空難的同事而名爲“馬丁·博格曼號”（Martin Bergmann）——作爲那些在寒冷的環境中專注工作的搜尋人員漂流根據地。巴爾斯列靠創立Research in Motion公司發家——黑莓公司的前身。他現在投身於衆多的慈善事業，有時甚至有點兒堂吉訶德的味道。（我有一個朋友也是馬爾科姆·格拉德維爾在多倫多三一學院的大學舍友，加拿大真是小國家）“我本想假裝我們原本就有一個有預見性的、完美的計劃，”一天下午他在多倫多說道。“但實際上，一切都是碰巧有點運氣罷了。當你拖着聲納在海牀上搜尋時，你得有一股倔勁。我把這過程稱爲‘修理草坪’，問題就在於誰的割草機要大一些、誰割得久一些罷了。”

“我們原計劃搜查兩個區域，一個在北邊，一個更靠南一些，我們本想先搜北邊，但20年來那個區域的冰都比南邊的要多，所以我們還是先在南邊搜尋。這就像以前一個笑話裏說的酒鬼那樣，他在車裏丟了鑰匙，但是他卻到車外去找，因爲車外有燈，好找一些。但我們這次，鑰匙就在車外。”

南面搜索過程中，一位名叫安德魯·斯圖靈（AndrewStirling）的飛行員和在考古學家鐸格·司登頓（Doug Stenton）的指導下工作，開始“巡察”一個以前沒有研究過的海島。“他們就是在那裏找到了一個吊艇架，”巴爾斯列說道。吊艇架是一個下放救生艇的滑輪裝置。“因此他們仔細看了看，接着——一個驚心動魄的時刻到了——吊艇架上有一些標有皇家海軍標記的小型箭狀物。他們就說：‘我們馬上到這個島上去搜吧。’他們在數小時內有重新部署——然後他們就找到了。

“悲劇發生的基本過程基本清楚明瞭了。這些人（即富蘭克林的船員們）到了維多利亞海峽，然後他們困住了——我認爲，這是毫無疑問的——在北極最危險、糟糕的地方，冰緊逼而來——他們就被困在冰層裏面。他們完全無法脫身，然後，他們本是從維多利亞島航海過來，後來他們回到船上時，冰化了，他們又開始航行了，不過走得不遠。我認爲冰破之後他們繼續北航，接着他們靠近淺灘四處在轉。然後他們說，‘我們下船吧，看能不能搭上哈德遜灣(Hudson's Bay)郵船。’我認爲這就是事情的經過。他們後來航遊的地方觸礁的可能性很大——博格曼號在40米深的地方探測。他們的探險船肯定被卡住了，或者是幾乎卡住了，他們找到登陸最佳地點了，然後他們開始步行。“巴爾斯列解釋說這些新發現能解釋其他很多拼湊起來的細節問題。——其中包括因紐特人口口相傳，說看見一艘“幽靈船”往南行駛，應該就是重新起航的富蘭克林探險船了。

富蘭克林遠征隊失蹤之謎還有一部分和當納聚會相似——那些船員顯然被逼到了自相殘殺食用的地步。“從屍體上凹凸不平的表面以及壺裏的殘留物，我們能得知我們走投無路的同胞們不得不轉向最後的食源——自己的同伴——以求能夠活得久一些。”約翰·雷報告道——這個結論不知爲何激怒了偉大的查爾斯·狄更斯，他和他的朋友威爾吉·柯林斯以此案爲原型寫了一部劇：《冰淵》（The Frozen Deep），然後強行把一些罪名安在無辜地因紐特人身上。“我們從未聽說過白種人有食人的天性，即使這些白人面臨着迷路、無家可歸、無船可行、被同族遺忘、飢寒交迫、虛弱無助、和死亡的情況，我們也從未聽說過。”狄更斯寫道。

“我認爲那過程中食人的情節是無可否認的，”巴爾斯列說道。“他們撕開手指的方式以及不同人骨上（以前發現的遺骸）的痕跡，以及骨頭散佈的方式都說明了這一點。因此，憑藉雷的證詞以及辯論術，沒人能證明食人事件沒有發生。”另一個受富蘭克林事件啓發的維多利亞時期的圖畫是埃德溫·亨利·蘭西爾（Edwin Henry Landseer）令人驚奇的畫作《謀事在人，成事在天》（Man Proposes, God Disposes），畫中一個男人被畫作船的殘骸樣，而上帝或者是大自然，被畫作兩隻狡猾的北極熊正在啃食一個人類的胸腔以及一根殘敗的桅杆。“他們認爲，不管怎樣，吃人的總是其他種族的人或動物，”巴爾斯列說道。“效忠女王和大英帝國的英國紳士是不會食人的。只有愛斯基摩人和北極熊才吃人。”

尚未能確定找到並已拍攝的船是“恐怖號”還是“黑暗號”。但若如很多人猜想的那樣是“恐怖號”，整個故事就會可以和美國掛上鉤，並極具諷刺意味——因爲劇情反轉得太厲害了：在1814年9月12日，英國海軍曾通宵炮擊美國巴爾的摩（Blatimore），然而在黎明將至時，美國國旗依然飄揚在巴爾的摩的上空。人們常說倖存是加拿大散文的主要修辭手法，那麼此次發現再次將加美兩國的歷史聯繫在一起——兩者相比，美國勝出，並且還大聲地一直唱了下去（美國人弗蘭西斯·斯考特基（Francis ScottKey）目睹了英國海軍對巴爾的摩的Fort McHenry的炮擊後寫下了後來稱爲美國國歌的《星條旗永不落》（The Star-Spangled Banner），譯註），而這艘加拿大船（至少也是英國船，永遠地沉入到了加拿大謎海中），就這樣在海底百年來冰凍着，倖存了下來。

另一方面，在加拿大文學界中不斷重現富蘭克林未解之謎的文學作品中，最值得紀念，也是最貼近事實的是偉大的加拿大小說，由摩德卡·瑞馳勒（Mordecai Richler）撰寫的《所羅門·古爾斯基在這裏》（“Solomon Gursky Was Here.”）。文中的艾福瑞·古爾斯基，一名從倫敦逃出的愛搬弄是非的猶太人偷偷登上了富蘭克林遠征隊船上——當誠實的英國人不情願地吃着含鉛量高的罐裝口糧時，他和他的朋友伊茲樂滋滋地吃着蕎麥粥和液油鯡魚。他們最後活了下來，並且把他們的信仰和一些意地緒語傳給了一些因紐特人。但是，到目前爲止，人們還沒有發現古爾斯基、鯡魚或者是說着意地緒語的因紐特人的痕跡。