Frederick Schwatka

Arctic explorer, American army lieutenant

• Born: September 29, 1849
• Place of Birth: Galena, Illinois
• Died: November 2, 1892
• Place of Death: Portland, Oregon

Education: Willamette University; United States Military Academy at West Point; Bellevue Medical College

Significance: The son of European immigrants, Frederick Schwatka earned degrees in law and medicine and served in the United States military. He was one of many explorers who set out to find the infamous and ill-fated expedition of Sir John Franklin. He also explored and mapped the area around the Yukon River and named many of the mountains, lakes, and other geographical features in the Canadian region.

Background

Frederick Schwatka was born on September 29, 1849, in Galena, Illinois. His parents, Frederick Gustavus Schwatka and Amelia Hukill Schwatka, were European immigrants. Schwatka was apprenticed to a printer but also attended Willamette University. He obtained an appointment to the US Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated in 1871.

After graduation, Schwatka was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Third Cavalry unit. He spent about half a dozen years with the cavalry and took an active part in battles at Tongue River, Rosebud, and Slim Buttes, all in 1876. While maintaining his rank and status in the military, Schwatka also studied law and medicine. He was admitted to the Nebraska bar in 1875 and earned his medical degree in 1876 from Bellevue Medical College.

Life's Work

Schwatka was still in his teens when he read news accounts of the missing Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin. Franklin was an officer in the English navy who led a crew of 134 men on two ships attempting to find a Northwest sea passage across the top of North America in 1845. Franklin's expedition never returned, and after his widow posted a reward for information about his fate, dozens of explorers set off to find out what happened to Franklin and the crew. The stories about Franklin intrigued Schwatka, particularly those of the expeditions led by Charles Francis Hall, who worked with native Inuit guides in conducting his expeditions.

In 1876, a whaling captain came back from a trip to the Arctic with a spoon that had Franklin's crest. He related a story heard from the local people about a man who appeared in their village telling them that there were many papers related to a voyage resting in a cairn, or pile of stones, near King William Island. The idea that there might be records from Franklin's expedition aroused great interest from officials. They thought they might hold the answers about the crew's fate and the scientific information they may have gathered during their trek. The American Geographical Society arranged for private funding for an effort to find and retrieve the documents, and Schwatka volunteered to serve as its leader.

Unlike most previous expeditions, which relied on ships to get through the icy waters of the Arctic and made the attempts extremely dependent on the weather, Schwatka and his group of five others planned to explore using dog sleds. When he left New York on June 19, 1878, aboard a schooner named Eothen,Schwatka took with him the science reporter from the New York Heraldand "Eskimo Joe" Ebierbing, a native Inuit guide who spent time in both England and America and spoke passable English. Ebierbing had accompanied Hall and others as a guide on previous Arctic expeditions.

Schwatka's expedition set up a winter camp along Canada's northern shore and traveled overland to what is now known as Wager Bay before settling in for the winter. When spring arrived, Schwatka's group and a dozen Inuit set out on dog sleds for King William Island. Their search there was futile, as they found only a copy of a document that was already known. Natives in the area told Schwatka that the documents he was seeking had been destroyed. After gathering some relics of Franklin's expedition and identifying and burying some of the dead from Franklin's crew, the group returned by sled to the base camp on March 4, 1880. Their expedition away from the camp had lasted eleven months and twenty days.

While the expedition did not achieve its primary mission of finding and retrieving Franklin's documents, it did accomplish several other things. First, the items Schwatka found, including part of one of the ships on which Franklin's crew traveled and numerous graves, convinced the world that not only was the Franklin party lost, but also that there was little of value to be recovered from his expedition. This effectively ended other searches. Second, Schwatka's mode of travel—dog sled—revealed the potential for using this sort of transportation for Arctic exploration and became a factor in several other important expeditions. Third, while he was searching for the documents, Schwatka documented and named several geographical sites in the area. This foreshadowed the next stage of his life.

After his Arctic journey, Schwatka turned his attention to exploring the Yukon Territory. He did so while effectively serving as a spy for the US Army, which wanted information on the native people of Canada and their threat potential. The Canadian government, however, did not know that Schwatka was there. On two journeys, one in 1883 and a second in 1891, Schwatka traveled overland through Canada and explored many geographic sites, all of which he named after famous and influential people, possibly as a way of gaining their favor.

In between these two Yukon trips, Schwatka attempted another Arctic foray to climb Mount St. Elias, but this effort ended in failure. Schwatka wrote articles and several books, including A Summer in Alaska. For a time, he was a popular speaker. Eventually, however, interest faded in the Arctic, and Schwatka's tours and writings became less in demand.

On November 2, 1892, Schwatka was found dead in a doorway in Portland, Oregon. The cause of death was an overdose of laudanum, a popular liquid opiate painkiller he took because of health problems.

Impact

Schwatka's legacy includes discovering and naming geographic locations in several areas of Canada. Information from his expedition ended the nearly four decades of searching for the Sir John Franklin party. Schwatka is also credited as a pioneer in the use of dog sleds instead of ships for Arctic expeditions. A book about his life, Big Wolf—The Adventurous Life of Lieutenant Frederick G. Schwatka, was published in 2023. The work by Douglas W. Wamsley was the first full-length biography of the adventurer.

Personal Life

At the time of his death in 1892, Schwatka left behind a wife, Ada Josephine Brackett Schwatka, and a daughter, Frederika, who was born in 1886.

Bibliography

"Frederick Schwatka." Hougen Group, hougengroup.com/yukon-history/yukon-nuggets/frederick-schwatka/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2017.

"Frederick Schwatka." University of Chicago, penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United‗States/Army/USMA/AOG‗Reunions/24/Frederick‗Schwatka*.html. Accessed 3 Mar. 2017.

"Frederick Schwatka (1849–1892)." University of Calgary, pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic37-3-302.pdf. Accessed 3 Mar. 2017.

Gates, Michael. "Frederick Schwatka's Forgotten Expedition." Yukon News, 25 June 2010, www.yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/frederick-schwatkas-forgotten-expedition. Accessed 3 Mar. 2017.

Lienhard, John H. "Looking for Franklin." Engines of Our Ingenuity, University of Houston, www.uh.edu/engines/epi1241.htm. Accessed 3 Mar. 2017.

Sandler, Martin W. Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage, and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship.Sterling Publishing, 2008. pp. 201–13.

Savitt, Ronald. "Frederick Schwatka and the Search for the Franklin Expedition Records 1878–1880." Polar Record, vol. 44, no. 3, July 2008, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/polar-record/article/frederick-schwatka-and-the-search-for-the-franklin-expedition-records-18781880/AEE017401946206B189814A3E2056B58. Accessed 3 Mar. 2017.

Wamsley, Douglas W. Big Wolf—The Adventurous Life of Lieutenant Frederick G. Schwatka. American History Press, 2023.