John Rae, Arctic Explorer. The Unfinished Autobiography

John Rae was a surgeon from the Orkney Islands, an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and an important nineteenth-century Arctic explorer. He is probably most famous for being the person who first found conclusive evidence concerning the tragic fate of the Franklin expedition to the North American Arctic, and he is sometimes incorrectly given credit for discovering the Northwest Passage. But perhaps Rae’s most significant achievement was simply the tremendous amount of time he spent living and working in the Arctic and the miles he covered traveling through the region. It has become something of a cliché to say that John Rae is among the most overlooked explorers of the nineteenth-century Arctic. But with a plaque at Westminster Abbey, a statue at Stromness pier on the Orkney Islands, at least two biographies, and now with the publication by the University of Alberta Press of a lavish edition of his unfinished autobiography painstakingly edited by William Barr, this is a claim that is becoming increasingly difficult to substantiate.

An uncharitable reading of John Rae’s unfinished Autobiography might be that there are reasons why this work has never before been published. Reading the book is a bit of a slog. Unlike some of his polar explorer contemporaries and near contemporaries, Rae’s talent for writing does not match his talent for exploration. There is, for example, an excess of detail that an editor working on the book with Rae would likely have cut out but that Barr leaves in (presumably out of respect for his subject and in pursuit of historical accuracy). There are a number of significant gaps in the text. An account of his 1846–1847 Arctic Expedition, for example, was published separately and so does not make it into the Autobiography. More important, perhaps, given that Rae’s fame is often associated with finding conclusive evidence concerning the fate of the Franklin expedition, his account of his life stops several days short of this pivotal moment. There is some speculation in the conclusion about why this may be the case: Barr dismisses the suggestion that this section was lost and thinks it was due to the painful memories elicited by the reception of his findings. Whatever the cause, the reader cannot help but feel a little cheated not to get Rae’s thoughts on what he found and how he was subsequently treated after reporting the news.

Critiquing an unfinished biography for what it leaves out is more than a little unfair. Readers who persevere will be rewarded by numerous insights into the character of John Rae, the history of Arctic exploration, and the nature of the Arctic environment. The editorial work of William Barr is of tremendous assistance to the assiduous reader. Not only does he provide copious endnotes and occasional comments alongside the text, but he also includes fairly extensive correspondence throughout the book to fill in some of the gaps in Rae’s own account of his life. Although these letters make what is already quite a long (and heavy) book even longer (and heavier), their inclusion serves the intended purpose. The extensive correspondence with Sir George Simpson, head of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in particular provides valuable insights into the key relationship of Rae’s career as an Arctic explorer. Rae needed a powerful patron and Simpson needed an on-the-ground leader he could trust. This created a synergy that benefited both men and the wider history of Arctic exploration.

Throughout the Autobiography Rae’s love for the Arctic and sub-Arctic landscapes of North America comes across strongly. As a passionate hunter he was well suited to a job working for the Hudson’s Bay Company and to the exploration of the Arctic that this career choice would lead to. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that barely a page of the Autobiography goes by without some comment on the availability of game or on Rae’s hunting exploits. Although this can become a little tedious, the high level of detail he provides potentially makes the book a useful source for thinking about environmental change over time. How have numbers of birds and mammals changed in different locations described by Rae? What can this tell us about wider ecosystem change? Though certainly not up to modern standards for the collection of data, historical ecologists may gain some valuable information from reading this book.

In contrast to the detailed descriptions of game and hunting, there are relatively few insights into Rae’s personal thoughts and feelings during his career as an Arctic explorer. Few strong emotions make their way into the Autobiography, and most of the narrative adopts a matter-of-fact tone. Readers looking for insights into what Rae really thought of Franklin, for example, or about the tragic fate of the Franklin expedition will come away largely disappointed. Rae does allow himself some moments of self-reflection. Summing up, for example, the “very different knowledge of birds and beasts” between himself and Sir John Richardson, one of his companions at Fort Confidence during the winter of 1848–1849, he wrote:

I as a keen sportsman could tell by long practise what a bird or quadruped was, at a great distance by its flight or peculiar movements. Sir John could not do this but when he got either to hand he could point out each marking and peculiarity which distinguished it from some other variety or species of close resemblance with an accuracy which I could not pretend to, thus indicating our separate lines of study, his being by far the more minute, intricate, and important of the two. (196)

The sense of deference that comes at the end of this comparison suggests that Rae knew his place in the social and scientific hierarchies of nineteenth-century British exploration. These hierarchies would work against him following his presentation of evidence about the Franklin expedition, especially the suspicion of cannibalism. In his conflict with the English polar establishment, it is interesting to note some interesting parallels to the later experiences of the Scottish Antarctic explorer William Speirs Bruce.

Just as Rae knew his place in the social hierarchy, he never doubted that he was at the top of the racial hierarchies of the day. His racist views were very much of the time and do not appear to have been particularly extreme. But a reader looking for evidence of the casual everyday racism that characterized the settler colonial experience in mid-nineteenth-century Canada will find plenty of evidence in the Autobiography. Before embarking on his expeditions to the High Arctic, for example, he offers a derogatory description of “two Indians” who had worked with him in the fur trading factories of the Hudson’s Bay Company. These men were members of the Wesleyan Mission, but according to Rae they used their faith as an excuse not to work on Sundays and even to “appropriate” the belongings of others. “Their idea,” Rae concluded, is “I have faith, I pray, therefore I am saved. I may now steal, lie, or be as immoral as a please—nothing can hurt me!!!” (104). Though Rae can sometimes be complimentary about the skills and attitudes of the local people, his descriptions frequently descend into fairly crude racial stereotypes. Similarly, though women are certainly not absent from the Autobiography, this is, unsurprisingly, very much a male description of what Rae perceived to be a masculine world.

John Rae’s unfinished Autobiography is not an easy book to read, and it would not surprise me if it ends up being unfinished by many of its readers. The difficulties are primarily due to the style of the writing and the fact that it is being published as a primary source without the significant editing process it would almost certainly have gone through if it had been published during Rae’s lifetime. As a consequence, the reading experience is not dissimilar to visiting a historical archive, albeit an archive that has been carefully curated by William Barr. Specialists in Arctic history will find much of interest in this volume. John Rae was clearly an extraordinary individual who made an important contribution to the history of nineteenth-century Arctic exploration and, despite his flaws, it is good to see that he is finally getting the attention that he deserves.