As Explore Your Archive week draws to an end, RCSI Heritage Collections decided to look at an explorer and surgeon who has for many decades lived very quietly in the archives. But today is his day to shine!
Put your archive loving hands together for.....
David Walker!
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| David Walker (1837-1917) by Stephen Pearce (NPG 922) National Portrait Gallery, London |
David Walker was the surgeon and naturalist who accompanied Sir Francis Leopold McClintock to the Arctic on the yacht Fox in 1857, to try and locate the missing Franklin expedition. Sir John Franklin, his two ships Erebus and Terror and 129 crew had left London in the summer of 1845 to try and discover a navigable north-west passage and had not been heard of since.
After numerous unsuccessful public search expeditions, Lady Franklin decided to finance a private search expedition to uncover some evidence of what had happened to her husband and his men. She contacted McClintock, who was in Dublin on a leave from the Royal navy, and asked him to crew a tiny steam yacht, the Fox. Walker was enlisted as the ship's surgeon, naturalist and photographer. After a year of being trapped in ice off Greenland and searching King William Island and the Great Fish River, they eventually found debris and some bodies of the Franklin expedition. The written record below shows how in 1847 Franklin's men were in good spirits and still exploring the vast ice continent around them. But a year later all had changed.
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| The final Franklin communication found by McClintock's crew in May 1859, Back Bay, King William Island |
25th April 1848
H.M. ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on 22nd April, 5 leagues NNM of this, having been beset since 12th Septr 1846. The officers and crew consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F.R.M. Crozier landed here, in Lat. 69 37 42, Long 98 41.... Sir John Franklin died on 11th June 1847 and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to date 9 officers and 15 men.
James Fitzjames, Captain NMS Erebus
F.R.M Crozier, Captain and Senior offr.
and start on tomorrow 26th for Back's Fish River.
With this evidence, and more, the Fox returned to England to tell the world the fate of the last Franklin expedition. Walker was discharged from his active service on the ship by McClintock and returned to his native Belfast in 1859, a hero.
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| Photograph of Fox in the Arctic 1857-1859 |
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| Walker's certificate of character and discharge signed by McClintock after their successful search expedition Museé McCord Museum |
Walker was born in Belfast on 28th December 1837. He studied medicine at Queen's College Belfast receiving his MD in 1856 and the following year he received his Licence from RCSI at the tender age of 19. Walker didn't stay still for long after his return from the Arctic, in 1861 he was sent by the British government on botanical trips along the west coast of North America and British Columbia. He travelled across Canada before the trans-continental railway was built and settled in Portland, Oregon where he joined the US army as a medical officer in 1865.
Walker went back to the Arctic in 1877 as a medical officer with an early US Navy Arctic expedition on the Florence led by George Emory Tyson. Walker stayed as a medical officer in the US army until 1881, when he resigned and made his way to Bodie, California. He stayed in California for the next seven to eight years, returning to Portland, Oregon in 1889 where he set up a general practice. He wrote numerous papers on botany, zoology and the Arctic. He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society, the Royal Geographical Society, he was a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Zoological Society.
David Walker passed away at his daughter's house in Portland on 11 May 1917 after a life full of exploration and discovery.
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| Photograph of David Walker in 1899 by Thwaites (NPG x27212) National Portrait Gallery, London |
- Researched and written by Meadhbh Murphy