Graham Gore
Graham Gore (c. 1809 – between 28 May 1847 and 25 April 1848) was an English officer of the Royal Navy and polar explorer who participated in two expeditions to the Arctic and a survey of the coastline of Australia aboard HMS Beagle.
While there were concerns that the boy was too young[2] permission was granted for him to join his father and older brother John Gore (1807–1830) as a volunteer on board Dotterel.
[citation needed] Graham Gore was an accomplished artist and a keen shot and huntsman, both skills he was to put to good use during his naval career.
She nearly sank on her return journey across the Atlantic,[5] and was in a sinking condition by the time Back was able to beach the ship on the coast of Ireland on 21 September.
Gore was an accomplished artist; his painting of Burial Reach and Flinders River made during the voyage is held by the National Library of Australia.
Captain Stokes reported that Gore, "my much-valued friend...nearly blew off his own hand whilst shooting" and ended up "stretched at his length at the bottom of the boat".
Stunned but fortunately with only a minor injury to his hand, Gore could only quietly remark, "Killed the bird..." This comment Stokes described as "an expression truly characteristic of a sportsman".
[14] At the Whalefish Islands in Disko Bay, on the west coast of Greenland, 10 oxen carried on Baretto Junior were slaughtered for fresh meat which was transferred to Erebus and Terror.
[15] Gore sent Lady Jane Franklin a watercolour and pen sketch of the Erebus being towed into Disko Bay by the tug Blazer on 31 May 1845.
After travelling down Peel Sound through the summer of 1846, Terror and Erebus became trapped in ice off King William Island in September 1846 and are thought never to have sailed again.
[10][20] In May 1847, Franklin sent Lieutenant Gore, First Mate Charles Frederick Des Voeux and six sailors on a landing party to explore the west side of King William Island.
The party of eight men left the ships on 24 May and after trekking for four days reached their first objective, Sir James Ross' Cairn at Victory Point.
The next day the men reached their second objective at Gore Point, but as there was no cairn at this location they built one and left another note inside before exploring further south following which they returned to the ships.
[21] The Victory Point Note left by Gore was retrieved from its cairn on 25 April 1848 and a second part added before being signed by Fitzjames and Crozier.
Gore[13] and 7 other officers and 15 men had also died before the remaining crew had abandoned their ships[10] and planned to walk over the island and across the sea ice towards the Back River on the Canadian mainland, beginning on 26 April 1848.
[22] From archeological finds, it is believed that all of the remaining crew died on the subsequent 400 km long march[22] to Back River, most on the island.
Thirty or forty men reached the northern coast of the mainland before dying, still hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of Western civilization.
It contains the only surviving information we have concerning the fate of Gore and the rest of the crew and consists of two parts written on a pre-printed Admiralty form.
[17] As stated earlier, in 1834 Sarah and John Gore, together with their three daughters, Ann, Eliza and Charlotte and their youngest son, Edward, moved to Australia, where they firstly lived at Parramatta near Sydney.
Inscribed 'To the great arctic navigator and his brave companions who sacrificed their lives in completing the discovery of the North West Passage.
[27] Gore appears as a character in the 2007 novel, The Terror by Dan Simmons, a fictionalized account of Franklin's lost expedition, as well as the 2018 television adaptation, where he is played by Tom Weston-Jones.
