Winter moves in swiftly in the Arctic, and by mid-September 1821, they’ve been marching through the snow for weeks, subsisting mostly on tripe-de-roche and singed pieces of moccasin. Back paints what is likely his last scene until November. “Tripe-de-roche in the Barrens” looks about as bleak as it sounds: a detailed greyscale of a sparse camp at the foot of a rock face, crewmembers scattered across the page trying to survive.
The rest of September and October, recorded in the journals of Back, Franklin, Hood and others, is dire. For a second time, Back sets out to find help. This time he hopes to find the revered Yellowknives Dene Chief Akaitcho to save his crewmates. Some members, including Franklin, make it to the empty fort and they now cling to their last threads of life. Nine of the 20-man crew to the coast have either gone missing, starved to death, been shot or, in at least one instance, been eaten. On November 7, Dene hunters arrive just in time; if they had been one day later, Fort Enterprise would have been silent as a grave.
Back returns home to England the following spring and writes in a letter of that fateful winter, “To tell the truth, things have taken place which must not be known.”
More than 200 years later, Back’s artwork serves as a time capsule of a place, offering glimpses of beauty amid duty, compassion through hardship and, perhaps, what could not be known.