# Rae 1854: Report to the Secretary of the Admiralty and the Hudson's Bay Company on the fate of the Franklin expedition

> John Rae, 1854. 1 records on Mysteries Department cite it. The first published account of the expedition's end and the first claim of cannibalism.

Source: https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0D59JR1C6RJR/report-to-the-secretary-of-the-admiralty-and-the-hudsons-bay  
Publisher: Mysteries Department  
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (credit Mysteries Department and link the page)  

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[Sources](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources)[Franklin expedition (HMS Erebus and HMS Terror)](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/franklin-expedition)Rae 1854

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# Report to the Secretary of the Admiralty and the Hudson's Bay Company on the fate of the Franklin expedition

John Rae, 1854. _Further Papers Relative to the Recent Arctic Expeditions in Search of Sir John Franklin (House of Commons Sessional Papers, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1855), 835–844; text on Canadian Mysteries_.

Rae's report, written at York Factory on 1 September 1854, of what Inuit told him in 1854: that a party of about forty white men had died of starvation west of a large river, and that "from the mutilated state of many of the bodies, and the contents of the kettles" they had been driven to cannibalism.

**Franklin expedition (HMS Erebus and HMS Terror)** **Primary source** LetterChecked against the original0

## What it's used for here

The first published account of the expedition's end and the first claim of cannibalism.

## Cited by on this site 1 record

[The Franklin expedition (HMS Erebus and HMS Terror)](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/franklin-expedition)

The mystery article

MYS

## Cite it

```
Rae, J. (1854). Report to the Secretary of the Admiralty and the Hudson's Bay Company on the fate of the Franklin expedition. Further Papers Relative to the Recent Arctic Expeditions in Search of Sir John Franklin (House of Commons Sessional Papers, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1855), 835–844; text on Canadian Mysteries. https://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/franklin/archive/text/RaeProceedings1854_en.htm
```

[Read it free at canadianmysteries.ca](https://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/franklin/archive/text/RaeProceedings1854_en.htm)

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**SRC** 0D59JR1C6RJR

Kind

Letter

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public-domain

Kept

29 Oct 2026

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