Richard King (traveller)

Richard King (1811?-1876) was a British naval surgeon and Arctic traveller, best known for his controversial theories regarding the fate of the Franklin Expedition.

Born around 1811, King served as a surgeon in the Royal Navy. He is primarily remembered for his association with the search for Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to find the Northwest Passage. In the aftermath of the expedition's disappearance in 1845, King proposed a theory, based on his own experiences travelling among Indigenous peoples in North America, that the Franklin crew had perished not from scurvy and starvation alone, but also due to a refusal to learn survival techniques from the local Inuit. He argued that the Inuit were a valuable source of knowledge about the Arctic environment and that the British explorers' failure to engage with them contributed to their demise.

King presented his views forcefully and persistently to the British Admiralty and the public. He believed that a properly equipped search party, guided by Inuit knowledge, could locate the Franklin survivors or at least determine their fate. He offered his own services to lead such an expedition, but his proposals were repeatedly rejected.

His theories were initially dismissed by many in Britain, who held a more conventional view of the Franklin disaster attributing it to disease and environmental factors. King's advocacy of Indigenous knowledge challenged prevailing Victorian attitudes about the perceived superiority of European civilization.

Despite the initial skepticism, King's arguments eventually gained more traction as evidence emerged from later expeditions, particularly those led by John Rae and Charles Francis Hall, that corroborated his claims about the importance of Inuit knowledge and the possible role of cannibalism in the expedition's final days. These later findings lent greater credibility to King's original theories.

Richard King published several pamphlets and articles outlining his views on the Franklin Expedition. He died in 1876, having spent much of his life advocating for a reevaluation of the expedition's fate and the crucial role of Indigenous expertise in Arctic exploration. While his theories were initially controversial, his persistent advocacy helped to shape a more nuanced understanding of the Franklin disaster and the value of Indigenous knowledge in the Arctic.