Great Couples From History: John and Jane Franklin

Sir John Franklin was considered a man of benevolent character, with a strong and jovial personality; the sort of man whose hearty laughter must have always appeared incredulous, the kind with raised eyebrows and a raised lower lip in a sort of frown and smiling side eyes given both ways.  His first wife of two years, Eleanor, a poet, died of consumption at the tender age of 29 (when he was 39).  Three years later, John married his late wife's friend, Jane Griffin, who had just gotten over an unrequited love for that nerd Roget who published Roget's Thesaurus.  Well-traveled, intelligent and ambitious, Jane didn't necessarily marry John because he was a hunk (he was chubby and mostly bald), but with his clout and her drive, they were a formidable social force.  The year after their wedding, John was knighted and became Sir John, making Jane into Lady Jane.  He was Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land (now known as Tasmania) from 1837 to 1843, during which time she oversaw many philanthropic efforts like the goshdarn Princess Diana of the prison colonies.  
Now, even as late as the 19th century, Europeans were still a bit peeved over that 1492 voyage running into a pair of big stupid continents sitting in the way of their ships and all those sweet, sweet spices, silks, indigo dyes, tea leaves and more that Asia had to offer, and even though they'd figured out how to sail around the south end, that voyage could take over a year to make, and by that time, the sailors were exceptionally randy.  European scientists were pretty sure there would be a lot of open water over at the North Pole once you sailed through the icebergs around the Arctic Circle, and from there you could enter the Pacific.  After everyone else said no, Sir John was picked to command the forebodingly named HMS Erebus (named for the Greek personification of darkness) and HMS Terror (named for the Greek concept of terror) on an expedition to locate this theoretical Northwest Passage.  They had all the hook-ups; iron-reinforced frames, primitive steam engines, steam heating, propellers, canned food and a thousand non-pornographic books, and in July 1845, they were last seen by European whalers in Baffin Bay before vanishing into history (well, actually, the Inuit people in the region later told of how a bunch of emaciated Englishmen with blackened mouths had been dragging a boat across the Arctic Archipelago and eaten each other).  Lady Jane became the world's most famous widow, something she never accepted, continuing to sponsor expeditions to locate the lost ships as late as 30 years after their disappearance.  When the Inuit said the Franklin expedition had eaten each other, she was openly racist against them, in the name of love.  When an acclaimed painting of polar bears chowing down on human rib cages amidst the wreckage of an English ship was displayed by the Royal Academy, Lady Franklin called it offensive and refused to look at it, in the name of love.  When one of her expeditions discovered a letter left by Franklin's men, indicating that he had died June 11, 1847, but not specifying the cause, Lady Franklin took it pretty hard, but then was like, prove it.  In the name of love.  She died in 1875 at the age of 83, a month after the last search expedition she'd arranged had set sail.