This is something you really do not want to happen while under extreme Arctic conditions. Enhanced level of lead leads to a number of serious symptoms, such as joint and muscle pain, cognitive difficulties, headaches and abdominal pain. Even more interesting was the discovery of enhanced lead levels in the seamen’s bones, compared to Inuit bones recovered during the same survey. Telltale marks on the bones confirmed the Inuit stories about cannibalism. Together with his team, he was able to recover bones from Franklin crew members. That year and the next, he conducted surveys on the western side of King William Island. Owen Beattie, then an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, started his work on the Franklin expedition in 1981. Why did the Franklin expedition fare so badly? Speculations were plenty, but there was little hard evidence to provide a firmer basis for theories.

James Ross Clark’s expedition in the same area from 1829-1833 with only three lives lost. Why was there a high number of deaths early on in the expedition? Other Arctic expeditions had lost far fewer lives, e.g. The loss of the Franklin expedition remained a mystery. Search parties in the 1850s discovered many of these remains. The expedition members did not make it, leaving skeletons and artifacts scattered along the route on the western and southern coast of King William Island and on the northern coast of the mainland. The note found in a cairn on King William Island, which describes the plight of the Franklin expedition and their decision to head for Back River. These reports also included information about cannibalism among the seamen. The Inuit later reported these meetings and their subsequent discovery of dead expedition members to the search parties. During this trek, the seamen encountered local Inuit. They dragged along lifeboats on sleds with provisions and equipment. The remaining crew tried to reach Back River and a Hudson Bay company outpost further south. The provisions would have run out by then and the men would have been in no state to trek south.īy April 1848, 9 officers and 15 seamen had died, according to the note mentioned above. They simply could not wait another year in the hope that the ships would be released by the ice. The route of the Franklin expedition through the eastern part of Arctic Canada.Īfter another wintering off King William Island, the men abandoned the ships in late April 1848. The situation was made worse by the death of Franklin on June 11 1847, according to a note later found in a cairn on King William Island. To the shock of the expedition members, the ice did not thaw during the 1847 summer. Both ships got stuck in the ice off King William Island in September and the second wintering took place there. The Franklin ships had sailed from Beechey Island and south through Peel Sound in the summer of 1846. The wintering quarters were found, including a small cemetery with the burials of three seamen who had died during the overwintering. It had wintered on the small Beechey Island 1845/46. Intense searches in the 1850s shed light on the fate of the expedition. By this time, most of the members of the Franklin expedition were already dead. Since the expedition was equipped with three years of provisions, the Admiralty in London did not send out rescue missions until 1848. They were last seen in Baffin Bay in July of the same year, when five expedition members were discharged and sent home with whalers. The ships sailed from England in May 1845 with 134 men, under the leadership of Sir John Franklin. The expedition was well equipped for a long stay in the Arctic. The clues to why this happened were few and mysterious. The two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were lost with all hands. Instead, the expedition ended in a disaster. The Franklin expedition was meant to be the final exploration of the Northwest Passage – the sea route linking Europe and Asia through the Canadian Arctic. What can they tell us about the disastrous Franklin expedition, and why are they so well preserved? The expedition We take a closer look at the investigation of the Beechey Island permafrost burials. Nothing had prepared them for the encounter with the Victorian seaman from the lost Franklin expedition, buried in the frozen ground in the Canadian High Arctic. The archaeologists stood back in shock and awe.

Erebus bodies