by Owen Beattie
On 12 July the surveyors headed out from their newly established base camp. They found nothing more in the area where they had discovered the six bones, just two-thirds of a mile from their camp, but 2 miles (3 km) to the west of the camp they discovered a 100- by 130-foot (30- by 40-metre) area littered with wood fragments. As they closely searched the site, larger pieces of wood were also found. Schwatka’s description of the coastline and the small islands a few hundred feet out in Erebus Bay left the men with little doubt that they had reached the boat place where the large lifeboat from the Franklin expedition, filled with relics, was first discovered by M’Clintock and Hobson in 1859 and later visited by Schwatka in 1879. But the sight that had filled M’Clintock and the others with awe so many years before had vanished: the skeletons that once stood guard over their final resting place were nowhere to be seen. An exhaustive search of the site was conducted, and slowly, out of the gravel, came bits and pieces that graphically demonstrated to them the heavy toll of lives once claimed by the desolation of King William Island.
In the immediate vicinity, they eventually located many artefacts, including a barrel stave, a wood paddle handle, boot parts and a cherrywood pipe bowl and stem similar to those found by M’Clintock at the same site. More important, however, was the discovery of human skeletal remains. From the boat place and scattered along the coast to the north, they found bones from the shoulder (scapulas) and leg (femurs, tibias). Several of the bones showed scarring due to scurvy—similar to the markings discovered on the bones found a year earlier near Booth Point. (In total, evidence of scurvy would be found in the bones of three individuals collected in 1982.) The team worked long and hard, each of the four men combing the ground for any relic or human bone. Dusk soon surrounded them, but no nightfall follows dusk during the summer at such high latitudes. It was under the midnight sun that Tungilik made the survey’s most important find.
Cherrywood pipe.
While systematically searching the boat place, Tungilik caught sight of a small ivory-white object projecting slightly from a mat of vegetation. Picking at the object with his finger, out popped a human talus (ankle bone). With his trowel, Carlson scraped the delicate, dark green vegetation aside, revealing a series of bones immediately recognizable as a virtually complete human foot. Continuing his excavation, which lasted into the early morning hours of 13 July, Carlson found that most of the thirteen bones from the left foot were articulated, or still in place, meaning that the foot had come to rest at this spot and had not been disturbed since 1848. The remaining skeletal remains varied from a calcaneus, or heel bone (measuring 3 inches/8 cm in length), to a tiny sesamoid bone (no bigger than .12 inches/3 mm across). Also found was part of the right foot from the same person, which supported the interpretation that a whole body once rested on the surface at this spot.
M’Clintock had argued that, as the lifeboat was found pointing directly at the next northerly point of land, it was being pulled back towards the deserted ships, possibly for more supplies:
I was astonished to find that the sledge (on which the boat was mounted) was directed to the N.E…. A little reflection led me to satisfy my own mind at least that this boat was returning to the ships. In no other way can I account for two men having been left in her, than by supposing the party were unable to drag the boat further, and that these two men, not being able to keep pace with their shipmates, were therefore left by them supplied with such provisions as could be spared, to last them until the return of the others with fresh stock.
The 1982 discoveries at the boat place supported this interpretation: the human skeletal remains were found scattered in the immediate vicinity of the lifeboat, and in the direction of the ships for a distance of two-thirds of a mile. It appears that those pulling the lifeboat could go no further and had abandoned their burden and the two sickest men. They continued on, but some had nevertheless died soon after.
In all, the remains of between six and fourteen individuals were located in the area of the boat place. In determining the minimum number of individuals from the collection of bones, Beattie first looked to see how many of the bones were duplicated. Then he examined their anatomy, such as size and muscle attachment markings, comparing bones from the left and right sides of the body to see if they were from one or more individuals.
Beattie was sure that the bones had been missed by Schwatka. From his journal, it is obvious that Schwatka was reasonably thorough in his collection of bones. He had discovered the skull and long bones of at least four individuals and buried these at the site. As in the previous searches along the coast that summer, Beattie and his crew were not able to find this grave. Of the bones discovered by the scientists in 1982, no skull bones were found.
Strangely, the most touching discovery made at the boat place was not a bone but an artefact, found by Kowal. Surveying a beach ridge further inland on 13 July, he saw, lying among a cluster of lemming holes, a dark brown object that, on closer inspection, turned out to be the complete sole of a boot. Picking it up he could see that three large screws had been driven through the sole from the inside out, and that the screw ends on the sole bottom had been sheared off. Kowal carried the artefact back to camp, where the others, who had been cataloguing the collection, examined it. It was obvious that the screws were makeshift cleats that would have given the wearer a grip on ice and snow—a grip absolutely necessary when hauling a sledge over ice.
Boot sole found at the “boat place,” showing screw “cleats.”
It was this object, more than even the bleached bones of the sailors, which brought home to the four searchers the discomfort, agony and despair that the Franklin crews must have endured at this final stage of the disaster. For the research team, the piece of boot symbolized the final trek of the men of the Erebus and Terror. The imagination can play tricks in such situations. And while sitting alone during the dusk-shrouded early hours of 14 July, with brisk winds blowing in off Victoria Strait, Beattie felt that Franklin’s men did indeed still watch over the place. It was as if the dead crewmen might yet rise up for one last desperate struggle to ascend the Back River to safety.
Later, Beattie, Carlson, Kowal and Tungilik surveyed 3 miles (5 km) further to near Little Point. To the west of this location was a long inlet filled with rotten ice, which effectively formed a barrier to any further survey that season. And so, packing their precious cargo of bones and artefacts, the team readied to leave the island. With the King William Island surveys at an end, Beattie was already wondering what new insights into the Franklin disaster his small collection of bones would provide.
10. A Doorway Opens
During the early months of 1982, bone samples collected from four skeletons discovered on King William Island in 1981—three Inuit (two males, one female) and the Franklin expedition crewman from near Booth Point—were submitted to the Alberta Soil and Feed Testing Laboratory for trace element analysis. The reason for the testing was to gain possible insights into the individuals’ health and diet. The method of analysis used, called inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy, would assess the level of a number of different elements contained in the bones. At the time, Owen Beattie believed that scurvy and starvation were the likely cause of the Franklin disaster, but the 1981 bone samples were submitted without instructions to look for a particular element.
By the time Beattie returned from the field in 1982, the findings of the trace element analysis were waiting for him. The results showed that the level of lead found in the Franklin expedition crewman’s bones was extremely high, raising the possibility that some—or all—of the crew had been exposed to potentially toxic levels of lead; and that the difference between the lead levels found in the Inuit skeletons and that of the Franklin crewman was astounding. In the three Inuit skeletons, the lead levels ranged from 22 to 36 parts per million. (Such levels fall within the range identified in other human skeletons from cultures with no exposure
to lead beyond that found in the environmental background.) In contrast to the Inuit skeletons, the occipital bone from the Franklin crewman registered levels of 228 parts per million. These results meant that if the Franklin crews had suffered this level of intake during the course of their expedition, it would have caused lead poisoning—the effects of which in humans have been well documented and include a number of physical and neurological problems that can occur separately or in any combination, depending on the individual and the amount absorbed. Anorexia, weakness and fatigue, irritability, stupor, paranoia, abdominal pain and anaemia are just a few of the possible effects.
Lead poisoning had plagued the ancient Greeks and Romans, who employed kettles, buckets, pipes and domestic utensils made of lead. Because the metal has a saccharine taste when dissolved (which is why the acetate is commonly called “sugar of lead”), the Romans had even used sheet lead to neutralize the acidity of bad wine. Even in 1786, when Benjamin Franklin provided the first detailed medical description of the “mischievous effect from lead,” the serious, even deadly, risks that he enumerated were nonetheless not widely disseminated. Cosmetics such as face pomades and hair powder, pewter drinking vessels, tea caddies, water pipes and cisterns, children’s toys and candlewicks all caused lead poisoning in the nineteenth century.
One scholar who has studied the circumstances under which lead poisoning arises, describes the outbreaks as “legion, oftentimes bizarre, and sometimes dramatic.” A mystery illness, for instance, called the “York Factory Complaint,” afflicted the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur trade post from 1833–36. Most of the men at the fort suffered the telltale signs of “debility,” resulting in a series of unexplained deaths. Symptoms included “a total loss of reason,” “great nervous weakness,” weight loss, convulsions and stupor. One new arrival at York Factory in 1834 described the inhabitants as having a peculiar pallor, which made them seem “more like ghosts than men.” At the time, the illness was blamed on a number of factors, including “the want of vegetables and fresh beef.” Today, scientists attribute the outbreak to saturnism (lead poisoning), most likely derived from the lead-lined containers used for food or drink.
Whilst lead’s dangers were little understood at the time, some warnings did enter the medical and scientific literature of the mid-1800s—an article in Scientific American that appeared in 1857, for instance, declared “all combinations of lead are decidedly poisonous.” One particular characteristic militated against its discovery, and gave rise to lead poisoning’s other name: the “aping disease.” As one scientific study concluded: “So protean are its manifestations that it, like syphilis, may simulate a hundred other conditions.” Lead poisoning also has a way of appearing in epidemics, so that it was often attributed to some unrelated cause. In the context of Arctic expeditions, these symptoms—emaciation, discolouration of the gums, abdominal colic, shooting pains of the limbs—would naturally suggest to medical officers and expedition commanders a well-known and feared illness: scurvy. All are, however, symptoms of lead poisoning.
Most poignantly for those dragging heavily laden sledges, “lead poisoning has a mean way of penalizing the extremity most used in muscular effort.”
The unexpected discovery of elevated bone lead levels begged another question: What could have been the source? Suspicion immediately fell on the relatively new technology of preserving foods in tin containers, as used by the Franklin expedition. Nearly 8,000 lead-soldered tins containing 33,289 pounds (15,113 kg) of preserved meat were supplied to the expedition, as well as the tinned equivalent of 2,560 gallons (11,638 litres) of soup, 1,200 pounds (545 kg) of tinned pemmican and 8,900 pounds (4,040 kg) of tinned preserved vegetables. (Even today, the seams and seals of some tins are known to be a significant source of lead contamination in some developing countries, so this certainly could have been a problem.) But ignorance of its ill effects remained commonplace. Just as authorities had failed to understand the link between scurvy and reliance on tinned food, so too they failed to understand the effect of interior-lead-soldered seams on tinned foods, and thus, on those dependent for long periods on such provisions. In addition, lead-glazed pottery and tableware were used by nineteenth-century British Arctic expeditions. The storage and serving of acidic foods and beverages (which can dissolve lead salts)—such as lemon juice, wine, vinegar or pickles—in lead-glazed vessels could have been a major source of lead ingestion during the expedition. Other possible sources of lead on the expedition included tea, chocolate and other foods stored in containers lined with lead foil. In addition, food colouring, tobacco products, pewterware and even lead-wicked candles could have added to the possible contamination. As a result, lead poisoning, compounded by the severe effects of scurvy, could have been lethal for many members of the expedition’s crews during the early months of 1848. Rapidly declining health might well in fact have been the major reason for the decision by Crozier and Fitzjames to desert the ships. As the note discovered by Hobson on King William Island shows, nine officers and fifteen men had already died by 25 April 1848.
This radical new theory, proposed by Beattie, would prompt debate among historians who had, for so long, relied on the theories of nineteenth-century searchers and, later, parliamentary inquiries in Britain as the basis for their investigations. While such sources are invaluable in the reconstruction of events, all the volumes written about the doomed expedition combined were not able to provide the scientific data Beattie had already gained from the scanty physical remains found on King William Island.
A cup made from an empty food tin from one of the Franklin search expeditions—showing that the cycle of lead contamination from the tins could continue even after they had served their primary purpose.
The problem with Beattie’s theory, however, was that skeletal remains alone were not enough to make a conclusive case. Although the lead values found so far were undeniably high, bone does not reflect recent exposure so much as it does lifetime exposure; lead sources present in the early industrial environment of mid-nineteenth-century England could have been to blame rather than any short-term exposure on the expedition. Also, contamination over the twenty-five or so years of the unknown Franklin crewman’s life could have caused physical or neurological symptoms, but they would have been much milder than those associated with classic lead poisoning and might have resulted in only slight behavioural problems. Therefore, to establish or disprove lead as a health problem on the expedition required the analysis of preserved soft tissue, which would reflect lead exposure following the departure of the expedition from England in May 1845.
The unexpected discovery of high lead levels shifted the focus away from the just-completed 1982 survey of King William Island. The gross examination of these bone materials, however, yielded two important observations: they added to the evidence for scurvy as a factor in the crewmen’s health late in the expedition and, significantly, backed up the bone lead findings. Values of the bone lead analyses from the remains of sailors collected in 1982 ranged from 87–223 micrograms per gram. By contrast, lead levels in bones of Inuit of the same time period and same geographical area ranged from 1–14 micrograms per gram. This provided convincing evidence that environmental lead contamination in the Arctic was not a contributing factor to the lead exposure. But even a physical anthropologist could learn little more from these test results. The definitive answer lay elsewhere: at the only known location where Franklin crewmen had died and been buried in the frozen ground by their shipmates. That place was tiny Beechey Island, off the southwest coast of Devon Island, where three sailors, Petty Officer John Torrington, Able Seaman John Hartnell and Private William Braine of the Royal Marines, died during the first winter of the Franklin expedition and were buried in the permanently frozen ground. What if those bodies remained frozen to this time? Wouldn’t they hold the key to whether Beattie’s lead theory was supportable or not?
Preserved human remains have given researchers and histor
ians untold insights into life in very different worlds from our own. They are time capsules of the history and evolution of human beings. The mummified pharaohs of ancient Egypt, for example, have added greatly to our knowledge of that distant time, just as the bog people of northern Europe have shed new light on Iron Age man. But bodies have also remained frozen for great lengths of time. Examples include Charles Francis Hall, who died in 1871, and whose partially preserved remains were uncovered in Greenland’s permafrost in 1968. Prehistoric Inuit have also been found entombed, in the ice near Barrow, Alaska, and in Greenland, while in the Altai Mountains of southcentral Siberia, 2,200-year-old Scythian tombs have been discovered containing frozen and partially preserved human remains. The Arctic temperatures on Beechey Island were perfect for at least the chance of similar preservation.
Beattie first officially proposed the exhumation of the three graves to Canadian authorities early in 1983. In 1981 and 1982, he had required only an archaeology permit issued by the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre of the Northwest Territories and a science permit from the Science Advisory Board of the Northwest Territories to conduct his survey for skeletal remains on King William Island. The plan to investigate the buried corpses of Beechey Island, however, was far more complicated. The site was, in effect, a graveyard, and the identities of the three Franklin expedition sailors were known. Beattie had to ensure that all proper authorities were notified and that they approved of the planned research.