Frozen in Time (14 page)

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.

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.

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 historians 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.

Archaeology and science permits were obtained from the Territorial government, which in turn asked that the British Admiralty, now part of the Ministry of Defence, be informed and that an attempt to contact any living descendants of the three sailors be made. The scientific team sought, and eventually received, clearance from the chief medical officer of the Northwest Territories, who assessed whether there was a potential health risk involved in the exposure of remains dating to the mid-nineteenth century. Exhumation and reburial permits, issued by the Department of Vital Statistics of the Northwest Territories, were also applied for. Permission from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was also required, and, with its assistance, Beattie notified the British Ministry of Defence of the planned excavations. The Settlement Council of the Resolute Bay community also granted permission to conduct research on the site, which falls within their local jurisdiction. Finally, in an effort to contact any descendants of the three Franklin crewmen, Beattie wrote to the
Times
asking that a request for descendants to contact him be published as soon as possible. The short article produced no response.

Because of the nature of the work on Beechey Island and what might be contained in the graves, the research team was then expanded to include an archaeologist and a pathologist. At last, in August 1984, the team of scientists from the University of Alberta left Edmonton for Resolute, en route to Beechey Island. They shared the same hope: that the very cold that once worked to destroy the Franklin expedition would now help them unlock the mystery of its destruction.