Frozen in Time

by Owen Beattie

  Exhumed, John Torrington was a frail, innocent-looking young man. He did not fit the image of a sea-toughened sailor and adventurer, but simply of a young man who died too soon. Because of this, not one of the scientists was prepared for what awaited them a few inches below the ice in Hartnell’s coffin.

  Kowal poured water over Hartnell’s face area and soon spotted the outline of a nose through the receding ice. While John Torrington’s face had been slightly discoloured by contact with the coffin covering and by exposure to a pocket of air, Hartnell’s nose appeared natural in colour. Gradually, Kowal could see a ghostly image taking shape through the ice—a frightening, shimmering face of death.

  “This guy is spooky,” Kowal said while continuing the exposure of Hartnell, “the quintessential pirate. This guy is frightening.”

  The others watched in silence as the face was finally completely exposed. Perhaps the emotional drain of their work with Torrington was only now taking its toll. As with Torrington, they were shaken by the second face that was emerging from the rock-hard ground of the island. Shaken, but in a different way.

  Whereas Torrington had embodied a youthful, tragic innocence, John Hartnell reflected the harsh realities of death and suffering in the Arctic: his was the face of a sea-hardened nineteenth-century sailor. His right eye socket appeared empty and his lips were rigidly pursed, as if he were shouting his rage at dying so early in his adventure. John Hartnell’s last thoughts and the intensity of the pain he suffered during those final moments of life had been captured—literally frozen—on his face.

  His features were tightly framed by a cap, a shroud drawn up under his red-bearded chin and the contours of melting ice on either side. A lock of dark hair could be seen below the rim of the cap; unlike the right, his left eye appeared normal. “I wonder why there is such a difference in the preservation of the eyes,” Beattie mumbled, as each took a turn to examine Hartnell. “Was the eye injured before his death? Was it diseased?” Answers to the countless questions would have to await their planned return to Beechey Island.

  Besides the face, only the clothing covering the right forearm was exposed. The body had been covered in a shroud, or sheet. A portion of the shroud and the underlying shirt sleeve of his right arm had been torn by the pickaxe used during the original exhumation. There also appeared to be damage to the arm itself. The total time of Hartnell’s exposure was close to twelve hours.

  The first view of John Hartnell.

  Later, back in the labs and libraries of Edmonton, Beattie would begin piecing together a solution to the mystery of Hartnell’s disturbance. Sir Edward Belcher was the first to dig into the graves in October 1852, but, discouraged by the resistant permafrost, his men gave up after excavating only a few inches. A month later, members of a privately funded search expedition exhumed Hartnell. The leader of the expedition was Commander Edward A. Inglefield, and he was accompanied by Dr. Peter Sutherland, who had suggested such an exhumation while serving with Captain William Penny’s search expedition two years earlier. Inglefield’s Arctic exploits were considerable and, in 1853, he was awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s Arctic medal. During the award speech, Sir Roderick Murchison (head of the society) described the exhumation. The transcript of the speech reflects a number of errors and embellishments:

  … Commander Inglefield, being in a private expedition, resolved to dig down into the frozen ground, for the purpose of ascertaining the condition in which the men had been interred. The opening out of one coffin quite realized the object he had in view, for at six feet [1.8 metres] beneath the surface, a depth reached only with great difficulty, by penetrating frozen ground as hard as a rock, a coffin, with the name of Wm. Heartwell, was found in as perfect order as if recently deposited in the churchyard of an English village. Every button and ornament had been neatly arranged, and what was most important, the body, perfectly preserved by the intense cold, exhibited no trace of scurvy, or other malignant disease, but was manifestly that of a person who had died of consumption, a malady to which it was further known that the deceased was prone.

  Inglefield’s expedition was one of those supported by Lady Franklin. With a crew of seventeen on board the screw schooner Isabel, they were at Beechey Island on 7 September 1852. In his published journal, Inglefield described his first sight of the graves:

  That sad emblem of mortality—the grave—soon met my eye, as we plunged along through the knee-deep snow which covered the island. The last resting place of three of Franklin’s people was closely examined; but nothing that had not hitherto been observed could we detect. My companion told me that a huge bear was seen continually sitting on one of the graves keeping a silent vigil over the dead.

  Inglefield did not describe the exhumation of Hartnell in this journal, but there is a blank period in it covering the time between when he and Sutherland finished dining with the officers of the North Star and the departure of the Isabel from Beechey Island shortly after midnight “… with as beautiful a moon to light our path as ever shone on the favoured shores of our own native land.” An unpublished letter written by Inglefield to Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort on 14 September 1852, fills in this gap:

  My doctor assisted me, and I have had my hand on the arm and face of poor Hartnell. He was decently clad in a cotton shirt, and though the dark night precluded our seeing, still our touch detected that a wasting illness was the cause of dissolution. It was a curious and solemn scene on the silent snow-covered sides of the famed Beechey Island, where the two of us stood at midnight. The pale moon looking down upon us as we silently worked with pickaxe and shovel at the hard-frozen tomb, each blow sending a spur of red sparks from the grave where rested the messmate of our lost countrymen. No trace but a piece of fearnought half down the coffin lid could we find. I carefully restored everything to its place and only brought away with me the plate that was nailed on the coffin lid and a scrap of the cloth with which the coffin was covered.

  A remarkable letter and, as the 1984 research showed, accurate in its description of what had happened, even down to the removal of the piece of fabric. This was all the evidence that was needed to explain the history of the grave’s disturbance, the cause of the damage and the mystery of the missing plaque and fabric.

  Another letter written by Inglefield on 14 September, this one to John Barrow Jr. at the Admiralty, differs from that to Beaufort, explaining that he had engaged not just Sutherland but six officers in the work, concealing the exhumation from his able seamen as he was wary of “the superstitions feelings of the sailors.” Most notably, where the letter to Beaufort professes detection of a “wasting illness” as Hartnell’s cause of death, Inglefield’s letter to Barrow is equivocal:

  I was most anxious to have examined the body that the cause of death might be ascertained, but our utmost efforts had been exhausted and to lay bare the middle of it to take off the copper plate that was nailed on the lid and to discover that no relic had been laid with him that could give a clue to the fate of his fellows was all our strength and the intense cold that had set in with midnight permitted our doing.

  Inglefield ends his letter to Barrow with a request for his discretion on the subject, “as the prejudices of some people would deem this intended work of charity sacrilege.” There can be no doubt, when their activities of that day are plotted out, that Inglefield would have been at the gravesite for only three or four hours prior to midnight, the appointed time for the Isabel to set sail, though he reported it was actually 1 AM when they got on board.

  By this stage in the 1984 field season, there was no hope that the medical investigations of Hartnell and William Braine could be completed. It was obvious the scientific team would have to return to the Arctic island again to complete the research.

  After photographs were taken of Hartnell, they began reconstructing the coffin and the gravesite. The lid was replaced on the coffin in the slightly askew positio
n in which it had been discovered. A thin layer of gravel was lightly shovelled over the lid, and, in anticipation of their return to the site, a bright orange tarpaulin was placed over the gravel-covered coffin. Standing around the grave, shovels in hand, they remarked on how garish the fluorescent tarp looked in contrast to the grey surroundings of the quiet grave. “There will be no trouble in locating the coffin next year with that protecting it,” Kowal said.

  With the reconstruction of the surface features of Hartnell’s grave complete, the crew readied to leave the island. The plane would come for them in two days—plenty of time to pack, clean the site and do some more exploring. It was also a time to take in all that they had experienced. Kowal and Ruszala left for a 22-mile (35-km) hike to Cape Riley and back, while Damkjar and Carlson headed up onto the headland of the island.

  Beattie spent the time alone, staring out at Erebus Bay. He remembered an account he had read about an earlier visit to Beechey Island, a visit made by the explorer Roald Amundsen in August 1903. Amundsen, on his attempt to sail the Northwest Passage, had stopped at Beechey Island to pay tribute to Franklin. Amundsen later wrote in his narrative, The North West Passage, that he experienced a “deep, solemn feeling that I was on holy ground.” He imagined the bustle of activity that had transpired as the Erebus and Terror prepared to winter here, and also pondered the causes of the deaths so early on in the expedition: “The dark outlines of crosses marking graves inland are silent witnesses before my eyes as I sit here. The spectre of scurvy showed itself for the first time, and claimed, if not many, yet several lives.” Amundsen’s party then “re-erected the only gravestone that had fallen down.” With his small vessel Gjoa anchored in Erebus Bay, Amundsen grappled with the decision of what route to take. He made the correct one, becoming the first man to successfully sail the elusive passage, though he wrote of the Franklin expedition: “Let us raise a monument to them, more enduring than stone: the recognition that they were the first discoverers of the Passage.” As Beattie reflected back on his summer’s experience, he did so with a growing feeling that the very freshness of the Franklin sailors’ bodies guaranteed the success of his own expedition. Little doubt remained that important new insights into the fate of Franklin and his crews would surface during the months of laboratory work ahead.

  The team’s final day on Beechey Island, 26 August 1984, was warm and sunny. The tents came down quickly and the gear was carried down by the graves. The gravel in the camping area was smoothed over and some final bits of paper picked up. Beattie then radioed the Polar Shelf base manager in Resolute Bay, and the plane departed to pick them up. Some final photographs were taken of the site and they set up a tripod to take a group picture. As they were doing this they could just make out the sound of a plane to the west. In the Arctic, there is a sixth sense about airplanes: people will suddenly look up and say, “There’s a plane,” and everyone will stop what they are doing and listen intently. Usually nothing is heard, but no one doubts that an aircraft is coming. Within a few brief seconds, the unmistakable sound of the engine is heard by all.

  Soon a Twin Otter hissed by overhead. Everyone waved, the cameras came out and all watched as the plane made one pass, then circled and landed.

  Sitting on the left side of the plane, Beattie looked out at the graves. During the previous two weeks, he had taken hundreds of photographs of all three and had looked into two of them, yet he felt strangely compelled to take one more photograph through the fogged and scratched window and spinning propeller of the Twin Otter. After pressing the shutter, and before he could wind the camera for a second picture, the plane began to roll. And with a roar and two jarring bumps, the plane was up and away. Seconds later, they were out over Union Bay, turning towards Cornwallis Island, visible to the west. Within forty-five minutes they were all sitting in the eating area of the Polar Shelf facilities in Resolute Bay, sipping coffee and eating a splendid home-cooked meal the staff had put aside for them. The security and hospitality of the Polar Shelf in Resolute was in marked contrast to the small campsite that had been their home. Already, the emotions attached to Beechey Island were fading. Priorities now turned to showers, laundry and news of the outside world. The jet from the south would arrive the next day, and that meant going home. The season had been a success, but still more exciting discoveries awaited them in their laboratories in Edmonton.

  13. The Evidence Mounts

  Essentially, the body of John Torrington was that of a mummy. What made it so different from mummies recovered from other archaeological sites in the world, however, was the amazing quality of preservation.

  When archaeologist Howard Carter opened the three coffins of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, he found the monarch’s body in a very bad state of preservation. Dr. Douglas Derry, the anatomist who examined Tutankhamen’s mummy, wrote a detailed report describing the charred and discoloured remains. The report outlined the damage done through the embalming process and through time: “the skin of the face is of a greyish colour and is very cracked and brittle… the limbs appeared very shrunken and attenuated.”

  Even mummies better preserved than Tutankhamen, whether embalmed in preparation for burial or intentionally desiccated by exposure to sun or air, have still suffered major alteration to the appearance, colour and detail of their soft tissues.

  Of course, the nature of burial can, on rare occasions, result in the unintentional whole or partial preservation of an individual. Some of the best-preserved human remains from antiquity have been found in peat bogs in several locations in northwestern Europe. In some cases the acids of peat bogs have kept human bodies largely intact not for hundreds but for thousands of years. But those same acids badly discoloured the “bog people,” as they are known, leaving skin “as if poured in tar” and hair bright red, and helping to decalcify the bones. Another natural means of preservation can result from cold temperatures and lack of moisture. In 1972, 500-year-old mummified human remains, including that of a child, were discovered at Qilakitsoq, Greenland. All of these mummies, however, were rigid and inflexible, the drying and hardening of the tissues having locked the body forever into the position in which it was buried.

  Undoubtedly the most amazing aspect of the Beechey Island research was the discovery of the near-perfect preservation of soft tissue. In effect, the unbroken period of freezing from early 1846 to 1984 suspended any major outward appearances of decay, allowing John Torrington to look very much as he had in life, right down to the flexibility of the tissue. Even when samples of Torrington’s tissues were studied by microscope, some of them looked recent in origin. Other clues, however, did reflect the lengthy period of freezing. Details of internal cellular structure were commonly missing, and in most tissues the cells were also partly collapsed. Preservation seemed also to vary within the individual. For example, microscope slides made from bowel samples collected from Torrington appeared as if they were taken right out of a textbook on modern human histology or pathology, while slides made from his other organs showed considerable post-mortem change and loss of detail.

  Still, Torrington’s condition was highly unusual, even for a body preserved in ice. Normally, the fats in the organs and muscles of humans or animal cadavers (whether encased in ice, submerged in water or located in a high-humidity environment) are transformed into adipocere, the so-called “fat wax” or “grave wax.” This ivory-white-coloured adipocere has a soapy, cheese-like consistency and a pungent, pervasive and unforgettable smell. While the superficial shape of the organ is maintained under the right conditions, over decades the adipocere changes, ending with desiccation as a firm, though crumbly, body mass, without internal structure. However, Torrington displayed a totally different morphology.

  Equally intriguing, a similar level of preservation was later observed in the 5,300-year-old iceman found in the Otztal Glacier of the Italian Alps in 1991. And in meetings and discussions between Beattie and Dr. Konrad Sp
indler of the University of Innsbruck, the lead investigator of the Tyrolean iceman project, it was verified that there is a relationship between the mummification process and the temperature at which the bodies are stored. As Spindler wrote of his discovery: “Transformation into fat wax takes place at temperatures around 0˚C [32˚F]; mummification with gradual dehydration, on the other hand, occurs at lower temperatures, from about five degrees below zero on, in which case permafrost conditions represent the decisive requirements.”

  Laboratory results of the autopsy on John Torrington painted a picture of a young man wracked with serious medical problems. Unfortunately, despite careful study of the organ samples by Roger Amy at the University Hospital in Edmonton, a specific cause of death could not be established.

  What was most obvious at the time of the autopsy were Torrington’s blackened lungs, a condition called anthracosis—caused by the inhalation of atmospheric pollutants such as tobacco and coal smoke and dust. Also, his lungs were bound to the chest wall by adhesions, a sign of previous lung disease. Microscopically visible destruction of lung tissue identified emphysema, a lung disease normally associated with much older individuals; evidence of tuberculosis was also seen. Amy’s interpretation of the adhesions, and of the presence of fluid in the lung associated with pneumonic infection, suggested to him that pneumonia was probably the ultimate cause of death.

  However, it was in the trace element analysis of bone and hair from Torrington that the probable underlying cause of death was found. Atomic absorption analysis of Torrington’s bone indicated an elevated amount of lead of 110–151 parts per million (the modern average ranges from 5–14 parts per million). Although not as high as those found in the Franklin crewman from Booth Point, the level of bone lead was still many times higher than normal. Torrington would have suffered severe mental and physical problems caused by lead poisoning and, so weakened, finally succumbed to pneumonia. (One theory as to why the Booth Point skeleton had greater lead contamination is that the Franklin sailor found in 1981 lived more than two years longer than John Torrington, and was thus exposed to lead on the expedition for a longer period.)