Frozen in Time

by Owen Beattie

  The Jeannette sailed from San Francisco on 8 July 1879, with a scientific staff that included an astronomer, meteorologist and naturalist from the Smithsonian Institution. Beset by ice on 6 September, she then drifted for two years in the polar pack as sickness gradually tightened its hold on her 33 crewmen. The men were largely dependent on tinned foods, and, as their symptoms worsened to include severe abdominal pain, fear spread that something in their diet was poisoning them. The crew was already in a severely weakened state when the Jeannette was finally crushed by the pack-ice in the Laptev Sea in 1881, though the men escaped, dragging three boats and supplies over hundreds of miles to open water. There was no fresh meat to be had out on the ice, only what provisions they could carry with them. One boat foundered in the icy sea, the other two were separated before they reached land at Siberia’s Lena Delta.

  Wandering across the marshy and featureless land of the delta, the crew of one boat stumbled across a native village and was saved. The men in the other boat—including De Long—faced a terrible ordeal. They located small huts, but found they had been abandoned: “We can see traces of Russians or other civilized beings. A rude checker-board, wooden forks, pieces of pencil, etc.” They struggled on for a month, killing several reindeer, but it was not enough. De Long made the painful decision to kill and eat the ship’s mascot, a dog named Snoozer. Soon his party was reduced to eating the animal hides the men had worn for warmth, their boot soles and, finally, moss dug from the frozen ground.

  Their final days were recorded in pitiful detail by De Long, the delirious howls of the starved men “a horrible accompaniment to the wretchedness of our surroundings.” In his journal, he also recorded the strange dream of the ship’s surgeon, James Ambler: “He seemed to be accompanying the survivors of Sir John Franklin’s last expedition on their journey to the Great Fish River.” Certainly the appalling nature of their suffering had a great deal in common with that of the Franklin crewmen, and Ambler’s dream proved portentous: he suffered the throes of just such a death. When his body was found, there was a trickle of blood from his mouth, into which his fingers were stuffed.

  With the ground frozen, the first men to die were carried out on the ice of a nearby river and crude markers were carved and erected on its bank in their memory. Soon the survivors were too weak to carry the dead out to the ice, so they dragged them behind the corner of their makeshift shelter so the bodies were out of sight. De Long continued to read divine service, but his diary entries, which once consumed pages with scientific observations and exacting accounts of their lives amidst the polar pack, were spare. As with his strength so went erudition. De Long made a last diary entry on 30 October 1881. There was no stirring sentimentality or evocation of patriotism, simply this: “Boyd and Gortz died during the night. Mr. Collins dying.” In all, twenty of the thirty-three expedition members perished. Wrote a searcher after coming across De Long’s last camp: “The world is richer by this gift of suffering,” though he could only offer in evidence the following: “A slight gain was made in the solution of the Arctic problem.” Ironically, the Jeannette, or at least relics of her, completed the Northwest Passage, drifting from west to east without her crew; and wreckage from the ship appeared on the southwest coast of Greenland in 1884, borne there by the polar tides.

  There was a public clamour for an accounting for De Long’s tragic failure. Naval and congressional investigations followed, and, in 1883, a writer in Medical News, drawing from the Report of the Court of Inquiry, published evidence that something other than scurvy or starvation might have been a factor in the disaster. In response to direct questions from the Court regarding the “character of the provisions” supplied to the expedition, a survivor, Lieutenant John Danehower, said: “In May, 1881, a number of the people became affected with stomach disorders, which were attributed to tin-poisoning. It had been observed that the inside of the tomato cans had turned dark, as though acted upon by the acid… ” When asked by the judge advocate about the physical condition of the men when they landed on the ice, in June 1881, the same witness said: “… Lieut. [Charles] Chipp was disabled and prostrated by what was supposed to be tin-poisoning… A number of men… were also affected by the tin-poisoning, and were prostrated a few days later.”

  In the Report of the Court of Inquiry, the sickness was judged to be “the result of eating canned provisions.” In his 1883 account, the medical writer W.E. Magruder declared: “I have no doubt the so-called ‘tin-poisoning’ was really lead-poisoning, resulting from the use of cans coated with the alloy of tin and lead.” As the Medical News went on to report: “The danger of contamination from the lead contained in the solder depends upon the way in which the can is made… In a hand-made can by a careless workman, a square inch or more of solder surface may be present on the inside of the can. Drops of solder may also fall into the can in the process of sealing, and most of our readers must have seen such fragments of solder. If they have not, their cooks have.”

  While De Long did not survive, his journal did, and it describes with remarkable clarity the effects of lead on the Jeannette’s crew. For the first time, a contemporaneous account by an explorer identified lead poison as a health factor on an expedition:

  June 1st [1881], Wednesday.—What next? The doctor [Ambler] informs me this morning that he is of opinion that several of our party under his treatment are suffering from lead poisoning… No less than six people, and the sledge party yet to hear from. Suspicion was first directed to the water, for as all joints about the distiller are red leaded to make them tight, we fear that some of the lead was carried over with the steam and deposited in the receiver. This, unfortunately, cannot be entirely avoided, though it may be reduced. Then I examined all vessels in which drinking water is carried or tea and coffee made, and I put out of commission all having any solder patches, substituting iron vessels lined with porcelain. But upon examining our tomatoes, they were found to show traces of lead in larger amounts than the water, and the doctor thinks that the distemper, if I may so call it, is due to our large consumption of that vegetable. The acid of the tomato acts chemically upon the solder used in the tins, and the dangerous mixture is formed; and since we have had tomatoes every day for dinner subsequent to May 4th, it is assumed that we have become largely dosed with lead, and some of us have had to succumb… It has transpired that the steward, who is the worst case, is remarkably fond of this vegetable, and eats of it unsparingly… A very interesting question here comes in. Our canned fruits have, I believe, similar chemical action upon the lead soldering, and no doubt we are absorbing more or less lead all the time. Now does this chemical action begin at once or at the end of two years? A very important question to an arctic expedition, for of what use is it to secure exemption from scurvy for two years if disabling lead poisoning finishes you in the third year? The doctor says each severe attack may be mitigated by medicine, but a continued absorption of the lead will produce palsy, and that would certainly be a perplexing disease to deal with in an arctic ship. If the chemical action begins as soon as the tomato is canned one is in danger at all times…

  Certainly no exemption from scurvy was secured for many of the Arctic expeditions of this era, despite the claims made for the antiscorbutic properties of tinned foods, though in that respect De Long’s seems to have fared better than most. But the ancient scourge now had company from an equally virulent and deadly affliction.

  The successes, or more often the failures, of nineteenth-century Arctic expeditions are usually viewed as little more than inventories of the foibles of individual commanders—which, if one believes the usual popular historical appraisals, run the gamut from simple incompetency and benign eccentricity to outright, stark-raving lunacy—squared off against a malignant climate and relentless geography. With hindsight, the decisions made and actions taken by some of those commanders do lend credence to the view that the Arctic heaved with an armada of the reality-challenged. But all that arrogan
ce and misapprehension amounts to little beside one simple fact: that many of those who sailed in search of the passage in the nineteenth century did so with their physical and mental health seriously compromised.

  These failures cannot simply be assigned to character in the face of history’s failure to account for a fundamental truth: That at the very moment when explorers sought to conquer the places of greatest extremity, where success relied on every advantage of technology and human ingenuity and when the consequences of failure were so stark and absolute, a new and unanticipated threat to human health had entered the equation. It was a threat absolutely germane to the debate about character, for it also had the effect of subverting and undermining a commander’s mental faculties at the same time as it mugged his body. Yes, the forces of the natural world they encountered were little understood. But even less understood was the “debility” caused by the scorbutic and saturnic diseases that ate away at expedition members, loosening their teeth, blackening their gums, bloating their extremities and clouding their judgment.

  The story of how the Royal Navy failed to achieve the Northwest Passage is really that of how the world’s greatest navy battled, and was ultimately humbled by, a simple yet gruesome disease—scurvy, allied to a menace of which they could not begin to conceive: lead poisoning. The source of their defeat was not the ice-choked seas, the deep cold, the winters of absolute night, the labyrinthine geography or the soul-destroying isolation. It was found in their food supply, most notably in their heavy reliance on tinned foods.

  The landscape of the Canadian Arctic has changed little in the intervening years. The grey tracts of stone, the relentless, grinding course of the sea ice, the violet hues of the late-setting sun, all are today as they were in Franklin’s time. Adventurers visiting King William and Beechey islands this summer or the next, whether burdened by backpacks or man-hauling sledges in a personal struggle to attain some commonality with a lost world, will find their satisfaction. The romance of the Franklin era of exploration and the emotional response that it evokes is enduring. What is not is the assumption that great men die only of great causes. For despite the hostile forces of climate and geography the region represents, it was something else that had a catastrophic effect on the Franklin expedition—something human.

  Acknowledgements

  The field and laboratory researches of the Franklin Forensic Project, and the Franklin Osteology Project, described in this book, were supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Boreal Institute for Northern Studies, the Polar Continental Shelf Project and the University of Alberta. Sincerest thanks go to these organizations and agencies.

  Additional support for various phases of the project was received from the Park Nicollet Medical Foundation, the Science Advisory Board (NWT), Alberta Workers’ Health and Compensation and Taymor Canada.

  Without the energy, insight, understanding, co-operation and dedication of those who participated in the field research, this book (and the research) would not have been possible. On Beechey Island: Walt Kowal, Eric Damkjar, Arne Carlson, Roger Amy, Joelee Nungaq, James Savelle, Derek Notman, Larry Anderson, Brian Spenceley, Geraldine Ruszala and Barb Schweger. And on King William Island: Arsien Tungilik, Karen Digby, Kovic Hiqiniq and Mike Aleekee. Thanks are also due to Dr. K. Kowalewska- Grochowska, University of Alberta Hospital; Sylvia Chomyc, Tuberculosis Control Unit, Provincial Laboratory of Public Health (Alberta), and the Netsilik Archaeology Project (James Savelle).

  The authors would also like to thank the staff of the following institutions for their assistance with historical and archival research: the British Library, the British Archives, the University of Alberta libraries, including the Canadian Circumpolar Library, the University of Toronto libraries and the Toronto Reference Library. In addition, special thanks go to Donald Bray, Sten Nadolney, Patrick Walsh of Conville & Walsh, Matthew Swan of Adventure Canada and Rob Sanders. Margaret Atwood is profoundly thanked.

  In memorium: Arne Carlson, who, with his wife Lesley Mitchell, died tragically in December 1998.

  Image Credits

  Photos: All photos are by Dr. Owen Beattie, except: photo on page 144 courtesy of the Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth, Government of Nunavut; photo on page 208 (lower) by Brian Spenceley; photo on page 216 “project photograph.”

  Illustrations: Pictures on pages 20, 37, 39, 40, 42, 49, 59, 63, 80, 82, 89, 90, 164, 215 are reproduced courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England; pictures on pages 19, 89 (lower) courtesy of the University of Toronto libraries; picture on page 54 courtesy of the British Library; pictures on pages 84, 98 courtesy of the Boreal Institute of Northern Studies, University of Alberta, Canada; pictures on pages i, 94 from the collection of John Geiger; pictures on pages 77, 87 courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library.

  Maps and diagrams: Neil Hyslop and Andrew Barr.

  Reprint Credits

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Quotation from The Rifles by William T. Vollmann. Penguin Books, New York. ©1995 William T. Vollmann. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  Quotation from “The Age of Lead” by Margaret Atwood. Wilderness Tips. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto. ©1991 O.W. Toad Ltd. Reprinted with kind permission of the author.

  Quotation from Terror and Erebus by Gwendolyn MacEwen. The Poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen: The Early Years (Volume One), eds. Margaret Atwood and Barry Callaghan. Exile Editions, Toronto. ©1993. Reprinted with kind permission of the publisher.

  Chorus from “Northwest Passage” by Stan Rogers. The album Northwest Passage. ©1981 Fogarty’s Cove Music. Reprinted with kind permission of Fogarty’s Cove Music and Ariel Rogers.

  Appendix One

  List of the officers and crews of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror taken from their Muster Books, 1845. Source: Admiralty Records, Public Record Office.

  HMS Erebus

  CAPTAIN Sir John Franklin

  COMMANDER James Fitzjames

  LIEUTENANTS Graham Gore, H.T.D. Le Vesconte, James W. Fairholme

  MATES Robert O. Sargent, Charles F. Des Voeux, Edward Couch

  SECOND MASTER Henry F. Collins

  SURGEON Stephen S. Stanley

  ACTING ASSISTANT-SURGEON Harry D.S. Goodsir

  PAYMASTER AND PURSER Charles H. Osmer

  ACTING MASTER James Reid

  WARRANT OFFICERS John Gregory (engineer), Thomas Terry (boatswain), John Weekes (carpenter)

  PETTY OFFICERS Philip Reddington (captain of the forecastle), Thomas Watson (carpenter’s mate), John Murray (sailmaker), James W. Brown (caulker), William Smith (blacksmith), Samuel Brown (boatswain’s mate), Richard Wall (cook), James Rigden (captain’s coxswain), John Sullivan (captain of the maintop), Robert Sinclair (captain of the foretop), Joseph Andrews (captain of the hold), Edmund Hoar (captain’s steward), Richard Aylmore (gunroom steward), Daniel Arthur (quartermaster), John Downing (quartermaster), William Bell (quartermaster), Francis Dunn (caulker’s mate), William Fowler (paymaster and purser’s steward), John Bridgens (subordinate officers’ steward), James Hart (leading stoker), John Cowie (stoker), Thomas Plater (stoker)

  ABLE SEAMEN Henry Lloyd, John Stickland, Thomas Hartnell, John Hartnell, George Thompson, William Orren, Charles Coombs, William Closson, William Mark, Thomas Work, Charles Best, George Williams, John Morfin, Thomas Tadman, Abraham Seely, Thomas McConvey, Robert Ferrier, Josephus Geater, Robert Johns, Francis Pocock

  ROYAL MARINES David Bryant (sergeant), Alexander Paterson (corporal), Joseph Healey (private), William Braine (private), William Reed (private), Robert Hopcraft (private), William Pilkington (private)

  BOYS George Chambers, David Young

  HMS Terror

  CAPTAIN Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier

  LIEUTENANTS Edward Little, John Irvi
ng, George H. Hodgson

  MATES Robert Thomas, Frederick John Hornby

  SECOND MASTER Gillies A. Macbean

  SURGEON John S. Peddie

  ASSISTANT SURGEON Alexander MacDonald

  CLERK-IN-CHARGE E.J.H. Helpman

  ACTING MASTER Thomas Blanky

  WARRANT OFFICERS Thomas Honey (carpenter), John Lane (boatswain), James Thompson (engineer)

  PETTY OFFICERS Reuben Male (captain of the forecastle), Thomas Johnson (boatswain’s mate), John Torrington (leading stoker), Alexander Wilson (carpenter’s mate), David MacDonald (quartermaster), William Rhodes (quartermaster), John Kenley (quartermaster), Thomas Darlington (caulker), John Diggle (cook), Thomas Farr (captain of the maintop), Henry Peglar (captain of the foretop), John Wilson (captain’s coxswain), Samuel Honey (blacksmith), William Goddard (captain of the hold), Thomas Jopson (captain’s steward), Thomas Armitage (gunroom steward), Cornelius Hickey (caulker’s mate), Edward Genge (paymaster’s steward), William Gibson (subordinate officers’ steward), Luke Smith (stoker), William Johnson (stoker)

  ABLE SEAMEN George Cann, William Shanks, David Sims, William Sinclair, William Jerry, Henry Sait, Alexander Berry, John Bailey, Samuel Crispe, John Bates, William Wentzall, William Strong, John Handford, Charles Johnson, David Leys, George Kinnaird, Magnus Manson, James Walker, Edwin Laurence

  ROYAL MARINES Solomon Tozer (sergeant), William Hedges (corporal), Henry Wilks (private), John Hammond (private), James Daly (private), William Heather (private)

  BOYS Robert Golding, Thomas Evans

  Four crewmen who returned to Britain on the Barretto Junior and the Rattler before the Erebus and Terror entered the Arctic: Thomas Burt (armourer), John Brown (able seaman), James Elliot (sailmaker), William Aitken (Royal Marine private)