Frozen in Time (20 page)

Franklin probably presided at the burial. He was a deeply religious man who, eight months earlier, had asked the British Admiralty to furnish one hundred Bibles, prayer books and testaments for sale at cost aboard the ships.

The snow, a spiralling yellow curtain in the lamplight, swirled around the group standing at the graveside. Some sifted and settled into the grave, obscuring the last view of Torrington's coffin. Each breath of Franklin's would have been made visible by the gripping cold, the sound of his voice blending with the icy, penetrating wind that always seems to blow at Beechey Island. His words were probably brief, but presented with obvious reverence and sincerity. Quickly, the ceremony was over, and thoughts turned away from the young man who, just months before at Woolwich, near London, had joined Franklin's carefully selected crew a relatively healthy man.

In many ways, Torrington's was an uneventful death, yet the confirmation of high lead levels in his body was of great significance in the context of the entire expedition. Beattie had stepped beyond the conventional theories about the expedition's end. It now seemed clear that the startling proof of lead poisoning in Torrington, coupled with the results from the Booth Point skeleton and the bone remains gathered in 1982, demonstrated that lead had played an important, if not pivotal, role in the Franklin disaster. Lost was the accepted explanation of scurvy and starvation alone carrying off the expedition. Beattie's medical findings from Torrington opened the door on a whole new way of looking at this and other nineteenth-century expeditions. But such a radical new theory about the underlying cause of the destruction of one of history's great voyages of discovery needed to be backed up by as much evidence as possible. The more bodies demonstrating lead contamination, the more credible the case that the theory applied to the entire expedition.

Therefore, the laboratory discoveries made during 1984 only served to underline the importance of returning to Beechey Island and establishing the cause of death of Hartnell and Braine. Another important part of the investigation would be to establish what conditions must have been like on the expedition during 1845–46, and to reconstruct the last months and days in the lives of the three men buried on Beechey Island. Their bodies would provide an unprecedented and privileged opportunity to look into British and Canadian history—but a three-dimensional history, represented by the only true “survivors” of Franklin's expedition.

After the 1984 field season ended and news of the preservation of John Torrington and John Hartnell was announced, two indirect descendants of Hartnell contacted Beattie. Donald Bray of Croydon, England, was astonished to see coverage of Beattie's expedition and to hear the name of his ancestor mentioned. Bray, a retired sub-postmaster, had devoted years to tracing his family history and was in possession of rare letters and documents that added haunting insights into Hartnell's family and life. Most touching were two letters to John and Thomas Hartnell, one sent by their mother, Sarah, and the other by their brother, Charles, both of which were intended to greet the sailors upon their completion of the Northwest Passage. The two men never received the letters, dated 23 December 1847. John Hartnell had already been dead for nearly two years and Thomas's death probably came the following summer on King William Island.

“My Dear Children,” Sarah Hartnell's letter began, “It is a great pleasure to me to have a chance to write you. I hope you are both well. I assure you I have many anxious moments about you but I endeavour to cast my prayers on Him who is too good to be unkind.” After a reference to her own illness and other news about family and friends, the letter ended: “If it is the Lord's will may we be spared to meet on earth. If not God grant we may all meet around His throne to praise Him to all eternity.” Perhaps Sarah knew, as parents sometimes do, that her sons were facing their deaths.

Another descendant of John Hartnell would, along with three other specialists, join Beattie's scientific team when he returned to the field in 1986. Brian Spenceley, a professor at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and a great-great-nephew of Hartnell, would soon be able to experience that which no other man has: to look into the eyes of a relative who has been dead for more than a century.

Jumping out of the Twin Otter onto the snow-blanketed ground of Beechey Island on 8 June 1986, Beattie was temporarily blinded by the bright, sunny sky and the sun's rays reflecting off the white ground. Only gradually did major geographical features and the three tiny headstones that poked their way through the snow become visible, assuring him that he was once again on the island where so many memories lay.

This time Beattie planned to complete his examinations of the Franklin graveyard; part of his research team had already arrived with him from Resolute. That group, consisting of archaeologist Eric Damkjar, project photographer Brian Spenceley, historical consultant Dr. Jim Savelle (who was a co-investigator with Beattie during the 1981 season and now served as a research scholar at the Scott Polar Research Institute) and field assistants Arne Carlson, Walt Kowal and Joelee Nungaq would set up camp and then conduct the detailed archaeological work and exhumations. A team of specialists consisting of pathologist Dr. Roger Amy, radiologist Dr. Derek Notman, radiology technician Larry Anderson and Arc-tic clothing specialist Barbara Schweger would arrive one week later.

Beattie was starting his 1986 field season earlier than in 1984, in order to avoid the problem of water run-off from melting snow. But as the temperatures remained below freezing in June and a brisk wind swept across the island for a good number of days, heightening the cold, the investigators had to endure additional hardships.

Each of the crew quickly set to work establishing camp, consisting of the usual array of individual and communal tents, with one new addition, a 16-foot-tall (5-metre) flagpole, where the bright red-and-white Canadian flag snapped in the near constant winds alongside the flag of the Northwest Territories. During this work, however, Beattie's mind was fixed on something else. For two years, one question had nagged him. It was a question posed by almost everyone he had talked to about the research on Beechey Island: Was there any guarantee that the bodies of John Torrington and John Hartnell were again encased in ice after their 1984 reburials? The theory that the summer meltwater would trickle down into the filled-in excavations, seep into the coffins and subsequently freeze was a good, logical one. But Beattie wondered if the process were so simple. The 1984 exhumation of John Torrington was final and complete; there could be no verification of the theory there. However, uncovering John Hartnell, exposed once in 1852 and again in 1984, would soon answer the question.

A tent was again erected over Hartnell's grave to protect the exhumation process from the elements. As before, digging was extremely difficult. The exposure of Hartnell's coffin required twenty-four hours of continual digging by Kowal, Carlson, Savelle and Nungaq, a process that had now become almost mechanical. One person would labour with the pickaxe until either the pain in his hands or the exhaustion in his arms required rest. The loosened ice and gravel would then be shovelled into buckets by one or two of the excavators, lifted out of the grave to another of them and finally dumped on the growing pile of “back-dirt.” Conversation between the excavators began with recollections of previous archaeological digs, especially those of 1984, but as the hours passed, the relentless sound of the pickaxe, broken regularly by the rasping, fingernail-on-blackboard sound of the shovel pushing into resistant gravel and ice, eventually won out.

When the coffin lid was finally exposed and the limits of the coffin identified, the group took a long overdue rest and waited for the arrival of the team of specialists. To this point, the excavation was a replay of 1984. But the next step, the removal of the coffin lid, though also done in 1984, would this time provide an answer to the question of the refreezing of the bodies. They were therefore poised at the true beginning of the 1986 investigation.

During the break in the exhumation work, Beattie and Damkjar returned to the food-tin dump for a more detailed survey than the one they had conducted in 1984. Two days were spent thoroughly documenting what was left of the tins. Out of the original 700 or so, fragments of fewer than 150 remained. Tins are a very transportable, recognizable and desired artefact for amateur archaeologists and collectors, and, over the decades, people had been depleting the information pool represented by the containers. None of those remaining was complete and most were badly fragmented. But all portions of the tins were represented, including the soldered seams.

The area of the tin scatter was gridded with string and tied in to a datum point. Each square of the grid was photographed and searched, and every tin fragment located and described. All of the larger pieces and those with particularly good features were individually photographed. Samples of “ordinary” tins were collected for later study, along with some tins that were particularly good examples of poor soldering and manufacture.

On the second day of work at the can dump, Beattie and Damkjar were interrupted by Nungaq, who had been out hiking on the ice of Union Bay during the break in the digging. He came walking quickly along the spit towards them, his dog Keena held tightly by her chain. “There's a bear coming,” he said, as he trotted up the rise of the mound. Pointing west, he continued: “Look, over there, it's coming right for us.” Little interest in the tins remained, as Beattie and Damkjar squinted out over the bright field of ice. Then Beattie saw it. The bear's head was lowered and it did not appear to be moving at all, though its body was swaying slightly from side to side. From this quick glimpse, Beattie recalled an important lesson. He remembered when he was a student pilot and his instructor had lectured him: “If you spot another airplane coming your way and it appears to be moving, you're safe—just keep your eye on it. But if that plane looks like it is standing still, watch out, because it's coming straight for you.” A strange thing to recall at this particular time, but the rule still applied. Although the bear was a good distance away, perhaps a mile, it looked awfully big. And within minutes they were all heading back to camp, cameras swinging from their necks, clutching notebooks, tripods and rifles. They did not want to leave either expensive camera equipment or their collected data at the tin dump for the bear to play with, so they had filled their arms with everything taken to the site. Halfway back to camp, they turned to see the bear crossing the spit with a slow, purposeful gait. They breathed easier when they watched the bear stop for a moment to test the air, then move on, heading across Erebus Bay to Devon Island.

The Twin Otter carrying Amy, Notman, Anderson and Schwe-ger at last swept over the camp. Beattie noticed right away that skis had been strapped onto the tundra wheels of the aircraft. The thin layer of snow on the island made landing there impossible; the plane would have to land offshore, on ice-covered Erebus Bay. That meant that the heavy load of equipment on board, over half of the 3,300 pounds (1,500 kg) of equipment to be used during the research, would have to be carried across the ice and up the beach to their camp. After brief greetings, the eleven-member team watched the Twin Otter leave, then spent the next two hours at that difficult task.

Exhumation work resumed with the digging of a work area adjacent to the right side of the coffin. This exposed the coffin's side for the first time, and immediately, something of interest was discovered: three “handles” were found spaced along the side of the coffin wall. However, these were not real handles like the ones on Torrington's coffin, but symbolic representations made out of the same white linen tape that decorated the edges of the coffin.

As in 1984, the team used heated water to accelerate the thawing process. There was no running water on the island, so Kowal developed a highly efficient method of melting snow, providing a constant, though meagre, water source. The water was heated, two buckets at a time, on naphtha stoves located in the adjacent autopsy/X-ray tent. When ready, Kowal carried the buckets across to Carlson and Nungaq, who would slowly pour the water over the dark-blue-wool-covered coffin. When too much water had accumulated in the bottom of the grave, making work virtually impossible, an electric sump pump was lowered in. The water drawn out of the grave was then directed through a hose away from the excavation area. It seemed to Beattie that the thawing was much more difficult than it had been in 1984; the time of year probably accounted for the difference. Although they did not test the temperature of the permafrost in 1984 or 1986, it seemed that at every depth it was colder in June than in August.

After photographs of the cleaned coffin were taken and it was measured (79 by 19 by 13 inches/203.5 by 48 by 33 cm deep), the delicate task of loosening and removing the already damaged lid was started. When at last it was lifted, Beattie and Carlson could see immediately that Hartnell's right arm area and face, both exposed in 1984, were again completely encased in ice. “Well, the water flowed back in, didn't it?” Beattie said. The question had been answered. Standing by Hartnell's ice-protected body, Beattie thought about the condition of John Torrington only a few steps away. He was now satisfied that the young petty officer was again suspended in time by the very process that had allowed them a brief, privileged glimpse in 1984.

Damkjar, standing alongside the upper edge of the grave with the others, pointed out that the ice around Hartnell appeared quite discoloured. The ice in the centre of the block, about where Hartnell's chest should be, was not an opaque white as with Torrington, but very brownish, even mottled.

Soon the work of exposing the body began, the warm water quickly unveiling the features of the seaman's face. This was an overwhelming experience for Spenceley, Hartnell's great-great-nephew, who stood close by the grave's edge, gazing in silence at his own family history over a distance of 140 years.

There did not seem to be any major deterioration in the tissues during the two-year hiatus. One observation made in 1984 was that Hartnell's left eye was well-preserved while his right eye appeared to be damaged, and it had been unclear whether this had happened while he lived or somehow shortly after his death. Inglefield's reports on the exhumation that he and Sutherland had conducted in 1852 had not indicated any problem with Hartnell's right eye. But in 1986, Beattie noticed immediately that, in addition to the shrunken right eye, Hartnell's left eye showed some shrinkage as well. He concluded that it is likely that exposure, for even a brief period, causes changes peculiar to the eyes, leaving the rest of the external features unaffected. In other words, the exposure of Hartnell in 1852 probably induced changes in the right eye—the fact that the left eye appeared normal to the researchers in 1984 indicated that Inglefield and Sutherland probably did not expose the left side of the face. The shrinking of the left eye over the two years that had passed since its exposure in 1984 supported the theory.

As the ice surrounding Hartnell thawed, it became apparent that he was wrapped in a white shroud from his shoulders down. The damaged shirt sleeve on his right arm was exposed through a tear in the sheet and pieces of the coffin lid appeared to have been driven forcibly into his right chest wall during the 1852 exhumation. When the obscuring ice was melted higher up the arm, the tears in the shroud, shirt sleeve and undergarments were visible as scissor or knife cuts. Obviously, to fully expose Hartnell's arm, Sutherland had had to make cuts in the shroud and clothing. This evidence showed that the investigation of Hartnell's body in 1852 was limited to his face and right arm. It would have been too difficult and taken too much time for Sutherland to do more.

On Hartnell's head was a toque-like hat, which in turn was resting on a small frilled pillow stuffed with wood shavings. Thawing of the ice surrounding the body continued until Hartnell was completely exposed. Nothing was moved by the group until the shrouded body had been thoroughly described and photographed. The next stage was the folding back of the shroud, which took a very long time because only the very thinnest layer of the exposed shroud and body was actually thawed and additional thawing of the fabric was required.

As Hartnell was unwrapped from the shroud his left arm was exposed, followed by his right arm. Immediately, Amy and Beattie could see that the arms had been bound to the body in the same manner as was seen on Torrington, though this time the material used was light brown wool. However, his right hand was lying on an outside fold of the binding. It was clear that his right arm had been extracted by Sutherland, who, when his examination was complete, had not tucked the hand back underneath the binding but left it lying on top.

Hartnell's blue-and-white-striped shirt was of a similar pattern to that seen on Torrington, though the stripes were not printed but woven (a more expensive material than that found on Torrington) and the design was also different from Torrington's. It was a pullover style, and some of the front buttons were missing, the buttonholes being tied shut with loops of string. The lower portion of the shirt had two letters embroidered on it in red and the date “1844.” The letters appeared to be “TH,” and it may be that the shirt had originally belonged to John Hartnell's younger brother and expedition companion, Thomas.

Underneath the shirt was a wool sweater-like undergarment, and beneath that a cotton undershirt. He was not wearing trousers, stockings or footwear. Beattie and Schweger were puzzled that Hartnell should have had three layers of clothing covering his upper body and nothing on below the waist. They suspected that there may have been a viewing of the body aboard the
Erebus
prior to burial, with the man's lower half covered by the shroud.