They also will have suffered exposure, and some deaths might have occurred from respiratory, cardiovascular and tubercular conditions. ShutterstockĪfter examining the illnesses seen in almost 1,500 medical cases across nine search crews, we concluded that Franklin’s men would have suffered similar common infections, gastro-intestinal disorders and injuries.
Created by Erhard and Bonaparte, published on Le Tour du Monde, Paris, 1860. Old map of Arctic region charting Sir John Franklin’s Northwest Passage exploration. Consequently, the illnesses and deaths that occurred on them might reflect those of the lost crew.
Those ships were similarly equipped and provisioned to Franklin’s vessels and met similar conditions. So our team at the University of Glasgow College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences and the College of Science and Engineering proposed that the medical records of those in the Royal Naval ships sent in search of Franklin and his crew might serve as a proxy for the health problems encountered by the expedition. The supposed roles of scurvy and lead poisoning in the disaster would be answered if the expedition’s medical records had survived – but they have eluded discovery, as have all the formal logs and journals. In general, levels of lead in their bodies would have been high anyway. That population ingested high levels of lead from water pipes, pewter cooking utensils and drinking vessels, lead-based medical treatments and many other sources. The difficulty is the lack of normative data for levels of lead in the British population from which the crew was recruited in the 19th century. Levels of lead in the remains of some of the crew are high relative to today, but it is debatable whether those levels would reflect incapacitating lead poisoning. Scurvy did occur in Arctic crews but research by Simon Mays of Historic England concluded that samples of the crew’s skeletal remains show little clear evidence of the disease. Their locations and contents may provide new insights into the fate of the crew.Įarly historians supposed that scurvy had caused widespread incapacity, while more recent research proposed that the men were poisoned by lead from the solder that sealed their canned provisions. However, both of the expedition’s ships have now been discovered – HMS Erebus in September 2014 by Parks Canada, and most recently the “pristine” HMS Terror in September 2016 by the Arctic Research Foundation. Some of the remains show evidence that cannibalism occurred in the last desperate throes of the expedition. Their deaths occurred after desertion of the ships and were probably due to starvation and exposure. Skeletal remains of some other members of the crew have been found further south on King William Island and adjacent parts of the Canadian mainland. Forensic examination suggests that their deaths may have been caused by tuberculosis. Three permafrost preserved bodies were found in graves at the expedition’s winter quarters of 1845/46 on Beechey Island in the northern Arctic. But what happened to the rest of the crew? We know that they deserted their ships in 1848 – after two winters trapped in the pack ice – and all eventually perished over the next two or three years.
The only informative document to be recovered from the expedition was a single page that reported initial good progress through 1845 to 1847, but then the desertion of the ships in 1848 by which point nine officers – including Sir John Franklin – and 15 other ranks were reported to have died.įranklin’s two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, became trapped in ice off King William Island in 1846, where it is known that Franklin died in June the following year. The loss of all 129 men of the 1845 Royal Navy expedition led by Captain Sir John Franklin to navigate a north-west passage through the Arctic remains an enigma. It remains one of history’s best-known naval tragedies – and mysteries.
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