Frozen in Time

This is the classic introduction to Franklin’s 1845 expedition. On Beechey Island, Owen Beattie conducted autopsies on the bodies of the first three sailors to die. John Geiger tells the story so clearly that he opens the door to interpretations at odds with his own.

At the northern tip of King William Island, believing he had no option, Franklin turned southwest into “the continuously replenished pack-ice.” He sailed into a lethal trap, one “made all the more cruel with the realization that the route along the eastern coast of the island regularly clears during the summer.” Here, I realized that… show more.

An absolutely riveting account of the tragic attempt of Captain John Franklin of England to discover a northwest passage to Asia in 1845-1848. The account is told by a professor of Anthropology who discovered the frozen bodies of three sailors on the expedition that were literally frozen in time when their two ships were ice-bound 138 years ago. The two sunken ships were discovered only recently in 2014. It is now believed that food poisoning from improperly canned food may have been the cause of the tragic fate of the crew of 125 men.

Whether you have read Frozen in Time or not, you have probably seen the startling photograph of John Torrington, a stoker on the Terror, whose body was preserved in the Arctic ice for 140 years. Torrington and two of his companions died early in the expedition and were buried with full honours on Beechey Island during the winter of 1845/6. In the early 1980s, Beattie a Canadian anthropologist led expeditions to exhume and autopsy the three men. The staggering state of preservation of the bodies, allowed Beattie to undertake detailed work, which included the discovery of high levels of… show more.