Native name: Iluvialuit | |
---|---|
Location in the Arctic Archipelago | |
Geography | |
Location | Northern Canada |
Coordinates | 74°43′N091°51′W / 74.717°N 91.850°W [1] |
Archipelago | Queen Elizabeth Islands Arctic Archipelago |
Area | 4.6 km2 (1.8 sq mi) |
Highest elevation | 198 m (650 ft) |
Highest point | Un-named |
Administration | |
Canada | |
Territory | Nunavut |
Demographics | |
Population | Uninhabited |
Official name | Beechey Island Sites National Historic Sites of Canada |
Designated | 1993 |
Beechey Island (Inuktitut : Iluvialuit) is an island located in the Arctic Archipelago of Nunavut, Canada, in Wellington Channel. It is separated from the southwest corner of Devon Island by Barrow Strait. Other features include Wellington Channel, Erebus Harbour, [3] and Terror Bay (not to be confused with the Terror Bay south of King William Island).
The first European visit to the island was in 1819, by Captain William Edward Parry. The island was named after the artist William Beechey (1753–1839) by his son Frederick William Beechey (1796–1856), who was then serving as Parry's lieutenant. [4]
It is the site of several very significant events in the history of Arctic exploration. In 1845, the British explorer Sir John Franklin, commanding a new but ill-fated search for the Northwest Passage aboard HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, chose the protected harbour of Beechey Island for his first winter encampment. The site was not rediscovered until 1850, when British and United States search vessels anchored nearby.
In 1850, Edward Belcher used the island as a base. There are memorials to Franklin and other polar explorers and sailors on the island, including to the French naval officer Joseph René Bellot, who died aged 27 falling into the Wellington Channel, northwest of Beechey Island. [5]
In 1903, paying respect to Franklin, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen stopped at the island at the beginning of his successful voyage through the Northwest Passage.
In 1975, Beechey Island was declared a Territorial Historic Site by the government of the Northwest Territories. Since 1999, it has been part of the newly created Canadian territory of Nunavut. [6]
In 1993, five archaeological sites on Beechey Island and nearby Devon Island (the Franklin wintering camp of 1845–46, Northumberland House, the Devon Island site at Cape Riley, two message cairns, and the HMS Breadalbane National Historic Site) were designated as the Beechey Island Sites National Historic Site of Canada. [7]
Beechey Island is best known for containing three graves of Franklin expedition members, which were first discovered in 1850 by searchers for the lost Franklin expedition. The searchers found a large stone cairn, along with the graves of three of Franklin's crewmen – Petty Officer John Torrington, Royal Marine Private William Braine, and Able Seaman John Hartnell – but no written record nor indication of where Franklin planned to sail the next season.
In 1852, Commander Edward A. Inglefield arrived at Beechey, along with a physician Dr Peter Sutherland. John Hartnell's grave was opened, damaging his coffin, and Hartnell's memorial plaque on the coffin lid was removed. During a later expedition, a searcher named Thomas Morgan died aboard the vessel North Star on May 22, 1854, and was buried alongside the three original Franklin crew members.
In the 1980s, during two separate expeditions to Beechey, Canadian forensic anthropologist Dr. Owen Beattie examined the three bodies and found them (externally) remarkably well-preserved. Autopsies determined that lung disease and lead poisoning were among the probable causes of death; the lead appeared to come from the thousands of lead-soldered tins of provisions with which the Franklin expedition had been supplied (although later studies would suggest that the unique water distillation system used by the ships was the major source of lead poisoning). [8]
Later research, however, found through hair sample comparisons between the Beechey remains and those of expedition assistant surgeon and naturalist Harry Goodsir (who died on the expedition a year later, and would therefore be expected to have yet further exposure, under the lead poisoning hypothesis) that the lead in the three men's remains, while indeed present at high levels now recognized as deleterious, was no higher than Goodsir's, and thus evidently mostly the result of exposure prior to the expedition (due to high everyday lead exposure common in the 19th century), and consequently was unlikely to be solely responsible for their deaths. [9] [10]
In the 1990s, due to the deteriorating condition of the Beechey grave markers, all markers were replaced with bronze memorials.
The explorers in Jules Verne's novel The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (French : Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras) visit Beechey Island. In addition, Clive Cussler's novel, Arctic Drift (2008), featured characters who would visit this island in the quest for Franklin's ships. The island is also mentioned in Dan Simmons' novel, The Terror .
Sir John Franklin was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer and colonial administrator. After serving in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and through the islands of the Arctic Archipelago, during the Coppermine expedition of 1819 and the Mackenzie River expedition of 1825, and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1837 to 1843. During his third and final expedition, an attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage in 1845, Franklin's ships became icebound off King William Island in what is now Nunavut, where he died in June 1847. The icebound ships were abandoned ten months later, and the entire crew died from causes such as starvation, hypothermia, and scurvy.
HMS Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel constructed by the Royal Navy in Pembroke dockyard, Wales, in 1826. The vessel was the second in the Royal Navy named after Erebus, the personification of darkness in Greek mythology.
Bathurst Island is one of the Queen Elizabeth Islands in Nunavut, Canada. It is a member of the Arctic Archipelago. An uninhabited island, the area is estimated at 16,042 km2 (6,194 sq mi), 185 to 188 km long and from 101 km (63 mi) to 116 km (72 mi) to 149.5 km (92.9 mi) wide, making it Canada's 13th largest island. It is located between Devon Island and Cornwallis Island in the east, and Melville Island in the west. Four small islands of Cameron, Vanier, Massey and Alexander lie in its northwest.
HMS Terror was a specialised warship and a newly developed bomb vessel constructed for the Royal Navy in 1813. She participated in several battles of the War of 1812, including the Battle of Baltimore with the bombardment of Fort McHenry. She was converted into a polar exploration ship two decades later, and participated in George Back's Arctic expedition of 1836–1837, the successful Ross expedition to the Antarctic of 1839 to 1843, and Sir John Franklin's ill-fated attempt to force the Northwest Passage in 1845, during which she was lost with all hands along with HMS Erebus.
Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier was an Irish officer of the Royal Navy and polar explorer who participated in six expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. In 1843, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society for his scientific work during his expeditions. Later, he was second-in-command to Sir John Franklin and captain of HMS Terror during the Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage, which ended with the loss of all 129 crewmen in mysterious circumstances.
The Terror is a 2007 novel by American author Dan Simmons. It is a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition, on HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, to the Arctic, in 1845–1848, to locate the Northwest Passage. In the novel, while Franklin and his crew are plagued by starvation and illness, and forced to contend with mutiny and cannibalism, they are stalked across the bleak Arctic landscape by a monster.
John Shaw Torrington was a Royal Navy stoker. He was part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition to chart unexplored areas of what is now Nunavut, Canada, find the Northwest Passage, and make scientific observations. He was the first fatality of the expedition, of which all personnel ultimately died, mostly in and around King William Island. Torrington was buried on Beechey Island. His body was exhumed by forensic anthropologist Owen Beattie in 1984, to try to determine the cause of death. His remains are among the best preserved example of a corpse since the ancient Tollund Man which was found in the 1950s. Photographs of his mummified remains were widely published and inspired music and literature.
Franklin's lost expedition was a failed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation. The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After being icebound for more than a year, Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848, by which point two dozen men, including Franklin, had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and Erebus's captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, presumably having perished.
O'Reilly Island is an uninhabited island in Nunavut Territory, Canada. It lies to the south of King William Island and to the west of the Klutschak and Adelaide Peninsulas, in the easternmost part of the Queen Maud Gulf.
William Braine was a British explorer. He served as a marine in the Royal Marines. From 1845 he was part of an expedition to find the Northwest Passage, but he died early in the trip and was buried on Beechey Island. His preserved body was exhumed in 1984, to try to determine the cause of death.
John Hartnell was an English seaman who took part in Sir John Franklin's Northwest Passage expedition and was one of its first casualties, dying of suspected zinc deficiency and malnourishment during the expedition's first year.
Owen Beattie is a Canadian professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta.
Terror Bay is an Arctic waterway in the Kitikmeot Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is located on the southwestern side of King William Island. The entrance to the bay is marked by Fitzjames Island on the west and Irving Island to the east. The bay opens to Queen Maud Gulf.
Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition is a book by Owen Beattie and John Geiger, first published in 1987 by Bloomsbury Publishing. The book focuses on the dramatic events surrounding the Franklin Expedition of 1845-1848, led by Sir John Franklin, as well as the scientific work and forensic testing on the bodies of three perfectly preserved Victorian seamen 138 years after their deaths, solving the mysteries of the Franklin Expedition. In 2004, the authors substantially revised the book, adding an epilogue and altering and updating the text. Margaret Atwood wrote an introduction. In 2017, the authors added a new afterword to the Canadian edition, and a new foreword by Wade Davis was added.
Thomas Abernethy was a Scottish seafarer, gunner in the Royal Navy, and polar explorer. Because he was neither an officer nor a gentleman, he was little mentioned in the books written by the leaders of the expeditions he went on, but was praised in what was written. In 1857, he was awarded the Arctic Medal for his service as an able seaman on the 1824–25 voyage of HMS Hecla, the first of his five expeditions for which participants were eligible for the award. He was in parties that, for their time, reached the furthest north, the furthest south (twice), and the nearest to the South Magnetic Pole. In 1831, along with James Clark Ross's team of six, Abernethy was in the first party ever to reach the North Magnetic Pole.
Graham Gore was an English officer of the Royal Navy and polar explorer who participated in two expeditions to the Arctic and a survey of the coastline of Australia aboard HMS Beagle. In 1845 he served under Sir John Franklin as First Lieutenant on the Erebus during the Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage, which ended with the loss of all 129 officers and crewmen in mysterious circumstances.
The Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site is a National Historic Site of Canada near King William Island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut. It protects the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, the two ships of the last expedition of Sir John Franklin, lost in the 1840s during their search for the Northwest Passage and then re-discovered in 2014 and 2016. The site is jointly managed by Parks Canada and the local Inuit. Public access to the site is not permitted.
Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte was an English officer of the Royal Navy and polar explorer who from 1845 served under Sir John Franklin as Second Lieutenant on the Erebus during the Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage, which ended with the loss of all 129 crewmen in mysterious circumstances.
Robert Anstruther Goodsir was a Scottish medical doctor, explorer and writer. He made two voyages to the Arctic in search of his brother Harry Goodsir who was lost with the Franklin expedition.
John Gregory was an English railway and naval engineer. He served as engineer aboard HMS Erebus during the 1845 Franklin Expedition, which sought to explore uncharted parts of what is now Nunavut, including the Northwest Passage, and make scientific observations. The ships were outfitted with former railway locomotive engines which served as auxiliary power units, which is why Gregory, who had never been to sea, served on the expedition. All expedition personnel perished in uncertain conditions, mostly on and around King William Island. In 2021, Gregory's remains became the first of the expedition to be identified using DNA analysis.