Sunset off the stern, Devon Island ahead, a clear night, a calm sea. John Geiger’s documentary Frozen in Time introduces
On September 12, authors and journalists and contributors to The Walrus joined The Walrus Expedition for a fourteen-day voyage in the Canadian Arctic aboard the Russian icebreaker Lyubov Orlova. The expedition—in partnership with Adventure Canada—is a fundraising event for the charitable, non-profit Walrus Foundation and is a part of The Walrus Arctic Project. Also onboard is Franklyn Griffiths, author of the essay on Arctic climate change in the special Arctic issue of The Walrus, published in November 2007. The Walrus Expedition begins in Resolute—very close to the Magnetic North Pole and very near the graves of some of John Franklin’s men. As the ship continues down the coast of Baffin Island, stopping in Pond Inlet and other communities, and with a stop in Greenland, you can follow along with here at The Walrus Blogs until the expedition ends in Iqaluit on September 24.

THE LYUBOV ORLOVA—Sunset off the stern, Devon Island ahead, a clear night, a calm sea. John Geiger’s documentary Frozen in Time introduces us to the John Franklin story, as we motor across Lancaster Sound towards Beechey Island. The film recounts the excavation by Dr. Owen Beattie of the graves of three of Franklin’s sailors and the subsequent analysis of bones and the fragments of cloth in the coffins. To scientist John Geiger, it seemed there were exceptionally high residue of lead in the bones. Not far from the graves, there is a large dump, full of the rusted tin cans, and a close examination of the tins, still littered on the shore, shows that the lead lining had eroded and could well have contaminated the food. (The controversy about canned food seems to have begun with the invention of canned foods.)

A curious detail: when one of the bodies was exhumed, it appeared that it had been autopsied, the organs just thrown back into the carcass. This would have happened on one of two very small ships, in the dead darkness of winter, by tallow light. Why do an autopsy? TB and scurvy were likely causes of death, or was this a teaching exercise….

Around midnight, we pass between the magnificent headlands that are the gateway to Erebus Bay, the sheer cliff on the western edge of Beechey Island and Cape Riley. We come in quietly and drop anchor. In late December, 1845, John Franklin and 128 men in the ships Erebus and Terror sailed into this same bay to overwinter, locked in by the ice. (They could still do this, in this bay, even though Lancaster Sound itself might not freeze.)

The sea is calm, but at 6:30 a.m., we sit just off the shore of Beechey, which is itself contained by the hills and ridges of much larger Devon Island. It is zero degrees Celsius and there is more than a dusting of snow—the first time any on the ship have seen Beechey snow-covered.

Aaju Peters (a Greenlander who crossed over in 1981 and stayed) stands guard on the slight crest of hill, with a rifle in the silhouette of her fur-trimmed seal skin parka. There is a row of four graves on the shale foreshore, facing west: three close together, the fourth a little up the hill; the sailors who died in the winter of 1846, and a sailor who came looking for the Franklin expedition in 1854. They all have a wooden plaque, with bronze plaques, each individual, The three originals have piles of rocks marking them, and a couple of erratic boulders. (In summer on one of the graves you would see a rash of wild poppies, which bloom nowhere else on the island.)

As writer and northern historian David Pelly tells us, this is one of Canada’s most important historic sites. For people who have thought and read about the Franklin expedition for years, and there are many such on this ship, this is a pilgrimage. Even in the nineteenth century, it was a destination, when possible. One of the monuments about a mile from here, behind the skeletal remains of Northumberland House, was carved by the crew of another ship, but they could get not get into the bay. So another ship, a season later, brought it for them.

Daniel Payne, musician from Newfoundland, sings “The Lament of Lady Franklin”, a traditional song written while Jane Franklin was pleading and begging and arm twisting to get the Admiralty, the United States government and anyone else in the world who wanted to help by donating money, to search for her husband lost in the Arctic. The search still goes on, 160 years later, but it is possible that a French underwater archaeologist and an Inuit researcher/historian may be very close to discovering both of Franklin’s ships, off the coast of King William Island, and the grave of Franklin.

It is very cold, windy, bleak. But this tiny forlorn graveyard combined with a small ship sitting in the harbour, the seeping in of winter, combine to make real an old human drama. The three sailors died during the dark winter but could not be buried until the ground thawed in June. Daniel is probably not the first musician to sing a lament on this shore.

On the walk along the coastline to Northumberland House four arctic hare hop out among the rubber boots and walking sticks. We step around and over rusted tin can fragments, and barrel staves, wood debris and chunks of brick from the ovens of whaling ships. The very fresh tracks of arctic fox in the snow lead to the point and a sheltered hill covered in dried moss, where lemmings no doubt live. On the sheer cliffs are faint streaks of a rusty lichen that flourishes on bird droppings, a sign of gyrfalcons. But few birds would nest or rest here, because the arctic fox is vigilant and agile.

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