Arctic Wasteland (No, Not Alberta!)

Last night I watched PBS's NOVA: Arctic Passage, Prisoners of the Ice. It covered the Franklin Expedition of 1845, which left two ships icebound at King William Island. For reasons that aren't entirely known, the men split up into groups that might have been hostile to each other, each party having their own notions about how to survive. They had no provisions for hunting because they had put their faith in the lemon juice that was known to stave off scurvy, and the newfangled canned food that would never spoil. They didn't know that lemon juice loses its vitamin C over time, or that the tins contained so much lead that numerous men would die agonizing deaths from a combination of scurvy and lead poisoning. Their faces and tongues blackened, their eyes bled.

Franklin and a few of his sick men took refuge in one of the stranded ships, where an Inuit man discovered them. Most were near death, their flesh the color of coal. Franklin took the man to a porthole and pointed across the endless expanse of snow and ice to a small clutch of men camping in tents. He warned the man never to go near that camp.

We now know the camp men may have been shunned for cannibalism. Human bones found near the site years later contained not only high levels of lead, but cut marks on the ankles and hands indicating the men had hacked away the hands and feet of the dead, ugly reminders of their humanity, and consumed the rest of the bodies. The camp men really had no choice; their supplies had run out, and the Inuits wouldn't hunt for 30 stranded Englishmen when they had their own families to feed. The Inuits later spoke to the search teams of cannibalism among Franklin's men, but England staunchly refused to accept the stories.

A third group set off on foot, heading south. Their remains have been found scattered along a 30-mile stretch of King William Island.

Back in England, Lady Franklin clung to the hope that against all odds, members of the expedition led by her husband had survived and were awaiting rescue. When search teams found no evidence of survivors, she became a world adventuress/explorer in her own right. (Her life is explored in a recent book, Lady Franklin's Revenge)

Gruesome and sad as this story is, I was fascinated by the determination and courage of these men and the other Arctic explorers who went in search of them, and impressed by the modern-day detective work that has solved some of the final mysteries of the Franklin Expedition. Next week's installment of NOVA: Arctic Passage covers Roald Amundsen, and I will definitely be watching.