Arctic Wasteland, Part II

“a mystery as ancient and despair-provoking as exists in the annals of Arctic discovery…[a] disaster…rivaled only by that of Sir John Franklin‘s third expedition, 126 years later.” - John Geiger and Owen Beattie, Dead Silence

In 1767, two Hudson’s Bay whaling crews stumbled upon the pitiful remains of the Knight Expedition over 50 years after it wintered on Marble Island (then Brooke Cobham), present-day Nunavit. The whalers heard Inuit tales of how Knight's men had bravely survived two winters on the island, by which time only two survivors remained. Legend had it the last man collapsed while digging a grave for his companion. The Inuit thereafter called Marble Island “Dead Man’s Island” and began a tradition of crawling up its rocky shore on elbows and knees to appease the spirit of death.

The Knight Expedition of 1719 was the first expedition in search of the Northwest Passage that never returned. The most perplexing question: How did Knight’s team die within sight of the North American mainland, only four days’ travel from Knight’s fur-trading post on the Churchill River? And was there any substance to the disturbing rumors that the Hudson’s Bay Company, chief financier of the expedition, had allowed the men to perish?
Unlike the aftermath of the Franklin Expedition, in which more searchers died than had died in the original expedition, not one ship was sent in search of Knight’s men.

Owen Beattie, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta, was the principle investigator of the Knight Project of 1989-1993, which attempted to solve the mysteries of the expedition’s fate. Beattie’s team had unraveled the fate of the Franklin Expedition during four scientific expeditions, 1981-1986, utilizing forensic methods to determine the cause of death. Unfortunately, Beattie’s best effort could not fully penetrate the riddles of the Knight Expedition.

James Knight of London was employed by Hudson’s Bay in the mid-1970s and rose rapidly through the ranks, despite being a thorn in the company’s side. He was a quarrelsome and ambitious man who looked out for his own interests first, once refusing to take an oath against private fur-trading. He was subsequently accused of this offense before a company tribunal and sacked, rehired only after the company’s forts were captured by the French. Knight led some 200 men into the Bay to retake the forts “by any force necessary”, and he was successful…for a time.
After a career spent mostly in the wilderness of the “Bottom of the Bay”, Knight still had ambitions to go north and find the Northwest Passage, as well as copper and gold. In his 70s, he embarked on his final expedition.

Samuel Hearn’s men reportedly found numerous graves on Marble Island in 1767, but subsequent visitors couldn’t find any that might have belonged to the Knight Expedition. Beattie’s team found only Inuit tombs and 19th-century whalers’ graves. If 40 men died gradually over a 2-year period, wouldn’t there be clearly marked gravesites?
When the large brick, mud, and sod shelter built by Knight’s men was excavated, animal bones were found in abundance near the cooking area, indicating the men had not trouble supplementing their ample provisions with fresh game. Beattie thus considered it unlikely they had starved to death.

Samuel Hearne had accepted Inuit stories, passed down for 50 years, that said Knight’s two ships were wrecked upon Marble Island in a storm. The earlier discovery of three anchors, together with bricks, medicine bottles, and other provisions speaks against the shipwreck theory. In 1767 there was evidence that parts of the ships had been chopped up and carved, perhaps to be used in the longboat the Inuit reportedly saw the men building. Bettie wondered if Knight hadn’t simply decided to winter on the island. The Albany had been found submerged off the island in 1971, and Arctic divers working with Beattie in ‘92 located the smaller Discovery nearby: Neither ship had sustained damage, though both had been stripped of planks and other useful parts.

Beattie was faced with the fact that Knight’s men had abandoned two able ships that were safely moored! Their reasons for doing so remain a mystery. No one knew why the men apparently remained on the island for two winters when they could have departed in the spring of 1921. Beattie realized that Knight’s men could easily have walked to the mainland during the winter, or departed in the ships' boats during the spring, and indeed there were legends that some of them had lived among the Inuit beyond 1721. Coupled with the absence of graves on Marble Island, this is the strongest evidence that the Knight Expedition was not stranded in 1719. Why didn’t the men travel to the nearby forts for shelter and provisions? Knight was extremely reluctant to seek aid there because he had accused the Governor of Prince of Wales’s Fort, Henry Kelsey, of stealing pelts and supplies from a storeroom, and he was preparing to testify against the man upon his return to England. This could explain why the Knight Expedition was left on its own in the Bay, but it doesn’t begin to explain why 40 reasonable, experienced men destroyed their own ships rather than burn the tremendous pile of coal they had unloaded from one of them, much less how they disappeared forever.