The drama of adventurers never returns

Beechey Island (Canada) has become a historic place of great significance because it is a mooring place and also the grave of Franklin adventurers who lost their lives in the route towards the Arctic since 1845.

With the cold wind blowing through the pants, Beechey looked like another planet lying far away from the earth. In fact, it belongs to the Nunavut Islands, Canada is in the Arctic region. The island is separated from the southwest corner of Devon Island by the Barrow Strait. Beechey became the most famous polar attraction as it was the place where two of the Franklin expedition's bad boats had docked in 1845 and never returned.

Sir John Franklin, born in 1786 in Lincolnshire (England), was a commander of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The expedition led by Franklin left London on May 19, 1845 with 24 officers, 110 crew members on two ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

After stopping in Scotland they went to Disko Bay on the west coast of Greenland, where the team members wrote the last letters sent home. However, at this time, there were 5 sick people and were taken back to their hometowns on support trains. They didn't know how lucky they were.

They were the first to search for the Northwest Corridor on the Arctic Ocean - an easier trade route to Asia through the North American continent. They take ships through Baffin Bay between Greenland and Canada, via Lancaster Sound to cross the Bering Strait, off western Alaska.

Tourists visit Beechey Island with remnants of sailors in the Franklin expedition.(Photo: Quark Expeditions).

The press then predicted they could go all the way and carry lots of goods like tea, rum, 8,000 boxes of meat, vegetables and soups.

On July 12, the expedition left 129 train drivers to Canada and two weeks later the ship entered Baffin Bay when the spirit was still very good. Franklin and the sailors continued west and disappeared.

Two years passed, an empty silence came from northern Canada. Then the three search teams were founded and departed in the spring of 1848. However, they returned after a year and found no trace of the missing explorers.

In 1850, another search fleet discovered a grave on the island of Beechey. They guessed that the Franklin expedition spent the winter of 1845 here, leaving behind a hundred boxes of food containers and losing three people in the group, the first losses in numbers.

The first tombstone was built on Beechey Island for young sailors who had perished, including John Torrington (20), John Hartnell (25), William Braine. The fourth tombstone was added later to researcher Thomas Morgan, who died of scurvy (a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C) in 1854 when searching for the missing expedition team.

Although many traces were found, there was no answer to many questions about Franklin's crew's death when the journey began.

It was officially announced that Franklin and the entire crew had died in 1854. That same year, explorer John Rae, met with the Inuit clan who lived near Kugaaruk (Nunavut), 650km south of Beechey. They said they saw 35 - 40 men fighting in the snow and dying of starvation.

The cuts on him are proof of hunger and hunger to eat each other. In 1859, other explorers also discovered Franklin died in 1847 on King William Island, 670km southwest of Beechey.

Between 1984 - 1986, a search team led by Owen Beattie, an anthropologist at the University of Alberta (Canada), unearthed three bodies buried deep in the ice. They found evidence of high levels of lead in the body, possibly due to leaks from food boxes or from the freshwater storage system on board.

Memorial of dead sailors on Beechey Island.(Photo: Sarah Hewitt).

In 2016, a team led by toxicologist Canada Jennie Christensen analyzed the fingerprint and pedicure samples from John Hartnell's body, one of the first three members killed. They discovered that Hartnell was deficient in zinc, possibly due to not eating enough meat. This damages his immune system and causes diseases such as pneumonia or pulmonary tuberculosis. Jennie's team concluded that the crew of Franklin's expedition died from lead poisoning, malnutrition and weak health.

On Beechey, apart from tombstones, there was a Northumberland house built in 1854 by sailors in a search team. Without the trees on the island, they carried timber from a wrecked whale ship to build a house.

The house is a storehouse of food reserves, when someone in the team finds their way home or supports other search teams. However, over 160 winters it was destroyed by harsh nature and was only a pile of wood. Not far from the house is Franklin Memorial and his sailors.

Currently, visitors can "explore" the island of Beechey by participating in a tour to explore the big group. This journey takes visitors to historical vestiges: east Franklin camp in 1845 - 1846, Northumberland house, stone docks carved messages, where two British boats were crushed by ice .