Antarctica or the Arctic especially during the spring. Erebus and Terror's 1842-3 voyage to
Antarctica was acclaimed with success despite the usual ice troubles. James Ross headed
the expedition not knowing that 5 years later he would be searching for Erebus an Terror last
voyage.
Halos are caused by ice crystals and can in fact be seen anywhere in the world. William
Parry "discovered" one aspect of them while during his extremely successful (not so famous)
voyages during the 1820's. In the picture, the Parry arc is the faint suncave arc (above the
sun), that together with brighter 22° upper tangent arc forms an ellipse like formation in the
sky. Apparently not too adventurous while in the luxury of their ships, all of Franklin's men
certainly have seen these effects and a lot more. The following quote from world class halo
expert Marko Riikonen relates to the history of this halo :
"Parry Arc is not a very spectacular halo. (William) Parry made his observation on April 7
1820. Another fellow by the name of Zahn observed it in Europe in 1733, but for some reason
it was never named after him. "
Halos can be a lot more impressive than this picture. At the sight of such sky lights,
Franklin's men must have thought that the Arctic may be dreadfully beautiful.
Photo by Marko Riikonen
To go to Marko Riikonen's web site, click here.
It is the principal culprit in the minds of most who are knowledgeable about this mystery. But,
lead simply could not have poisoned the crew to the point of insanity, giving mental lapses
and causing them to ultimately chose to flee towards the Great Fish river.
There was only 11% of food in tins on board Erebus and Terror. The ships water tanks
were made of Iron (Farrer), all together simply not enough poison to go around. All men on
board were already well imbued with lead, a great part of the UK was using lead extensively
especially for water distribution. Singling out Franklin's expedition failure by this toxin would,
by extrapolation, mean that the Royal Navy should have been unable to sustain the Empire,
after all, they ate foods from the same tins. Exhumation at Beechey Island essentially proved
that dead sailors were well contaminated before they left Britain, they were exposed to only 8
months of ships rations, including a big supply of fresh meat from living cattle slaughtered
once the ships were well into winter. Finally, lead analysis in crew member bones are not
good indicators since ingested lead mostly accumulates in bone and stays there for a long
time (20 years, Farrer)
Furthermore, it makes no sense to think that Erebus and Terror stores were heated, proof
was seen everywhere by Franklin searchers, they saw distorted tins with contents not at all
consumed, most likely as a result of bursting after exposure from severe cold weather. The
chance of lead dissolving into food is remote to non existent in very low temperatures.
Chemical reactions drastically slow down around zero degrees, lead batteries in modern
cars have little power when cooled below -20 Celsius. Water from the expedition was most
likely mainly melted sea ice, modern tests make it nearly as good as distilled water. Then
again, water was kept in storage at cool temperatures. No one can imagine Franklin and
crew wasting heat from their precious coal stores, it was often written that living in winter
quarters on beset ships was wretched, as temperatures were not a comfortable 20 degrees.
The low temperatures on board were ironically indirect lead anti-toxins.
cans kept at normal temperatures for 120 years. They showed marginal lead contamination
(Farrer). The crews of the expedition already absorbed lead in England as well as with
everyone using modern infrastuctures in the Empire. Lead is indeed a toxin, but in this case
it shouldn't have cause the crew to wear skirts at other times than their Christmas festivities!
Once you remove the lead veil, the real cause of the demise of this expedition was sheer
failure to adopt local means of survival and the lack of courage from officers to swallow ones
pride and learn from what was known as a "savage" people. In contrast, the crew of HMS
Victory survived an harrowing 4 year quite similar ordeal from 1831-1835, instructions from
John and James Ross magnetic North Pole adventure was most certainly available from
Erebus and Terror vast libraries. Surely some crew members understood the need to adopt
Inuit ways. At the time of abandonment mutinies should have been numerous between those
who wanted to adapt and live and those who wanted to die with pride.
Reference: Lead and the Last Franklin Expedition, K.T.H. Farrer.
Journal of Archaeological Science, 1993, vol 20, pages 399-409.
he isolated himself in Inuit country for several years, hoping he could hear about the true
demise of Erebus and Terror crew. Well he did, in some ways found stories, but it is doubtful
he heard them right. His hearing and transcribing of Inuit words are suspect, naturally so, since
he perhaps thought very little about multy faceted dialects throughout the Canadian Arctic. Taking
one interpreter from one region, as he did, and putting him the middle of a fact finding mission
is like asking an Italian person to speak to a Portuguese without prior knowledge of their
languages. This is a common linguistic mistake thread, pretty much permeating all 19th
Century Arctic expeditions. Even Rasmussen was not very well understood:
"Six men from Greenland came into Repulse Bay that year. We could hardly make out what
they were saying, their qamutiit (sleds) were a lot shorter than ours, and everything they did
was different from our ways" Louis Tapatai. Inuktitut Magazine. One of those six men was Knud
Rasmussen doing his overland expedition of 1921-1925. Hall's valiant effort achieved a partial
success, his collection of stories all seem to be intermixed with the famously successful John
Ross expedition of 1829-1834. John Ross, for some a stuffy Scot Officer, was without doubt the
most Inuk like explorer of the day, he achieved great things by imitating Inuit survival techniques,
his nephew was equally capable and it is no surprise that they didn't get along, great minds need
space between each other, and this may have partly motivated James Ross to find the Magnetic
North Pole. At 75 years of age John Ross sailed a yacht, the Mary, from England to Beechey
Island. He achieved no small accomplishments. John Ross had survival techniques etched in
his mind, just like Inuit.
Some of Hall's stories relate to Franklin, the man, very few Inuit stories carry him. There are
problems with Hall's accounts, Franklin was portrayed has being fat, wearing glasses and was
bald with Grey hair..... Grey Hair? If you look at any painting or even Franklin's famous last
photograph, you shall note that 2 years prior to his death, he had no grey hair. Was Hall well
informed? Or did he add words caused by translation gaps. John Ross occasionally had grey
expedition, show him so. The painting you see, is after the expedition. John Ross apparently
changed his hair colour , for obscure reasons, was he bald? Or was it fashionable to wear
wigs, even during far away expeditions.
Vision
