UNCOVERING THE PAST: Archaeologist Douglas Stenton excavates a shallow grave in the Canadian Arctic containing human remains from the Franklin expedition.CREDIT: ROBERT W. PARK, UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
In April 1848, 105 men set out into the frozen heart of the Canadian Arctic. Abandoning their ships, which had become locked in sea ice (at around 69 degrees north latitude) near King William Island two winters earlier, the crew had a desperate plan: head south to the Canadian mainland, and cross hundreds of miles to the nearest Western settlement.
None would survive. These last members of Sir John Franklin’s doomed 129-man expedition to map the Northwest Passage all perished, many just a few miles from where they’d started—although the bodies of many of the crew members, including Franklin himself, have never been found. The hazy picture of their final days was drawn from the examination of human remains and testimony from Inuit people, who ...
