Free Frozen in Time by Owen Beattie

thrown upon the gloom of uncertainty which hangs over the fate of Sir John Franklin and his companions.” For on 23 August 1850, Captain Erasmus Ommanney and some of the officers of the search ship HMS Assistance found signs of Franklin’s expedition at Cape Riley, on the southwest shore of Devon Island. After two years of disappointments, the Royal Navy at last had leads in the search for the missing men. Ommanney recalled:
    I had the satisfaction of meeting with the first traces of Sir John Franklin’s expedition, consisting of fragments of naval stores, ragged portions of clothing, preserved meat tins, &c… and the spot bore the appearance of an encampment.
    But those relics told only of a brief stop, perhaps for magnetic observation early in the expedition, and gave away nothing in regard to Franklin’s whereabouts.
    Ommanney pushed on, combing the shoreline for clues, until a large cairn was spotted high up on the headland of a nearby islet named Beechey Island. Lieutenant Sherard Osborn, commander of the steamship HMS Pioneer, which was also part of the Royal Navy search expedition under the overall command of Captain Horatio Thomas Austin, painted a dramatic picture of the men rushing towards the “dark and frowning cliffs… too steep for even [a] snow-flake to hang upon”:
    A boatful of officers and men proceeded on shore. On landing, some relics of European visitors were found; and we can picture the anxiety with which the steep slope was scaled and the cairn torn down, every stone turned over, the ground underneath dug up a little, and yet, alas! no document or record found.
    Osborn was undeterred; he still held great hope that more discoveries would follow: “[The cairn] seemed to say to the beating heart, ‘follow them that erected me!’ ”
    A flotilla of search ships converged on the area, among them the Lady Franklin under Captain William Penny. The gritty Scot swore to scour the area “like a blood-hound” until answers to the mystery were found. More traces of Franklin’s crew were discovered on Devon Island, this time at nearby Cape Spencer. Penny found the remains of a hut built of stones, artefacts that included scraps of newspaper dated September 1844, a fragment of paper with the words “until called,” more food tins, torn gloves—and that was all. Then, on 27 August, a breathless sailor brought Penny startling news: “Graves, Captain Penny! Graves! Franklin’s winter quarters!”
    Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, ship’s surgeon under American searcher Edwin De Haven, was present when the news arrived and described what happened next:
    Captain De Haven, Captain Penny, Commander Phillips, and myself… hurried on over the ice, and, scrambling along the loose and rugged slope that extends from Beechey to the shore, came, after a weary walk, to the crest of the isthmus. Here, amid the sterile uniformity of snow and slate, were the head-boards of three graves, made after the old orthodox fashion of gravestones at home.
    The tombs lay side by side in a line with the headboards facing Cape Riley. Two of the grave mounds were “neatly paved round” with limestone slabs. Their inscriptions, chiselled into the headboards, read:
    Sacred
to the
memory of
William Braine, R.M.,
h.m.s. Erebus
Died April 3d, 1846
aged 32 years
‘Choose ye this day whom ye will serve’
Joshua, ch. xxiv., 15.
    The second was:
    Sacred to the memory of
John Hartnell, A.B. of H.M.S.
Erebus,
died January 4th, 1846
aged 25 years.
‘Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways.’
Haggai, i., 7.
    The third grave, representing the earliest death, was not as carefully finished as the others, but Kane felt “its general appearance was more grave-like.” The headboard was inscribed:
    Sacred
to
the memory of
John Torrington
who departed
this
life January 1st,
A.D. 1846,
on board of
H.M. ship Terror
aged 20 years
    Osborn