Frozen in Time Read Free Page B

initially failed to reform dietary regimens, however, with the result that the disease continued to wreak havoc. Only in 1795 did the Royal Navy heed decades of advice and begin enforcing the consumption of lime juice on its ships (giving rise to the term “limey”).
    While slow to enforce the benefits of lime juice, the Royal Navy nevertheless moved swiftly to embrace a technology that it was convinced also had powerful antiscorbutic properties: tinned food. Prior to the 1810 introduction of tinned meats and vegetables, expeditions were reliant on dry foods that could be stored for long periods of time, such as salt beef and salt pork, biscuits, pemmican and flour. However, spoilage, insects and rodents played havoc with such stores—none of which had antiscorbutic properties. Therefore, the discovery of the value of preserving food in airtight metal containers offered a liberation of sorts. In theory, expeditions of ever-greater duration might now be planned, knowing that there would be a reliable onboard source of meats, vegetables, fruits and soups that would maintain their nutritive value throughout an expedition. It was this simple invention, tinned meats and vegetables, together with the navy’s success with lime juice, that convinced the Admiralty that lengthy Arctic discovery voyages such as Franklin’s were possible.
    Yet, though tinned foods enjoyed a great reputation for warding off scurvy, their antiscorbutic benefits had not been proven, and, in fact, were grossly overrated. The nature of the canning process of the day, which required that tins be nearly immersed in boiling water or saltwater, destroyed any ascorbic acid they may have contained, so that their tinned meats, vegetables, soups and even fruits were virtually useless as antiscorbutics. Still, received opinion held that scurvy could be staved off on Arctic voyages by liberal diets of tinned meats and vegetables, along with a daily allotment of lime juice.
    The skeleton found near Booth Point by the University of Alberta researchers in 1981 proved otherwise. It left little doubt that, during the final year of the Franklin expedition (and probably earlier), scurvy was a factor in the declining health of the crews and an important contributor to the expedition’s disastrous outcome.
    Other findings also preyed upon the minds of the researchers, however: the unusual distribution of the bones near the entrance of the tent circle, the fact that certain bones were present yet others were missing and the discovery of cut marks on the skeleton’s right femur. Also noted by Beattie were the angularity of the cranial fragments and the identifiable convergence of fracture lines, indicating that the skull was forcibly broken. He paused over the evidence before him and briefly considered the possibility that this young sailor had suffered an end far more terrible than that described in the historic Inuit accounts—that Franklin’s crew “fell down and died as they walked along.” Was this the first physical evidence found to support another Inuit claim: that in their final days, the sailors had been reduced to cannibalism?
    The discovery of the bones at Booth Point would prompt, over the next five years, three further scientific expeditions into the Canadian Arctic. With each of these investigations, new leads would be pursued and unravelled, culminating in the exhumation of the preserved corpses of three of Franklin’s sailors on Beechey Island in 1984 and 1986, allowing Beattie and his colleagues an unprecedented look into a world very different from our own. By opening this window into the past, they became the first to piece together accurately the events that led to the destruction of the greatest enterprise in the annals of polar exploration.

2. A Subject of Wonder
    The discovery of a north-west passage to India and China has always been considered as an object