#beechey graves
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Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie - trad. & Beechey Island Graves & May We Be Spared to Meet On Earth - edited by Russell A. Potter et al. & The Terror
#was peacefully listening to folk music when I had a screaming crying grieving revelation#bothered-by-expeditions birdie#thomas hartnell#john hartnell#the terror amc#the terror#franklin expedition#beechey graves#may we be spared to meet on earth#various expeditions
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Anybody have a spare $20,000 to give me so I can go to beechey island and sit on the rocks and stare at the Franklin graves for 12 hours while considering the unstoppable force that is the passage of time
#the franklin expedition#polar exploration#and also thinking about how hundreds of people died on a journey to this same place that people can now just more or less go for fun#was talking about this with friends last night#imagine telling a victorian explorer that I can get in a big metal tube that will climb 20000 ft in the sky and take me to greenland#then get in a boat that will take me to the northwest passage in just a few days time#all for the modest sum of $20000#their brains would melt out of their ears
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beechey island graves represented in art / early photography /conservation reference compilation post that no one on earth cares about except for me. ok 🖤 yay 🤍
( sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6)
#📜#really really fascinated by the drawings. first of all. but also the fact that they were originally black and faded to white over time#painting the grave markers black so they would stay legible against the landscape. say what you will but those sailors loved each other
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The Terror: When, How, Where... (PART 1)
See part 2 for the end of my sanity (ep 6 through 9. Wasn't enough characters left on the post for ep 10)
See part 3 (and episode 10)
As I am writing the fic, I was getting frustrated at trying to figure out the timeline of the expedition. More specifically, what happens after they dropped the Victory Point Note.
Therefore, in order to organize my ideas, and also because it might be of interests to some of you, I will document here what I got.
Episode 1 through 5 for now.
Methodology
If we agree that the showrunners (and Dan Simmons to an extent) made their research, we should be able to match some of the event of the story with notable point of interests where artefacts and/or remains were found over the numerous searches made to ascertain the fate of the Franklin Expedition
I also tried to take note of all indications of time passing so that I might document their speed travel and the dates when they are not mentioned.
... And the death count. (Departing Beechey Island with 24 officers and 102 men)
Finally, I also used the following website to keep track of sunrises and sunsets: https://www.timeanddate.com/
1927 Admiralty Map
I may be an amateur in this kind of research but I find myself frustrated that the most complete map I've been able to find showing all that was found between 1850 and 1926 is shown on this map from 1927
To be noted, we now know that the Skeleton of H. Peglar was more probably W. Gibson or T. Armitage
The Skeleton of Lt. Le Vesconte has also been reevaluated and is now believed to be that of Harry Goodsir ( :( )
Also, as it happens, if we compare to 2024 maps, we can say that this is not the actual shape of KWI (close enough!).
Therefore, for my own sanity, I recreated with modern maps. Is it accurate? Well, I wouldn't publish it but I think it gives a good enough view of where they went and where they were going:
Where the Ships had drifted to in June 1847 (According to G. Gore's coordinates left on the Victory point note)
Where the Ships had drifted with the Pack by April 1848 (Victory Point Note)
Victory Point
McClintock's Boat Place (proposed to be same location as NgLJ-1)
Camp with Many skeletons
From D. Simmons' The Terror - The Hospital Camp
Peglar Skeleton
Starvation Cove
A Bunch of cairns in the area
Harry Goodsir
Gjoa Haven (Netsilik Settlement)
Fort Resolution (Dear God... look at how far they wanted to walk/Canoe/make portage...)
Matching the Show
Episode 1 - Go for Broke
Location 1 - David Young's grave (71.22, -96.60)
Date: September 5th 1846
Nighttime - None
Daylight - 14h 57 min
Twilight - 9h 03 min
Sunset: 7:51 PM - Sunrise: 4:55 AM
David Young was buried 7 days before they were beset in the ice (see point 3 on the map below).
During the dinner in which we were regaled by the tale of Mr. Fitzjames' Holes, Franklin discuss that they were approaching a bigger channel, which is now know as the McClintock Channel (see point 1 on the map below), meaning that at the time, they were still in the Franklin Strait.
On the day after his death, Franklin discuss their next course and assure that they must be 'nearly in sight of KW Land'. Crozier suggests it might take them weeks to actually make it to KWI. This would confirm what was infer above.
As we can see the two ships fitting in a cozy little cove while the grave is being dug, I would like to propose Point 4 on the map below as Ficitonal David Young's final resting place, on Tasmania Islands
Location 2 - Ships September 1846 (70.25, -98.00)
Date: September 12th 1846
Nighttime - None
Daylight - 13h 45 min
Twilight - 10h 15 min
Sunset: 7:19 PM - Sunrise: 5:34 AM
Well, for this one, we need to use the extrapolation provided by the 1927's Admiralty map by tracing the line from where the ships were known to be in 1847 and 1848 (Point 5 and 6). (see point 3)
For Future Reference:
Travel Time between Loc 1 and Loc 2 - 7 days
Distance between Loc 1 and Loc 2 :70 NM / 80 Miles / 130 km
Average Travel Speed - 11.4 miles a day
Travel Condition - Ice breaking
DEATH COUNT: 2 + 3 (Total 5)
24 Officers and 100 Men remaining
Episode 2 - Gore
Location 3 - The Ships in 1847 (70.15, -98.30)
Date: May 24th 1847
Nighttime - None
Daylight - 24h min
Twilight - None
Sunset: N/A - Sunrise: N/A
Coordinates and Date From the Victory Point Note (see Point 1)
Location 4 - The Cairn (69.66, -98.27)
Date: May 28th 1847
Nighttime - None
Daylight - 24h min
Twilight - None
Sunset: N/A - Sunrise: N/A
From the ships, Gore lead his party to James Clark Ross' Cairn.
Now, in the Show, they found JCR's Cairn without an issue. In reality, while Gore had found the Cairn just fine, Crozier and Fitzjames did not. One of the reason for it is that JCR had, apparently, made a miscalculation in reporting where he had erected the Cairn by several miles. Honestly, the way that Fitzjames had written the words was so confusing, I appreciate that the show made the whole thing so much simpler, ahah. So let's say that it matches what we know now as Victory Point. Easy Peasy! (see Point 2)
To be Noted, we know the dates of departure from ships and arrival at cairn from the Victory Point Note.
Location 5 - The Ice Camp (69.665, -98.32)
Date: May 28th 1847
Nighttime - None
Daylight - 24h min
Twilight - None
Sunset: N/A - Sunrise: N/A
The Camp was raised just beyond the ice ridge that blocked the way form the shore and the Cairn was only a mile or so away. (see Point 3... hidden between point 2)
Of Note: That hail storm's cloud coverage was intense to say the least... So dark :')
Back to Loc 3 (70.15, -98.30)
Date: June 2nd 1847
Nighttime - None
Daylight - 24h min
Twilight - None
Sunset: N/A - Sunrise: N/A
Wednesday is a good day to drink with the Captain :D which makes it the Wednesday following May 28th 1847! So it's June 2nd!
For Future Reference:
Loc 2 to Loc 3
Travel time - 8 months, 12 days or 254 days
Travel Distance: 8.6 NM / 10 miles / 16 km
Average Travel Speed - 0.04 miles a day
Travel Condition - Pack drifting
Loc 3 to Loc 4/5
Travel time - 5 days
Travel Distance: 29 NM / 33.5 miles / 54 km
Average Travel Speed - 6.7 miles a day
Travel Condition - 6 Men hauling Sledge on Ice
Loc 4/5 Back to Loc 3
Travel time - 4 days
Travel Distance: 29 NM / 33.5 miles / 54 km
Average Travel Speed - 8.4 miles a day
Travel Condition - 6 Men hauling ASS and Sledge on Ice
DEATH COUNT: 1 (Total: 6)
23 Officers and 100 Men remaining
Episode 3 - The Ladder
This one is fun because, well... they're not moving! I could point out where Silna ends up but it looks like she remain close enough to the ships that it doesn't matter all that much. So, let's just make note of the date and events:
Location 3 - Ships in June 1847 (70.15, -98.30)
For the duration of the episode:
Nighttime - None
Daylight - 24h min
Twilight - None
Sunset: N/A - Sunrise: N/A
Date: between June 2nd and June 10th 1847
- Silna makes her igloo a few miles away from the Ships
Date: June 11th 1847
- Franklin Dies
- Crozier drafts his resignation letter
Date: June 12th 1847
- Franklin's leg is buried :')
- Lieutenant Fairholme is sent to KWI.
DEATH COUNT: 2 (Total: 8)
22 Officers and 99 Men remaining
Episode 4 - Punished, As a Boy
Another fun bottle Episode!
Location 3 - Ships in same approx position as June 1847 (70.15, -98.30)
Date: November 23rd 1847
Nighttime - 12h 35 min
Daylight - None
Twilight - 11h 25min
Sunset: 11:47 am - Sunrise: 10:51 am
- William Strong's birthday :)
- We know because it's the last sunrise of the year!
- Evans and Strong die :(
They searched for a long time if it was just before 4 pm when they got the alarm and then they came back in time for last sunrise at 11 am...
Date: November 24th 1847 to November 25th 1847
Nighttime - 12h 35 min
Daylight - None
Twilight - 11h 25min
Sunset: N/A - Sunrise: N/A
- Hickey has a communion with Tuunbaq (supposedly next day or so)
- Then Hickey gets evily booped.
DEATH COUNT: 2 + Hickey's postern (Total: 10)
22 Officers and 97 Men remaining
Episode 5 - First Shot the Winner, Lads
More fun in a bottle. These boys are not going far...
Honestly, for this one, the trouble was figuring out how much time had passed. For one, we know it's not yet Christmas because Christmas is, in fact, mentioned in Episode 6 (And Lady Jane's Christmas Pudding, hear hear) as part of the meeting between the officer and there was not yet a cooperation between the Terror Lts and Fitzjames for counting the supplies.
ALSO! That scene where Mr. Wentzell got killed dead over his nail... well, it gave me the feeling that either the review of the crew is not daily or that they've been on Erebus for a short time because 1) Fitzjames doesn't know their names and 2) He has to repeat the instructions about cleanliness... Perhaps they sent the Terrors in waves and not all 50 of them at once.
Other details to be mentionned:
Hickey is not recovered yet and Goodsir suspects he might reopen his wounds from working.
Goodsir has had time to be quite good at speaking inuktitut. Now, he could have had a continuous learning experience from Dr. McDonald since June 47 and before but considering that Dr. McDonald is stationed in Terror and Goodsir in Erebus, I suspect they did not have much time to have a class together...
Finally. Crozier suggests that he would be 2, perhaps, perhaps more... sick from sobering up. He got up just in time for First sunrise (Jan 17th).
So! We can infer that the episode might have spanned over 1 or 2 days (what's with the movement between the ships and the whole Rat Wedding).
My best guess is that the dates for this whole episode would be:
Date: December 14th 1847 to December 18th 1847
Nighttime - 13h 32 min
Daylight - None
Twilight - 11h 28min
Sunset: N/A - Sunrise: N/A
Why December 14th? Because it would be Edward Little's Birthday and I feel like it is appropriate for his character to have his boss send him back to the killing cold for more booze :') (December 16th to December 20th seems more likely but...)
This would give Crozier a full month to recover from sobering up and 22 days for Goodsir to learn inuktitut (impressive!), for Hickey backside to feel better and for Fitzjames to NOT learn the name of his new Terrors.
DEATH COUNT: 3 + Blanky's leg (Total: 13)
22 Officers and 94 Men remaining
That's it for now. I'll do the last 5 episodes soonish...
Conclusion to the first sets of episode: Sunsets and Sunrises were whacky in June 1847 but, so far, distance and travel times make good sense. If the accuracy holds up until episode 10, we might be able to have a pretty good idea of what, when and where everything happened in episodes 6 through 10.
#The Terror#The Terror AMC#Reference#The Terror Timeline#19th century dead sailors#At least now it's written somewhere that is not 120301923 word files...#Might need later editing#Super duper long post
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omg i can’t believe jake hughes got pole. not bad for a victorian sailor exhumed from his grave on beechey island after meeting an untimely demise from tuberculosis, pneumonia, and lead poisoning in the early stages of franklin’s lost expedition
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Lost Franklin Expedition graves, Beechey Island, Nunavut, Canada
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Finding Franklin's Tomb
Watched National Geographic's Explorer: Lost in the Arctic (2023) documentary. Amazing footage of the route that the Franklin Expedition took, but these guys in the doc wanting to find Franklin's tomb thinking he was buried with ships' logs, letters & even photos? Don't think you'd bury those in a grave.
Imagine finding Frozen Franklin a la the Beechey lads. His Guelphic Order medal wasn't even buried with him but kept to give to Jane if anybody made it back. Just like the ships' logs etc would be items to keep so that they could be returned to England to tell the story of the expedition.
That's what sounds plausible to me, at least. The logs/letters were probably among the papers given to the Inuit children to play with...
You can watch the documentary on Disney+
#franklin expedition#james fitzjames#royal navy#naval history#the terror#john franklin#francis crozier#arctic
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jorrington song btw. he was an average man with an average life (random ass sailor). he worked from 9 to 5 (ish) and paid the price (death of coal lung and lead poisoning). all he wants is to be left alone in his average home (permafrost grave on beechey island). but fuck dude someone is watching him (the scientists that keep digging my boy up). plus it came out in 1984. could've been on the radio as they were exhuming him. anyways
#beechey boys song in general but jorrington's my favorite. sorry jack#permafrost mummy fancam incoming? well yes perhaps#Spotify
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I’ve seen a few other fictional stories based the Franklin Expedition besides The Terror (like Kristina Gehrmann’s Icebound and a video game I can’t remember the name of) and those seem to have a common plot point of members of the expedition going on a mutiny. Was there any evidence that a mutiny occurred for the real Franklin Expedition or is that usually added to the stories to make it more dramatic? Also, do you think that the mutiny in The Terror was justified in any way?
Mutiny and discontent were always possibilities under such harsh conditions.
That's largely why the Marines were aboard - to quell any negativity should it arise. And it's why they had provisioned so many forms of entertainment too - plays and benjos and books and hand organs blasting out the tunes all do wonders to keep men's minds and bodies occupied.
But no, to the best of my limited knowledge, there's no 100% concrete evidence that a mutiny took place on the Franklin Expedition.
What potential evidence does exist relates mainly to the ships themselves.
A whaleboat was found by would-be rescuers, for example, with a variety of items in it, including two skeletons. Most importantly though, it was found facing northward, back in the direction of Terror and Erebus.
So it may be that some of the men mutinied and split off from the main group, determined to go back to the perceived safety of the ships rather than proceed south. But it may also have been more innocent than that - maybe leads had started to open up and that boat represented a party sent back by command to try to re-man the ships, or it may be that they were some of the last survivors who saw no other choice than to try and return.
There's also potential evidence in the fact that Erebus and Terror were both found so far away from their last known locations frozen in to the north of King William Island.
Again, this supports the possibility that they were re-manned at some point, and that men may have split off deliberately from the main group in order to do so.
But again, it's impossible to say yet whether something like that did happen, let alone that it happened as the result of mutiny or malice. It's entirely possible, if not more likely, that the ships drifted on their own when the ice finally started to break up. Until there's further exploration of the wrecks, we don't know and even then, we might never know.
Interestingly, there is one other piece of evidence that's been interpreted before perhaps not as full-blown mutiny but at least of discontent and that's the rather ominous nature of the inscriptions on the graves at Beechey Island.
Death in the ranks could certainly have exacerbated the existing misery and fear among the men in the dark of winter, and some have interpreted the inscriptions as meant to reassert discipline and authority.
Hartnell's read "Thus sayeth the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways"...
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In answer to your final question, I don't think mutiny either on-screen or real life would be justified necessarily but I do think it understandable.
I can perfectly understand why even a normal seaman, not even one already under Hickey's sway, would feel tremendous discontentment not just in all the hardships they were being expected to endure but in the fact that information was purposefully kept from them by command (even if for good reason).
And if anything, the idea of it in real life is even more understandable. What we see in the show is bad enough but at the end of the day, it's only a tiny fraction of the horror and carnage that the real men of the Franklin Expedition would have endured. I don't think anyone could blame them, in their abject terror and desperation, for clutching at any straw for survival, even if they had to mutiny and rebel in order to do the clutching.
#Ask#Friendos#Franklin Expedition#The Terror#The Terror AMC#History#Historic Context#Historic Conjecture certainly#I am no expert!#This is all just to the best of my knowledge
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Three crew members off the infamous Franklin expedition of 1845-46 are buried on Beechey Island, Canada. The fourth grave is of Thomas Morgan who died in 1854 aboard another ship.
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I present my third and final poem about the Beechey Island gang. I have been very humbled by the kind responses to my flirtations with verse and am so very grateful. :) This poem is based largely on information about Braine's excavation and autopsy in Frozen in Time.
William Braine Meets Owen Beattie and His Team
"Old Billy Braine of the Royal Marines,
He sailed to the Pole in a silver tureen,
He was chewed by the rats as Sir John said his prayers,
And was left with no mates but the foxes and bears."
Hauling the sledges, I fell to my knees;
The lads helped me up and I shook off their hands.
A Royal Marine had no time to be weak,
So I kept on until I could no longer stand.
The harness wore wounds that my shoulders displayed
To the strangers who lifted me out of the ground
With the first gentle touch I had felt in an age
As they murmured about all the bite marks they found.
How strange for a man who had lived to be tough,
Who had toted a rifle and snickered at fear
To feel love for these doctors who gazed at my bones
As they spoke of my sickness with reverent tears.
I was never the man in the camera's eye
Not a uniformed fop trimmed in bullion and blue,
Never printed on tin for a mantelpiece frame,
But these strangers? They wanted my photograph, too.
So I thanked them, I did, as they laid me back down,
As they tidied me up so my grave goods laid right.
And I hope they'll remember this Royal Marine
And my grin from the last time I savored the light.
#franklin expedition#william braine#poem#I don't think he'd know what an archaeologist is#so he calls them doctors
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instagram
Episode Thirty-Six: The HMS Terror Photodump
#1. The Anchorage Museum of History and Art is the fourth and final stop for a traveling exhibit called “Death in the Ice: The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition.”
#2. A historical newspaper highlights what will become the doomed Franklin expedition : New York to North Pole. #3. Wooden replicas stand in place of the original tombstones which were found on the ground at Beechey Island.
3 graves contain members from Franklin’s expedition, the fourth contains someone who died while searching for the Franklin expedition.
#4. The face of John Hartnell begins to emerge from the ice. Researchers slowly thawed the corpses by bathing them in warm water. The corpses were removed from the grave to a tent where they were x-rayed and autopsied.
#5. John Hartnell, 140 years after Hartnell's death aboard the HMS Erebus in 1846. His body was perfectly preserved in the permafrost (despite having been disturbed by previous explorers).
#6. The Resolute Desk was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the English oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute which was searching for the lost Franklin Expedition.
#7. Bones of Franklin’s crew were found discarded in mass graves.
#8. Tin cans from the Franklin Expedition (arranged in a cross and filled with stones to keep them in place) serve as some of the many original artifacts of Franklin’s Expedition. The cans are still arranged there today.
#9. Some of the earlier graves utilized materials found aboard the ships H.M.S. Terror and H.M.S. Erebus. The handles on the coffins were crafted with tape.
#10. Excavation reveals some of the bones belonging to the crew on Franklin’s Expedition have knife marks and heat related residue, revealing that the men resorted to late stage cannibalism in a last ditch effort to survive.
#The HMS Terror#Let's Get Haunted#Late Stage Cannibalism#Ghost Ship#The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition#Instagram
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best visual telephone games about the franklin expedition: RANKED
discovering the gladman point skeleton and how it was positioned
what the graves on beechey island looked like
trying to decipher what the victory pointe cairn note said under the rust stains
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you can visit the beechey island graves on google maps btw. discovery of the day.
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So I watched that Lost in the Arctic documentary on Disney+/NatGeo last night, and guess what! I have thoughts!
The high-level overview of the Franklin Expedition is useful for anyone who didn't already know a decent amount about it. The cinematography is really pretty and I particularly enjoyed seeing the Whalefish Islands. The footage shot by Renan Ozturk and Mark Synott's NatGeo crew as they sailed up to Qikiqtaq from Maine does give you some flavor of what it might've been like for a 19th c. sailor. (Cold, wet, seasick-making, often terrifying.)
They don't talk about climate change, but it's depressingly clear how little sea ice there is now, particularly when you see the ice and snow in the footage of the Beattie and Geiger expedition in the 1980s. Also, I had not actually seen that footage before, so that was fascinating. It did provide a big jump scare for Bruce, who somehow, despite having lived with me for decades and in particular over the last five years, had never seen the Beechey mummies. That closeup on poor John Hartnell with the livid eyeball is a lot if you've never seen it before.
Points as well for involvement of some of the local Inuit and also a namecheck for the late great Louie Kamookak.
However...
The whole structure of the documentary hinges on a Sasquatch-like spotting of what might have been Franklin's grave by Tom Gross, who flew over an area in the mid-2010s, saw a rectangular thing that might have been a structure, but couldn't find it again and didn't get the coordinates.
So it's all framed as an expedition with these guys going out to this corner of the island where Gross believed he sighted the thing, and combing it on foot, with drones, and ATVs, and there's this whole "WILL THEY FIND FRANKLIN'S GRAVE???" narrative which...
Spoilers: Nope!
And look, if they had, all of Terror Tumblr would have read about it and been yelling about it as soon as it happened.
There was one detail that drove me absolutely fucking batshit throughout, which is this weird conviction the searchers had about the possibility of Franklin having been buried with his logbook.
I am not an expert in all things Franklin or Royal Navy, but I just don't get where they got this idea from. It's not like Franklin was a pharaoh buried with grave goods or some shit. Surely, if they'd meant to leave a log for searchers, they'd have stuck it in a cairn, like the Victory Point note? Or, wouldn't the surviving senior officer (Crozier or Fitzjames) have taken the ship's log? Or maybe they would have left the logs on the ships. I'm not actually certain what the true protocol would have been.
Now, if they were asserting that Franklin might have been buried with private papers or something ... okay, I can almost buy that. But every time they said something about how if they find Franklin's grave, they'll find him with the log, I wanted to throw something.
At one point, Bruce turned to me and said, "What I've learned from this is ... there's no mystery! They know where the ships are, they found all these graves and bones ... the only thing they don't know is where Franklin's actual body is!"
And that's really it, isn't it? Early on in the documentary, Synott said something about the expedition vanishing "without a trace" and I actually laughed out loud because ... fucking hell, y'all, there's two really big Traces underwater off Qikiqtaq and a bunch more at the RMG, and Parks Canada is picking up more every summer.
We know, or can make a solid educated guess about, what happened. There are interesting adjacent questions, for sure! Like the stories that one or more men survived with the Inuit for some years after. And yeah, it would be pretty neat to find Franklin's grave. And it would also be really interesting from a human-perspective-of-history angle to get a more detailed, first-hand description of the expedition's final days.
But the more I sit with this story—and I have been sitting with it most intensely for five years now—the more I think that Bruce is right—the so-called "mystery" ... isn't. It's not a mystery, really. It's a disaster. it's an incredibly stupid colonialist thing that meant a lot of men died in abject misery. And there are many interesting extrapolations to be made from it. But if you're super duper obsessed with the fine details of "but what REALLY HAPPENED", I think you're not seeing the forest for the trees.
Ultimately I feel like there is a MUCH more interesting documentary to be made about the Inuit perspective on Franklin and on European Arctic exploration in general, and their oral tradition and the stories that the qablunaat should have fucking listened to a hundred years ago.
This ain't it. It's entertaining enough, and there are worse ways to spend 48 minutes, and for those of us who write fic about the place, it's absolutely worth it for the visuals. Just take the constructed narrative with an entire fucking saltshaker on the side.
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HMS’s Erebus and Terror off Beechey Island
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